scholarly journals Joseph Melia’s nominalism and the indexing theory of numbers

2019 ◽  
Vol 62 (1) ◽  
pp. 35-50
Author(s):  
Aleksa Cupic
Keyword(s):  
Scientific Theory ◽  
Scientific Explanation ◽  
Indispensability Argument ◽  
Theory Of Numbers

According to the Quine-Putnam indispensability argument, we are committed to all the entities that are indispensable to our best scientific theory. John Melia argues contra Quine-Putnam by claiming that even though such entities as numbers are indispensable to our best science, there is reason to deny their existence. In order to defend Melia?s theory from criticism put forth by Mark Colyvan, who demands that Melia provide a nominalistically acceptable paraphrase of our best scientific theory, supporters of this view have argued for the stronger claim that numbers are not indispensable. They all claim that numbers have an indexing role in the scientific explanation. In this article, I will consider some of the arguments for the indexing theory and point out its inadequacies.

scholarly journals The Eleatic and the Indispensabilist

2015 ◽  
Vol 30 (3) ◽  
pp. 415-429 ◽  
Author(s):  
Russell Marcus
Keyword(s):  
Scientific Theory ◽  
Indispensability Argument ◽  
Mathematical Objects

The debate over whether we should believe that mathematical objects exist quickly leads to the question of how to determine what we should believe.  Indispensabilists claim that we should believe in the existence of mathematical objects because of their ineliminable roles in scientific theory.  Eleatics argue that only objects with causal properties exist.  Mark Colyvan’s recent defenses of Quine’s indispensability argument against some contemporary eleatics attempt to provide reasons to favor the indispensabilist’s criterion.  I show that Colyvan’s argument is not decisive against the eleatic and sketch a way to capture the important intuitions behind both views.

scholarly journals MASALAH PEMAHAMAN COVID-19 DAN TUGAS FILSAFAT

2021 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 217
Author(s):  
Mikhael - Dua
Keyword(s):  
Scientific Theory ◽  
Local Community ◽  
Scientific Explanation ◽  
Edmund Husserl ◽  
Public Understanding ◽  
Historical Experience ◽  
The People ◽  
The World ◽  
Human Understanding ◽  
Phenomenological Perspective

<em>Public understanding of Covid 19 is often seen as a source of problems in pandemic time. This article presents a discussion that the logic of understanding is different from the logic of explanation. If in scientific explanation, law and scientific theory are regarded as the premises, all human understanding departs from the historical experience of the world which belongs to the community. In a phenomenological perspective, human understanding is rational because it is oriented toward convergence without coincidence, unification without equivalence, commonality without identity, and cooperation without uniformity. The Study of the musical experiences of East Nusa Tenggara shows that the people of East Nusa Tenggara have a transverse rationality, in a sense that is convergent with the health protocol, although is based on the mythical cosmology. Based on this kind of logos, any effort in solving Covid 19's problem as a point of convergence needs interpretation of local community different understanding.</em><br /><br /><strong>Key words:</strong> Covid 19, Edmund Husserl, Phenomenology, rationality, transversality.

Models And Method

Philosophy ◽  
1964 ◽  
Vol 39 (149) ◽  
pp. 260-267 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. W. Theobald
Keyword(s):  
Scientific Theory ◽  
Scientific Explanation ◽  
Vital Part

The construction of models plays a vital part in scientific thought.And many questions about the characteristics demanded of a good model, and the implications of using models are often asked by philosophers of science. Although models are frequently and successfully used in scientific explanation, this does not imply that they are a necessary feature of such explanation, though it does provide some justification for their use. However, any attempt to provide a model for a scientific theory undoubtedly leads to a clearer understanding of that theory. Models and theories are often considered as separate features in a scientific explanation, but a theory is not usually devised and then consciously provided with a model.

