Department of History and Philosophy
Montana State University
Bozeman Montana
Professor of Philosophy
Research Interests
My primary research area is philosophy of science, with a special
emphasis on the application of probabilistic/statistical reasoning to
scientific inference, theory-testing and evaluations of theories.
Although philosophy of science is a careful reflection on scientific
methodology including the actual practice of science, very few
philosophers of science, strictly speaking, are working scientists. To
know how science works in or outside labs I have been collaborating
closely with working scientists including statisticians (Robert Boik,
and Mark Greenwood, Montana State University, C. Andy Tsao, National
Dong Hwa University, Taiwan), and an ecologist ( Mark Taper, Montana
State University). At the same time, I am also in constant touch with
philosophers (Gordon Brittan, ARBC philosopher, John Bennett, University
of Rochester). Based on interacting with both scientists and
philosophers, I have developed a Bayesian philosophical position which
provides responses to long standing philosophical problems like “the
curve-fitting problem”, “the underdetermination problem”, “the
Duhem-Quine holism problem”, “the Popperian severity of theory-testing
problem” and many more. Borrowing a cue from a statistician, Richard
Royall, I have distinguished between the belief and evidence questions.
I have argued that this distinction holds the key to addressing several
of the problems listed above. In addition, like any other philosophy of
science mine also acts as the intellectual conscience of practicing
scientists!
Prasanta Bandyopadhyay