Philosophy of Science

Computational science, especially computer simulations, is now the dominant procedure in many areas of science. This book contains the first systematic philosophical account of this new scientific method, and draws a parallel between the ways in which such computational methods have enhanced our abilities to mathematically model the world, and the more familiar ways in which scientific instruments have expanded our access to the empirical world. This expansion forms the basis for a new kind of empiricism better suited to the needs of science than the older anthropocentric forms of empiricism. Human abilities are no longer the ultimate standard of correctness within epistemology. The book includes arguments for the primacy of properties rather than objects, for how technology interacts with scientific methods, and a detailed account of how the path from a computational template or model to a scientific application is constructed and revised. This last feature allows us to hold a form of selective realism in which anti-realist arguments based on abstract reconstructions of theories can be avoided. One important consequence of the rise of computational methods is that the traditional organization of the sciences is being replaced by an organization founded on computational templates.

The essays in the book center on the concept of probability. What is the framework within which probability comfortably lives? What are the coherence principles that must be satisfied for degrees of belief to be probabilities, and how do these principles generalize to probability change? What is the relation between coherent degrees of belief, beliefs about chances, and inductive inference? What constraints does coherence put on inductive skepticism?

This book investigates what it means to say that mental states — thoughts, wishes, perceptual experiences, and so on — are about things in the world. The answer to this deep philosophical problem is a novel teleological account of intentional content, grounded in and shaped by a carefully constructed theory of functions. This book's teleological account centres on the claim that the content of an intentional state depends both on the information that it is supposed to carry and on the way in which it is used — whether to trigger a simple response, to help keep track of an object or place, to help in planning a route through the environment, or in a sophisticated process of reasoning. Along the way the book defends its view from recent objections to teleological theories, and indicates how it might be applied to some notable problems in the philosophy of mind.

Gauge theories have provided our best representations of the fundamental forces of nature. But a representation may be successfully employed even without a clear understanding of how it works. This book seeks such understanding, so that we are able to say what kind of world our gauge theories reveal to us. A gauge theory's representations are mathematical structures that may be transformed while certain features remain the same. Do representations related by such a gauge transformation merely offer alternative perspectives on the same situation? If so, then gauge symmetry is a purely formal property since it reflects no corresponding symmetry in nature. This book describes the representations provided by gauge theories in both classical and quantum physics. It argues that gauge symmetry is a purely formal property of almost all classes of representations these provide. Evidence for classical gauge theories of forces (other than gravity) gives us reason to believe that loops rather than points are the locations of fundamental properties. Besides exploring whether this holds also for the quantum gauge field theories of the Standard Model of elementary particle physics, the book assesses the difficulties involved in basing such ontological conclusions on the success of these theories.

Relationalism about space is a venerable doctrine that is enjoying renewed attention among philosophers and physicists. Relationalists deny that space is ontologically prior to matter and seek to ground all claims about the structure of space in facts about actual and possible configurations of matter. Thus, many relationalists maintain that to say that space is infinite is to say that certain sorts of infinite arrays of material points are possible (even if, in fact, the world contains only a finite amount of matter). This book investigates the distinctive notion of geometric possibility that relationalists rely upon. Its over‐arching strategy is to examine the prospects for adapting to the geometric case the standard philosophical accounts of the related notion of physical possibility. The central chapters of the book examine Humean, primitivist, and necessitarian accounts of physical and geometric possibility.

This book develops the theory of causal dispositionalism. Others have already suggested that a theory of causation would follow from an ontology of real dispositions or powers. This book attempts to show how. The book argues that powers come together in complex partnerships producing something together that they could not have produced alone. They will do so in a distinctly dispositional way that is not reducible to necessity. The mode of composition of causes can vary and is sometimes non-linear. The book calls this view compositional pluralism. The book argues for the simultaneity of cause and effect as causation is the process that occurs when partnered powers produce their effect. It begins once those partners are together and ends either when the process is complete or is interrupted. The theory explains how causal claims are distinguished from others and why there is no causation by absence. The book distinguishes the distinct, sui generis dispositional modality of causation and show how it can be known directly through experience. The book applies the theory to the science of biology, where it is corroborated.

This book introduces the intelligent design theory, which preserves the core of creation science while doing away with much of the biblical literalism and explicit references to God. It discusses the theory, where it came from, and how it is presented to the public. It argues that the theory represents a serious threat to the educational, scientific, and philosophical values of the Enlightenment that have shaped modern science and modern democratic institutions.

This book applies to the study of human nature the generally pluralistic metaphysics and methodology developed in the author's earlier work. It begins with detailed criticism of two popular projects for understanding human nature, evolutionary psychology, and rational‐choice theory. The argument shows how the flaws in these projects reflect deep misconceptions about the nature and the legitimate ambitions of science. Such scientific theories necessarily provide highly simplified accounts of a phenomenon as complex as human nature and can provide only a small part of the total picture of such a phenomenon. Only a pluralistic approach, an approach that combines insights from a variety of perspectives not limited to the scientific, can hope to provide anything close to an adequate account of human nature. In addition to a variety of partial perspectives from science, the humanities, and, not least, common human experience, it is argued that there is also room for a conception of human autonomy. The details of this conception, including a sketch of a novel voluntarist theory of freedom of the will, are provided in a concluding chapter.