Adolf Grünbaum

The Foundations of Psychoanalysis: A Philosophical Critique

This study is a philosophical critique of the foundations of Sigmund Freuds psychoanalysis. As such, it also takes cognizance of his claim that psychoanalysis has the credentials of a natural science. It shows that the reasoning on which Freud rested the major hypotheses of his edifice was fundamentally flawed, even if the probity of the clinical observations he adduced were not in question. Moreover, far from deserving to be taken at face value, clinical data from the psychoanalytic treatment setting are themselves epistemically quite suspect.

The placebo concept

Abstract Throughout the medical, psychological, and psychiatric literature, the terminology used to characterize placebos is misleading, imprecise, and conducive to conceptual confusion in research on their effects. To remedy this situation, the present paper does the following: (1) It fills the conceptual lacunae left by the defective traditional locutions; (2) It proposes a lucid and precise new vocabulary to supplant the traditional obscure language in which the results of placebo research are couched; and (3) It illustrates the important conceptual refinement accruing from using the new expressions by thoroughly recasting A.K. Shapiros influential definition of ‘placebo.’

The Duhemian Argument

This paper offers a refutation of P. Duhem’s thesis that the falsifiability of an isolated empirical hypothesis H as an explanans is unavoidably inconclusive. Its central contentions are the following: (1) No general features of the logic of falsifiability can assure, for every isolated empirical hypotheses H and independently of the domain to which it pertains, that H can always be preserved as an explanans of any emprical findings O whatever by some modification of the auxiliary assumptions A in conjunction with which H functions as an explanans. For Duhem cannot guarantee on any general logical grounds the deducibility of O from an explanans constituted by the conjunction of H and some revised non-trivial version R of A: the existence of the required set R of collateral assumptions must be demonstrated for each particular case. (2) The categorical form of the Duhemian thesis only a non-sequitur but actually false. This is shown by adducing the testing of physical geometry as a counterexample to Duhem in the form of a rebuttal to A. Einstein’s geometrical articulation of Duhem’s thesis. (3) The possibility of a quasi a priori choice of a physical geometry in the sense of Duhem must be clearly distinguished from the feasibility of a conventional adoption of such a geometry in the sense of H. Poincare. And the legitimacy of the latter cannot be invoked to save the Duhemian thesis from refutation by the foregoing considerations.

Explication and Implications of the Placebo Concept

Just what is the problem of identifying an intervention or treatment t of one sort or another as a placebo for a target disorder D? One set of circumstances, among others, in which the need for such an identification may arise is the following: After the administration of t to some victims of D, some of them recover from their affliction to a significant extent. Now suppose that there is cogent evidence that this improvement can indeed be causally attributed at all to some factors or other among the spectrum of constituents comprising the dispensation of Mo a patient. Then it can become important to know whether the therapeutic gain that ensued from t in the alleviation of D was due to those particular factors in its dispensation that the advocates of t have theoretically designated as deserving the credit for the positive treatment-outcome. And one aim of this paper is to articulate in detail the bearing of the answer to this question on whether t qualifies generically as a placebo or not. For, as will emerge, the medical and psychiatric literature on placebos and their effects is conceptually bewildering to the point of being a veritable Tower of Bable.

Ad Hoc Auxiliary Hypotheses and Falsificationism

In the history of science, there are various instances of theory-modification by auxiliary hypotheses, as distinct from wholesale theory-replacement. And these instances include familiar episodes in which the new auxiliaries prompted cries of ad hoc, epistemic caveats or at least a clear appreciation of considerable epistemic risk from some segments of the scientific community. In each such episode, a modifying collateral assumption H repaired a troubled major theory T1 by then enabling the ensuing modified version T2 to explain deductively a known fact E which is contrary to T1. Thus T2 is logically incompatible with T1.1 But the new auxiliary H was

The Meaning of Time

Studies of time by scientists have often been concerned with the multifaceted problems of measuring time intervals in atomic, geophysical, biological, and astronomical contexts. It has been claimed that in addition to exhibiting measurable intervals, time is characterized by a transiency of the present, which has often been called ‘flux’ or ‘passage’.

Is the Method of Bold Conjectures and Attempted Refutations Justifiably the Method of Science

(a) Preliminary Considerations. (b) Propositions P and P0 vis-h-vis Qualitative Verisimilitude (i) Formal Considerations (ii) Can the Conjectures BF A, and EF ~ N, be Warranted by Popperian Corroborations or Only Inductivistically if At All? (iii) Conclusions. (c) Poppers Quantitative Theory of the Content and Verisimilitude of a Hypothesis, Prop. P #, and the Merits of Severe Tests. (i) Comparison of Vs. with vs. (ii) Poppers Probabilistic Measure of Content, and the Bearing of his Quantitative Concept of Content on his Reductio ad Absurdum Argument Against Probabilistic Inductivism. (iii) Can Poppers Quantitative Theory of Content and Vs. Give a Deductivistic Vindication of his Advocacy of Severe Tests?

Is Falsifiability the Touchstone of Scientific Rationality? Karl Popper Versus Inductivism

There is already a sizeable literature in which the question posed in the title of this essay is answered in the negative. That literature includes the writings of Imre Lakatos.

Simultaneity by Slow Clock Transport in the Special Theory of Relativity

P. W. Bridgman’s recent (1962) method of synchronism by infinitely slow clock transport as an alternative to Einstein’s light signal method is examined in its bearing on the philosophical status of simultaneity in the Special Theory of Relativity (STR). Critical attention is focused on the claim, made in a 1967 paper by B. Ellis and P. Bowman (E & B), that Bridgman’s alternative to Einstein’s clock synchronization rule refutes the philosophical conception of simultaneity which Hans Reichenbach attributed to Einstein. It is contended that in the STR. synchronism by slow clock transport neither refutes nor trivializes the ingredience of a convention in that theory’s distant simultaneity.

Can We Ascertain the Falsity of a Scientific Hypothesis

Can we ascertain the falsity of a given scientific hypothesis H? Alternatively, could we ascertain the truth of H? One tradition answers these questions asymmetrically as follows: Alas, unfavorable results furnished by just one kind of experiment suffice to guarantee the falsity of an otherwise highly successful hypothesis. And would that favorable experimental findings had a comparable capability of establishing the truth of a hypothesis! Thus, the scientist is held to be laboring under a discouraging handicap in his quest to glean nature’s secrets. His most triumphant theories are never safe from refutation by potential contrary evidence. Hence, none of his hypotheses can ever be known to be true with certainty. But if even a small amount of contrary evidence does materialize, then the most celebrated of hypotheses is indeed known to be false.