2000 HSS/PSA Program 1 - History of Science Society

PSA Abstracts
for explanations, perhaps we should consider whether our preference for theories
that are explanatory says more about our own intellectual addiction to causal
narratives than it does about the epistemic importance of explanation. How to
do philosophy of science. Philosophers of science typically use episodes in the
history of science as evidence in their disputes about the nature of theory
evaluation and theory selection. As Faust argues, this method exhibits many of
the same frailties as the regrettable practice of expert, human (“clinical”) judgment
in complex scientific domains. Should philosophers of science embrace actuarial
methods in their research? An actuarial approach to the history and philosophy
of science would draw upon scientific findings and could be evaluated by
empirical means. This poses a dilemma for naturalistic philosophers of science:
Either we reject the actuarial results and thereby reject the most reliable methods
we have of coming to grips with complex phenomena, or we embrace the actuarial
findings, in which case we seem forced to jettison considerable chunks of
contemporary philosophy of science.
Peter Bokulich University of Notre Dame
Black Hole Remnants and Classical vs. Quantum Gravity
Belot, Earman, and Ruetsche (1999) dismiss the black hole remnant proposal
as an inadequate response to the information loss paradox. I argue that their
criticisms are misplaced and that, properly understood, remnants do offer a
satisfying response to Hawking’s argument. I also claim that a proper
understanding of these proposals — and, more generally, of attempts to
formulate a theory of quantum gravity — requires recognizing the significant
and controversial nature of assessing the limits of our current theories.
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William␣ F. Brewer University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
Bruce␣ L. Lambert University of Illinois, Chicago
The Theory-Ladeness of Observation and the Theory-Ladeness of the Rest
of the Scientific Process
This paper uses evidence from cognitive psychology and the history of science
to examine the issue of the theory-ladeness of perceptual observation. The
evidence shows that perception is theory-laden, but that is only strongly theoryladen
when the perceptual evidence is ambiguous, degraded, or requires a
difficult perceptual judgment. The paper argues that debates about the theoryladen
issue have focused too narrowly on the issue of perceptual experience
and that a full account of the scientific process requires an examination of the
theory-laden issue in attention, perception, data interpretation, data production,
memory, and scientific communication.