This essay develops an inferential account of model explanation, based on Mauricio Suárez’s inferential conception of scientific representation and Alisa Bokulich’s counterfactual account of model explanation. It is suggested that the fact that a scientific model can explain is essentially linked to how a modeler uses an established model to make various inferences about the target system on the basis of results derived from the model. The inference practice is understood as a two-step activity, with the first step involving making (...) counterfactual statements about the model itself and the second step involving making hypothetical statements transferring over claims derived from the model onto the target. To illustrate how this two-step activity proceeds, an agent-based simulation model is discussed. (shrink)

Many philosophers have drawn parallels between scientific models and fictions. In this paper I will be concerned with a recent version of the analogy, which compares models to the imagined characters of fictional literature. Though versions of the position differ, the shared idea is that modeling essentially involves imagining concrete systems analogously to the way that we imagine characters and events in response to works of fiction. Advocates of this view argue that imagining concrete systems plays an ineliminable role in (...) the practice of modeling that cannot be captured by other accounts. The approach thus leaves open what we should say about the ontological status of model-systems, and here advocates differ among themselves, defending a variety of realist or anti-realist positions. I argue that this debate over the ontological status of model-systems is misguided. If model-systems are the kinds of objects fictional realists posit, they can play no role in explaining the epistemology of modeling for an advocate of this approach. So they are at best superfluous. Defenders of the approach should focus on developing an account of the epistemological role of imagining model-systems. (shrink)

In psychiatry, pharmacological research has played a crucial role in the formulation, revision, and refinement of neurobiological theories of psychopathology. Besides being utilized as potential treatments for various mental disorders, pharmacological drugs play an important epistemic role as experimental instruments that help scientists uncover the neurobiological underpinnings of mental disorders (Tsou, 2012). Interventions with psychiatric patients using pharmacological drugs provide researchers with information about the neurobiological causes of mental disorders that cannot be obtained in other ways. This important source of (...) evidence for the biological causes of mental disorder is often overlooked in philosophical analyses of psychiatry, especially in skeptical analyses that debase the biological aspects of psychopathology (e.g., Szasz, 1960; Scheff, 1963; Laing, 1967). In discussing pharmacological interventions as a form of evidence for the physical basis of mental disorders, this paper aims to clarify the nature, reliability, and limitations of this evidence. In addition, it illustrates the central role that pharmacological findings in applied clinical contexts play in the acquisition of neurobiological knowledge in research contexts. (shrink)

The philosopher of science faces overwhelming disagreement in the literature on the definition, nature, structure, ontology, and content of scientific theories. These disagreements are at least partly responsible for disagreements in many of the debates in the discipline which put weight on the concept scientific theory. I argue that available theories of theories and conceptual analyses of theory are ineffectual options for addressing this difficulty: they do not move debates forward in a significant way. Directing my attention to debates about (...) the properties of particular, named theories, I introduce ‘theory eliminativism’ as a certain type of debate-reformulation. As a methodological tool it has the potential to be a highly effective way to make progress in the face of the noted problem: post-reformulation disagreements about theory cannot compromise the debate, and the questions that really matter can still be asked and answered. In addition the reformulation process demands that philosophers engage with science and the history of science in a more serious way than is usual in order to answer important questions about the justification for targeting a particular set of propositions (say) in a given context. All things considered, we should expect the benefits of a theory-eliminating debate-reformulation to heavily outweigh the costs for a highly significant number of debates of the relevant type. (shrink)

Relying on the notion of “overlapping perspectives,” this paper argues that entity realism and perspectivism are complementary. According to entity realism, it is justified to maintain a positive attitude toward the existence of unobservable entities with which multiple experimental interactions are possible. Perspectivism also explains that our beliefs about these entities are bounded by historically contingent theoretical and instrumental perspectives. The argument of the paper is developed through a discussion of Ronald Giere’s versions of realism: entity realism, constructive realism, and (...) perspectival realism. (shrink)

