Whereas an inference (deductive as well as inductive) is usually viewed as being valid in virtue of its argument form, the present paper argues that scientific reasoning is material inference, i.e., justified in virtue of its content. A material inference is licensed by the empirical content embodied in the concepts contained in the premises and conclusion. Understanding scientific reasoning as material inference has the advantage of combining different aspects of scientific reasoning, such as (...) confirmation, discovery, and explanation. This approach explains why these different aspects (including discovery) can be rational without conforming to formal schemes, and why scientific reasoning is local, i.e., justified only in certain domains and contingent on particular empirical facts. The notion of material inference also fruitfully interacts with accounts of conceptual change and psychological theories of concepts. (shrink)

We discuss first a "stance" methodology toward the problem of personhood. This is to ask first, what it is to take something to be a person, and then to move via a notion of appropriateness to an answer to what it is to be a person. We argue that the distinctions between persons and non-persons, between agents and patients, and between subjects and mere objects are deeply connected. All three distinctions are themselves traced to a fundamental distinction within the space (...) of reasons -- between, that is, two sorts of material inferential propriety. These two structures of inference are made explicit by indicative and subjunctive conditionals. Tracing personhood to the fundamentally stereoscopic structure of material inference sheds light not only on notions of freedom, agency, and personhood, but on the nature of modal judgments, on the conceptual space of causation, and on the semantics of the explicitating conditionals. We conclude with a pragmatic argument for belief in persons. (shrink)

An adequate semantics for generic sentences must stake out positions across a range of contested territory in philosophy and linguistics. For this reason the study of generic sentences is a venue for investigating different frameworks for understanding human rationality as manifested in linguistic phenomena such as quantification, classification of individuals under kinds, defeasible reasoning, and intensionality. Despite the wide variety of semantic theories developed for generic sentences, to date these theories have been almost universally model-theoretic and representational. This essay outlines (...) a range of proof-theoretic analyses for characterizing generics. Particular attention is given to an expressivist proof-theory that can be traced to 1) work on logical syntax that Carnap undertook prior to his turn toward truth-conditional model theory in the late 1930s, and 2) research on sequent calculi and natural deduction systems that originate in work from Gentzen and Prawitz.11 This essay offers a more precise exposition of some of the material discussed in the first two chapters of my dissertation (Stovall Citation2015a). These ideas developed in the context of a working group on non-monotonic logic run by Robert Brandom, and they were subsequently clarified through the work of Nissim Francez (particularly Francez Citation2015). I am indebted to many people for feedback and criticism on this essay, though I am sure none among them would agree with everything I say and do here. I would particularly like to thank Brandom, Francez, Ulf Hlobil, Daniel Kaplan, Jared Millson, Bernhard Nickel, Jaroslav Peregrin, Jeffry Pelletier, Thomas Ricketts, Mark Risjord, Shawn Standefer, and two reviewers for this journal. Work on this essay was supported by the joint Lead-Agency research grant between the Austrian Science Foundation (FWF) and the Czech Science Foundation (GAČR), Inferentialism and Collective Intentionality, GF17-33808L. It was substantially revised prior to its final submission. (shrink)

Wilfrid Sellars’s suggestion that there are valid material inferences entails that validity is not limited to formal inferences. Because material inferences are expressed in ordinary language and deal with both conceptual and empirical matters, an interesting prospect unfolds: valid reasoning is irreducibly plural. However, it is not clear what the validity of inferences composed of non-logical and descriptive vocabulary means. I argue that it is better to speak of the legitimacy rather than the validity of material inferences. (...) A material inference can be understood as legitimate when one has a pragmatic propriety to infer from an assertion A to an assertion B. Pragmatic propriety designates the social-normative entitlement of inferencing. Because pragmatic proprieties are discipline-specific and local, legitimate reasoning is plural. Nevertheless, the shared general feature of reasoning practices is to preserve and improve the coherence of one’s system of belief. (shrink)

