The twentieth century was dominated by two rival views of scientific explanation. The first is the causal view in which causation is primitive. According to this view, the best explanations are the ones that tell us the cause of a phenomenon, organism, or state of affairs. The second is the unification view, which seeks to unify seemingly disparate bodies of knowledge. Philip Kitcher shook up the debate by synthesizing the two views. He developed a unification theory in which causation is derivative of explanation. The intuitive idea is that the best explanations are the ones that can draw the most conclusions from the fewest basic premises, and these premises just are the causal explanations. There is a problem though. Like any theory of scientific explanation, Kitcher must show that his respects explanatory asymmetry. For instance, we want our scientific theories to say that the height of a flagpole is explanatory of the length of the flagpole's shadow, and not vice versa. Kitcher's view has come under serious attack from Eric Barnes, who claims that Kitcher's theory cannot respect the problem of asymmetry. He gives three examples in which he thinks Kitcher's view fails. Todd Jones tried to defend Kitcher in a paper, but there is still much left to be said. One of his arguments, involving a Newtonian particle system, fails. The status of two of his other arguments is unclear. My goal is to step into the debate between Jones and Barnes and tip the scales in favor of the position that Jones defended. Additionally, I consider new potential cases of asymmetry and show how Kitcher's theory is equipped to accommodate these cases too.

Among the figures of the Scientific Revolution, Galileo was the most influential in moving science away from Aristotle’s concept of scientific explanation to what became Modern science. My primary goal in this thesis is to explicate Galileo’s concept of scientific explanation, as well as the metaphysical and methodological underpinnings relied upon by Galileo, and to investigate where these depart from Aristotle as well as the Aristotelians of Galileo’s time. Galileo’s most revolutionary scientific achievement was to advance a new, more practical aim for scientific inquiry: he changed the focus of scientific investigations to the measuring, modeling, and predicting of phenomena. In order to increase the reliability of his hypotheses Galileo rejected those aspects of Aristotle’s account of scientific explanation that could not be rigorously empirically justified. The result was that empirical science no longer searched for the essential attributes of bodies or for Aristotle’s causes such as the “final” cause. The identified contributions and innovations promulgated by Galileo are significant because they dictated changes that became formative to contemporary models of scientific explanation. I argue that analyses such as the one given in this dissertation can provide a framework for better understanding twentieth-century criticisms that argue that Aristotle’s concept of scientific explanation contained elements that are indispensable to genuine scientific explanations but that are missing from standard contemporary accounts such as Hempel’s covering law models. Finally, I conclude that my analysis of Galileo’s contributions to scientific explanation suggests that contemporary claims that covering law models should be more receptive to Aristotle’s ideas of causation and essence are misguided. / text

Nearly all of the ways philosophers currently attempt to define the terms "representation" and "function" undermine the scientific application of those terms by rendering the scientific explanations in which they occur vacuous. Since this is unacceptable, we must develop analyses of these terms that avoid this vacuity.Robert Cummins argues in this fashion in Representations, Targets, and Attitudes. He accuses "use theories" of representational content of generating vacuous explanations, claims that nearly all current theories of representational content are use theories, and offers a non-use theory of representational content which avoids explanatory vacuity. According to this theory, representations are physically instantiated structures, and represent whatever other structures are isomorphic to them, regardless of how or whether these structures are used by some cognitive system. Unfortunately, since isomorphism is a rather weak constraint, Cummins' theory underdetermines representational content so severely that it too undermines explanatory appeals to representation. One task I undertake is to develop an alternative non-use theory which avoids this difficulty.My second task is to adapt Cummins' argument to criticize most current analyses of "function," which undermine scientific explanation in an analogous way. Though Cummins does not explicitly argue in this manner, his own analysis of "function," by avoiding any appeal to use, avoids the explanatory vacuity to which they succumb. Consequently, I endorse Cummins' notion of function, both as it appears in cognitive science, and elsewhere. However, although use theories fail as analyses of the terms "representation" and "function," I argue that they can still make significant contributions to the sciences employing these terms. For, while philosophers seeking to define "representation" and "function" must avoid incorporating representational and functional uses into their definitions, scientists must still find a way to determine which representations and functions are being used. Suitably re-construed use theories of representation and function may in many cases assist them in this task by providing principles for theory choice in the face of empirical underdetermination of facts about representational and functional use.

