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  1. The scientific demarcation problem: a formal and model-based approach to falsificationism.Attard Jeremy - manuscript
    The problem of demarcating between what is scientific and what is pseudoscientific or merely unscientific - in other words, the problem of defining scientificity - remains open. The modern debate was firstly structured around Karl Popper's falsificationist epistemology from the 1930's, before diversifying a few decades later. His central idea is that what makes something scientific is not so much how adequate it is with data, but rather to what extent it might not have been so. Since the second half (...)
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  2. Mixed-grain Property Collaboration: Reconstructing Multiple Realization after the Elimination of Levels.Robert D. Rupert - manuscript
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  3. (1 other version)Towards a Taxonomy of the Model-Ladenness of Data.Alisa Bokulich - forthcoming - PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association.
    Model-data symbiosis is the view that there is an interdependent and mutually beneficial relationship between data and models, whereby models are not only data-laden, but data are also model-laden or model filtered. In this paper I elaborate and defend the second, more controversial, component of the symbiosis view. In particular, I construct a preliminary taxonomy of the different ways in which theoretical and simulation models are used in the production of data sets. These include data conversion, data correction, data interpolation, (...)
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  4. Normative Formal Epistemology as Modelling.Joe Roussos - forthcoming - The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science.
    I argue that normative formal epistemology (NFE) is best understood as modelling, in the sense that this is the reconstruction of its methodology on which NFE is doing best. I focus on Bayesianism and show that it has the characteristics of modelling. But modelling is a scientific enterprise, while NFE is normative. I thus develop an account of normative models on which they are idealised representations put to normative purposes. Normative assumptions, such as the transitivity of comparative credence, are characterised (...)
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  5. (1 other version)Recipes for Science: An Introduction to Scientific Methods and Reasoning (2nd edition).Angela Potochnik, Matteo Colombo & Cory Wright - 2024 - Routledge.
    Scientific literacy is an essential aspect of an undergraduate education. Recipes for Science responds to this need by providing an accessible introduction to the nature of science and scientific methods appropriate for any beginning college student. The book is adaptable to a wide variety of different courses, such as introductions to scientific reasoning, methods courses in scientific disciplines, science education, and philosophy of science. -/- Recipes for Science ​​was first published in 2018, and a thoroughly revised second edition was published (...)
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  6. Scientific Representation. [REVIEW]Cory Wright - 2024 - Journal for General Philosophy of Science / Zeitschrift für Allgemeine Wissenschaftstheorie 55 (2).
    James Nguyen & Roman Frigg (2022). Scientific Representation. Cambridge University Press, 90pp., €21.23 (Paperback), ISBN: 9781009009157.
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  7. Are Models Our Tools Not Our Masters?Caspar Jacobs - 2023 - Synthese 202 (4):1-21.
    It is often claimed that one can avoid the kind of underdetermination that is a typical consequence of symmetries in physics by stipulating that symmetry-related models represent the same state of affairs (Leibniz Equivalence). But recent commentators (Dasgupta 2011; Pooley 2021; Pooley and Read 2021; Teitel 2021a) have responded that claims about the representational capacities of models are irrelevant to the issue of underdetermination, which concerns possible worlds themselves. In this paper I distinguish two versions of this objection: (1) that (...)
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  8. From depressed mice to depressed patients: a less “standardized” approach to improving translation.Monika Piotrowska - 2023 - Biology and Philosophy 38 (6):1-19.
    Depression is a widespread and debilitating disorder, but developing effective treatments has proven challenging. Despite success in animal models, many treatments fail in human trials. While various factors contribute to this translational failure, standardization practices in animal research are often overlooked. This paper argues that certain standardization choices in behavioral neuroscience research on depression can limit the generalizability of results from rodents to humans. This raises ethical and scientific concerns, including animal waste and a lack of progress in treating human (...)
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  9. Philosophy of science in practice in ecological model building.Luana Poliseli, Jeferson G. E. Coutinho, Blandina Viana, Federica Russo & Charbel N. El-Hani - 2022 - Biology and Philosophy 37 (4):0-0.
    This article addresses the contributions of the literature on the new mechanistic philosophy of science for the scientific practice of model building in ecology. This is reflected in a one-to-one interdisciplinary collaboration between an ecologist and a philosopher of science during science-in-the-making. We argue that the identification, reconstruction and understanding of mechanisms is context-sensitive, and for this case study mechanistic modeling did not present a normative role but a heuristic one. We expect our study to provides useful epistemic tools for (...)
