# Putnam's Critical and Explanatory Tendencies Interpreted from a Machine Learning Perspective

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2501.03026 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.03026/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 3 of its 6 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 6 Jan 2025.

## Builds on (most cited first, 3 of 3)

- [Attention Is All You Need](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.03762/) (2017)
- [Explainability for Large Language Models: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.01029/) (2023)
- [A Phenomenological AI Foundation Model for Physical Signals](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.14724/) (2024)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Making sense of theory choice in normal and across extraordinary science is central to philosophy of science. The emergence of machine learning models has the potential to act as a wrench in the gears of current debates. In this paper, I will attempt to reconstruct the main movements that lead to and came out of Putnam's critical and explanatory tendency distinction, argue for the biconditional necessity of the tendencies, and conceptualize that wrench through a machine learning interpretation of my claim.