Histories of science in modern China often explore their subjects within global or national frameworks. This essay uses data from gazetteers to address the place-based nature of Chinese agricultural science as it developed at smaller geographical scales. Information contained in gazetteers suggests that regional environmental knowledge and site-specific social networks influenced the construction and communication of scientific ideas about farming at the local level. By highlighting these dimensions of knowledge making, this essay demonstrates the benefits of using gazetteers to grapple (...) with the importance of place in Chinese science. (shrink)

We often explain by citing an absence or an omission. Apart from the problem of assigning a causal role to such apparently negative factors as absences and omissions, there is a puzzle as to why only some absences and omissions, out of indefinitely many, should figure in explanations. In this paper we solve this ’many absences problem’ by using the contrastive model of explanation. The contrastive model of explanation is developed by adapting Peter Lipton’s account. What initially appears to (...) be only a trivial amendment to Lipton’s Difference Condition enables us both to offer a much more satisfactory solution to the ’many absences problem’ than David Lewis did, and also to explain why explanation in terms of absences and omissions should be so common. (shrink)

Dans un article provocateur qui fit date, Langdon Winner posait cette question pour le moins incongrue : « Do artefacts have politics ? » 1. Peter-Paul Verbeek lui a apporté une forme de réponse dans son ouvrage intitulé à dessein : What things do . Cependant,..

For many years—and with some energy since Laudan’s “Confutation of Convergent Realism” —the scientific realist has sought to accommodate examples of false-yet-successful theories in the history of science. One of the most prominent strategies is to identify ‘success fueling’ components of false theories that themselves are at least approximately true. In this article I develop both sides of the debate, introducing new challenges from the history of science as well as suggesting adjustments to the divide et impera realist strategy. A (...) new ‘recipe’ for the prospective identification of working/idle posits is considered. (shrink)

In this book, Peter Achinstein proposes and defends several objective concepts of evidence. He then explores the question of whether a scientific method, such as that represented in the four "Rules for the Study of Natural Philosophy" that Isaac Newton invoked in proving his law of gravity, can be employed in demonstrating how the proposed definitions of evidence are to be applied to real scientific cases.

We compare astronomers' removal of Pluto from the listing of planets and psychiatrists' removal of homosexuality from the listing of mental disorders. Although the political maneuverings that emerged in both controversies are less than scientifically ideal, we argue that competition for "scientific authority" among competing groups is a normal part of scientific progress. In both cases, a complicated relationship between abstract constructs and evidence made the classification problem thorny.

Working in constructive set theory we formulate notions of constructive topological space and set-generated locale so as to get a good constructive general version of the classical Galois adjunction between topological spaces and locales. Our notion of constructive topological space allows for the space to have a class of points that need not be a set. Also our notion of locale allows the locale to have a class of elements that need not be a set. Class sized mathematical structures need (...) to be allowed for in constructive set theory because the powerset axiom and the full separation scheme are necessarily missing from constructive set theory. We also consider the notion of a formal topology, usually treated in Intuitionistic type theory, and show that the category of set-generated locales is equivalent to the category of formal topologies. We exploit ideas of Palmgren and Curi to obtain versions of their results about when the class of formal points of a set-presentable formal topology form a set. (shrink)

Theories of explanation are characterized as being either pragmatic or non-pragmatic, without a clear sense of what this is supposed to mean. The present paper offers a definition of a "pragmatic explanation-sentence", and in terms of this, of a "pragmatic theory of explanation". It is argued that van Fraassen's theory of explanation, despite claims to the contrary, is not genuinely pragmatic. By contrast, the author's own "illocutionary" theory is pragmatic. Attention is devoted particularly to sentences of the form "E is (...) a good explanation of q", which, it is urged, are pragmatic in a strong sense. In defense of this claim, and of the advantages of a pragmatic account generally, appeal is made to Rutherford's 1911 subatomic explanation of the results of his scattering experiments. Implications of a pragmatic theory are drawn for the debate between realists and anti-realists and absolutists and relativists. (shrink)

This chapter shows how al-Kindī interweaves ideas from Greek cosmology to give a theory that can explain the efficacy of astrology and how God’s providence is dispersed by means of heavenly influence. A concrete example is found in al-Kindī’s works on meteorology, since he thinks that weather is produced by celestial causation. The mechanics of this causation are explained differently in different works, which leads to a consideration of the authenticity of On Rays, which is ascribed to al-Kindī, and its (...) place in his corpus. Finally, the chapter considers whether al-Kindī’s account commits him to determinism, and whether he thinks universal causal determinism is compatible with human freedom. (shrink)

Peter Vardy explains the philosophic process that has led to post-modernism - with its rejection of a single truth - and charts the political, social, environmental and personal consequences of undermining the distinction between truth and falsity.

We introduce a new axiom scheme for constructive set theory, the Relation Reflection Scheme . Each instance of this scheme is a theorem of the classical set theory ZF. In the constructive set theory CZF–, when the axiom scheme is combined with the axiom of Dependent Choices , the result is equivalent to the scheme of Relative Dependent Choices . In contrast to RDC, the scheme RRS is preserved in Heyting-valued models of CZF– using set-generated frames. We give an application (...) of the scheme to coinductive definitions of classes. (shrink)

This chapter deals with al-Kindī’s metaphysics, which in this context means theology and the idea that being is an emanation or creation from God. Depending on the Neoplatonists, especially Proclus, al-Kindī proves God’s existence by arguing for the need for a “true One”, whose absolute simplicity rules out a multiplicity of divine attributes.