John D. Norton’s “Material Theory of Induction” has been one of the most intriguing recent additions to the philosophy of induction. Norton’s account appears to be a notably natural account of actual inductive practices, although his theory has attracted considerable criticism. I detail several novel issues for his theory but argue that supplementing the Material Theory with a theory of direct inference could address these problems. I argue that if this combination is possible, a stronger theory of (...) inductive reasoning emerges, which has a more propitious answer to the Problem of Induction. (shrink)

In this paper I individuate some important differences between formal inference and material inference and how they affect two different ways of understanding human reasoning. I will claim that understanding reasoning as characterised by formal inference can generate epistemic injustice in education. To explain this claim, I will go through two examples of errors in evaluation. In the first one—the “shelves case” — I will show how epistemic injustice generates oppression because it does not take into (...) account the difference generated by the consideration of individuals as concrete individuals rather than abstract individual or “the generalised other”. I will contend that given the nature of human reasoning, thought is not reducible to "logical" reasoning but rather requires knowledge of conceptual contents. In the second example—the “Backtracking fallacy”—I will contend that a fallacy in assessment procedures may arise from the lack of distinction between the "public" framework of knowledge and individual epistemic states. From what will emerge about the two examples, the importance of the transmission of cultural heritage, in the form of knowledge and content, also as the sets of inferences involving concepts, will be seen. For it becomes necessary to set aside the misleading idea that these legacies are mere conceptual structures that have always been implicitly present in the student’s mind, and that it is sufficient to stimulate the student’s mind to make them explicit. -/- . (shrink)

A two-fold challenge faces any account of inductive inference. It must provide means to discern which are the good inductive inferences or which relations capture correctly the strength of inductive support. It must show us that those means are the right ones. Formal theories of inductive inference provide the means through universally applicable formal schema. They have failed, I argue, to meet either part of the challenge. In their place, I urge that background facts in each domain determine (...) which are the good inductive inferences; and we can see that they are good in virtue of the meaning of the pertinent background facts. This material theory of induction is used to assess the competing inductive inferences in the debate in 1972 between John N. Bahcall and Halton Arp over the import of the redshift of light from the galaxies. (shrink)

Following David Hitchcock and Stephen Toulmin, this paper takes warrants to be material inference rules. It offers an account of the form such rules should take that is designed (a) to implement the idea that an argument/inference is valid only if it is entitlement preserving and (b) to support a qualitative version of evidence proportionalism. It attempts to capture what gives warrants their normative force by elaborating a concept of reliability tailored to its account of the form (...) such rules should take. (shrink)

The so-called materially valid inferences have come to new prominence through the work of Robert Brandom. This paper introduces a fragment of a logic of concepts that does not reduce concepts to their extensions. Concept logic and ist semantics allow us to represent the conceptual knowledge used in material inferences and thus suggests a way to deal with them.

Coping with uncertainty is a necessary part of ordinary life and is crucial to an understanding of how the mind works. For example, it is a vital element in developing artificial intelligence that will not be undermined by its own rigidities. There have been many approaches to the problem of uncertain inference, ranging from probability to inductive logic to nonmonotonic logic. Thisbook seeks to provide a clear exposition of these approaches within a unified framework. The principal market for the (...) book will be students and professionals in philosophy, computer science, and AI. Among the special features of the book are a chapter on evidential probability, which has not received a basic exposition before; chapters on nonmonotonic reasoning and theory replacement, matters rarely addressed in standard philosophical texts; and chapters on Mill's methods and statistical inference that cover material sorely lacking in the usual treatments of AI and computer science. (shrink)