Callender and Cohen have proposed to apply a “Gricean strategy” to the constitution problem of scientific representation, taking inspiration from Grice’s reduction of linguistic meaning to mental states. They suggest that scientific representation can be reduced to stipulation by epistemic agents. This account has been criticised for not making a distinction between symbolic and epistemic representation and not taking into account the communal aspects of scientific representation. I argue that these criticisms would not apply if Grice’s actual strategy were properly (...) employed. I present Grice’s account of linguistic meaning and transpose his actual strategy and method to epistemic representation. This results in a reduction of epistemic representation to mental states that does not fall prey to the same criticisms. The main novelty of the resulting account is a distinction between contextual representational use and general representational status, which I address using the notion of indexicality. (shrink)

The sociotechnical domain is the realm of scientists, the communities and institutions they form, and the tools and instruments they use to create, disseminate, and preserve knowledge. This paper reviews current scientonomic theory concerning this domain. A core scientonomic concept is that of an epistemic agent. Generally, an agent is an entity capable of intentional action—action that has content or meaning due to its purposeful direction towards a goal. An epistemic agent is one whose actions are the taking of epistemic (...) stances, such as acceptance or rejection, towards epistemic elements, like theories or questions. An epistemic agent must semantically understand the propositions in question, and their alternatives, and choose among them with reason, with the motive of acquiring knowledge. The most obvious example of an epistemic agent is an individual human being. Rejecting the network of practitioners view, current scientonomic theory argues that appropriately organized communities of scientists can also function as epistemic agents. Communal epistemic agents are of particular scientonomic importance. Whereas the methods of theory assessment of individual scientists can be idiosyncratic, scientonomic theory contends that the taking of epistemic stances by scientific communities is a lawful, rule governed process. A second concept of central importance is that of an epistemic tool. A physical object or system is an epistemic tool for some epistemic agent if there is a procedure by which the tool can provide an acceptable source of knowledge under the method employed by that agent. (shrink)

Recently, some philosophers of science (e.g., Gürol Irzik, Michael Friedman) have challenged the ‘received view’ on the relationship between Rudolf Carnap and Thomas Kuhn, suggesting that there is a close affinity (rather than opposition) between their philosophical views. In support of this argument, these authors cite Carnap and Kuhn’s similar views on incommensurability, theory-choice, and scientific revolutions. Against this revisionist view, I argue that the philosophical relationship between Carnap and Kuhn should be regarded as opposed rather than complementary. In particular, (...) I argue that a consideration of the fundamentally disparate nature of the broader philosophical projects of Carnap (logic of science) and Kuhn (providing a theory of scientific revolutions)renders the alleged similarities between their views superficial in comparison to their fundamental differences. In defense of the received view, I suggest that Carnap and Kuhn are model representatives of two contrasting styles of doing philosophy of science, viz., logical analysis and historical analysis respectively. This analysis clarifies the role played by Kuhn’s Structure of Scientific Revolutions in the demise of logical empiricism in the second half of the twentieth-century. (shrink)

At the beginning of the 20th century, Gestalt psychologists put forward the concept of psychoneural isomorphism, which was meant to replace Fechner’s obscure notion of psychophysical parallelism and provide a heuristics that may facilitate the search for the neural correlates of the mind. However, the concept has generated much confusion in the debate, and today its role is still unclear. In this contribution, I will attempt a little conceptual spadework in clarifying the concept of psychoneural isomorphism, focusing exclusively on conscious (...) visual perceptual experience and its neural correlates. Firstly, I will outline the history of our concept, and its alleged metaphysical and epistemic roles. Then, I will clarify the nature of isomorphism and rule out its metaphysical role. Finally, I will review some epistemic roles of our concept, zooming in on the work of Jean Petitot, and suggest that it does not play a relevant heuristic role. I conclude suggesting that psychoneural isomorphism might be an indicator of robustness for certain mathematical descriptions of perceptual content. (shrink)

