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Title of Journal: Synthese

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Abbravation: Synthese

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Springer Netherlands

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10.1016/0091-3057(86)90160-7

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1573-0964

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Comparative syllogism and counterfactual knowledge

Authors: Linton Wang WeiFen Ma
Publish Date: 2013/08/08
Volume: 191, Issue: 6, Pages: 1327-1348
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Abstract

Comparative syllogism is a type of scientific reasoning widely used explicitly or implicitly for inferences from observations to conclusions about effectiveness but its philosophical significance has not been fully elaborated or appreciated In its simplest form the comparative syllogism derives a conclusion about the effectiveness of a factor eg a treatment or an exposure on a certain property via an experiment design using a test experimental group and a comparison control group Our objective is to show that the comparative syllogism can be understood as encoding a simulation view of counterfactuals in that counterfactual situations are conceptual constructs that can be correctly simulated by homogeneous comparison groups In this simulation view the empirical data from the comparison groups play an evidential role in the evaluation of counterfactuals and in obtaining counterfactual knowledge We further indicate how successful experimental designs can help us to obtain correct simulations and thus to bring us to scientificallyempirically based counterfactual knowledge

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  2. Physicalism and strict implication
  3. Adequate formalization
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  5. Inscrutability and visual objects
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  9. Against a descriptive vindication of doxastic voluntarism
  10. Epistemic and Dialectical Models of Begging the Question
  11. Parsing the rainbow
  12. Why neuroscience matters to cognitive neuropsychology
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  14. Existence problems in philosophy and science
  15. Logic and social interaction: introduction
  16. Similarity and cotenability
  17. Towards a reflexive framework for development: technology transfer after the empirical turn
  18. A triviality result for the “Desire by Necessity” thesis
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  20. Which empathy? Limitations in the mirrored “understanding” of emotion
  21. “If you’d wiggled A, then B would’ve changed”
  22. Recognition-primed group decisions via judgement aggregation
  23. A discrete solution for the paradox of Achilles and the tortoise
  24. A foundation for presentism
  25. Externalism and “knowing what” one thinks
  26. Semantics, conceptual spaces, and the meeting of minds
  27. Inference to the best explanation and mathematical realism
  28. Why follow the royal rule?
  29. Ordering effects, updating effects, and the specter of global skepticism
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  31. Can the new indispensability argument be saved from Euclidean rescues?
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  37. Information, possible worlds and the cooptation of scepticism
  38. Levels of communication and lexical semantics
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  40. Why Euclid’s geometry brooked no doubt: J. H. Lambert on certainty and the existence of models
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