In May of 1973 we organized an international research colloquium on foundations of probability, statistics, and statistical theories of science at the University of Western Ontario. During the past four decades there have been striking formal advances in our understanding of logic, semantics and algebraic structure in probabilistic and statistical theories. These advances, which include the development of the relations between semantics and metamathematics, between logics and algebras and the algebraic-geometrical foundations of statistical theories (especially in the sciences), have led (...) to striking new insights into the formal and conceptual structure of probability and statistical theory and their scientific applications in the form of scientific theory. The foundations of statistics are in a state of profound conflict. Fisher's objections to some aspects of Neyman-Pearson statistics have long been well known. More recently the emergence of Baysian statistics as a radical alternative to standard views has made the conflict especially acute. In recent years the response of many practising statisticians to the conflict has been an eclectic approach to statistical inference. Many good statisticians have developed a kind of wisdom which enables them to know which problems are most appropriately handled by each of the methods available. The search for principles which would explain why each of the methods works where it does and fails where it does offers a fruitful approach to the controversy over foundations. (shrink)

In this paper, we outline a theory of the nature of self-directed agents. What is distinctive about self-directed agents is their ability to anticipate interaction processes and to evaluate their performance, and thus their sensitivity to context. They can improve performance relative to goals, and can, in certain instances, construct new goals. We contrast self-directedness with reactive action processes that are not modifiable by the agent, though they may be modified by supra-agent processes such as populational adaptation or external design.Self-directedness (...) lies at the nexus of issues concerning the evolution and nature of intentionality, intelligence, and agency. It provides some insight into the evolution of intelligence because it helps explain how organisms are able to manage variable interaction processes, e.g., a hunting strategy that varies with prey type, ground condition, and hunger level. Simple self-directed organisms like bumblebees manage variability in one or a few dimensions. (shrink)

Tim van Gelder, following Brandom, Collins and others, uses the so‐called wide content of capacities which support social, norm governed activities, such as language, to argue for their anti‐natural, abstract, but socially instituted nature and thence for the failure of the entire traditional mind‐body discussion as ill‐posed. We argue that his former conclusion is wrong, that such properties are naturalisable, complicated organisational properties of the complexly organised, non‐linearly interactive systems that human beings are. This analysis also provides principled support, but (...) on other grounds, for van Gelder’s latter conclusion. We outline a new naturalist approach to the organisational capacities of such systems that is intended to ground their biological, cognitive and social characters. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Sovereignty of Reason: The Defense of Rationality in the Early English Enlightenment by Frederick C. BeiserJohn W. YoltonFrederick C. Beiser. The Sovereignty of Reason: The Defense of Rationality in the Early English Enlightenment. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996. Pp. xi + 332. Cloth, $39.50.Beiser characterizes the methodology of his study as historical and philosophical: historical in placing texts in their own context and in uncovering the intentions (...) of their authors; philosophical in reconstructing and appraising arguments (ix). Both methods are necessary for good historical work. The second is often practiced without the first, to the detriment of philosophy and its history. “A philosopher who reconstructs arguments without the aid of history indulges in mere guesswork and anachronism, measuring the standards of philosophical relevance and importance by the concerns of his own age” (x). Equally, understanding the arguments and ideas of, e.g., seventeenth-century writers, “also involves testing their truth: seeing how they cohere with one another, what their consequences are, whether they follow from the evidence adduced for them, and if they reply to the objections made against them” (x). This splendid study of the role of reason in seventeenth-century religion, science, and philosophy is a fine example of careful textual-historical scholarship with rigorous philosophical analysis.The goal of his study is to tell “the story of how rationalism, in the very specific sense of the sovereignty of reason, arose in seventeenth-century England” (5). Starting with an introduction which discusses such topics as “The Paradox of the English Enlightenment,” “Rationalism in the English Church,” “The Enlightenment and the New Sciences,” Beiser proceeds to detailed presentations and discussions of “The Protestant Challenge” (Chap. 1); Richard Hookers’s defense of reason (Chap. 2); the views of the Great Tew Circle, e.g., Falkland, Chillingworth, Hammond, Hales (Chap. 3); the Cambridge Platonists (Chap. 4); the nature of Enthusiasm (Chap. 5); John Toland and Deism (Chap. 6); and ethical rationalism (Chap. 7).Many of the topics covered have been the subjects of other books and articles. What marks Beiser’s account is the freshness of his approach, the many new insights and suggestions about the tensions between the holders of traditional doctrines and newer challenges. Beiser’s writing is clear, and the issues are carefully presented and analyzed. One of the central themes is the mistake of equating “rationalism with the critique or rejection of religion” (15), of identifying enlightenment with secularization (14). The appeals to reason often emerge from within orthodox religion, whose defenders were trying to cope with their own internal tensions. “Once we consider the Cambridge Platonists’ early reaction to predestination, it becomes clear that it was not Hobbes but Calvin who first posed the danger of atheism for them. For it was Calvin’s theology, and not Hobbes’s materialism, that inspired the fear of God that [End Page 138] they regarded as the source of atheism. In the eyes of the Cambridge Platonists, Hobbes’s materialism was only a false remedy for that fear...” (147). A similar point is made later: “the foundations of a rational theology” in Whichcote “did not arise from any need to combat a creeping Hobbesianism. Rather, it grew up from the inner struggles and torments of the Protestant soul” (165).Equally significant is Beiser’s analysis of enthusiasm, the appeals to divine inspiration rather than to reason or evidence: “We should be aware of accepting the contemporary caricature of the enthusiasts, which portrayed them as zealous and ignorant anti–intellectuals with no cogent or coherent philosophical position of their own” (187). His analysis of the enthusiasts stresses the epistemological nature of their position, rather than the usual theological, ethical, or political dimensions (193). He insists that “enthusiasm is essentially a philosophical concept. Historically, it arose as a response to the problem of the sources and criteria of religious knowledge” (187). The search for criteria is a pervasive feature of Beiser’s study: Luther’s and Calvin’s efforts to draw the boundary between faith and reason (24); Richard Hooker’s failure to “provide an epistemological foundation for his theory of natural law” (67); the need for a criterion to distinguish genuine from false revelation... (shrink)

