Böcker i SpringerBriefs in Philosophy-serien

The diversity of kinds of models one finds in science - ranging from toy models and scale models to theoretical and mathematical models - has attracted attention not only from scientists, but also from philosophers, sociologists, and historians of science.

This work breaks new ground by carefully distinguishing the concepts of belief, confirmation, and evidence and then integrating them into a better understanding of personal and scientific epistemologies. It outlines a probabilistic framework in which subjective features of personal knowledge and objective features of public knowledge have their true place. It also discusses the bearings of some statistical theorems on both formal and traditional epistemologies while showing how some of the existing paradoxes in both can be resolved with the help of this framework.This book has two central aims: First, to make precise a distinction between the concepts of confirmation and evidence and to argue that failure to recognize this distinction is the source of certain otherwise intractable epistemological problems. The second goal is to demonstrate to philosophers the fundamental importance of statistical and probabilistic methods, at stake in the uncertain conditions in which for the most part we lead our lives, not simply to inferential practice in science, where they are now standard, but to epistemic inference in other contexts as well. Although the argument is rigorous, it is also accessible. No technical knowledge beyond the rudiments of probability theory, arithmetic, and algebra is presupposed, otherwise unfamiliar terms are always defined and a number of concrete examples are given. At the same time, fresh analyses are offered with a discussion of statistical and epistemic reasoning by philosophers. This book will also be of interest to scientists and statisticians looking for a larger view of their own inferential techniques.The book concludes with a technical appendix which introduces an evidential approach to multi-model inference as an alternative to Bayesian model averaging.

This book unifies a large part of the vast body of Husserlian phenomenology using a relatively simple set of dynamical laws. By making key Husserlian ideas clear and by formally expressing them, it facilitates efforts to apply Husserlian phenomenology in various domains, in particular to cognitive science.

This book is a contribution both to Aristotle studies and to the philosophy of nature, and not only offers a thorough text based account of time as modally potentiality in Aristotle's account, but also clarifies the process of "actualizing time" as taking time and looks at the implications of conceiving a world without actual time.

This book lies at the intersection of philosophy of mind and philosophy of religion and operates on the assumption that dialogue between the two disciplines can be fruitful.

Since unary algebras admit only type 1, this book focuses on these algebras to tackle the main problem. It discusses several aspects of unary algebras and proves that the Constraint Satisfaction Problem for relational structures is polynomially equivalent to SysTermSat over unary algebras.

This book describes a novel conception of reality, one that uniquely incorporates an idealistic view of existence with an account of objectivity.

This volume examines Popper's philosophy by analyzing the criticism of his most popular critics: Thomas Kuhn, Paul Feyerabend and Imre Lakatos. Starting from the assumption that Hume's criticism of induction is valid, the book explores the central criticism and objections that these three critics have raised.

This book on infinite regress arguments provides (i) an up-to-date overview of the literature on the topic, (ii) ready-to-use insights for all domains of philosophy, and (iii) two case studies to illustrate these insights in some detail. Infinite regress arguments play an important role in all domains of philosophy.

This book explains the first published consistency proof of PA. A notable aspect of the proof is the representation of ordinal numbers that was developed by Gentzen. The topic should interest researchers and students who work on proof theory, history of proof theory or Hilbert's program and who do not mind reading mathematical texts.

This book develops a philosophical analysis of economic reality and economic science from an Aristotelian point of view. It differs from other philosophy of economics books as it also deals with economic reality (not only the science) and approaches its subject from an Aristotelian perspective.

Explores the practical applicability of the philosophy of science to scientific research, but also considers its relevance to practice within the realms of technology, design, crafts, and even within the world of arts and the humanities.

This volume offers a new understanding of Titchener's influential system of psychology popularly known as introspectionism, structuralism and as classical introspective psychology.

Paradoxes provide a vehicle for exposing misinterpretations and misapplications of accepted principles. for instance, startling claims concerning human destiny and the nature of reality are directly related to fallacious reasoning in a betting paradox, and a problem analyzed in philosophy journals is resolved by means of a computer program.

This book provides an introductory overview to the social debate over enhancement technologies with an overview of the transhumanists' call to bypass human nature and conservationists' argument in defense of it.

The aim of the book is to argue for the restoration of theoretical and practical reason to economics. Institutions allow us to deliberate on and guide our decisions about capabilities, through the use of practical reason.

A Summary of Scientific Method is a brief description of what makes science scientific. A Summary of Scientific Method provides a clear, intuitive, and accurate model of scientific method.

The ancient Chinese scholars are fond of applying the Yin and Yang diagram to correlate almost everything. This book continues that tradition and uses the model to study other non-dialectical theories and models.

This book is a contribution to the understanding of psychosomatic health problems.

The view advanced here is that philosophical materialism and minimalist assumptions about adaptation serve Darwinian psychology better than the more popular alternative view that relies on cognitive dualism and propositional-attitude psychology to formulate evolutionary psychology theory.