Induction Confirmation And Explanation
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Theory and Reality
Author: Peter Godfrey-Smith
language: en
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Release Date: 2021-07-16
How does science work? Does it tell us what the world is “really” like? What makes it different from other ways of understanding the universe? In Theory and Reality, Peter Godfrey-Smith addresses these questions by taking the reader on a grand tour of more than a hundred years of debate about science. The result is a completely accessible introduction to the main themes of the philosophy of science. Examples and asides engage the beginning student, a glossary of terms explains key concepts, and suggestions for further reading are included at the end of each chapter. Like no other text in this field, Theory and Reality combines a survey of recent history of the philosophy of science with current key debates that any beginning scholar or critical reader can follow. The second edition is thoroughly updated and expanded by the author with a new chapter on truth, simplicity, and models in science.
Inference Belief and Interpretation in Science
The book is an engaging discourse on a number of interesting and deep issues relating to how Science inquires into Nature. It constitutes a critique of the received view that objectivity and logic are the cornerstones of science, and emphasises the role of inductive inference, of which an essential feature is that, compared to its deductive counterpart, the correspondence between evidence and conclusion is not unique, and that it entails a fundamental element of choice or decision. Induction takes place in the mind of the individual and also in the collective mental process of a scientific community. More precisely, the process of inductive inference is essentially dependent on beliefs, tied to affect and emotions, mostly playing their role in a substratum of conscious, deductive activity. In this the scientific process, which involves induction and deduction in complementary roles, is seen to have deeply cognitive roots. Building around this basic perception and drawing from diverse current trends of research, the book adopts a naturalist approach to pose a critique of a widespread but naive version of scientific realism. The presentation is lucid, informal, and witty, mainly addressed to general readers, though the discourse is at once deep, intriguing and provoking wherein it will prove to be of value to specialists in the areas of philosophy of science and cognitive science.
Argument and Inference
A thorough and practical introduction to inductive logic with a focus on arguments and the rules used for making inductive inferences. This textbook offers a thorough and practical introduction to inductive logic. The book covers a range of different types of inferences with an emphasis throughout on representing them as arguments. This allows the reader to see that, although the rules and guidelines for making each type of inference differ, the purpose is always to generate a probable conclusion. After explaining the basic features of an argument and the different standards for evaluating arguments, the book covers inferences that do not require precise probabilities or the probability calculus: the induction by confirmation, inference to the best explanation, and Mill's methods. The second half of the book presents arguments that do require the probability calculus, first explaining the rules of probability, and then the proportional syllogism, inductive generalization, and Bayes' rule. Each chapter ends with practice problems and their solutions. Appendixes offer additional material on deductive logic, odds, expected value, and (very briefly) the foundations of probability. Argument and Inference can be used in critical thinking courses. It provides these courses with a coherent theme while covering the type of reasoning that is most often used in day-to-day life and in the natural, social, and medical sciences. Argument and Inference is also suitable for inductive logic and informal logic courses, as well as philosophy of sciences courses that need an introductory text on scientific and inductive methods.