Models and Methods in the Philosophy of Science: Selected Essays

by Patrick C. Suppes

Preface. Part General Methodology. 1. The Role of Formal Methods in the Philosophy of Science. 2. The Study of Scientific Theory and Methodology. 3. Limitations of the Axiomatic Method in Ancient Greek Mathematical Sciences. 4. The Plurality of Science. 5. Heuristics and the Axiomatic Method. 6. Representation Theory and the Analysis of Structure. Part Causality and Explanation. 7. Causal Analysis of Hidden Variables. 8. Scientific Causal Talk. 9. Explaining the Unpredictable. 10. Conflicting Intuitions about Causality. 11. When are Probabilistic Explanations Possible? 12. Non-Markovian Causality in the Social Sciences with Some Theorems on Transitivity. Part Probability and Measurement. 13. Finite Equal-Interval Measurement Structures. 14. The Measurement of Belief. 15. The Logic of Clinical Bayesian and Other Approaches. 16. Arguments for Randomizing. 17. Propensity Representations of Probability. 18. Indeterminism or Instability, Does it Matter? Part Physics. 19. Descartes and the Problem of Action at a Distance. 20. Some Open Problems in the Philosophy of Space and Time. 21. Aristotle's Concept of Matter and its Relation to Modern Concepts of Matter. 22. Popper's Analysis of Probability in Quantum Mechanics. 23. Probabilistic Causality in Quantum Mechanics. Part Psychology. 24. From Behaviorism to Neobehaviorism. 25. Learning Theory for Probabilistic Automata and Register Machines, with Applications to Educational Research. 26. Is Visual Space Euclidean? 27. Davidson's Views on Psychology as a Science. 28. Current Directions in Mathematical Learning Theory. 29. On Deriving Models in the Social Sciences. 30. The Principle of Invariance with Special Reference to Perception. 31. Can Psychological Software be Reduced to Physiological Hardware? References. Author Index.

532 pages, Paperback

First published May 31, 1993