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Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities
Underdetermination And The Problem Of Identical Rivals, P.D. Magnus
Underdetermination And The Problem Of Identical Rivals, P.D. Magnus
Philosophy Faculty Scholarship
If two theory formulations are merely different expressions of the same theory, then any problem of choosing between them cannot be due to the underdetermination of theories by data. So one might suspect that we need to be able to tell distinct theories from mere alternate formulations before we can say anything substantive about underdetermination, that we need to solve the problem of identical rivals before addressing the problem of underdetermination. Here I consider two possible solutions: Quine proposes that we call two theories identical if they are equivalent under a reconstrual of predicates, but this would mishandle important cases. …
Williamson On Knowledge And Psychological Explanation, P.D. Magnus, Jonathan Cohen
Williamson On Knowledge And Psychological Explanation, P.D. Magnus, Jonathan Cohen
Philosophy Faculty Scholarship
According to many philosophers, psychological explanation canlegitimately be given in terms of belief and desire, but not in termsof knowledge. To explain why someone does what they do (so the common wisdom holds) you can appeal to what they think or what they want, but not what they know. Timothy Williamson has recently argued against this view. Knowledge, Williamson insists, plays an essential role in ordinary psychological explanation.Williamson's argument works on two fronts.First, he argues against the claim that, unlike knowledge, belief is``composite'' (representable as a conjunction of a narrow and a broadcondition). Belief's failure to be composite, Williamson thinks, …
Making Morality: Pragmatist Reconstruction In Ethical Theory, Brian G. Henning
Making Morality: Pragmatist Reconstruction In Ethical Theory, Brian G. Henning
Philosophy Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
Success, Truth, And The Galilean Strategy, P.D. Magnus
Success, Truth, And The Galilean Strategy, P.D. Magnus
Philosophy Faculty Scholarship
Philip Kitcher develops the Galilean Strategy to defend realism against its many opponents. I explore the structure of the Galilean Strategy and consider it specifically as an instrument against constructive empiricism. Kitcher claims that the Galilean Strategy underwrites an inference from success to truth. We should resist that conclusion, I argue, but the Galilean Strategy should lead us by other routes to believe in many things about which the empiricist would rather remain agnostic.
Underdetermination And The Claims Of Science, P.D. Magnus
Underdetermination And The Claims Of Science, P.D. Magnus
Philosophy Faculty Scholarship
The underdetermination of theory by evidence is supposed to be a reason to rethink science. It is not. Many authors claim that underdetermination has momentous consequences for the status of scientific claims, but such claims are hidden in an umbra of obscurity and a penumbra of equivocation. So many various phenomena pass for `underdetermination' that it's tempting to think that it is no unified phenomenon at all, so I begin by providing a framework within which all these worries can be seen as species of one genus: A claim of underdetermination involves (at least implicitly) a set of rival theories, …
Intentional Explanation, Psychological Laws, And The Irreducibility Of The First Person Perspective, Karsten Stueber
Intentional Explanation, Psychological Laws, And The Irreducibility Of The First Person Perspective, Karsten Stueber
Philosophy Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.