Québec Studies in the Philosophy of Science: Part II: Biology, Psychology, Cognitive Science and Economics Essays in Honor of Hugues Leblanc

309 Pages·1996·7.853 MB·English

by  François Duchesneau (auth.), Mathieu Marion, Robert S. Cohen (eds.)

QuEBEC STUDIES IN THE PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE
PART II
BOSTON STUDIES IN THE PlllLOSOPHY OF SCIENCE
Editor
ROBERT S. COHEN, Boston University
Editorial Advisory Board
mOMAS F. GLICK, Boston University
ADOLF GRUNBAUM, University of Pittsburgh
SAHOTRA SARKAR, McGill University
SYLVAN S. SCHWEBER, Brandeis University
JOHN J. STACHEL, Boston University
MARX W. WARTOFSKY, Baruch College of
the City University ofN ew York
VOLUME 178
HUGUES LEBLANC
Courtesy of Suzanne S. Leblanc
'"
QUEBEC STUDIES IN THE
PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE
Part II: Biology, Psychology,
Cognitive Science and Economics
Essays in Honor ofH ugues Leblanc
Edited by
MATHIEU MARION
University o/Ottawa
and
ROBERT S. COHEN
Boston University
KLUWER ACADEMIC PUBLISHERS
DORDRECHT I BOSTON I LONDON
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A C.I.P. Catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.
ISBN-13: 978-94-010-6537-5 e-ISBN-13: 978-94-009-0113-1
001: 10.1007/978-94-009-0113-1
Published by Kluwer Academic Publishers,
P.O. Box 17, 3300 AA Dordrecht, The Netherlands.
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All Rights Reserved
© 1996 Kluwer Academic Publishers
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No part of the material protected by this copyright notice may be reproduced or
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
EDITORIAL PREFACE ix
PHILOSOPHY OF BIOLOGY
FRAN<;OIS DUCHESNEAU / Teleological Arguments from a Meth-
odological Viewpoint I
PAUL DUMOUCHEL / Natural Selection and Selection Type Theories 13
DANIEL LAURIER / Function, Normality and Temporality 25
MURRA Y CLARKE / Natural Selection and Indexical Representation 53
PHILOSOPHY OF PSYCHOLOGY AND COGNITIVE SCIENCE
EV AN THOMPSON / Artificial Intelligence, Artificial Life, and the
Symbol-Matter Problem 63
JAMES A. McGILVRAY / Making Colored Objects 81
PAUL BERNIER / Why Marr's Theory of Vision Is Not Anti-
Individualist 99
MICHEL SEYMOUR / "Three Thought Experiments Revisited" 113
DENIS FISETTE / Davidson on Norms and the Explanation of
Behavior 139
DECISION THEORY AND PHILOSOPHY OF ECONOMICS
ROBERT NADEAU / Economics and Intentionality 159
MAURICE LAGUEUX / How Could Anyone Be Irrational? 177
ALAIN VOIZARD / "If Cows Had Wings, We'd Carry Big Umbrellas."
An Almost Number-Free Note on Newcomb's Problem 193
1. NICOLAS KAUFMANN / The Belief-Desire Model of Decision
Theory Needs a Third Component: Prospective In.tentions 215
JOCEL YNE COUTURE / Decision Theory, IndividualistIc Explanations
and Social Darwinism 229
EPISTEMOLOGICAL STUDIES
SUSAN DWYER / Dispositions to Explain 247
CLAUDE PANACCIO / Belief-Sentences: Outline of a Nominalistic 265
Approach
vii
viii T ABLE OF CONTENTS
MARTIN MONTMINY / Verificationism and the Molecular View of
Language 279
NOTES ON THE AUTHORS 295
NAME INDEX 299
EDITORIAL PREFACE
By North-American standards, philosophy is not new in Quebec: the first men
tion of philosophy lectures given by a Jesuit in the College de Quebec (founded
1635) dates from 1665, and the oldest logic manuscript dates from 1679. In
English-speaking universities such as McGill (founded 1829), philosophy
began to be taught later, during the second half of the 19th century. The major
influence on English-speaking philosophers was, at least initially, that of
Scottish Empiricism. On the other hand, the strong influence of the Catholic
Church on French-Canadian society meant that the staff of the facultes of the
French-speaking universities consisted, until recently, almost entirely of
Thomist philosophers. There was accordingly little or no work in modern
Formal Logic and Philosophy of Science and precious few contacts between
the philosophical communities. In the late forties, Hugues Leblanc was a young
student wanting to learn Formal Logic. He could not find anyone in Quebec to
teach him and he went to study at Harvard University under the supervision of
W. V. Quine. His best friend Maurice L' Abbe had left, a year earlier, for
Princeton to study with Alonzo Church.
After receiving his Ph.D from Harvard in 1948, Leblanc started his profes
sional career at Bryn Mawr College, where he stayed until 1967. He then went
to Temple University, where he taught until his retirement in 1992, serving as
Chair of the Department of Philosophy from 1973 until 1979. His achievements
as a logician include seminal contributions to the development of Free Logic, in
particular with the ground breaking paper, written jointly with Theodore
Hailperin, 'Nondesignating Singular Terms' (Philosophical Review 68 (1959),
pp. 239-43). After initial results by Bas van Fraassen, using supervaluation,
Hugues Leblanc and Richmond Thomason obtained completeness results in
'Completeness Theorems for Some Presupposition-Free Logic' (Fundamenta
Mathematicae 62 (1968), pp. 125-64). More recently, Leblanc also made
seminal contributions to Truth-Value Semantics (cf. his Truth-Value Semantics,
Amsterdam, North-Holland, 1976) and, inspired by appendices to Karl Popper's
Logic of Scientific Discovery, to Probability Semantics and Probability Theory,
in his paper 'Probabilistic Semantics for First-Order Logic' (ZeitschriJt fur
mathematische Logik und Grundlagen der Mathematik 25 (1979), pp. 498-
