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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

PART FOUR: AND FINALLY TO RETRODUCTION And so, at last, we arrive, by circuitous ways, at the account of inference toward which all of this has been tending. By now, its outlines should be moderately clear. Beginnings. Let us return for a moment (only a moment!) to the seventeenth century. We left Bacon an inductivist

PART THREE: INDUCTIVISM In deference to the occasion [the Aquinas Lecture], we have spent so long on assaying the stability of some of the bridges that recent scholars have thrown across the gap between the tradition of the Posterior Analytics and modern views on what constitutes the basic form of scientific inference that we are

PART TWO: ENLARGING DEMONSTRATION It would take us too far afield to comment on the medieval discussions of the nature of demonstration in the detail they deserve. Our main goal in this essay is to analyze the three primary patterns that have been proposed over the years for explanation/ inference in natural science. We have

PART ONE: DEMONSTRATION ALONE Aristotle on Demonstration. What makes knowledge “scientific” (epistemonikos) according to Aristotle is that it should constitute strict demonstration (apodeixis). And by demonstration /5/ he means an inference from premisses which are true, primary, immediate, more knowable (gnorimos) than, and prior to the conclusion, and further that the premisses furnish an explanation

THE INFERENCE THAT MAKES SCIENCE by Ernan McMullin Abstract. In his Aquinas Lecture 1992 at Marquette University, Ernan McMullin discusses whether there is a pattern of inference that particularly characterizes the sciences of nature. He pursues this theme both on a historical and a systematic level. There is a continuity of concern across the ages

Van Fraassen(s) constructive empiricism Van Fraassen’s constructive empiricism is one of the most discussed current alternatives to scientific realism. Contrary to positivists, Van Fraassen does believe that scientific theories must be taken literally. In that sense, he rejects the positivist reinterpretations of scientific statements, according to which talk of unobservablesis only a convenient abbreviation of

Some moms against hijab wearing The debate over the hijab can literally hit home for some young Muslim women. Those that wear the hijab in the United States can befuddle their mothers, who often immigrated to the West so they could be free from wearing the hijab and other rules imposed on women. That’s what