This thesis starts with three challenges to the structuralist accounts of applied mathematics. Structuralism views applied mathematics as a matter of building mapping functions between mathematical and target-ended structures. The first challenge concerns how it is possible for a non-mathematical target to be represented mathematically when the mapping functions per se are mathematical objects. The second challenge arises out of inconsistent early calculus, which suggests that mathematical representation does not require rigorous mathematical structures. The third challenge comes from renormalisation group (...) (RG) explanations of universality. It is argued that the structural mapping between the world and a highly abstract minimal model adds little value to our understanding of how RG obtains its explanatory force. I will address the first and second challenges from the similarity perspective. The similarity account captures representations as similarity relations, providing a more flexible and broader conception of representation than structuralism. It is the specification of the respect and degree of similarity that forges mathematics into a context of representation and directs it to represent a specific system in reality. Structuralism is treatable as a tool for explicating similarity rela-tions set-theoretically. The similarity account, combined with other approaches (e.g., Nguyen and Frigg’s extensional abstraction account and van Fraassen’s pragmatic equivalence), can dissolve the first challenge. Additionally, I will make a structuralist response to the second challenge, and suggestions regarding the role of infinitesimals from the similarity perspective. In light of the similarity account, I will propose the “hotchpotch picture” as a method-ological reflection of our study of representation and explanation. Its central insight is to dissect a representation or an explanation into several aspects and use different theories (that are usually thought of competing) to appropriate each of them. Based on the hotchpotch picture, RG explanations can be dissected to the “indexing” and “inferential” conceptions of explanation, which are captured or characterised by structural mappings. Therefore, structuralism accommodates RG explanations, and the third challenge is resolved. (shrink)

Ecological-enactive approaches to cognition aim to explain cognition in terms of the dynamic coupling between agent and environment. Accordingly, cognition of one’s immediate environment (which is sometimes labeled “basic” cognition) depends on enaction and the picking up of affordances. However, ecological-enactive views supposedly fail to account for what is sometimes called “higher” cognition, i.e., cognition about potentially absent targets, which therefore can only be explained by postulating representational content. This challenge levelled against ecological-enactive approaches highlights a putative explanatory gap between (...) basic and higher cognition. In this paper, we examine scientific cognition—a paradigmatic case of higher cognition—and argue that it shares fundamental features with basic cognition, for enaction and affordance selection are central to the scientific enterprise. Our argument focuses on modeling, and on how models promote scientific understanding. We base our argument on a non-representational account of scientific understanding and on the material engagement theory, for models are hereby conceived as material objects designed for scientific engagements. Having done so, we conclude that the explanatory gap is significantly less threatening to the ecological-enactive approach than it might appear. (shrink)

Since the beginning of the 20th century, philosophers of science have asked, "what kind of thing is a scientific theory?" The logical positivists answered: a scientific theory is a mathematical theory, plus an empirical interpretation of that theory. Moreover, they assumed that a mathematical theory is specified by a set of axioms in a formal language. Later 20th century philosophers questioned this account, arguing instead that a scientific theory need not include a mathematical component; or that the mathematical component need (...) not be specified by a set of axioms in a formal language. We survey various accounts of scientific theories entertained in the 20th century -- removing some misconceptions, and clearing a path for future research. (shrink)

Discusses philosophy and the science of its lesson. Observation of the perspective that laws of nature exist in theories thereby quantifying statements capable of sustaining counterfactuals; Belief on the confirmation or falsification of theories by treating putative laws as premises of hypothetical argument; Aim of science to use fewer laws to explain greater facts; Similarity between prediction and explanation.

In a famous critique, Goodman dismissed similarity as a slippery and both philosophically and scientifically useless notion. We revisit his critique in the light of important recent work on similarity in psychology and cognitive science. Specifically, we use Tversky’s influential set-theoretic account of similarity as well as Gärdenfors’s more recent resuscitation of the geometrical account to show that, while Goodman’s critique contained valuable insights, it does not warrant a dismissal of similarity.