Many epistemologists take Inference to the Best Explanation (IBE) to be “fundamental.” For instance, Lycan (1988, 128) writes that “all justified reasoning is fundamentally explanatory reasoning.” Conee and Feldman (2008, 97) concur: “fundamental epistemic principles are principles of best explanation.” Call them fundamentalists. They assert that nothing deeper could justify IBE, as is typically assumed of rules of deductive inference, such as modus ponens. However, logicians account for modus ponens with the valuation rule for the material conditional. (...) By contrast, fundamentalists account for IBE with an ill-defined set of relations that happen to furnish their favorite set of inductive inferences. To our eye, this seems a little too convenient—there is too much room for ad hoc, just-so stories about the “striking” correspondence between our explanatory and inductive practices. We will argue that the (explanatory) pluralism adopted by the leading theorists of the best explanation—philosophers of science—undermines fundamentalism. Section 1 clarifies fundamentalism’s key tenets. Section 2 presents pluralism’s challenge to fundamentalism. Section 3 considers a potential fundamentalist reply to this challenge. Sections 4 through 6 canvass the leading candidates for developing this fundamentalist reply, showing each to be unsatisfactory. (shrink)

In a formal theory of induction, inductive inferences are licensed by universal schemas. In a material theory of induction, inductive inferences are licensed by facts. With this change in the conception of the nature of induction, I argue that the celebrated “problem of induction” can no longer be set up and is thereby dissolved. Attempts to recreate the problem in the material theory of induction fail. They require relations of inductive support to conform to an unsustainable, hierarchical empiricism.

The inaugural title in the new, Open Access series BSPS Open, The Material Theory of Induction will initiate a new tradition in the analysis of inductive inference. The fundamental burden of a theory of inductive inference is to determine which are the good inductive inferences or relations of inductive support and why it is that they are so. The traditional approach is modeled on that taken in accounts of deductive inference. It seeks universally applicable schemas or (...) rules or a single formal device, such as the probability calculus. After millennia of halting efforts, none of these approaches has been unequivocally successful and debates between approaches persist. The Material Theory of Induction identifies the source of these enduring problems in the assumption taken at the outset: that inductive inference can be accommodated by a single formal account with universal applicability. Instead, it argues that that there is no single, universally applicable formal account. Rather, each domain has an inductive logic native to it. Which that is, and its extent, is determined by the facts prevailing in that domain. Paying close attention to how inductive inference is conducted in science and copiously illustrated with real-world examples, The Material Theory of Induction will initiate a new tradition in the analysis of inductive inference. (shrink)

Inferentialism is a theory in the philosophy of language which claims that the meanings of expressions are constituted by inferential roles or relations. Instead of a traditional model-theoretic semantics, it naturally lends itself to a proof-theoretic semantics, where meaning is understood in terms of inference rules with a proof system. Most work in proof-theoretic semantics has focused on logical constants, with comparatively little work on the semantics of non-logical vocabulary. Drawing on Robert Brandom’s notion of material inference (...) and Greg Restall’s bilateralist interpretation of the multiple conclusion sequent calculus, I present a proof-theoretic semantics for atomic sentences and their constituent names and predicates. The resulting system has several interesting features: (1) the rules are harmonious and stable; (2) the rules create a structure analogous to familiar model-theoretic semantics; and (3) the semantics is compositional, in that the rules for atomic sentences are determined by those for their constituent names and predicates. (shrink)

Inferences from the absence of evidence to something are common in ordinary speech, but when used in scientific argumentations are usually considered deficient or outright false. Yet, as demonstrated here with the help of various examples, archaeologists frequently use inferences and reasoning from absence, often allowing it a status on par with inferences from tangible evidence. This discrepancy has not been examined so far. The article analyses it drawing on philosophical discussions concerning the validity of inference from absence, using (...) probabilistic models that were originally developed to show that such inferences are weak and inconclusive. The analysis reveals that inference from absence can indeed be justified in many important situations of archaeological research, such as excavations carried out to explore the past existence and time-span of sedentary human habitation. The justification is closely related to the fact that archaeology explores the human past via its material remains. The same analysis points to instances where inference from absence can have comparable validity in other historical sciences, and to research questions in which archaeological inference from absence will be problematic or totally unwarranted. (shrink)

