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AN ANALOGY, TO ARRIVE AT WHAT MAY BE DISTINCTIVELY DIFFERENT As an analogy, suppose that someone wanted to construct an account not of what science is but of business, commerce. If someone starts a business, he will begin by amassing some capital, acquire a place of business, equipment, inventory, employees, and begin to advertise. As […]

MCMULLIN ACCOUNT OF RETRODUCTIVE INFERENCE It is in fact not easy to disentangle the points that allow us to recognize a process of retroductive inference from the claims McMullin makes concerning this sort of inference. We must concentrate on the definitive account that McMullin provides in the last 5 pages (in the reprint that follows)

CONTRASTING MCMULLIN(S) VISION WITH RIVAL EPISTEMOLOGIES McMullin does enough to discredit some alternative projects with a similar aim, such as attempts to define induction as a method for science. Today other projects of that sort exist as well, drawing in one way or another on the concept and theories of probability, notably varieties of Bayesianism

THE MATHEMATICAL PRACTICE OBJECTION For the modified indispensability theorist, the choice between strong fact and no-fact hinges on developments in physics (and per- haps the rest of science). We should now ask the impact of this choice: How would the pursuit of our independent question be af- fected by it? In other words, we want

FOUNDATIONS OF PHYSICS Here the fundamental theories are general relativity and quantum mechanics, and the central problem is to reconcile the two. Three of the fundamental forces-electromagnetic, weak, and strong-have yielded more or less workable quantum-field descriptions, but grav- ity remains intractable. The mathematics of quantum-field theories has an annoying habit of generating impossible (infinite)

FOUNDATIONS OF SET THEORY My second reservation about the indispensability arguments rests on somewhat less familiar grounds; to reach it, I must review a bit of set theory and (in the next section) a bit of physics. It is well-known that the standard axioms of contemporary set theory, ZFC, are not enough to decide every

INDISPENSABILITY AND PRACTICE 281 sarily recommended the removal of atoms from, say, chemical theory; they did, however, hold that only the directly verifiable con- sequences of atomic theory should be believed, whatever the explan- atory power or the fruitfulness or the systematic advantages of think- ing in terms of atoms. In other words, the confirmation

THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY duced all of mathematics, including the part so far applied in physi- cal science. From this point of view, a modified indispensability argument first guarantees that mathematics has a proper ontology, then endorses (in a tentative, naturalistic spirit) its actual methods for investigating that ontology. For example, the calculus is indispensable

INDISPENSABILITY The original indispensability arguments were aimed at those who would draw a weighty ontological or epistemological distinction be- tween natural science and mathematics. To those tempted to admit the existence of electrons while denying the existence of numbers, Quine5 points out that Ordinary interpreted scientific discourse is as irredeemably committed to abstract objects-to nations,

THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY … naturalism: abandonment of the goal of a first philosophy. It sees natural science as an inquiry into reality, fallible and corrigible but not answerable to any supra-scientific tribunal, and not in need of any justification beyond observation and the hypothetico-deductive method … The naturalistic philosopher begins his reasoning within the