The received view of computation is methodologically bifurcated: it offers different accounts of computation in the mathematical and physical cases. But little in the way of argument has been given for this approach. This article rectifies the situation by arguing that the alternative, a unified account, is untenable. Furthermore, once these issues are brought into sharper relief we can see that work remains to be done to illuminate the relationship between physical and mathematical computation.

It has been commonplace in epistemology since its inception to idealize away from computational resource constraints, i.e., from the constraints of time and memory. One thought is that a kind of ideal rationality can be specified that ignores the constraints imposed by limited time and memory, and that actual cognitive performance can be seen as an interaction between the norms of ideal rationality and the practicalities of time and memory limitations. But a cornerstone of naturalistic epistemology is that normative assessment (...) is constrained by capacities: you cannot require someone to do something they cannot or, as it is usually put, ought implies can. This much we take to be uncontroversial. We argue that differences in architectures, goals and resources imply substantial differences in capacity, and that some of these differences are ineliminable. It follows that some differences in goals and architectural and computational resources matter at the normative level: they constrain what principles of normative epistemology can be used to describe and prescribe their behavior. As a result, we can expect there to be important epistemic differences between the way brains, individuals, and science work. (shrink)

In this paper, I develop Mauricio Suárez’s distinction between denotation, epistemic representation, and faithful epistemic representation. I then outline an interpretational account of epistemic representation, according to which a vehicle represents a target for a certain user if and only if the user adopts an interpretation of the vehicle in terms of the target, which would allow them to perform valid (but not necessarily sound) surrogative inferences from the model to the system. The main difference between the interpretational conception I (...) defend here and Suárez’s inferential conception is that the interpretational account is a substantial account—interpretation is not just a “symptom” of representation; it is what makes something an epistemic representation of a something else. (shrink)

We respond to Morris and Richardson 's claim that Pickering and Chater's arguments about the lack of a relation between cognitive science and folk psychology are flawed. We note that possible controversies about the appropriate uses for the two terms do not affect our arguments. We then address their claim that computational explanation of knowledge-rich processes has proved possible in the domains of problem solving, scientific discovery, and reasoning. We argue that, in all cases, computational explanation is only possible for (...) aspects of those processes that do not make reference to general knowledge. We conclude that consideration of the issues raised by Morris and Richardson reinforces our original claim that there are two fundamentally distinct projects for understanding the mind, one based on justification, and the other on computational explanation, and that these apply to non-overlapping aspects of mental life. (shrink)

This article argues that the credibility of both theoretical and empirical models in economics is best understood through their connection with the empirical aspects of the real world. The discussion herein demonstrates that the similarity between the model and the real world is not enough to justify a theoretical model’s explanatory power. The best way to secure the model’s credibility is to prove the existence of representation theorems.

En este trabajo me ocupo de la manera en que Klimovsky concibió a las teorías y a los modelos en la ciencia. Comienzo describiendo la concepción hipotético-deductiva de las teorías empíricas de Klimovsky. Luego presento los distintos significados del término "modelo" que Klimovsky distinguió y discuto la manera en que entendió la relación entre teorías y modelos. Después analizo la concepción semántica de las teorías y señalo la ambigüedad de la posición de Klimovsky respecto de ella, a la que no (...) consideró una auténtica alternativa al método hipotético-deductivo. Expongo, entonces, una concepción proposicional de las teorías que permitiría superar aquellas críticas semanticistas que afectan a la concepción enunciativa de Klimovsky. En la conclusión intento mostrar la unidad de la concepción de Klimovsky acerca de la estructura de las teorías formales y empíricas. In this work I address the way Klimovsky conceived of theories and models in science. I start by describing Klimovsky's hypothetico-deductive conception of empirical theories. I then present the different senses of "model" identified by Klimovsky, and I discuss his understanding of the relation between theories and models. Next I analyze the semantic conception of theories, and argue that Klimovsky held an ambiguous stance towards them, insofar as he did not considered them to be a genuine alternative to the hypothetico-deductive method. I further present a propositional conception of theories that enables us to overcome various criticisms from semanticists to Klimovsky's statement conception of theories. I conclude by showing that Klimovsky embraced a unified perspective on the structure of empirical and formal theories. (shrink)