Statistical inference is often justified by long-run properties of the sampling distributions, such as the repeated sampling rationale. These are frequentist justifications of statistical inference. I argue, in line with existing philosophical literature, but against a widespread image in empirical science, that these justifications are flawed. Then I propose a novel interpretation of probability in statistics, the artefactual interpretation. I believe that this interpretation is able to bridge the gap between statistical probability calculations and rational decisions on the (...) basis of observed data. The artefactual interpretation is able to justify statistical inference without making any assumptions about probability in the material world. (shrink)

An important field of probability logic is the investigation of inference rules that propagate point probabilities or, more generally, interval probabilities from premises to conclusions. Conditional probability logic (CPL) interprets the common sense expressions of the form “if . . . , then . . . ” by conditional probabilities and not by the probability of the material implication. An inference rule is probabilistically informative if the coherent probability interval of its conclusion is not necessarily equal to (...) the unit interval [0, 1]. Not all logically valid inference rules are probabilistically informative and vice versa. The relationship between logically valid and probabilistically informative inference rules is discussed and illustrated by examples such as the modus ponens or the affirming the consequent. We propose a method to evaluate the strength of CPL inference. (shrink)

We provide a new link between deductive and probabilistic reasoning fallacies. Illusory inferences from disjunction are a broad class of deductive fallacies traditionally explained by recourse to a matching procedure that looks for content overlap between premises. In two behavioral experiments, we show that this phenomenon is instead sensitive to real-world causal dependencies and not to exact content overlap. A group of participants rated the strength of the causal dependence between pairs of sentences. This measure is a near perfect predictor (...) of fallacious reasoning by an independent group of participants in illusory inference tasks with the same materials. In light of these results, we argue that all extant accounts of these deductive fallacies require non-trivial adjustments. Crucially, these novel _indirect_ illusory inferences from disjunction bear a structural similarity to seemingly unrelated _probabilistic reasoning_ problems, in particular the conjunction fallacy from the heuristics and biases literature. This structural connection was entirely obscure in previous work on these deductive problems, due to the theoretical and empirical focus on content overlap. We argue that this structural parallelism provides arguments against the need for rich descriptions and individuating information in the conjunction fallacy, and we outline a unified theory of deductive illusory inferences from disjunction and the conjunction fallacy, in terms of Bayesian confirmation theory. (shrink)

This book investigates the role of inference in argumentation, considering how arguments support standpoints on the basis of different loci. The authors propose and illustrate a model for the analysis of the standpoint-argument connection, called Argumentum Model of Topics. A prominent feature of the AMT is that it distinguishes, within each and every single argumentation, between an inferential-procedural component, on which the reasoning process is based; and a material-contextual component, which anchors the argument in the interlocutors’ cultural and (...) factual common ground. The AMT explains how these components differ and how they are intertwined within each single argument. This model is introduced in Part II of the book, following a careful reconstruction of the enormously rich tradition of studies on inference in argumentation, from the antiquity to contemporary authors, without neglecting medieval and post-medieval contributions. The AMT is a contemporary model grounded in a dialogue with such tradition, whose crucial aspects are illuminated in this book. (shrink)

We present an explanatory objection to Norton's material theory of induction, as applied to predictive inferences. According to the objection we present, there is an explanatory disconnect between our beliefs about the future and the relevant future facts. We argue that if we recognize such a disconnect, we are no longer rationally entitled to our future beliefs.

The philosophy of cognitive paleoanthropology involves three related tasks: (1) asking what inferences might be drawn from the paleontological and archaeological records to past cognition, behavior and culture; (2) constructing synthetic accounts of the evolution of distinctive hominin capacities; (3) exploring how results from cognitive paleoanthropology might inform philosophy. We introduce some distinctive cognitive paleoanthropological inferences and discuss their epistemic standing, before considering how attention to the material records and the practice of paleoanthropology can inform and transform philosophical approaches.