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  10. Two epistemological challenges regarding hypothetical modeling.Peter Tan - 2022 - Synthese 200 (6).
    Sometimes, scientific models are either intended to or plausibly interpreted as representing nonactual but possible targets. Call this “hypothetical modeling”. This paper raises two epistemological challenges concerning hypothetical modeling. To begin with, I observe that given common philosophical assumptions about the scope of objective possibility, hypothetical models are fallible with respect to what is objectively possible. There is thus a need to distinguish between accurate and inaccurate hypothetical modeling. The first epistemological challenge is that no account of the epistemology of (...)
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  11. Comparer les modèles à l’aide du vecteur caractéristique : fonction, nature, principe et usage des modèles.Franck Varenne - 2022 - Natures Sciences Sociétés 30 (1):93-102.
    In the context of pluralization, sophistication, and combination of formal models, it is becoming difficult to propose uniform – or even comparable – model comparison practices. This paper outlines a broad and classificatory comparative epistemology of models. The aim of this epistemology is to propose applicable, and if necessary rectifiable, conceptual tools that can be useful to modellers as well as to historians and epistemologists. The notion of model characteristic vector – incorporating concepts of function, nature, principle and use of (...)
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  12. The Predictive Turn in Neuroscience.Daniel A. Weiskopf - 2022 - Philosophy of Science 89 (5):1213-1222.
    Neuroscientists have in recent years turned to building models that aim to generate predictions rather than explanations. This “predictive turn” has swept across domains including law, marketing, and neuropsychiatry. Yet the norms of prediction remain undertheorized relative to those of explanation. I examine two styles of predictive modeling and show how they exemplify the normative dynamics at work in prediction. I propose an account of how predictive models, conceived of as technological devices for aiding decision-making, can come to be adequate (...)
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  13. Modeling the Past: Using History of Science to predict alternative scenarios on science-based legislation.José Ferraz-Caetano - 2021 - Hypothesis Historia Periodical 1 (1):60-70.
    In an ever-changing world, when we search for answers on our present challenges, it can be tricky to extrapolate past realities when concerning science-based issues. Climate change, public health or artificial intelligence embody issues on how scientific evidence is often challenged, as false beliefs could drive the design of public policies and legislation. Therefore , how can we foresee if science can tip the scales of political legislation? In this article, we outline how models of historical cases can be used (...)
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  14. Emergent Models for Moral AI Spirituality.Mark Graves - 2021 - International Journal of Interactive Multimedia and Artificial Intelligence 7 (1):7-15.
    Examining AI spirituality can illuminate problematic assumptions about human spirituality and AI cognition, suggest possible directions for AI development, reduce uncertainty about future AI, and yield a methodological lens sufficient to investigate human-AI sociotechnical interaction and morality. Incompatible philosophical assumptions about human spirituality and AI limit investigations of both and suggest a vast gulf between them. An emergentist approach can replace dualist assumptions about human spirituality and identify emergent behavior in AI computation to overcome overly reductionist assumptions about computation. Using (...)
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  15. Models, Fictions and Artifacts.Tarja Knuuttila - 2021 - In Wenceslao J. Gonzalez (ed.), Language and Scientific Research. Springer Verlag. pp. 199-22.
    This paper discusses modeling from the artifactual perspective. The artifactual approach conceives models as erotetic devices. They are purpose-built systems of dependencies that are constrained in view of answering a pending scientific question, motivated by theoretical or empirical considerations. In treating models as artifacts, the artifactual approach is able to address the various languages of sciences that are overlooked by the traditional accounts that concentrate on the relationship of representation in an abstract and general manner. In contrast, the artifactual approach (...)
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  16. Série Investigações Filosóficas: Textos Selecionados de Filosofia da Ciência II [Philosophical Investigation Series: Selected Texts on Philosophy of Science II].Luana Poliseli (ed.) - 2021 - Pelotas: Editora da Universidade Federal de Pelotas.
    A Série Investigação Filosófica, uma iniciativa do Núcleo de Ensino e Pesquisa em Filosofia do Departamento de Filosofia da UFPel e do Grupo de Pesquisa Investigação Filosófica do Departamento de Filosofia da UNIFAP, sob o selo editorial do NEPFil online e da Editora da Universidade Federal de Pelotas, com auxílio financeiro da John Templeton Foundation, tem por objetivo precípuo a publicação da tradução para a língua portuguesa de textos selecionados a partir de diversas plataformas internacionalmente reconhecidas, tal como a Stanford (...)
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  17. The Truth About Better Understanding?Lewis Ross - 2021 - Erkenntnis 88 (2):747-770.
