Browsing Susan G. Sterrett by Title

Now showing items 7-26 of 28

    • Historical context and Philosophy of Science: a reply to Peter Simons' 'Coincidence and Kite-Flying' 

      Sterrett, Susan G. (2009-03-04)
      This essay responds to a review of my book "Wittgenstein Flies A Kite: A Story of Models of Wings and Models of the World" by Peter Simons that appears in the March 2009 issue of the journal Metascience. The revised version ...

    • How beliefs make a difference 

      Sterrett, Susan G. (University of Pittsburgh, 1999-11-15)
      How are beliefs efficacious? One answer is: via rational intentional action. But there are other ways that beliefs are efficacious. This dissertation examines these other ways, and sketches an answer to the question of how ...

    • How many thoughts can fit in the form of a proposition? 

      Sterrett, Susan G. (2004--06-2)
      I argue here that Frege’s eventual view on the relation between sentences and the thoughts they express is that, ideally, a sentence expresses exactly one thought, and a thought is expressed by exactly one (canonical) ...

    • How mathematics figures differently in exact solutions, simulations, and physical models 

      Sterrett, Susan G. (Springer Nature, 2023-03-29)
      The role of mathematics in scientific practice is too readily relegated to that of formulating equations that model or describe what is being investigated, and then finding solutions to those equations. I survey the role ...

    • Kinds of models 

      Sterrett, Susan G. (2003-03-20)
      In this paper, I survey a broad variety of models with an eye to asking what kind of model each is in the following sense: in virtue of what is each of them regarded as a model? It will be seen that when we classify models ...

    • Kites, models and logic: Susan Sterrett investigates models in Wittgenstein's world 

      Sterrett, Susan G. (SimplyCharly.com, 2008)
      This is the text of Dr. Sterrett's replies to an interviewer's questions for simplycharly.com, a website with interviews by academics on various authors, philosophers, and scientists.

    • Models of machines and models of phenomena 

      Sterrett, Susan G. (Taylor & Francis, 2006-01)
      Experimental engineering models have been used both to model general phenomena, such as the onset of turbulence in fluid flow, and to predict the performance of machines of particular size and configuration in particular ...

    • The morals of model-making 

      Sterrett, Susan G. (Elsevier, 2013-12-17)
      I address questions about values in model-making in engineering, specifically: Might the role of values be attributable solely to interests involved in specifying and using the model? Selected examples illustrate the ...

    • Nested algorithms and "the original imitation game test": a reply to James Moor 

      Sterrett, Susan G. (Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2002)
      In "The Status and Future of the Turing Test" (Moor, 2001), which appeared in an earlier issue of this journal, James Moor remarks on my paper "Turing's Two Tests for Intelligence." In my paper I had claimed that, whatever ...

    • Physical models and fundamental laws: Using one piece of the world to tell about another 

      Sterrett, Susan G. (Springer-Verlag, 2002-03-01)
      In this paper I discuss the relationship between model, theories, and laws in the practice of experimental scale modeling. The methodology of experimental scale modeling, also known as physical similarity, differs ...

    • Physical pictures: Engineering models circa 1914 and in Wittgenstein's "Tractatus" 

      Sterrett, Susan G. (2000-07-17)
      In 1914, Wittgenstein recorded an incident in his Notebooks that he later mentioned to several friends as occasioning a major insight for his views in the Tractatus that propositions represent by being pictures. The entry ...

    • Physical pictures: Engineering models circa 1914 and in Wittgenstein's "Tractatus" 

      Sterrett, Susan G. (Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2002)
      Today I want to talk about an element in the milieu in which Ludwig Wittgenstein conceived the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus that has not been recognized to date: the generalization of the methodology of experimental scale ...

    • Physically similar systems - A history of the concept 

      Sterrett, Susan G. (Springer Nature, 2017)
      The concept of similar systems arose in physics and appears to have originated with Newton in the seventeenth century. This chapter provides a critical history of the concept of physically similar systems, the twentieth ...

    • Physically similar systems: A history of the concept 

      Sterrett, Susan G. (Springer, 2017)
      The concept of similar systems arose in physics, and appears to have originated with Newton in the seventeenth century. This chapter provides a critical history of the concept of physically similar systems, the twentieth ...

    • Pictures of Sound: Wittgenstein on gramophone records and the logic of depiction 

      Sterrett, Susan G. (Elsevier, 2005-06)
      I consider the way Wittgenstein employed some kinds of sound recordings (but not others) in discussing logical form in the Tractatus logico-philosophicus. The year that Ludwig Wittgenstein was born in Vienna, 1889, nearby ...

    • Similarity and dimensional analysis 

      Sterrett, Susan G. (Elsevier/North-Holland, 2009)
      The importance of similarity in comprehending things and reasoning about them was recognized before the time of Plato. Similarity continues to be important in philosophy, science, and technology to this day. The historical ...

    • Sounds like light: Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity and Mach's work in Acoustics and Aerodynamics 

      Sterrett, Susan G. (Elsevier, 1998-03-11)
      Ernst Mach is the only person whom Einstein included on both the list of physicists he considered his true precursors, and the list of the philosophers who had most affected him. Einstein scholars have been less generous ...

    • Three views of logic: Mathematics, Philosophy, Computer Science 

      Loveland, Donald W.; Hodel, Richard E.; Sterrett, Susan G. (Princeton University Press, 2014)
      Demonstrating the different roles that logic plays in the disciplines of computer science, mathematics, and philosophy, this concise undergraduate textbook covers select topics from three different areas of logic: proof ...

    • Too many instincts: contrasting philosophical views on intelligence in humans and non-humans 

      Sterrett, Susan G. (Taylor and Francis Ltd, 2002)
      This paper investigates the following proposal about machine intelligence: that behaviour in which a habitual response that would have been inappropriate in a certain unfamiliar situation is overridden and replaced by a ...

    • Turing on the integration of human and machine intelligence 

      Sterrett, Susan G. (Springer, 2016)
      Philosophical discussion of Alan Turing’s writings on intelligence has mostly revolved around a single point made in a paper published in the journal Mind in 1950. This is unfortunate, for Turing’s reflections on machine ...