Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science: Proceedings of the Boston Colloquium for the Philosophy of Science 1961/1962 (Boston Studies in the Philosophy and History of Science, 1)

The broad range of interdisciplinary concerns which are encompassed by the philosophy of science have this much in common: (I) they arise from reflection upon the fundamental concepts, the formal structures, and the methodology of the sciences; (2) they touch upon the characteristically philosophical questions of ontology and epistemology in a unique way, bringing to traditional conceptions the analytic apparatus of modern logic, and the new content and conceptual models of active scientific investigations. These sources are reflected in the present volume, which consists of the major portion of the papers presented to the Boston Colloquium for the Philosophy of Science in the academic year 1961-1962. There is no central theme nor any dominant approach in this colloquium. Initiated in 1960 as an inter-university interdisciplinary faculty group, the Colloqnium is intended to foster creative and regular exchange of research and opinion, to provide a forum for professional discussion in the philosophy of science, and to stimulate the development of academic programs in philosophy of science in the colleges and universities of metropolitan Boston. The base of the Colloquium is our philosophic and scientific community, as broad and heterodox as the academic, cultural and techno­ logical complex in and about this city. The Colloquium has been supported in its first full year, as an inter-institutional cooperative association, by a generous grant to Boston University from the U. S. National Science Foundation. We are most grateful for this help. The broad range of interdisciplinary concerns which are encompassed by the philosophy of science have this much in common: (I) they arise from reflection upon the fundamental concepts, the formal structures, and the methodology of the sciences; (2) they touch upon the characteristically philosophical questions of ontology and epistemology in a unique way, bringing to traditional conceptions the analytic apparatus of modern logic, and the new content and conceptual models of active scientific investigations. These sources are reflected in the present volume, which consists of the major portion of the papers presented to the Boston Colloquium for the Philosophy of Science in the academic year 1961-1962. There is no central theme nor any dominant approach in this colloquium. Initiated in 1960 as an inter-university interdisciplinary faculty group, the Colloqnium is intended to foster creative and regular exchange of research and opinion, to provide a forum for professional discussion in the philosophy of science, and to stimulate the development of academic programs in philosophy of science in the colleges and universities of metropolitan Boston. The base of the Colloquium is our philosophic and scientific community, as broad and heterodox as the academic, cultural and technoƯ logical complex in and about this city. The Colloquium has been supported in its first full year, as an inter-institutional cooperative association, by a generous grant to Boston University from the U.S. National Science Foundation. We are most grateful for this help In this fifth volume of Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, we have gathered papers about the logic and methods of the natural sciences. Along with the individual pieces, there are several which have originated as commentaries but are now supplementary contributions: those by Stachel and Putnam. Grlinbaum's long essay developed from a paper first suggested for our Colloquium some years ago, and we are glad of the occasion to publish it here. Several of the papers were not first presented to our Colloquium but they are the work of friends and scholars who have contributed to our discussions along similar lines. We are grateful to them for allowing us to publish their papers: L Bernard Cohen, Hilary Putnam, Mihailo Markovic. And we are also grateful to C.F. von Weizsacker for his paper, recently presented to the Boston philosophical and scientific community as a lecture at M. LT. With these few exceptions, the fifth volume presents work which was partially supported by a grant from the U.S. National Science Foundation to Boston University. Such support will conclude with the fourth volume of philosophical studies of psychology, the social sciences, history, and the inter-relationships of the sciences with ethics and metaphysics. Unimportant circumstances made it necessary to publish that fourth volume after this fifth volume, and perhaps this will mildly suggest that neither science nor the philosophy of science needs to be constrained by orthodoxy of procedure Front Matter....Pages I-VIII A Model of Mind-Body Relation in Terms of Modular Logic....Pages 1-41 Comments....Pages 42-45 Comments....Pages 46-47 The Relationship of Language to the Formation of Concepts....Pages 48-54 The Logical Structure of Physics....Pages 55-71 Discussion....Pages 72-76 Modal Logics I: Modalities and Intensional Languages....Pages 77-96 Comments....Pages 97-104 Discussion....Pages 105-116 Modal Logics II: Toward a Formal Analysis of Cultural Objects....Pages 117-143 Deterministic Interpretations of the Quantum Theory....Pages 144-155 Operational Aspects of Hidden-Variable Quantum Theories with a Postscript on the Impact of Recent Scientific Trends on Art....Pages 156-173 Comments....Pages 174-177 The Falsifiability of Theories: Total or Partial? A Contemporary Evaluation of the Duhem-Quine Thesis....Pages 178-195 Comments....Pages 196-198 Perception and Language....Pages 199-205 Perception: Cause and Achievement....Pages 206-212