Test Validation Without Measurement

2016 ◽  
Vol 32 (3) ◽  
pp. 204-214 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emilie Lacot ◽  
Mohammad H. Afzali ◽  
Stéphane Vautier
Keyword(s):  
Test Data ◽  
Test Scores ◽  
Scientific Explanation ◽  
Test Validation ◽  
Clinical Tests ◽  
Ethical Perspective ◽  
Power Of Test ◽  
Memory Accuracy ◽  
Social Uses ◽  
Special Case

Abstract. Test validation based on usual statistical analyses is paradoxical, as, from a falsificationist perspective, they do not test that test data are ordinal measurements, and, from the ethical perspective, they do not justify the use of test scores. This paper (i) proposes some basic definitions, where measurement is a special case of scientific explanation; starting from the examples of memory accuracy and suicidality as scored by two widely used clinical tests/questionnaires. Moreover, it shows (ii) how to elicit the logic of the observable test events underlying the test scores, and (iii) how the measurability of the target theoretical quantities – memory accuracy and suicidality – can and should be tested at the respondent scale as opposed to the scale of aggregates of respondents. (iv) Criterion-related validity is revisited to stress that invoking the explanative power of test data should draw attention on counterexamples instead of statistical summarization. (v) Finally, it is argued that the justification of the use of test scores in specific settings should be part of the test validation task, because, as tests specialists, psychologists are responsible for proposing their tests for social uses.

The Black Swan: Yeats and the Science of the Unknown

2017 ◽  
Vol 47 (2) ◽  
pp. 350-359
Author(s):  
Aoife Lynch
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Scientific Theory ◽  
Black Swan ◽  
Max Planck ◽  
Universal History ◽  
New Concepts ◽  
Wave Particle Duality ◽  
Paradigmatic Change

This essay views science as a creative mask for the poetry and philosophy of W.B. Yeats. It explores the changing worldview which occurred at the beginning of the twentieth century with the discovery of wave-particle duality by Max Planck in 1900. It considers the new concepts of reality which arose at this time in relation to modernism and Yeats's response to the paradigmatic change of era he was a part of. Accordingly, the poet's understanding of universal history in A Vision (1925, 1937) is used alongside close readings of his poetry to evince an argument which unites that poetry with philosophy, scientific theory, and modernism as aspects of one universe of knowledge which refracts different aspects of itself through the prism of time.

Thomas Reid on Causation and Scientific Explanation

2016 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 51-67 ◽  
Author(s):  
Manuel Barrantes ◽  
Juan M. Durán
Keyword(s):  
Common Sense ◽  
Scientific Explanation ◽  
Thomas Reid ◽  
Contemporary Debate ◽  
The Common

We argue that there is no tension between Reid's description of science and his claim that science is based on the principles of common sense. For Reid, science is rooted in common sense since it is based on the (common sense) idea that fixed laws govern nature. This, however, does not contradict his view that the scientific notions of causation and explanation are fundamentally different from their common sense counterparts. After discussing these points, we dispute with Cobb's ( Cobb 2010 ) and Benbaji's ( Benbaji 2003 ) interpretations of Reid's views on causation and explanation. Finally, we present Reid's views from the perspective of the contemporary debate on scientific explanation.

THE SCIENCE OF JUDICIAL PSYCHOLOGY

2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 78-87
Author(s):  
Petru TĂRCHILĂ
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Behavior ◽  
Cultural Context ◽  
Scientific Explanation ◽  
Preventive Measures ◽  
Psychosocial Characteristics ◽  
Legal Norms ◽  
Behavioral Profile ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Determining Factor ◽  
Determinant Factor

Judicial psychology is the science that analyzes and tries to understand the criminal phenomenon in general and its determinant factor in particular, by the complexity of factors that generate it and by the diversity of its forms of manifestation. Although the determining factor of criminal behavior is always subjective being generated by the psychic of the offender, this aspect must be correlated with the context in which it manifests itself: social, economic, cultural context etc. Judicial psychology investigates the behavior of the individual in all its aspects, seeking a scientific explanation of the mechanisms and factors enhancing criminal favors, thus enabling the identification of the preventive measures to be taken to reduce the categories of offenses. It studies the psycho-behavioral profile of the offender, identifying the causes that determined its behavior in order to take preventive measures.The domain of judicial psychology is mainly deviance, conduct that departs from the moral or legal norms that are dominant in a given culture. The object of judicial psychology is the criminal act, correlated with the psychosocial characteristics of the participants in the judicial action (offender, victim, witness, investigator, magistrate, lawyer, civil party, educator, etc.). The science of judicial psychology also analyzes how these characteristics appear and manifest themselves in concrete and special conditions of their interaction in three phases of the criminal act: the pre-criminal phase, the actual criminal phase and the post-criminal phase.

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