509). In all, Leblanc has written more than one hundred scientific papers, the
more recent of them in collaboration with Peter Roeper (Australian National
University), and four books, he collaborated on two books and edited or co
edited four. Many logic students will remember learning the subject from his
classic textbook, written with William A. Wisdom, Deductive Logic (3rd edn.,
Englewood Cliffs, Prentice Hall, 1993).
After a long and fruitful career in the United States, Hugues Leblanc is now
ix
x EDITORIAL PREFACE
back in Quebec, where the philosophical milieu has changed beyond recogni
tion since his student days. He came back to find studies in logic and in all
aspects of philosophy of science in a flourishing state. As a result of the revolu
tion tranquille which took place among the French-speaking society in the
sixties, philosophy in Quebec opened up to external influences such as, initially,
phenomenology and Marxism and, increasingly in the past twenty years, Anglo
American analytic philosophy. As a result, there is now a growing number of
French-speaking logicians and philosophers of science - although not all of
them work from the point of view of analytical philosophy. Conditions were set
for fruitful exchanges with the English-speaking philosophical community. (But
we should add here that the essential role of immigrants in the evolution of
the philosophical life in Quebec should not be overlooked. Contributors to the
present volumes come not only from other parts of Canada, but also from
Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Germany, Ireland, Switzerland, the United
Kingdom and the United States).
Such exchanges have led recently to the creation of research groups across
Quebec. These are now joined together under the name of Groupe de recherche
sur la representation, l' action et Ie lang age or GRRAL. Our two volumes of
Quebec Studies in the Philosophy of Science comprise the first full-scale collec
tion of studies in the philosophy and history of science from French- and
English-speaking philosophers of Quebec to appear in English; they include in
particular most members of the GRRAL. As editors, we are happy to join the
contributors in dedicating these volumes to Hugues Leblanc, who is, among
philosophers, the first logicien quebecois.
In our second volume, we have collected papers in philosophy of biology, phi
losophy of psychology and cognitive sciences, philosophy of economics and
decision theory, and relevant epistemological studies (while papers in logic,
philosophy of mathematics, philosophy of physics and in general philosophy
and history of science were collected in volume one). This volume includes
members of two of the research groups forming the GRRAL, the group
Naturalisation de l'intentionalite (D. Laurier, C. Panaccio, M. Seymour, A.
Voizard) and a group located at McGill, working on the possibility of a scien
tific theory of meaning (S. Dwyer, J. McGilvray; the contributions of P.
Pietroski and D. Davies are in volume I). Another group, Rationalite et sciences
humaines, not affiliated to the GRRAL is also represented here (P. Dumouchel,
M. Lagueux, R. Nadeau).
In the section on philosophy of biology, Franr;ois Duchesneau explores the
use of teleological arguments in biology, while Paul Dumouchel discusses
selection type theories. In papers oriented towards the program of teleo
semantics, Daniel Laurier examines the notion of natural function and Murray
Clarke discusses the issue of the selection of true beliefs. The section on the
philosophy of psychology and cognitive science opens with a paper at the
border between theoretical biology and cognitive science, Evan Thompson
discusses the notion of syntactic interpretability in relation to the 'symbol-
EDITORIAL PREFACE xi
matter' problem. Jim McGilvray looks at bearers of color properties from a
subjectivist point of view. Paul Bernier argues against Burge's interpretation of
Marr's theory of vision as anti-individualist, while Michel Seymour reexamines
thought experiments (by Putnam, Burge & Kripke) which are used to support
the later. Finally, Denis Fisette looks at the support given to Davidson's anom
alous monism by the normative character of rationality.
The next section opens with papers on the foundations of economics by
Robert Nadeau, who argues that intentionality is a phenomenon constitutive of
the domain of economic theory, and by Maurice Lagueux, who challenges the
possibility of a characterization of irrationality free of value judgements. Then
follow three papers concerned with issues in decision theory: Alain Voizard
argues for Bayesian decision theory by minimizing the impact of Newcomb's
problem. Nicolas Kaufmann argues for the incorporation of prospective inten
tions in the model of expected utility maximization and Jocelyne Couture
attacks individualistic interpretations of decision theory.
In the last section, we collected papers dealing with wider philosophical
issues, which are nevertheless relevant and complementary to some of the
issues raised in this volume: Susan Dwyer argues for a dispositional explana
tion of linguistic competence, while Claude Panaccio present his own nominal
istic interpretation of belief .sentences and Martin Montminy raises objections to
Dummett's molecularist"conception of meaning.
We would like to thank Alain Voizard for his help in writing this preface. Once
again we express our gratitude to Annie Kuipers for her assistance, encourage
ment and patience.
Boston and Montreal MATHIEU MARION & ROBERT S. COHEN
April 1995