In this paper the claim that laws of nature are to be understood as claims about what necessarily or reliably happens is disputed. Laws can characterize what happens in a reliable way, but they do not do this easily. We do not have laws for everything occurring in the world, but only for those situations where what happens in nature is represented by a model: models are blueprints for nomological machines, which in turn give rise to laws. An example from (...) economics shows, in particular, how we use--and how we need to use--models to get probabilistic laws. (shrink)

The terms “perspectivism” and “perspectivalism” have been the focus of an intense philosophical discussion with important repercussions for the debate about the role of mechanisms in scientific explanations. However, leading exponents of the new mechanistic philosophy have conceded more than was necessary to the radically subjectivistic perspectivalism, and fell into the opposite error, by retaining not negligible residues of objectivistic views about mechanisms. In order to remove this vacillation between the subjective-cultural and the objective-natural sides of mechanisms, we shall raise (...) the question about theory-ladenness over again and interpret it in its connection with the technical–experimental nature of scientific knowledge, as affirming the perspectival character of scientific knowledge: It is because of the character at once theory-laden and practice-laden, i.e. technique-laden, of our putting questions to nature that empirical reality must be investigated from particular perspectives: nature can be known scientifically only from a potentially infinite number of perspectives or theoretical points of view, concretely exemplified by mechanisms or experimental ‘machines’ that allow specific access to specific aspects of sensible reality. (shrink)

Active materials are self-propelled non-living entities which, in some circumstances, exhibit a number of cognitively interesting behaviors such as gradient-following, avoiding obstacles, signaling and group coordination. This has led to scientific and philosophical discussion of whether this may make them useful as minimal models of cognition (Hanczyc, 2014; McGivern, 2019). Batterman and Rice (2014) have argued that what makes a minimal model explanatory is that the model is ultimately in the same universality class as the target system, which underpins why (...) it exhibits the same macrobehavior. We appeal to recent research in basal cognition (Lyon et al., 2021) to establish appropriate target systems and essential features of cognition as a target of modeling. Looking at self-propelled oil droplets, a type of active material, we do not find that organization alone indicates that these systems exhibit the essential features of cognition. We then examine the specific behaviors of oil droplets but also fail to find that these demonstrate the essential features of cognition. Without a universality class, Batterman & Rice’s account of the explanatory power of minimal models simply does not apply to cognition. However, we also want to stress that it is not intended to; cognition is not the same type of behavioral phenomena as those found in physics. We then look to the minimal cognition methodology of Beer (1996, 2020a, b) to show how active materials can be explanatorily valuable regardless of their cognitive status because they engage in specific behaviors that have traditionally been expected to involve internal representational dynamics, revealing misconceptions about the cognitive underpinnings of certain, specific behaviors in target systems where such behaviors are cognitive. Further, Beer’s models can also be genuinely explanatory by providing dynamical explanations. (shrink)

Les questions qui ont suscité le présent texte concernent la relation entre la théorie et le réel empirique: comment peut-on identifier le contenu empirique d'une théorie? Dans quelle mesure sa prétention à révéler le réel estelle justifiée? La première tâche que ces interrogations commandent est celle d'exposer les conceptions de la structure des théories scientifiques les plus marquantes de ce siècle. Dans cette période la philosophie des sciences a d'abord été dominée par l'empirisme logique et son approche formelle de la (...) structure des théories scientifiques. L'empirisme logique est certes un mouvement qui a eu une histoire mouvementée et qui a été le théâtre de nombreuses modifications, mais une de ses thèses les plus persistantes peut le caractériser de façon générale: sa représentation de la théorie sous la forme d'un système d'énoncés. Pour désigner cette position, nous utiliserons l'expression «conception assertive» comme traduction de statement view. L'approche sémantique est une conception plus récente de la structure de la théorie qui semble peu à peu vouloir prendre la place de la conception assertive. Nous décrirons donc dans un premier temps ces deux approches afin de déterminer chaque fois la fagon dont le rapport de la théorie au réel est envisagé. (shrink)

