920: General Philosophy of Science, Fall 2004, Malcolm R. Forster

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1.      Chapter 1 of ms, especially the sections on discovery versus confirmation, historical versus logical theories of confirmation, indirect confirmation, and unification.  Recommended reading:  Musgrave, Alan (1974):  “Logical Versus Historical Theories of Confirmation.”  The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 25: 1‑23.

2.      Chapter 2 of ms, curve fitting, the beam balance example, the problem of many models, normal and revolutionary science, and confirmation “from above”.  Recommended reading: Priest, Graham (1976):  “Gruesome Simplicity.”  Philosophy of Science 43: 432 - 437.  Reference: Guide to Kuhn's Structure of Scientific Revolutions.

3.      Chapter 3 of ms, simplicity versus unification (what’s the distinction?), goodness-of-fit, leave-one-out cross validation, confirmation of unified models, and the harmony of planetary astronomy.  Recommended reading:  Cohen, I. Bernard (1985):  The Birth of a New Physics, Revised and Updated Edition.  W. W. Norton & Company, New York.  The Whewell-Mill debate.
Glymour, Clark (1980). “Explanations, Tests, Unity and Necessity.” Noûs 14: 31‑50.

4.      Variety of evidence, theoretician’s dilemma:  Excerpts from Hempel, Carl G. (1965): Aspects of Scientific Explanation and Other Essays in the Philosophy of Science. New York: The Free Press.   Hempel, Carl G. (1966): Philosophy of Natural Science. Englewood Cliffs, NJ:  Prentice-Hall, Inc.

5.      Empiricism:  Sober, Elliott (1993):  “Epistemology for Empiricists,” in H.  Wettstein (ed.), Midwest Studies in Philosophy.  Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press; pp.  39-61.  Sober, Elliott (1990):  “Contrastive Empiricism,” in W. Savage (ed.), Scientific Theories,  Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science: vol. 14, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 392‑412.

6.      Popper’s problem of verisimilitude:  Ch. 10 of Popper, Karl (1968): Conjectures and Refutations : The Growth of Scientific Knowledge, (New York: Basic Books).  Forster, Malcolm R., “Verisimilitude and Likelihood.”

7.      Realism and the principle of common cause:  Arntzenius, Frank  (1993): “The Common Cause Principle.”  PSA 1992 Volume 2: 227-237. East Lansing, Michigan:  Philosophy of Science Association. Arguments concerning scientific realism, van Fraassen, Bas (1980),  The Scientific Image, Oxford: Oxford University Press.  Recommended reading:  The Bell argument as an argument against Reichenbach's principle of common cause.

8.   Values and objectivity:  Longino, Helen C. (1990):  “Values and Objectivity,” in Longino, Helen C. (1990) Science as Social Knowledge: Values and Objectivity in Scientific Inquiry, Princeton NJ:  Princeton University Press, 62-82.  Okruhlik, Kathleen (1994):  “Gender and the Biological Sciences,” Biology and Society, Canadian Journal of Philosophy, Supplementary vol. 20: (1994): 21-42.  Reprinted in Curd, Martin and J. A. Cover (eds.) (1998): Philosophy of Science: The Central Issues, New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 170-208.

9.      The Popperian response to Kuhn:  Lakatos, Irme (1970): “Falsificationism and the Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes” in I. Lakatos and A. Musgrave (eds.), Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge.  Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 91-196.

10. The Earman-Friedman argument for realism:  Friedman, Michael (1981): “Theoretical Explanation,” in Time, Reduction and Reality, edited by R. A. Healey. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pages 1-16.  Forster, Malcolm R. (1986):  “Unification and Scientific Realism Revisited,”  in Arthur Fine and Peter Machamer (eds.), PSA 1986.  E. Lansing, Michigan:  Philosophy of Science Association. Volume 1: 394‑405.  Earman, John (1978). “Fairy Tales vs. an Ongoing Story: Ramsey’s Neglected Argument for Scientific Realism.” Philosophical Studies 33: 195-202.

11.  Realism about component causes:  Forster, Malcolm R. (1988),  “Unification, Explanation, and the Composition of Causes in Newtonian Mechanics.”  Studies in the History and Philosophy of Science 19: 55 ‑ 101.

12.  A Bayesian theory of unification:  Myrvold, Wayne (2003), “A Bayesian Account of the Virtue of Unification”, Philosophy of Science 70: 399-423.  Lange, Marc (2004):  “Bayesianism and Unification: A Reply to Wayne Myrvold,” Philosophy of Science 71:  205-215.  M. R. Forster (unpublished): “Unification and Predictive Accuracy.”

13.  The time asymmetry of cause and effect:  Arntzenius, Frank  (1997): “Transition Chances and Causation.”  Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 78:  149-168.   Sober, Elliott (1994):  “Temporally Oriented Laws,” in Sober (1994) From A Biological Point of View - Essays in evolutionary philosophy, Cambridge University Press, 233 - 251.

14.  Mysteries of quantum mechanics:  The GHZ version of Bell's argument.  Forster, Malcolm R., “The Miraculous Consilience of Quantum Mechanics.”

15.  Predictive accuracy:  Forster, Malcolm R. and Elliott Sober (1994):  “How to Tell when Simpler, More Unified, or Less Ad Hoc Theories will Provide More Accurate Predictions.” British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 45: 1 – 35 (omit sections 6 and 7 and appendices).  Myrvold, Wayne and William L. Harper (2002), “Model Selection, Simplicity, and Scientific Inference”, Philosophy of Science 69: S135-S149.  Supplementary reading:  Hitchcock, Christopher R. and Elliott Sober (2004):  “Prediction versus Accommodation and the Risk of Overfitting,” British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 55: 1-34.