A generalized inclusion frame consists of a set of points W and an assignment of a binary relation $R\sb{w}$ on W to each point w in W. Generalized inclusion frames whose $R\sb{w}$ are partial orders are called comparison frames. Conditional logics of various comparative notions, for example, Lewis's V-logic of comparative possibility and utilitarian accounts of conditional obligation, model the dyadic modal operator $>$ on comparison frames according to the following truth condition: $\alpha > \beta$ "holds at w" iff every (...) point in the truth set of $\alpha$ bears $R\sb{w}$ to some point where $\beta$ holds. ;In this essay I provide a relational frame theory which embraces both accessibility semantics and g.i. semantics as special cases. This goal is achieved via a philosophically significant generalization of universal strict implication which does not assume accessibility as a primitive. Within this very general setting, I provide the first axiomatization of the dyadic modal logic corresponding to the class of all g.i. frames. Various correspondences between dyadic logics and first order definable subclasses of the class of g.i. frames are established. Finally, some general model constructions are developed which allow uniform completeness proofs for important sublogics of Lewis' V. (shrink)

Working in the weakening of constructive Zermelo-Fraenkel set theory in which the subset collection scheme is omitted, we show that the binary refinement principle implies all the instances of the exponentiation axiom in which the basis is a discrete set. In particular binary refinement implies that the class of detachable subsets of a set form a set. Binary refinement was originally extracted from the fullness axiom, an equivalent of subset collection, as a principle that was sufficient to prove that the (...) Dedekind reals form a set. Here we show that the Cauchy reals also form a set. More generally, binary refinement ensures that one remains in the realm of sets when one starts from discrete sets and one applies the operations of exponentiation and binary product a finite number of times. (shrink)

Frederick Kronz constructs interesting examples in an attempt to show deficiencies in my concept of evidence and the advantages in Carnap's positive relevance idea. His discussion raises general questions of importance in developing an adequate account of scientific evidence questions about the relationship between evidence and belief and the role of emphasis in determining evidence. His examples are challenging, but do they work?

The primary aim of this important study is to produce a reliable account of Peter Martyr’s life before he left Italy in 1542. Earlier biographers had been content to follow the Swiss Calvinist Josiah Simler, who knew Peter Martyr in later years, delivered his funeral oration and published it in 1563. Dr McNair has tried ‘to delve beneath Simler to contemporary records’. He has discovered, for example, that Peter Martyr was born in 1499 not, as is usually (...) said, in 1500. He has been concerned to find out when Peter Martyr left his order and his Church, suggesting that there is little reason to believe that his apostasy began in his years at the University of Padua, 1518-26; it was in Naples, between 1537 and 1540, when he came to know Juan de Valdés, that Peter Martyr’s conversion took place. ‘He arrived a reformer after the order of Ximénez, he left a reformer after the order of Zwingli’, writes Dr McNair, meaning by this the Zwingli of the years immediately before 1523, when he wished to go further than Erasmus but not so far as Luther. (shrink)

Peter Spirtes. Conditional Independence in Directed Cyclic Graphical Models for Feedback.

Assumptions about the tirocinium fori are based on claims by Joachim Marquardt that it was a form of training for young elite Romans at about the age of 16, that it lasted for one year, and that it consisted of mentorship by a distinguished elder. Though there is little evidence to support these claims, the theory of a tirocinium fori continues to influence discussions of oratory in the age of Cicero, where it gives a false picture of the process by (...) which aspiring young orators made the transition from the school of rhetoric to practice in the courts. (shrink)

Just war theory has traditionally focused onjus ad bellum(the justiceofwar) andjus in bello(justiceinwar). What has been neglected is the question ofjus ante bellum, or justicebeforewar. In particular: Under what circumstances is it justifiable for a polity topreparefor war by militarizing? When (if ever) and why (if at all) is it morally permissible or even obligatory to create and maintain the potential to wage war? What are the alternatives to the military? And if we do have militaries, how should they be (...) arranged, trained, and equipped? These considerations are not about whether warmakingis justified, but about whether warbuildingis justified.InEthics, Security, and the War-Machine, Ned Dobos argues that we have not sufficiently calculated the true (noneconomic) costs of the military, and that if we did, having a standing defense force would not seem like as good an idea. Dobos pushes us to reflect on something we have taken for granted: that one of the biggest institutions in our society, which is supposed to keep us safe and allow us to lead our own lives, may in fact pose great dangers and risks to us physically, morally, and culturally. The essays in this symposium take Dobos's work as a starting point and show the importance, complexity, and richness of this new strand of ethical inquiry. (shrink)

A term and its contradictory exhaust the universe of discourse, but when examined for their relation to each other, I believe they are seen to exhaust that universe in a more particular respect than may have come into notice. They seem to exhaust or annul one of the leading notions of mathematical logic. This notion is the one concerning the whereabouts of the null class.

Most models of risky decision making assume that all relevant information is taken into account (e.g., Kahneman & Tversky, 1979; von Neumann & Morgenstern, 1944). However, there are also some models supposing that only part of the information is considered (e.g., Brandstätter, Gigerenzer, & Hertwig, 2006; Gigerenzer & Gaissmaier, 2011). To further investigate the amount of information that is usually used for decision making, and how the use depends on feedback, we conducted a series of three experiments in which participants (...) choose between two lotteries and where no feedback, outcome feedback, and error feedback was provided, respectively. The result show that without feedback participants mostly chose the lottery with the higher winning probability, and largely ignored the potential gains. The same result occurred when the outcome of each decision was fed back. Only after presenting error feedback (i.e., signaling whether a choice was optimal or not), participants considered probabilities as well as gains, resulting in more optimal choices. We propose that outcome feedback was ineffective, because of its probabilistic and ambiguous nature. Participants improve information integration only if provided with a consistent and deterministic signal such as error feedback. (shrink)