The role of interaction in learning is essential and profound: it must provide the means to solve open problems (those only vaguely specified in advance), but cannot be captured using our familiar formal cognitive tools. This presents an impasse to those confined to present formalisms; but interaction is fundamentally dynamical, not formal, and with its importance thus underlined it invites the development of a distinctively interactivist account of life and mind. This account is provided, from its roots in the interactivist (...) biological constitution of life, through the evolution of the dual internal regulatory capacities expressed as intentionality and intelligence, to its expression in self-directed anticipative learning in persons and in science. (shrink)

The thesis of this paper is that scientific method is to be thought of as a complex many-leveled regulatory hierarchy of principles, interacting with theory also viewed as a complex many-leveled hierarchy. This conception of method is illustrated in particular through one episode in the contemporary development of plasma physics, and related to others. It provides for method-theory interaction and for the development of method itself as science develops.

We live together in one natural, if complex, world, and our scientific knowledge of it ought to be correspondingly unified. But currently the sciences collectively form a very complex structure, partly interrelated, partly unrelated, and partly incompatible. How is this condition explained, and what may we expect of unity in science?

All the major inter-theoretic relations of fundamental science are asymptotic ones, e.g. quantum theory as Planck's constant h 0, yielding (roughly) Newtonian mechanics. Thus asymptotics ultimately grounds claims about inter-theoretic explanation, reduction and emergence. This paper examines four recent, central claims by Batterman concerning asymptotics and reduction. While these claims are criticised, the discussion is used to develop an enriched, dynamically-based account of reduction and emergence, to show its capacity to illuminate the complex variety of inter-theory relationships in physics, and (...) to provide a principled resolution to such persistent philosophical problems as multiple realisability and the nature of the special sciences. Introduction Exposition Examination I: Claims (1) and (2), asymptotic explanation and reference Examination II: Claim (3), reduction and singular asymptotics Examination III: Claim (4), emergence and multiple realisability Conclusion. (shrink)

The Three Papers comprising this series, together with my earlier [34] also published in this journal, constitute an attempt to set out the major issues in the theoretical domain of reduction and to develop a general theory of theory reduction. The fourth paper, [34], though published separately from this trio, is integral to the presentation and should be read in conjunction with these papers. Even so, the presentation is limited in scope – roughly, to intertheoretic reduction among empirical theories – (...) and informal in presentation – not least because a satisfying formal account of theories has yet to be offered. And despite the length, the treatment is still condensed; often corroborating and/or intuitively helpful detail has had to be consigned to footnotes or omitted. I approach the problem from within my own naturalistic realist philosophy of science and formal analysis of abstract hierarchy in theory. The sources for the former are [25], [29], [31], and [32] and those for the latter essentially [27] and [30]. Hierarchical notions played a significant role in the already published [34]. (shrink)

It is shown how the development of physics has involved making explicit what were homocentric projections which had heretofore been implicit, indeed inexpressible in theory. This is shown to support a particular notion of the invariant as the real. On this basis the divergence in ideals of physical intelligibility between Bohr and Einstein is set out. This in turn leads to divergent, but explicit, conceptions of objectivity and completeness for physical theory. *I am indebted to Dr. G. McLelland. Professor F. (...) Rohrlich and an anonymous referee of this journal for several improvements in the formulation of the paper. (shrink)