Ernst Cassirer’s epistemological trilogy – Substanzbegriff und Funktionsbegriff (1910), Zur Einsteinschen Relativitätstheorie (1921) and Determinismus und Indeterminismus (1937) – is well known to Western scholars, some of whom recently devoted a number of in-depth and interesting studies to Cassirer’s epistemology. Nonetheless, they overlooked aspects of Cassirer’s concept of idealisation and his model of science as found in his last epistemological work: Determinismus und Indeterminismus. In this essay I will consider these two almost disregarded aspects of Cassirer’s epistemology in order to (...) provide a better understanding of his idea of science. (shrink)

The complex societal challenges of the twenty-first Century require scientific researchers and academically educated professionals capable of conducting scientific research in complex problem contexts. Our central claim is that educational approaches inspired by a traditional empiricist epistemology insufficiently foster the required deep conceptual understanding and higher-order thinking skills necessary for epistemic tasks in scientific research. Conversely, we argue that constructivist epistemologies provide better guidance to educational approaches to promote research skills. We also argue that teachers adopting a constructivist learning theory (...) do not necessarily embrace a constructivist epistemology. On the contrary, in educational practice, novel educational approaches that adopt constructivist learning theories often maintain traditional empiricist epistemologies. Philosophers of science can help develop educational designs focused on learning to conduct scientific research, combining constructivist learning theory with constructivist epistemology. We illustrate this by an example from a bachelor’s program in Biomedical Engineering, where we introduce conceptual models and modeling as an alternative to the traditional focus on hypothesis testing in conducting scientific research. This educational approach includes the so-called B&K method for constructing scientific models to scaffold teaching and learning conceptual modeling. (shrink)

How is scientific knowledge used, adapted, and extended in deriving phenomena and real-world systems? This paper aims at developing a general account of 'applying science' within the exemplar-based framework of Data-Oriented Processing (DOP), which is also known as Exemplar-Based Explanation (EBE). According to the exemplar-based paradigm, phenomena are explained not by deriving them all the way down from theoretical laws and boundary conditions but by modelling them on previously derived phenomena that function as exemplars. To accomplish this, DOP proposes to (...) maintain a corpus of derivation trees of previous phenomena together with a matching algorithm that combines subtrees from the corpus to derive new phenomena. By using a notion of derivational similarity, a new phenomenon can be modelled as closely as possible on previously explained phenomena. I will propose an instantiation of DOP which integrates theoretical and phenomenological modelling and which generalises over various disciplines, from fluid mechanics to language technology. I argue that DOP provides a solution for what I call Kuhn's problem and that it redresses Kitcher's account of explanation. (shrink)

Some have argued that chaos, with its characteristic feature of sensitive dependence on initial conditions, should be sensitive to quantum events (Hobbs 1991; Kellert 1993). The upshot of these arguments is that classical chaos would then be indeterministic, but such a conclusion is dependent on which versions of quantum theory and solutions to the measurement problem are adopted (Bishop and Kronz 1999). In this essay, the relationship between quantum mechanics and sensitive dependence is placed in the general context of nonlinear (...) dynamics and is investigated in detail, revealing further limitations and quali…cations on these sensitive dependence arguments. (shrink)

