The philosophical foundations of statistics may be regarded as the study of the epistemological, conceptual, and logical problems revolving around the use and interpretation of statistical methods, broadly conceived. As with other domains of philosophy of science, work in statistical science progresses largely without worrying about “philosophical foundations.” Nevertheless, even in statistical...

Recent decades have seen a surge in interest in metaphilosophy. In particular there has been an interest in philosophical methodology. Various questions have been asked about philosophical methods. Are our methods any good? Can we improve upon them? However, prior to such evaluative and ameliorative concerns, is the matter of what methods philosophers actually use. Worryingly, our understanding...

This paper provides an historical overview of the theoretical antecedents leading to information theory, specifically those useful for understanding and teaching information science and systems. Information may be discussed in a philosophical manner and at the same time be measureable. This notion of information can thus be the subject of philosophical discussion and the ideas about information...

The philosophical foundations of statistics may be regarded as the study of the epistemological, conceptual and logical problems revolving around the use and interpretation of statistical methods, broadly conceived. As with other domains of philosophy of science, work in statistical science progresses largely without worrying about “philosophical foundations.” Nevertheless, even in statistical ...

(Nov/03 draft, forthcoming in " Pacific Philosophical Quarterly " , comments to [email protected]) abstract In this paper I argue that questions about the semantics of rigid designation are commonly and illicitly run together with distinct issues, such as questions about the metaphysics of essence and questions about the theoretical legitimacy of the possible-worlds framework. I discuss in depth t...

A reorientation is needed in methodological debate about the role of intuitions in philosophy. Methodological debate has lost sight of the reason why it makes sense to focus on questions about intuitions when thinking about the methods or epistemology of philosophy. The problem is an approach to methodology which gives a near exclusive focus to questions about some evidential role that intuitio...

Forthcoming in Biology and Philosphy Traditionally, studies in the philosophy of biology have been strongly centered on evolutionary biology and systematics. To be sure, during the last four decades the field of molecular biology has been subject to substantial philosophical discussion as well. Still, discussions of molecular biology have focused on questions peculiar to this field (such as the...

The Talking Heads (TH) experiment [13] was designed to demonstrate the feasibility of bootstrapping a communication system among agents situated in a real world situation. In the experiment, the agents, embodied in robots with moving camera's, conceptualize the perceived world, invent and learn a shared language, and succeed in communicating what they see to each other in that language. The aim...