It is now commonly accepted that N. Goodman's predicate "grue" presents the theory of confirmation of C. G. Hempel (and other such theories) with grave difficulties. The precise nature and status of these "difficulties" has, however, never been made clear. In this paper it is argued that it is very unlikely that "grue" raises any formal difficulties for Hempel and appearances to the contrary are examined, rejected and an explanation of their intuitive appeal offered. However "grue" is shown to raise (...) an informal, "over-arching" difficulty of great magnitude for all theories of confirmation, including Hempel's theory. (shrink)

D. H. Sharp has recently argued that Einstein, Podolsky, and Rosen failed to make good their claim that elementary quantum theory provides only an incomplete description of physical reality. Sharp expounds in detail three criticisms (a fourth is mentioned) which focus largely on formal features of the quantum theory. I argue, on grounds centered largely in our search for an adequate physical understanding of the micro domain, that each of these criticisms must be rejected. The original criticism of quantum theory (...) reemerges as a still-important baseline in our search for an adequate understanding of quantum theory. (shrink)

Any theory of reduction that goes only so far as carried in Parts I and II does only half the job. Prima facie at least, there are cases of would-be reduction which seem torn between two conflicting intuitions. On the one side there is a strong intuition that reduction is involved, and a strongly retentive reduction at that. On the other side it seems that the concepts at one level cross-classify those at the other level, so that there is no (...) way to identify properties at one level with those at the other. There is evidence to suggest that there will be no unique mental state/neural state association that can be set up, because, e.g., many different parts of the nervous system are all capable of taking over ‘control’ of the one mental function. And it is alleged that infinitely many, worse: indefinitely many, different bio-chemo-physical states could correspond to the economic property ‘has a monetary system of economic exchange’; and similarly for the property ‘has just won a game of tennis’. Yet one doesn't want an economic system or a game of tennis to be some ghostly addition to the actual bio-chemo-physical processes and events involved. Similarly one hopes that neurophysiology allied with the rest of natural science will render human experience and behaviour explicable. (shrink)

It is argued that fundamental to Piaget's life works is a biologically based naturalism in which the living world is a nested complex of self-regulating, self-organising (constructing) adaptive systems. A structuralist-rationalist overlay on this core position is distinguished and it is shown how it may be excised without significant loss of content or insight. A new and richer conception of the nature of Piaget's genetic epistemology emerges, one which enjoys rich interrelationships with evolutionary epistemology. These are explored and it is (...) shown how a regulatory systems evolutionary epistemology may be embedded within genetic epistemology. (shrink)

An explicit philosophy and meta-philosophy of positivism, empiricism and popperianism is provided. Early popperianism is argued to be essentially a form of empiricism, the deviations from empiricism are traced. In contrast, the meta-philosophy and philosophy of an evolutionary naturalistic realism is developed and it is shown how the maximal conflict of this doctrine with all forms of empiricism at the meta-philosophical level both accounts for the form of its development at the philosophical level and its defense against attack from nonrealist (...) quarters. Following an earlier article on realism of similar theme (Synthese 26 (1974), 409) this paper then further explores the ramifications of a thoroughgoing realist position. (shrink)

Part I of this trilogy, Historical and Scientific Setting, set out a general context for selecting a certain subclass of inter-theoretic relations as achieving appropriate explanatory and ontological unification – hence for properly being labelled reductive. Something of the complexity of these relations in real science was explored. The present article concentrates on the role which identity plays in structuring the reduction relation and so in achieving ontological and explanatory unification.

In his bookMinimal Rationality (1986), Christopher Cherniak draws deep and widespread conclusions from our finitude, and not only for philosophy but also for a wide range of science as well. Cherniak's basic idea is that traditional philosophical theories of rationality represent idealisations that are inaccessible to finite rational agents. It is the purpose of this paper to apply a theory of idealisation in science to Cherniak's arguments. The heart of the theory is a distinction between idealisations that represent reversible, solely (...) quantitative simplifications and those that represent irreversible, degenerate idealisations which collapse out essential theoretical structure. I argue that Cherniak's position is best understood as assigning the latter status to traditional rationality theories and that, so understood, his arguments may be illuminated, expanded, and certain common criticisms of them rebutted. The result, however, is a departure from traditional, formalist theories of rationality of a more radical kind than Cherniak contemplates, with widespread ramifications for philosophical theory, especially philosophy of science itself. (shrink)