Master of Arts / Department of Economics / Peri da Silva / Economists use various models to explain why it is that firms are capable of pricing above marginal cost. In this paper, we will examine two of them: the Cournot and Bertrand duopoly models. Economists generally accept both models as good explanations of the phenomenon, but the two models contradict each other in various important ways. The puzzle is that two inconsistent explanations are both regarded as good explanations for the same phenomenon. This becomes especially worrisome when the two models are offering divergent policy recommendations. This report presents that puzzle by laying out how the two models contradict each other in a myriad of ways and then offers five possible solutions to that puzzle from various economists, philosophers of science, and philosophers of economics.

Thesis advisor: Maria E. Brisk / This descriptive case study examines the role that Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) theory of language can play in making academic language more transparent and accessible to linguistically diverse students. In an urban fourth grade classroom composed of both bilingual and monolingual students, I incorporated key concepts of SFL into writing instruction on personal narrative and scientific explanation texts. Specifically, instruction explored the context, purpose, and tenor of each genre and scaffolded students' development of appropriate structure and useful language tools. Classroom instruction and student writing were examined using selective coding, constant comparison, and triangulation to make meaning from the data. Analysis of student writing in relation to SFL-influenced instruction revealed significant growth in areas of structure and language. In this case, SFL provided the researcher and classroom teacher with a useful theory of language and purposeful meta-language to identify and describe the functional elements of two genres to students from diverse literacy backgrounds. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2011. / Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education. / Discipline: Teacher Education, Special Education, Curriculum and Instruction.

This thesis defends Epistemic Structural Realism (ESR) against both Ontic Structural Realism (OSR) and Traditional Scientific Realism (TSR). It is argued that TSR cannot properly explain what actually happens throughout radical theory changes in science / in the sense that a plausible version of Scientific Realism should, somehow, satisfy Scientific Anti-Realists&rsquo / concerns about the link between &ldquo / truth&rdquo / and &ldquo / success&rdquo / of our scientific theories. On the other hand, it is claimed that OSR is not a form of Scientific Realism but rather basically a modified form of Pragmatism. To that effect, it is further argued that Modern Physics does not provide convincing reasons to accept the conclusions that advocates of OSR derive from it. It is finally asserted that a Structural Realist understanding of Scientific Explanation is not possible. In that regard, it is argued that a defense of Structural Realism by No Miracle Argument (NMA) against Pessimistic Meta Induction Argument (PMIA) will be effective if and only if the NMA is formulated by the predictive success of scientific theories, rather than constructing it on the explanatory power of them.

Humeans say that laws depend on their instances. Another way of saying this is that the instances explain the laws. However, laws are often used in science to help explain these same instances. If this is true it appears as though the instances help explain themselves, which would be a serious problem for the Humeans (Miller, 2015, pp. 1314-1317). In this essay I expand on a solution proposed by Miller (2015, pp. 1328-1331) that the laws are not explained by their instances but rather grounded by a set of global facts. I develop this into a new framework in which it would be expected for the laws to not be grounded by their instances. I call this framework conjunction monism since the core idea is a that conjunctions ground their conjuncts. I finish with a discussion about the compatibility of conjunction monism and Humeanism.

No description available.

