Mehul "Stretch" Shah Shah

Bucks County Community College
  •  1
    Why Can't There Be a Logic of Discovery?
    Dissertation, City University of New York. 2004.
    When philosophers of science speak of a "logic of discovery", what they mean is a systematic method for the generation of scientific hypotheses. The task of this dissertation is to examine arguments for and against a logic of discovery and to defend the possibility of a methodological logic of discovery as opposed to a psychological or epistemic logic of discovery. According to a methodological logic of discovery, there are systematic methods for generating hypotheses that promote the long-term …Read more
  •  58
    The Socratic Teaching Method
    Teaching Philosophy 31 (3): 267-275. 2008.
    This paper will show how the three principles of the Socratic teaching method—midwifery, recollection, and cross-examination—are utilized in the treatment of learning diseases, that is, attitudes that interfere with effective learning. The Socratic teaching method differs from the traditional lecture model of teaching, but it does not sacrifice the therapeutic for the informative task of teaching. Rather, by indirectly imparting content and uncovering implicit content through careful questioning…Read more
  •  25
    The Logics of Discovery in Popper’s Evolutionary Epistemology
    Journal for General Philosophy of Science / Zeitschrift für Allgemeine Wissenschaftstheorie 39 (2): 303-319. 2008.
    Popper is well known for rejecting a logic of discovery, but he is only justified in rejecting the same type of logic of discovery that is denied by consequentialism. His own account of hypothesis generation, based on a natural selection analogy, involves an error-eliminative logic of discovery and the differences he admits between biological and conceptual evolution suggest an error-corrective logic of discovery. These types of logics of discovery are based on principles of plausibility that ar…Read more
  •  80
    Is it justifiable to abandon all search for a logic of discovery?
    International Studies in the Philosophy of Science 21 (3). 2007.
    In his influential paper, 'Why Was the Logic of Discovery Abandoned?', Laudan contends that there has been no philosophical rationale for a logic of discovery since the emergence of consequentialism in the 19th century. It is the purpose of this paper to show that consequentialism does not involve the rejection of all types of logic of discovery. Laudan goes too far in his interpretation of the historical shift from generativism to consequentialism, and his claim that the context of pursuit belo…Read more