Contrary to formal theories of induction, I argue that there are no universal inductive inference schemas. The inductive inferences of science are grounded in matters of fact that hold only in particular domains, so that all inductive inference is local. Some are so localized as to defy familiar characterization. Since inductive inference schemas are underwritten by facts, we can assess and control the inductive risk taken in an induction by investigating the warrant for its underwriting facts. In (...) learning more facts, we extend our inductive reach by supplying more localized inductive inference schemes. Since a material theory no longer separates the factual and schematic parts of an induction, it proves not to be vulnerable to Hume's problem of the justification of induction. (shrink)

In his recent book, John Norton has created a theory of inference to the best explanation, within the context of his "material theory of induction". I apply it to the problem of scientific explanations that are false: if we want the theories in our explanations to be true, then why do historians and scientists often say that false theories explained phenomena? I also defend Norton's theory against some possible objections.

Traditionally, analytic philosophy has been affiliated with a formalist conception of inference which understands reasoning as a process that exploits syntactic properties of natural language according to a set of formal rules that are insensitive to conceptual content. This chapter discusses an alternative approach that takes semantic properties as the underlying forces driving rational inference. Building on Wilfird Sellars’ notion of material inference and analytic tools from cognitive linguistics, I will show how parts of the inferential (...) structure of natural language can be explained in terms of semantic relations between extra-logical concepts. In the end, I will outline a strategy for explicating some of these inference-types using Peter Gärdenfors’ theory of conceptual spaces. (shrink)

Chs. 7 set out and clean the formal tools that are needed in the remaining chapters to prove that Donald Davidson's and Richard Rorty's cases against facts and the representation of facts are unfounded, and their slingshot arguments for discrediting the existence of facts unsatisfactory. The previous chapter clarified what is meant by such terms as ‘extensions’, ‘extensionality’ and ‘scope’, and this one separates various inference principles common in extensional logic. The six sections of the chapter are: Introductory Remarks; (...) A Principle of Substitutivity for Material Equivalents; A Principle of Substitutivity for Singular Terms; A Principle of Substitutivity for Logical Equivalents; An Inference Principle Involving ‘Exportation’; and A Principle of Substitutivity for Definite Descriptions. (shrink)

Relevantism, as a matter of definition, rejects classical logic as incorrect and adopts instead a relevant logic as encapsulating correct inference. It rejects classical logic on the grounds that the rule of Material Detachment, from A and not A or B to infer B,, sometimes leads from truth to falsity. Relevantism — although promoted by some relevant logicians, and an integral part of ultralogic — has recently encountered heavy, but interesting, criticism from relevance logicians themselves.

According to John D. Norton's Material Theory of Induction, all reasonable inductive inferences are justified in virtue of background knowledge about local uniformities in nature. These local uniformities indicate that our samples are likely to be representative of our target population in our inductions. However, a variety of critics have noted that there are many circumstances in which induction seems to be reasonable, yet such background knowledge is apparently absent. I call such absences ‘the frontiers of science', where background (...) scientific theories do not provide information about such local uniformities. I argue that the Material Theory of Induction can be reconciled with our intuitions in favour of these inductions. I adapt an attempted justification of induction in general, the Combinatoric Justification of Induction, into a more modest rationalisation at the less foundational level that the critics discuss. Subject to a number of conditions, we can extrapolate from large samples using our knowledge of facts about the minimum proportions of representative subsets of finite sets. I also discuss some of Norton's own criticisms of his theory and argue that he is overly pessimistic. I conclude that Norton's theory at least performs well at the frontiers of science. (shrink)

The aim of this book is to present the fundamental theoretical results concerning inference rules in deductive formal systems. Primary attention is focused on: admissible or permissible inference rules the derivability of the admissible inference rules the structural completeness of logics the bases for admissible and valid inference rules. There is particular emphasis on propositional non-standard logics (primary, superintuitionistic and modal logics) but general logical consequence relations and classical first-order theories are also considered. The book is (...) basically self-contained and special attention has been made to present the material in a convenient manner for the reader. Proofs of results, many of which are not readily available elsewhere, are also included. The book is written at a level appropriate for first-year graduate students in mathematics or computer science. Although some knowledge of elementary logic and universal algebra are necessary, the first chapter includes all the results from universal algebra and logic that the reader needs. For graduate students in mathematics and computer science the book is an excellent textbook. (shrink)

