We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 08 April 2017
Astronomers study the behaviour of the stars; philosophers of science study the behaviour of the astronomers. Philosophers of science, alongside historians and sociologists of science, are in the business of accounting for how science works and what it achieves. There is more to the philosophy of science than principled descriptions of scientific activity, since there are also all the normative questions of justification and warrant, but the descriptive task is an important part of the discipline and the primary focus of the present essay.
1 Hume, D., An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Beauchamp, T. (ed.) (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1748/1999), section IV.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
2 Hume, D., An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Beauchamp, T. (ed.) (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1748/1999), sections IV, V.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
3 Goodman, N., Fact, Fiction and Forecast, 4th ed. (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1983), 68–69.Google Scholar
4 Hempel, C., Aspects of Scientific Explanation (New York: Free Press, 1965), 10–13.Google Scholar
5 Goodman, N., Fact, Fiction and Forecast, 4th ed. (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1983), chapter III.Google Scholar
6 Hempel, C., Aspects of Scientific Explanation (New York: Free Press, 1965), 14–20.Google Scholar
7 Goodman, N., Fact, Fiction and Forecast, 4th ed. (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1983), 71.Google Scholar
8 Cf. Howson, C. & Urbach, P., Scientific Reasoning: The Bayesian Approach (La Salle: Open Court, 1989).Google Scholar
9 Cf. Earman, J., Bayes or Bust? A Critical Examination of Bayesian Confirmation Theory (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1992), chapter 5.Google Scholar
10 Howson, C., Hume's Problem: Induction and the Justification of Belief (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 239–240.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
11 Howson, C., Hume's Problem: Induction and the Justification of Belief (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), chapter 7.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
12 Quine, W. V., ‘Natural Kinds’, in Ontological Relativity (New York: Columbia University Press, 1969), 114–116.Google Scholar
13 Mill, J. S., A System of Logic, 8th ed., London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1904) section III.VIII.2.Google Scholar
14 Dretske, F., ‘Conclusive Reasons’, Australasian Journal of Philosophy 67 (1971), 1–22Google Scholar; Nozick, R., Philosophical Explanations (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1981), 172–196.Google Scholar
15 Nozick, R., Philosophical Explanations (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1981), 248.Google Scholar
16 There is more work to be done to articulate how this probability is to be understood, but I would like to capture the idea that confirmation in its tracking element is a matter of degree.
17 This way of putting the point was given to me by Paul Dicken.
18 As Tim Williamson pointed out to me, this shows why it is not fully adequate to construe the tracking condition as saying simply that if the hypothesis had been false the evidence would have been different. For suppose that the hypothesis is an arbitrary conjunction of the observed and the unobserved, where the observed conjunct is more ‘fragile’ or contingent than the unobserved conjunct. In this case the simple tracking condition would be satisfied even though there is no confirmation. What is required I think is that the observed track the unobserved, which is not the case for this conjunction.
19 Cf. Lipton, P., Inference to the Best Explanation 2nd edition (London: Routledge, 2004).Google Scholar
20 Cf. Chakravartty, A., ‘Semirealism’, Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 29 (1998), 391–408.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
21 Cf. Woodward, J., ‘Realism about Laws’, Erkenntnis 36 (1992), 200.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
22 Cf. Lewis, D., ‘Counterfactual Dependence and Time's Arrow’, in Philosophical Papers, Vol. II (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), 32–66.Google Scholar
23 Cf. Kripke, S., Naming and Necessity (Oxford: Blackwell, 1980), Lecture III.Google Scholar
24 I am grateful to audiences at Oxford University, Cambridge University, University of East Anglia, Leeds University, University of Aarhus, and the Royal Institute of Philosophy, and for helpful reactions to my talks about ravens, and to Alex Broadbent and Paul Dicken for comments on a draft paper.
