Certain predictions are such that their accuracy can be affected by their dissemination, by their being believed and acted upon. Examples of such reflexive predictions are presented. Various approaches to the precise delineation of this category of predictions are explored, and a definition is proposed and defended. Next it is asked whether the possible reflexivity of predictions creates a serious methodological problem for the social sciences. A distinction between causal and logical reflexivity helps support a negative answer. Finally, we consider the thesis that “this characteristic of predictions is peculiar to human affairs” (Merton), and an attempted rebuttal (Grünbaum). It is argued that Grünbaum's rebuttal is ineffective.

Because Bertrand Russell adopted much of the logical symbolism of Peano, because Russell always had a high regard for the great Italian mathematician, and because Russell held the logicist thesis so strongly, many English-speaking mathematicians have been led to classify Peano as a logicist, or at least as a forerunner of the logicist school. An attempt is made here to deny this by showing that Peano's primary interest was in axiomatics, that he never used the mathematical logic developed by him for the reduction of mathematical concepts to logical concepts, and that, instead, he denied the validity of such a reduction.

Professor Buck has given an illuminating account of the logical status of reflexive predictions in the social sciences. He tells us that the classification of a prediction as reflexive is predicated on a tacit distinction between the “normal” and the “abnormal” or perturbed conditions under which it is made. This seems to me to be a perceptive and sound circumscription of the class of reflexive predictions as encountered in the social sciences. He goes on to show helpfully how the social scientist can cope with the pitfalls of spurious disconfirmation and spurious confirmation which are created by “self-frustrating” and “self-fulfilling” predictions respectively. And Professor Buck then offers some searching doubts concerning the adequacy of regarding self-fulfilling predictions as the pattern of racial discrimination against minority groups. Finally, he presents objections to my critique ([1], pp. 239–240) of Robert Merton's claim that self-defeating and self-fulfilling predictions are endemic to the domain of human affairs and are “not found among predictions about the world of nature.” ([2], p. 181).

If the currently available theories of semantic information and utility-expectation are to be applied in a satisfactory way, they must be combined with a message-processing procedure. This paper presents a model of communication within which such a procedure can be defined. In this model the sender's messages arrive over a period of time, the receiver can reject some messages and retain others, the receiver can change his mind in various ways, and the receiver can apply various evaluation functions to a “usable message total”. As one example of message-evaluation, a system for evaluating news-value is presented.

B. F. Skinner is perhaps even more widely known for his views on science than for his experimental work. His comments on the role of theory in science have been labeled “anti-theoretical,” “ultra-empirical”, “non-theoretical,” “radical,” and worse. His position appears to be both extreme and untenable. Scriven [1] has given us a critique of Skinner that goes beyond mere labeling; it is an examination of the assumptions and implications of such a position.

Hempel and Oppenheim have stated in Part III of their paper “Studies in the Logic of Explanation” [2] a set of conditions for deductive explanation. However, their analysis has come under damaging systematic criticisms in a recent paper by Eberle, Kaplan and Montague [1], The principal aim of the present paper is to review the Hempel-Oppenheim analysis and propose a strengthened version of it that avoids the recent criticisms.

It is fairly usual to argue or to assume that there is a single pattern of proper scientific endeavor for the behavioral sciences. This is based, one is inclined to say, on the superb model afforded by the natural science successes of the past few hundred years and on the common method which underlies and determines that model. Consequently, a protagonist can argue that within his own science, all opposed modes of thinking are archaic, peripheral, or unscientific, while his own at least prefigures fulfillment of true science. And it may even be claimed that other behavioral fields are special offshoots, subordinate provinces, or particularizations which are reducible to his favored scheme of analysis. Such diversity and disagreement as there is, it can be said, stems from either of two causes. The first is the stubbornness of men, whereby they refuse to face the facts, to employ reasoning processes properly, or to foresake sinister interests. The other is the relative immaturity of behavioral science, an immaturity which will be eliminated by patient progress.