Fodor & Lepore (2001) and Williamson (2003) attack the inferentialist account of concept possession according to which possessing or understanding a concept requires endorsing the inference patterns constitutive of its content. I show that Fodor & Lepore's concern – that the conception places an exorbitant epistemological demands on possessors of a concept – is met by Brandom's tolerance of materially bad nonconservative inferences. Such inferences themselves, as Williamson argues, present difficulties for the 'understanding as endorsement' conception. I show that, (...) properly understood, Brandom's broad conception of inferential role, which encompasses social-perspectival inferential connections, has the resources to respond to Willianson's challenge. (shrink)

This article discusses changes in the materiality of textbooks by examining several examples of primarily Slovene textbooks from various periods. By focusing on their spread design rather than technical aspects, one may infer that their materiality changed with the development of printing technologies and publishing skills. Based on the assumption that textbook visuality is a field of meaning that requires different bodily movements, postures, and engagement with the physical environment to produce cognitive processing, this article sheds light on how the (...) body adapts to the changed materiality of digital textbooks. Numerous micro-movements in a long string of procedures are required in a digital textbook ecosystem. All the participants should be aware of the different demands and properties of the digital textbook ecosystem. Therefore, further empirical research is needed. (shrink)

A conclusion follows from given premisses if and only if an acceptable counterfactual-supporting covering generalization of the argument rules out, either definitively or with some modal qualification, simultaneous acceptability of the premisses and non-accepta-bility of the conclusion, even though it does not rule out acceptability of the premisses and does not require acceptability of the conclusion independently of the premisses. Hence the reiterative associated conditional of an argument is true if and only it has such a covering generalization, and a (...) supposed unexpressed premiss supplied to make an argument formally valid should be a covering generalization. (shrink)

ArgumentThis paper argues that ancient Babylonian signs (omens) reflect a mode of inferential reasoning as a function of their syntactic and logical structure as conditionals. Taking into account the institutional context that produced a systematic written body of omens, the paper is principally interested in the cognitive disposition of such texts. Investigating what constitutes system in these works, formal aspects of the material are examined in terms of the nature of conditionals and the logic of conditional statements. It is (...) argued that conditional statements about ominous phenomena speak as much to a notion of conceivability and possibility as to empirical physical actuality. It is claimed that the epistemological character of the Babylonian compendia of signs cannot be understood without due attention to epistemic possibility and further, that the cuneiform omen texts comprise a different kind of scientific knowledge from that limited to a knowledge of physical phenomena and their laws. (shrink)

John Norton has proposed a position of “material induction” that denies the existence of a universal inductive inference schema behind scientific reasoning. In this vein, Norton has recently presented a “dome scenario” based on Newtonian physics that, in his understanding, is at variance with Bayesianism. The present note points out that a closer analysis of the dome scenario reveals incompatibilities with material inductivism itself.

This is one of four volumes from the same press collecting Hare’s major papers. Of the six papers in this volume, two have appeared in Mind, one in the Philosophical Review, two have appeared in special collections, and only one has not been previously published. There is brief additional material appended to some of the articles and, perhaps most important, a four page bibliography of Hare’s writings. From this bibliography one can discover which of Hare’s articles appear in each (...) of the volumes of this group and also find their original location. One might thus save the cost of a volume or two for there is little doubt, considering the size and price of these books, upon what principle the publisher of this series has decided. The articles are largely a development and defense of Hare’s views of practical reason as set forth in The Language of Morals, with particular attention to the logical forms of imperatives and ought statements, and to the forms of inference valid for each. Beyond this basic theme, the collection is not particularly unified. Two fundamental impressions, however, emerge. The first is an awareness of the enormous influence of J. L. Austin on Hare’s thinking. This is evident not only in his discussion and rejection of Austin’s distinction between locutionary and illocutionary acts, but more importantly in his constant respect for ordinary usage and his resistance to ideal formalism. The second impression is that there is much to be done to develop a logic for imperative and prescriptive inferences. These papers present some basic principles for such a development but, since they are primarily defenses against criticisms of Hare’s book, there is an ad hoc character about them. What is now required is a more complete and systematic treatment of these topics. Ordinary language analysts might here make some inroads on the domain of formal logic to recall some of that logic to philosophy. The articles collected, therefore, are valuable, particularly as they encourage further development of the overlap of logic and ethics.—K. M. (shrink)