Alison Gopnik and Andrew Meltzoff have argued for a view they call the ‘theory theory’: theory change in science and children are similar. While their version of the theory theory has been criticized for depending on a number of disputed claims, we argue that there is a fundamental problem which is much more basic: the theory theory is multiply ambiguous. We show that it might be claiming that a similarity holds between theory change in children and (i) individual scientists, (ii) (...) a rational reconstruction of a Superscientist, or (iii) the scientific community. We argue that (i) is false, (ii) is non-empirical (which is problematic since the theory theory is supposed to be a bold empirical hypothesis), and (iii) is either false or doesn’t make enough sense to have a truth-value. We conclude that the theory theory is an interesting failure. Its failure points the way to a full, empirical picture of scientific development, one that marries a concern with the social dynamics of science to a psychological theory of scientific cognition. (shrink)

Recently some philosophers have urged that connectionist artificial intelligence is (potentially) eliminative for the propositional attitudes of folk psychology. At the same time, however, these philosophers have also insisted that since philosophy of science has failed to provide criteria distinguishing ontologically retentive from eliminative theory changes, the resulting eliminativism is not principled. Application of some resources developed within the semantic view of scientific theories, particularly recent formal work on the theory reduction relation, reveals these philosophers to be wrong in this (...) second contention, yet by and large correct in the first. (shrink)

Science advances by means of argument and debate. Based on a formal model of complex argumentation, this article assesses the interplay between evidential and inferential drivers in scientific controversy, and explains, in particular, why both evidence accumulation and argumentation are veritistically valuable. By improving the conditions for applying veritistic indicators , novel evidence and arguments allow us to distinguish true from false hypotheses more reliably. Because such veritistic indicators also underpin inductive reasoning, evidence accumulation and argumentation enhance the reliability of (...) inductive inference, for example, inference to the best explanation. 1 Introduction2 Theory of Dialectical Structures3 Debate Simulations4 From Evidence and Arguments to Truth: The First Route5 From Evidence to Truth: The Second Route6 Conclusion. (shrink)

This paper offers an interpretation of Quine's naturalized epistemology through the lens of Jaegwon Kim's influential critique of the same. Kim argues that Quine forces a false choice between traditional deductivist foundationalism and naturalized epistemology and contends that there are viable alternative epistemological projects. However it is suggested that Quine would reject these alternatives by reference to the same fundamental principles (underdetermination, indeterminacy of translation, extensionalism) that led him to reject traditional epistemology and propose naturalism as an alternative. Given this (...) interpretation of Quine, it is essential that a successful critic of naturalism also examine Quine's aforementioned principles. The divide between naturalist and nonnaturalist epistemology turns out to be defined by the divide between more fundamental naturalist and nonnaturalist approaches to semantics. (shrink)

Neutral Theory is controversial in ecology. Ecologists and philosophers have diagnosed the source of the controversy as: its false assumption that individuals in different species within the same trophic level are ecologically equivalent, its conflict with Competition Theory and the adaptation of species, its role as a null hypothesis, and as a Lakatosian research programme. In this paper, I show why we should instead understand the conflict at the level of research programs which involve more than theory. The Neutralist and (...) Competitionist research programs borrow and construct theories, models, and experiments for various aims and given their home ecological systems. I present a holistic and pragmatic view of the controversy that foregrounds the interrelation between many kinds of practices and decisions in ecological research. (shrink)

In the end of the nineteenth century, there was a remarkable ‘empiricist attitude’ found among certain philosopher-scientists, an attitude which arguably emerged in the main as a reaction to the anti-scientific mood prevalent in the culture that time. Those philosopher-scientists, such as Mach and Hertz, were particularly anxious to emphasize and laud the privileged status of the empirical dimension ofour scientific knowledge, distinguishing it carefully from the theoretical constructions and hypothetical entities that are ordinarily posited by scientists. Yet, as I (...) exhibit in this article, there were certain crucial philosophical differences between these two thinkers with respect to their general conception of scientific theories and scientific norms guiding the activity. I suggest further that the most central difference in this context between Mach and Hertz can justifiably (and, perhaps, more fruitfully) be articulated and reckoned in traditional andcontemporary epistemological terms. (shrink)