It is natural to suppose that mental and physical properties are importantly distinct. Yet whatever this difference is, it has to be compatible with interaction between the mind and the body. Satisfaction of these desiderata leads to a paradox. If you make the mind strongly separate from the body, then there is the problem of bringing them together. If you unite them, then there is the problem of preserving their distinctiveness. It is the aim of this thesis to resolve the paradox. From the outset, it is assumed that the nature of interaction is most satisfactorily explained by an account of mental properties in monistic terms. For reasons for space, the arguments of Materialism are concentrated upon at the exposure of Idealism. Three strategies are examined, and found wanting. First, an instance of a non-reductive account provided by Davidson's 'Anomalous Monism'. Here, mental properties seem to be left with no role in influencing behaviour. Second, a review of reductionist accounts, ranging from Identity Theories to Representationalism. Criticism focuses upon the failure of reductionism to explain the connection between the function of a conscious state and its particular character. A Materialist treats mental states as if they were part of the physical universe. This implies that the nature of these states may be understood through scientific investigation, in the same manner as all other phenomena. The third strategy is to deny the above implication: that is, deny the assertion that, by existing, all aspects of an object are thereby knowable. The ideas of Colin McGinn are discussed as an example of this position. Since his arguments are equally suitable for non-Materialist purposes, they do not constitute an exclusively Materialist solution to the above paradox. This thesis offers an alternative way of pursuing the above strategy. It argues that the relation between mental states and our ways of understanding phenomena, is such that we should not expect our theories about the nature of 'mind' and the 'physical world' to employ the same terms. These properties appear distinct, not because they are different substances, but because they occupy different sides of the ‘process of understanding’ - ‘thing understood’ relationship. For convenience, this position is referred to as ‘Agnostic Materialism’. As interaction between the mind and the body is compatible with the mind having no influence upon our behaviour, it is incumbent upon the thesis to defend Materialism against the claim that mental properties are epiphenomenal. This is achieved by teasing out two ways in which such properties are considered inert: either because the workings of the mind are independent of the body; or because the mind’s processes are irrelevant to those of the body. The first claim is seen arise from the difficulty of seeing the mind as part of the physical world - a difficulty removed by the arguments in the previous paragraph. The second claim gains plausibility through a mistaken adherence to certain models of scientific explanation.

Si les scores psychotechniques ne sont pas des mesures, leur utilisation par les chercheurs an neuropsychologie pour tester des hypothèses de recherche et par les neuropsychologues pour effectuer des bilans mémoire manque de légitimité scientifique. Le chercheur en neuropsychologie qui, à l'aide d'une étude de cas, veut départager deux approches théoriques concurrentes, doit plutôt se demander si les théories prédisent des probabilités de réussite aux items des tests appartenant à des intervalles de valeurs disjoints. Cela suppose que la notion de probabilité de réussite d'un item par le patient soit empiriquement fondée (absence d'apprentissage). Si l'apprentissage a lieu, en particulier chez un patient cérébrolésé, le problème scientifique est différent : il s'agit de découvrir ce qui permet cet apprentissage. Le clinicien, praticien des tests neuropsychologiques, participe quant à lui à une institution diagnostique, contrainte à opérer une sélection des patients qui pourront bénéficier d'examens plus approfondis de leur cerveau. Dans cette perspective, les scores psychotechniques nourrissent un dispositif sociotechnique dont la légitimation ne devrait pas être seulement scientifique mais aussi politique. Le scientisme qui détermine les conditions actuelles de validation des tests non seulement masque la dimension politique de ce dispositif, mais encore empêche les chercheurs de réfléchir à ce que mesurer signifie (le scorage d'une performance n'est pas équivalent au mesurage d'une quantité théorique). La méthodologie de cette réflexion s'appuie (I) sur une série de travaux standards (validation de test, étude de cas) et (II) sur une analyse approfondie de la notion de testabilité des hypothèses de recherche utilisées par les chercheurs en neuropsychologie, ainsi que des hypothèses qui sous-tendent la mesurabilité d'une grandeur théorique. / The use of psycho-technical scores by neuropsychology researchers to test research hypotheses and neuropsychologists to perform memory assessments lacks scientific legitimacy if these scores are not measurements. A neuropsychology researcher who wants to decide between two competing theoretical approaches, by means of a case study, rather should consider whether the theories predict the probability of success in test items belonging to disjoint ranges. This implies that the notion of probability of success of an item by the patient is empirically based (absence of any learning). If learning takes place, especially in a patient with brain-injury, the scientific problem is different since it is to discover what make learning possible. The clinician, the practitioner of neuropsychological tests, participates in his turn to a diagnostic institution obliges to make a selection of patients who will benefit from further examination of their brains. In this perspective, the psycho-technical scores feed a socio-technical system whose legitimacy not expected to be merely scientific but also political. Scientism determining the current conditions of test validation not only masks the political aspect of this system, but also prevents researchers to think about what measuring means (the scoring of a performance is not equivalent to measuring a theoretical quantity). The methodology for this reflection is based on (i) a series of standard studies (validation testing, case study) and (ii) a thorough analysis of the notion of testability of research hypotheses used by neuropsychology researchers, and assumptions underlying measurability of a theoretical quantity.