Forensic DNA phenotyping is a genetic technology that might be used in criminal investigations. Based on DNA samples of the human body found at crime scenes, it allows to infer externally visible characteristics (such as eye, hair and skin colour) and continental-based biogeographical ancestry. By indicating the probable visible appearance of a criminal suspect, forensic DNA phenotyping allows to narrow down the focus of a criminal investigation. In this article, drawing on interviews with forensic geneticists, we explore how their narratives (...) translate contemporary focus on criminal molecularized bodies. We propose the concept of (de)materialization to approach three aspects of the forensic geneticists’ views. The first regards considering bodies as mutable entities. The second relates to socially contingent meanings attributed to bodies. The third regards to controversies surrounding data reliability. By reflecting upon the (de)materialization of criminal bodies, forensic geneticists juxtapose the defence and unsettling of forensic DNA phenotyping claims. (shrink)

A number of recent discussions comparing computer simulation and traditional experimentation have focused on the significance of “materiality.” I challenge several claims emerging from this work and suggest that computer simulation studies are material experiments in a straightforward sense. After discussing some of the implications of this material status for the epistemology of computer simulation, I consider the extent to which materiality (in a particular sense) is important when it comes to making justified inferences about target systems on (...) the basis of experimental results. (shrink)

Stibbard-Hawkes shows that cultures using material symbols might well not leave traces of that practice in the archaeological record. The paper thus poses an important challenge: When is absence of evidence evidence of absence? This commentary uses behavioural ecology to make modest progress on this problem.

Taking the manuscript On the Dual Essence of Language as a starting point, the article follows the scholarly tradition of reexamining the position of Ferdinand de Saussure’s linguistics regarding twentieth-century semiotics and structuralism. After half a century of research on Saussure’s manuscript legacy, the manuscript discovered in 1996 and published for the first time in 2002 develops aspects of Saussure’s linguistic thought that cannot be inferred on the basis of previously known texts. One of these aspects concerns the crucial question (...) of the nature of the linguistic sign and the process of signification, as well as the role of linguistic science in understanding such problems. The current text aims at reconstructing Saussure’s ideas on these points through an analysis of the notion of final quaternion, claiming that this notion presents an alternative concept of the linguistic sign and signification process that hasn’t been explored so far. It involves a five-sided relationship of non-pregiven elements in one signifying complex that is neither signifier, nor signified, and in the end, brings to the fore the material dimension of verbal language. (shrink)

The use of the material theory of induction to vindicate a scientist's claims of evidential warrant is illustrated with the cases of Einstein's thermodynamic argument for light quanta of 1905 and his recovery of the anomalous motion of Mercury from general relativity in 1915. In a survey of other accounts of inductive inference applied to these examples, I show that, if it is to succeed, each account must presume the same material facts as the material theory (...) and, in addition, some general principle of inductive inference not invoked by the material theory. Hence these principles are superfluous and the material theory superior in being more parsimonious. (shrink)

This article analyzes three approaches to resolving the classical Meno paradox, or its variant, the learning paradox, emphasizing Charles S. Peirce’s notion of abduction. Abduction provides a way of dissecting those processes where something new, or conceptually more complex than before, is discovered or learned. In its basic form, abduction is a “weak” form of inference, i.e., it gives only tentative suggestions for further investigation. But it is not too weak if various sources of clues and restrictions on the (...) abductive search are taken into account. We present three, complementary versions of abduction: (1) as a sort of guessing instinct or expert-like intuition, where unconscious clues are important; (2) as a form of inference, where a strategic point of view is essential; and (3) as a part of distributed cognition and mediated activity, where the interaction with the material, social, and cultural environment is emphasized. Our starting point is Peirce’s own notion of abduction, but we broaden the perspective, especially to the direction of distributed cognition. (shrink)