We clarify the notions scientific process and social process with structuralist means. Three questions are formulated, and answered in the structuralistic, set-theoretic framework. What is a scientific process, and a process in science? What can be meant by a non-social process? In which sense a non-social process can be a part of a scientific process in social science? We are specifically interested in social processes. Our answers use the notion of the generalized subset relation applied to set-theoretical structures, and the (...) set of structuralistically reconstructed empirical theories. (shrink)

Social Epistemology, as formulated by Steve Fuller, is based on the suggestion that rational knowledge policy must be held accountable to ‘brute facts’ about the nature of our human cognitive pursuits, whatever these may be. One difficulty for Fuller concerns the conception of the social which underwrites social epistemology. I argue that social epistemology conflates the social with human psychological properties that are available for public scrutiny and, accordingly, that social epistemology is best viewed as a brand of psychologism. Though (...) Fuller's proposal signifies an important step in the ongoing attempt by scholars to eradicate the last traces of Descartes' epistemological device of a disembodiedres cogitans, I conclude that his conception of the social is too weak to serve as the basis for a socially-embedded discipline in anything but name only. (shrink)

First, I discuss the older “theory-centered” and the more recent semantic conception of scientific theories. I argue that these two perspectives are nothing more than terminological variants of one another. I then offer a new theory-centered view of scientific theories. I argue that this new view captures the insights had by each of these earlier views, that it’s closer to how scientists think about their own theories, and that it better accommodates the phenomenon of inconsistent scientific theories.

Partiendo de la distinción filosófica entre las leyes de la ciencia y las leyes de la naturaleza, en el presente artículo se defiende la indispensabilidad explicativa de las leyes de la ciencia en el campo de las ciencias cognitivas. Se sostiene que las leyes de la ciencia desempeñan un papel epistémico indispensable tanto en el análisis funcional como en la explicación mecanicista de las capacidades cognitivas. De esta manera, se ofrece una elucidación plausible del poder explicativo de las ciencias cognitivas (...) en términos del papel epistémico de las leyes de la ciencia, suspendiendo el juicio, de manera prudente, respecto del controvertido estatus metafísico de las leyes naturales. Se pone en evidencia que tanto quienes defienden como quienes rechazan el compromiso ontológico con leyes causales intencionales presuponen que esas leyes no contribuyen a la explicación funcionalista ni mecanicista de los fenómenos que describen. Sin embargo, en el presente trabajo se argumenta, primero, que el análisis funcional requiere la especificación de leyes científicas no causales y, segundo, que la representación científica precisa de las actividades y de la organización dinámica de un mecanismo se despliega mayoritariamente, en el contexto de un modelo mecanicista, mediante la especificación de leyes científicas. La conclusión es que las leyes científicas (aunque no necesariamente las leyes de la naturaleza) desempeñan un papel indispensable en la explicación en ciencias cognitivas. (shrink)

In the 1950s–60s biochemists searched intensively for a series of high-energy molecules in the cell. Although we now believe that these molecules do not exist, biochemists claimed to have isolated or identified them on at least sixteen occasions. The episode parallels the familiar eighteenth-century case of phlogiston, in illustrating how error is not simply the loss of facts but, instead, must be actively constructed. In addition, the debates surrounding each case demonstrate how revolutionary-scale disagreement is sometimes resolved by differentiating or (...) partitioning empirical domains, rather than by replacement of one theory by another. (shrink)

En el presente trabajo intentaré poner de manifiesto las debilidades de los argumentos dados por Contessa para sustentar, como fuente del representar, a los razonamientos subrogantes válidos por sobre los sólidos. En primer lugar, analizo ciertas ventajas epistémicas del criterio sustentado sobre los RS sólidos, evidenciando, consecuentemente, los límites del criterio estipulado por Contessa. En segundo lugar, muestro que los argumentos utilizados por Contessa para descartar el criterio instituido en los RS sólidos son deficientes, ya que, en el mejor de (...) los casos, no demuestran nada y, en el peor de los casos, o bien se comete una falacia por ambigüedad o bien se comete una petición de principio. (shrink)