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New Dimensions of Confirmation Theory II: The Structure of UncertaintyPSA Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association 1970 342-374. 1970.You are, I am sure, just as aware as I am that the operational nodes of a complex problem, the points at which it can be split open to yield nuggets of new insight or achieve lasting advances, often lie in tediously technical details perhaps incomprehensible to all but specialists in the matter and anyways totally lacking in the romance and easy excitement which attract the topic's dilettantes. I would like you to hold fast to this appreciation, for the concerns I shall raise here are technical …Read more
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11Secondary extinction of lever-pressing behavior in the albino ratJournal of Experimental Psychology 54 (4): 280. 1957.
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38Of selection operators and semanticistsPhilosophy of Science 31 (3): 282-285. 1964.As anyone who has ever seriously attempted to analyze the semantico-epistemological status of scientific theories has soon discovered, it is not easy to reconcile the belief that theoretical terms have genuine cognitive properties with the empiricist tenet that all knowledge derives from experience. Even if it be granted that knowledge can originate in experience without being about experience, it still remains to develop a coherent metalinguistic account of the truth-conditions of theoretical p…Read more
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75New mysteries for old: The transfiguration of Miller's paradoxBritish Journal for the Philosophy of Science 19 (4): 345-353. 1969.
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46Nicod's criterion: Subtler than you thinkPhilosophy of Science 47 (4): 638-643. 1980.In a recent note, Horwich challenges the foundations of Hempel's classic paradox of confirmation by a clever example purporting to show that under Nicod's Criterion, data can be made to confirm a hypothesis with which they are logically incompatible. Specifically, Horwich observes that 'Pb' is formally equivalent to ''. The latter has form '' with '∼P___ · ∼Pb' for 'Ψ' and '___ ≠ b' for 'ϕ', while the observation that distinct objects a and b both lack P, i.e. that —Pa · ∼Pb · a ≠ b, can be expr…Read more
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88Dispositions revisitedPhilosophy of Science 40 (1): 59-74. 1973.Subjunctive conditionals have their uses, but constituting the meaning of dispositional predicates is not one of them. More germane is the analysis of dispositions in terms of "bases"--except that past efforts to maintain an ontic gap between dispositions and their bases, while not wholly misguided, have failed to appreciate the semantic birthright of dispositional concepts as a species of theoretical construct in primitive science.
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48On behavioral theories of referencePhilosophy of Science 46 (2): 175-203. 1979.Efforts to bare the psychonomic nature of the semantic reference (representation) relation have been remarkably scanty; in fact, the only contemporary account developed with any care is the one proposed by Osgood. However, not even Osgood has looked deeply at the difficulties that beset any attempt to analyze reference in terms of common effects appropriately shared by a symbol and its significate
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57Studies in the empiricist theory of scientific meaningPhilosophy of Science 27 (4): 359-373. 1960.Part I is concerned with the tenet of modern Emperical Realism that while the theoretical concepts employed in science obtain their meanings entirely from the connections their usage establishes with the data language, the referents of such terms may be "unobservables," that is, entities which cannot be discussed within the data language alone. Such a view avoids both the restrictive excesses of logical positivism and the epistemic laxity of transcendentalism; however, it also necessitates a bre…Read more
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240New dimensions of confirmation theoryPhilosophy of Science 35 (2): 134-155. 1968.When Hempel's "paradox of confirmation" is developed within the confines of conditional probability theory, it becomes apparent that two seemingly equivalent generalities ("laws") can have exactly the same class of observational refuters even when their respective classes of confirming observations are importantly distinct. Generalities which have the inductive supports we commonsensically construe them to have, however, must incorporate quasi-logical operators or connectives which cannot be def…Read more
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96Do Stimuli Elicit Behavior?—A Study in the Logical Foundations of BehavioristicsPhilosophy of Science 27 (2): 159-170. 1960.It has become customary in modern behavioristics to speak of stimuli as though they elicit responses from organisms. But logically this is absurd, for analysis of the grammatical roles of stimulus and response concepts shows that stimuli and responses differ in logical type from causes and effects. The "S elicits R" formula thus stands revealed as elliptical for a more complicated form of assertion. The trouble with this ellipsis, however, is that by suppressing vital components of formal struct…Read more
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40The logic of unboundedly reactive systemsSynthese 39 (3). 1978.Scientific theories often need to envision that a given output variable Y is jointly determined by all input variables of a certain kind ΣX that we can identify onlyas a kind without knowing all its specific instances or even how many of these there are, When the number of variables in ΣX is possibly infinite, the function by which they determine Y proves to be enormously enigmatic, epistemically, mathematically, and scientifically
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67Ontological induction and the logical typology of scientific variablesPhilosophy of Science 28 (4): 337-377. 1961.It is widely agreed among philosophers of science today that no formal pattern can possibly be found in the origins of scientific theory. There is no such thing as a "logic of discovery," insists this view--a scientific hypothesis is susceptible to methodological critique only in its relation to empirical consequences derived after the hypothesis itself has emerged through a spontaneous creative inspiration. Yet confronted with the tautly directed thrust of theory-building as actually practiced …Read more
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91Let's dump hypothetico-deductivism for the right reasonsPhilosophy of Science 49 (4): 637-647. 1982.
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University of AlbertaRegular Faculty
Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
Areas of Interest
Epistemology |
Philosophy of Language |
Philosophy of Probability |