…and causal necessitation. The most conspicuous cases of causation are those where powers accumulate and pass a requisite threshold for an effect to occur. We develop a model for representing…
Necessary Connections and the Problem of Induction
Summary: In this paper Beebee argues that the problem of induction, which she describes as a genuine sceptical problem, is the same for Humeans than for Necessitarians. Neither scientific essentialists…
The Dappled World: A study of the Boundaries of Science
Publisher’s Note: It is often supposed that the spectacular successes of our modern mathematical sciences support a lofty vision of a world completely ordered by one single elegant theory. In this…
Reasoning without the principle of sufficient reason
Abstract: According to Principles of Sufficient Reason, every truth (in some relevant group) has an explanation. One of the most popular defenses of Principles of Sufficient Reason has been the presupposition…
Models, fiction and fictional models
Summary: The use of models to scientifically represent and study reality is widely recognized with good reasons as indispensable for the practice of science. Because models, unlikely pure verbal representation,…
The Structure of scientific inference
Publisher’s Note: A danger of a heavily formalist approach to the structure of science is that it may lose sight of the concrete actualities on which scientific inference is exercised….
Models in Physics
Summary: In this article Hesse defends the idea that scientific theories are hypothetico-deductive in form. She examines this hypothetico-deductive method by considering some examples from nineteenth-century mathematical physics. By means…
Moore and Wittgenstein: Scepticism, Certainty, and Common Sense
…study of the epistemological work of two key figures in the history of analytic philosophy: G. E. Moore and Ludwig Wittgenstein. While historically accurate and engaging with scholarly work in…
Essentialism and the Necessity of the Laws of Nature
…considerations carry across to the argument from the dispositionalist view of properties, which may end up placing unreasonable constraints on property identity across possible worlds. None of her arguments preclude…
Science as a guide to Metaphysics?
Abstract: Analytic metaphysics is in resurgence; there is renewed and vigorous interest in topics such as time, causation, persistence, parthood and possible worlds. Those who share this interest often pay lip-service…