Prompted by the "Panel Discussion of Grünbaum's Philosophy of Science" (Philosophy of Science 36, December, 1969) and other recent literature, this essay ranges over major issues in the philosophy of space, time and space-time as well as over problems in the logic of ascertaining the falsity of a scientific hypothesis. The author's philosophy of geometry has recently been challenged along three main distinct lines as follows: (i) The Panel article by G. J. Massey calls for a more precise and more (...) coherent account of the Riemannian conception of an intrinsic as opposed to an extrinsic metric, which the author has invoked as his basis for the distinction between non-conventional and convention-laden ascriptions of metrical equality and inequality; (ii) the latter distinction has been claimed to suffer from the liabilities of the so-called "standard conception" of scientific theories [36]; and (iii) pursuant to H. Putnam's "An Examination of Grünbaum's Philosophy of Geometry" [56], J. Earman [16, 17] and R. Swinburne [65] have contended that the difference between intrinsic and extrinsic metrics is scientifically unilluminating, and that the associated distinction between non-conventional and convention-laden metrical comparisons does not have the kind of relevance to extant scientific theories that the author has claimed for it. The essay consists of two installments. The present installment, comprising the Introduction and Part A, is devoted to the clarification, correction and further development of the author's prior writings on the philosophy of geometry. Its main objective is constructive elaboration rather than offering polemics. But rebuttals to Earman, [16, 17], Swinburne [65] and Demopoulos [13] are included, because their inclusion conduced to clarity in giving the new exposition. Part B is to appear in a subsequent issue and will be devoted to replies to critiques contained in the Panel Discussion and in other recent literature. It will range over issues in the philosophy of geometry and in the logic of ascertaining the falsity of a scientific hypothesis. By way of merely elliptical anticipation of much more precise statements given in Part A, section 3(ii), the Introduction dissociates the notion of convention-ladenness developed in Part A from the quite different notion integral to the so-called "standard conception" of scientific theories. Thereby, the Introduction prepares the ground for seeing, as a corollary to Part A, section 3(ii), that the notion advocated in the present essay has nothing to fear from the following fact, noted by C. G. Hempel ([36]; cf. also his 1970 Carus Lectures): "even though a sentence may originally be introduced as true by stipulation, it soon joins the club of all other member-statements of the theory and becomes subject to revision in response to further empirical findings and theoretical developments." Part A, which begins with a fairly detailed table of contents, endeavors to meet the aforementioned three-fold challenge to the author's philosophy of geometry. Massey's call for the provision of clear and detailed characterizations of intrinsic and extrinsic metrics is answered with the invaluable aid rendered personally by Massey himself. These characterizations are shown to permit a precise explication of the portions of Riemann's Inaugural Dissertation relevant to (1) Riemann's brilliant anticipation of Einstein's dynamical conception of physical geometry, and (2) the author's philosophical characterization of the metrics and geometries of space, time, and space-time {section 2(c)}. A byproduct of the analysis is to raise two major philosophical doubts concerning Clifford's sketch of a so-called "space-theory of matter" as elaborated in J. A. Wheeler's relativistic geometrodynamics. That theory's vision of understanding matter as a manifestation of empty curved space is questioned in regard to (1) the existence of an intra-geometrodynamic basis for individuating the metrically homogeneous world points of its space-time manifold {section 1(a)}, and (2) the compatibility of the theory with the Riemannian metrical philosophy apparently espoused by its proponents {section 2(c)(i)}. (shrink)

"Well over one half of this brilliant new Monograph constitutes a major sequel to Professor Grunbaum's highly influential 1984 book The Foundations of Psychoanalysis: A Philosophical Critique, which was labeled "magisterial" by Frank J. Sulloway, and "the most important book ever written on Freud's status as a scientist" by J. Allan Hobson. The importance of the present Monograph lies in the extent to which the author now goes beyond that earlier volume to offer new original ideas on fundamental themes." (...) "Validation in the Clinical Theory of Psycho-analysis: A Study in the Philosophy of Psycho-analysis contains Adolf Grunbaum's new basic critique of the psychoanalytic theory of transference in its role of an etiologic theory; it turns out that etiologic transference interpretations rest on fallacious causal inferences from so-called "meaning connections" between mental states: moreover, just these unsound inferences are the stock-in-trade of the "hermeneutic" reconstruction of psychoanalysis, which charges Freud with a "scientistic self-misunderstanding."" "This volume joins the issue with Marshall Edelson's defenses of the investigative viability of the single-subject case study method. As a spin-off from the import of the serious placebo challenge to psychoanalysis, this Monograph presents the author's widely recognized new account of the placebo concept across all of medicine and psychotherapy. Whereas Foundations of Psychoanalysis objected that Freud's dream theory was evidentially ill-founded, the burden of the present book is to give two new basic reasons for presuming the theory to be false. It also develops the import of the author's appraisal of psychoanalytic theory for the scrutiny of Freud's triadic psychology of religious belief in theism." "Since Sir Karl Popper's most detailed charge of pseudoscience against psychoanalysis in 1983 could not be examined for inclusion in the 1984 book, the present monograph shows in what ways it is wide of the mark as an incoherent diagnosis of the scientific liabilities of psychoanalytic theory. In addition, four important papers that had antedated Foundations by a few years and were scattered over diverse publications have been updated and integrated with the other chapters herein."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved. (shrink)