Four experiments are reported which investigated the types of truth tables that people associate with conditional sentences and the kinds of inferences that they will draw from them. The present studies differed from most previous ones in using different types of content in the conditionals, for example promises and warnings. It was found that the type of content had a strong and consistent effect on both truth tables and inferences. It is suggested that this is because in real life conditionals (...) make probabilistic assertions, and that the strength of the probabilistic link is determined by the situation in which the conditional occurs. The implications of these findings for current theories of reasoning are considered and it is concluded that none of them is entirely satisfactory. It is suggested that more linguistically based theories may prove more successful. (shrink)

This article argues that what Grice termed ‘particularized conversational implicatures’ can be divided into two types. In some cases, it is possible to reconstruct the inference from the explicit content of the utterance to the implicature without employing a premise to the effect that that the speaker expressed that content (by means of an utterance). I call these ‘material implicatures’. Those whose reconstruction relies on a premise about the speaker's verbal behaviour, by contrast, I call ‘behavioural implicatures’. After (...) showing that the division is theoretically significant, I ask whether current pragmatic theory is able to accommodate it. I conclude that, while (neo)-Gricean pragmatics cannot do so straightforwardly, the distinction is already implicit in Relevance Theory. The article ends by considering the question of whether, in the light of previous discussion, speaker meaning really is always an instance of non-natural meaning. (shrink)

A collection of essays on methodology by practitioners of various disciplines. Raymond Aron, in discussing evidence and inference in history, touches on the old problems of uniqueness, relativism, periodization and pattern in history. H. M. Hart and J. T. McNaughton discuss the special problems of evidence which arise in a legal context. Erik Erikson emphasizes the subjective aspects of the clinical psychologist's method of interpreting evidence. Martin Deutsch writes about the role of theoretical assumptions in interpreting evidence in nuclear (...) research. Paul Lazarsfeld's essay, probably the best, deals with problems of logic and technique in social research. The symposium concludes with a case study by Jacob Fine: the investigation of a problem in medical research. The philosophical content of most of the essays is small, though they provide material of which the philosophical methodologist must take account.—R. S. (shrink)

This is the 1992 Marquette Aquinas lecture, the fifty-third in a distinguished series sponsored by the Wisconsin Alpha Chapter of Phi Sigma Tau. Though presented as a lecture, it is clearly the outline of a project that draws upon Ernan McMullin's considerable knowledge of the history of the philosophy of science and his realistic assessment of contemporary scientific inquiry. His is a large canvas and he admittedly paints with wide brush strokes. His major thesis, contra the positivism that lingers in (...) some quarters, is that nothing other than a realist philosophy of science will enable one to make sense of contemporary natural science. A very literal reading of Aristotle leads him to distance himself from the Stagirite in certain respects, but McMullin's is fundamentally an Aristotelian analysis of science. To have science is not merely to know what is given in experience and codified in laws of nature, but to have an explanation of the given in terms of its proper causes. It is not enough to know that copper is malleable, conducts electricity, takes on a certain hue under such and such circumstances, and has a melting point of 1083 degrees centigrade. To have scientific knowledge of a material which has been used since antiquity is to know why it has these properties. Such knowledge is not obtained by simple observation, but is gained by the inference which leads to the postulation of an unobserved structure. McMullin believes that empiricists in the tradition of Bacon, Hume, and Mill are hard pressed to explain the inferential leap from observed effect to inferred cause. In passing he notes, "Though Bacon is trying very hard to separate himself from the Aristotelian tradition, one can still catch echoes of [Aristotle's] epagoge". Reviewing Mill's logic of science, McMullin observes that at the same time Mill was writing that causal relations hold only between observables, "the growing reliance of natural scientists on non-inductive inference to and from observables was leading to dramatic advances in fields like optics, chemistry and theory of gases". (shrink)