This chapter considers a set of questions at the interface of the study of intuitive theories, causal knowledge, and problems of inductive inference. By an intuitive theory, we mean a cognitive structure that in some important ways is analogous to a scientific theory. It is becoming broadly recognized that intuitive theories play essential roles in organizing

Does evolutionary theory have implications about the existence of supernatural entities? This question concerns the logical relationships that hold between the theory of evolution and different bits of metaphysics. There is a distinct question that I also want to address; it is epistemological in character. Does the evidence we have for evolutionary theory also provide evidence concerning the existence of supernatural entities? An affirmative answer to the logical question would entail an affirmative answer to the epistemological question if the principle in confirmation theory that Hempel (1965, p. 31) called the special consequence condition were true: The special consequence condition: If an observation report confirms a hypothesis H, then it also confirms every consequence of H. According to this principle, if evolutionary theory has metaphysical implications, then whatever confirms evolutionary theory also must confirm those metaphysical implications. But the special consequence is false. Here‟s a simple example that illustrates why. You are playing poker and would dearly like to know whether the card you are about to be dealt will be the Jack of Hearts. The dealer is a bit careless and so you catch a glimpse of the card on top of the deck before it is dealt to you. You see that it is red. The fact that it is red confirms the hypothesis that the card is the Jack of Hearts, and the hypothesis that it is the Jack of Hearts entails that the card will be a Jack. However, the fact that the card is red does not confirm the hypothesis that the card will be a Jack. 2 Bayesians gloss these facts by understanding confirmation in terms of probability raising: The Bayesian theory of confirmation: O confirms H if and only if Pr(H│O)> Pr(H). The general reason why Bayesianism is incompatible with the special consequence

Abstract Two arguments due to Russell are examined, and found to show that the notion of causation as full determination doesn’t mesh easily with deterministic global physics and the distinction between effective and ineffective strategies. But a local notion of causation as involving a certain kind of counterfactual dependence is, I argue, compatible with Russell’s conclusions. I defend it from a resurgent form of Russell’s microphysical determinism argument by deploying a pragmatic account of the nature and function of scientific theories. 1. Russell’s Arguments The law of causality... like much that passes muster among philosophers, is a relic of a bygone age, surviving, like the monarchy, only because it is erroneously supposed to do no harm. (Russell, 1913 [1963], 132) Russell (1913 [1963]) takes the relation of causation to be a relation of determination: c causes e just when c determines e to occur. This relation is asymmetric and plausibly transitive. The fundamental law of causality is supposed to be that every event has a sufficient cause, one that is guaranteed to bring that event about and in fact did so. This intuition about the deterministic nature of causation is not a Russellian idiosyncrasy: it originates in Hume’s ‘constant conjunction’ regularity analysis (if c and e are constantly conjoined, the appearance of c should

The following paper contains a new refutation of the skeptical argument concerning our knowledge of the external world. The central idea is that the argument fails because it presupposes ambiguous attributions of reality. Once these ambiguities are identified, they make the argument either trivial or equivocal. Differently from others, this refutation does not lead us to undesired results. Since Descartes, the so-called argument from ignorance concerning the external world 1 is one of the most puzzling skeptical arguments ever created. In order to be prepared to construct it we need to make use of some general skeptical hypothesis about the external world. Examples of them are as follows: (1) I am dreaming the external world. (2) I am hallucinating an external world. (3) I am a soul being deceived by a malign genie, who makes me believe that I am living in this world, which in fact does not exist (the Cartesian version). (4) I am a brain in a vat, linked to a supercomputer that makes me believe that I am living in a real world, when in fact this is only an implemented program of virtual reality (the main contemporary version). Typical of such skeptical hypotheses is that their truth is at least logically possible. Indeed, it seems that we are not even able to know that they are false. I would like to thank professor Richard Swinburne for his sympathetic criticism.

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Abstract: In recent times, realism in economic methodology has increasingly gained importance. Uskali Mäki and Tony Lawson are the best-known realists within the discipline and even though their approaches are fundamentally different, both provide (among others) pragmatic defences of realism by claiming anti-realism to be the reason for the low quality of (some) economic models. My paper will show that a pragmatic defence of realism is untenable and furthermore, I will show that for both Mäki’s and Lawson’s normative ideas there is no need for realism.