"Well over one half of this brilliant new Monograph constitutes a major sequel to Professor Grunbaum's highly influential 1984 book The Foundations of Psychoanalysis: A Philosophical Critique, which was labeled "magisterial" by Frank J. Sulloway, and "the most important book ever written on Freud's status as a scientist" by J. Allan Hobson. The importance of the present Monograph lies in the extent to which the author now goes beyond that earlier volume to offer new original ideas on fundamental themes." (...) "Validation in the Clinical Theory of Psycho-analysis: A Study in the Philosophy of Psycho-analysis contains Adolf Grunbaum's new basic critique of the psychoanalytic theory of transference in its role of an etiologic theory; it turns out that etiologic transference interpretations rest on fallacious causal inferences from so-called "meaning connections" between mental states: moreover, just these unsound inferences are the stock-in-trade of the "hermeneutic" reconstruction of psychoanalysis, which charges Freud with a "scientistic self-misunderstanding."" "This volume joins the issue with Marshall Edelson's defenses of the investigative viability of the single-subject case study method. As a spin-off from the import of the serious placebo challenge to psychoanalysis, this Monograph presents the author's widely recognized new account of the placebo concept across all of medicine and psychotherapy. Whereas Foundations of Psychoanalysis objected that Freud's dream theory was evidentially ill-founded, the burden of the present book is to give two new basic reasons for presuming the theory to be false. It also develops the import of the author's appraisal of psychoanalytic theory for the scrutiny of Freud's triadic psychology of religious belief in theism." "Since Sir Karl Popper's most detailed charge of pseudoscience against psychoanalysis in 1983 could not be examined for inclusion in the 1984 book, the present monograph shows in what ways it is wide of the mark as an incoherent diagnosis of the scientific liabilities of psychoanalytic theory. In addition, four important papers that had antedated Foundations by a few years and were scattered over diverse publications have been updated and integrated with the other chapters herein."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved. (shrink)

Much of Grünbaum's work may be regarded as a careful development and systematic elaboration of the Riemann-Poincaré thesis of the conventionality of congruence, the thesis that the continuous manifolds of space, time, and space-time are intrinsically metrically amorphous, i.e. are devoid of intrinsic metrics. Therefore, to appreciate Grünbaum's philosophical contributions, one must have a clear understanding of what he means by an intrinsic metric. The second and fourth sections of this paper are exegetical; in them we try to piece together, (...) from his sundry remarks about intrinsic metrics, what Grünbaum means by the term 'intrinsic metric.' We shall argue that, the customary carefulness and precision of Grünbaum's writings notwithstanding, there are residual unclarities and difficulties which beset his conception of an intrinsic metric. In the fifth section we shall propose an explication of Grünbaum's notion of an intrinsic metric which seems on the whole faithful to Grünbaum's intuitions and insights and which also seems capable of performing the philosophical services which his work demands of that notion. The third section is a digression on Zeno's metrical paradox of extension. (shrink)

Zeno's paradoxes of motion are considered as challenges to the practice of describing motion in terms of continuous functions. A brief description of some work of adolf gruenbaum toward the resolution of these paradoxes is given. A new form of zeno's dichotomy paradox is described, And it is claimed that the paradox, In this form, Is not amenable to the explanations of gruenbaum. This is demonstrated by giving the new form of the paradox a second, More mathematical description. In a (...) short summary it is claimed that the challenges of zeno's paradoxes are still unanswered. (shrink)

The present article is an attempt to set forth and examine the conclusions of what is perhaps Husserl’s finest piece of philosophical investigation, and one of the finest pieces in the whole history of philosophy: the investigation of the consciousness of time, with its extraordinary combination of an unchanging form with an absolute flux of which it is none other than the very form itself. This investigation puts Husserl on a level with the wisest heads on the matter, with Aristotle (...) in Books IV and VI of the Physics, with Augustine in Book X of the Confessions, and with Kant, whose whole Critique of Pure Reason may be said to be an examination of what is necessary to temporal experience. In Husserl’s work we have, we may say, the greatest of recent philosophers tackling the greatest of philosophical problems, one in which contradiction is always appearing in novel forms, to be evaded only by the naïve superficiality of a Minkowski or a Grünbaum, or by such infinitely useful subtlety as Husserl himself practises. As Husserl himself put it near the beginning of his 1905 Lectures. (shrink)

Following the ideas of Poincaré, Reichenbach, and Grunbaum concerning the convention of setting up clock systems, we analyze clock systems and light propagation within the framework of four-dimensional symmetry. It is possible to construct a new four-dimensional symmetry framework incorporatingcommon time: observers in different inertial frames of reference use one and the same clock system, which is located in any one of the frames. Consequently, simultaneity has a meaning independent of position and independent of frame of reference. A further (...) consequence is that the two-way speeds of light alone are isotropic in any frame. By the choice of clock system there will be one frame in which the one-way speed of light is isotropic. This frame can be arbitrarily chosen. The difference between one-way speeds and two-way speeds of light signals is considered in detail. (shrink)

In 'Vague Identity: Evans Misunderstood' David Lewis defends Gareth Evans against a widespread misunderstanding of an argument that appeared in his article 'Can There be Vague Objects?'. Lewis takes himself to be 'defending Evans' and not just correcting a mistake; witness his remark that, 'As misunderstood, Evans is a pitiful figure: a "technical philosopher" out of control of his technicalities, taken in by a fallacious proof of an absurd conclusion'. Let me say at the outset that I take Lewis to (...) be exactly right in regarding as a misunderstanding the interpretation of Evans which he exposes as such. On Lewis's account, everything Evans says 'falls into place', and he quotes from a letter that 'settles the matter'. (shrink)

What if gravity satisfied the Klein-Gordon equation? Both particle physics from the 1920s-30s and the 1890s Neumann-Seeliger modification of Newtonian gravity with exponential decay suggest considering a "graviton mass term" for gravity, which is _algebraic_ in the potential. Unlike Nordström's "massless" theory, massive scalar gravity is strictly special relativistic in the sense of being invariant under the Poincaré group but not the 15-parameter Bateman-Cunningham conformal group. It therefore exhibits the whole of Minkowski space-time structure, albeit only indirectly concerning volumes. Massive (...) scalar gravity is plausible in terms of relativistic field theory, while violating most interesting versions of Einstein's principles of general covariance, general relativity, equivalence, and Mach. Geometry is a poor guide to understanding massive scalar gravity: matter sees a conformally flat metric due to universal coupling, but gravity also sees the rest of the flat metric in the mass term. What is the 'true' geometry, one might wonder, in line with Poincaré's modal conventionality argument? Infinitely many theories exhibit this bimetric 'geometry,' all with the total stress-energy's trace as source; thus geometry does not explain the field equations. The irrelevance of the Ehlers-Pirani-Schild construction to a critique of conventionalism becomes evident when multi-geometry theories are contemplated. Much as Seeliger envisaged, the smooth massless limit indicates underdetermination of theories by data between massless and massive scalar gravities---indeed an unconceived alternative. At least one version easily could have been developed before General Relativity; it then would have motivated thinking of Einstein's equations along the lines of Einstein's newly re-appreciated "physical strategy" and particle physics and would have suggested a rivalry from massive spin 2 variants of General Relativity. The Putnam-Grünbaum debate on conventionality is revisited with an emphasis on the broad modal scope of conventionalist views. Massive scalar gravity thus contributes to a historically plausible rational reconstruction of much of 20th-21st century space-time philosophy in the light of particle physics. An appendix reconsiders the Malament-Weatherall-Manchak conformal restriction of conventionality and constructs the 'universal force' influencing the causal structure. Subsequent works will discuss how massive gravity could have provided a template for a more Kant-friendly space-time theory that would have blocked Moritz Schlick's supposed refutation of synthetic _a priori_ knowledge, and how Einstein's false analogy between the Neumann-Seeliger-Einstein modification of Newtonian gravity and the cosmological constant \Lambda generated lasting confusion that obscured massive gravity as a conceptual possibility. (shrink)