    The notion of understanding occupies an increasingly prominent place in contemporary epistemology, philosophy of science, and moral theory. A central and ongoing debate about the nature of understanding is how it relates to the truth. In a series of influential contributions, Catherine Elgin has used a variety of familiar motivations for antirealism in philosophy of science to defend a non- factive theory of understanding. Key to her position are: (i) the fact that false theories can contribute to the upwards trajectory (...)
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  18. The Epistemic Duties of Philosophers: An Addendum.Philippe van Basshuysen & Lucie White - 2021 - Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal 31 (4):447-451.
    We were slightly concerned, upon having read Eric Winsberg, Jason Brennan and Chris Surprenant’s reply to our paper “Were Lockdowns Justified? A Return to the Facts and Evidence”, that they may have fundamentally misunderstood the nature of our argument, so we issue the following clarification, along with a comment on our motivations for writing such a piece, for the interested reader.
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  19. Three Ways in Which Pandemic Models May Perform a Pandemic.Philippe Van Basshuysen, Lucie White, Donal Khosrowi & Mathias Frisch - 2021 - Erasmus Journal for Philosophy and Economics 14 (1):110-127.
    Models not only represent but may also influence their targets in important ways. While models’ abilities to influence outcomes has been studied in the context of economic models, often under the label ‘performativity’, we argue that this phenomenon also pertains to epidemiological models, such as those used for forecasting the trajectory of the Covid-19 pandemic. After identifying three ways in which a model by the Covid-19 Response Team at Imperial College London may have influenced scientific advice, policy, and individual responses, (...)
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  20. Why I am not a literalist.Zoe Drayson - 2020 - Mind and Language 35 (5):661-670.
    Carrie Figdor argues for literalism, a semantic claim about psychological predicates, on the basis of a scientific claim about the nature of psychological properties. I argue that her scientific claim is based on controversial interpretations of scientific modelling, and that even if it were correct it would not justify her claims that psychological predicates are undergoing radical conceptual change.
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  21. Philosophical dogmatism inhibiting the anti-Copernican interpretation of the Michelson Morley experiment.Spyridon Kakos - 2020 - Harmonia Philosophica 1.
    From the beginning of time, humans believed they were the center of the universe. Such important beings could be nowhere else than at the very epicenter of existence, with all the other things revolving around them. Was this an arrogant position? Only time will tell. What is certain is that as some people were so certain of their significance, aeons later some other people became too confident in their unimportance. In such a context, the Earth quickly lost its privileged position (...)
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  22. Physical Entity as Quantum Information.Vasil Penchev - 2020 - Philosophy of Science eJournal (Elsevier: SSRN) 13 (35):1-15.
    Quantum mechanics was reformulated as an information theory involving a generalized kind of information, namely quantum information, in the end of the last century. Quantum mechanics is the most fundamental physical theory referring to all claiming to be physical. Any physical entity turns out to be quantum information in the final analysis. A quantum bit is the unit of quantum information, and it is a generalization of the unit of classical information, a bit, as well as the quantum information itself (...)
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  23. Mechanist idealisation in systems biology.Dingmar van Eck & Cory Wright - 2020 - Synthese 199 (1-2):1555-1575.
    This paper adds to the philosophical literature on mechanistic explanation by elaborating two related explanatory functions of idealisation in mechanistic models. The first function involves explaining the presence of structural/organizational features of mechanisms by reference to their role as difference-makers for performance requirements. The second involves tracking counterfactual dependency relations between features of mechanisms and features of mechanistic explanandum phenomena. To make these functions salient, we relate our discussion to an exemplar from systems biological research on the mechanism for countering (...)
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  24. Interprétabilité et explicabilité pour l’apprentissage machine : entre modèles descriptifs, modèles prédictifs et modèles causaux. Une nécessaire clarification épistémologique.Christophe Denis & Franck Varenne - 2019 - Actes de la Conférence Nationale En Intelligence Artificielle - CNIA 2019.
    Le déficit d’explicabilité des techniques d’apprentissage machine (AM) pose des problèmes opérationnels, juridiques et éthiques. Un des principaux objectifs de notre projet est de fournir des explications éthiques des sorties générées par une application fondée sur de l’AM, considérée comme une boîte noire. La première étape de ce projet, présentée dans cet article, consiste à montrer que la validation de ces boîtes noires diffère épistémologiquement de celle mise en place dans le cadre d’une modélisation mathématique et causale d’un phénomène physique. (...)
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  25. From Models to Simulations.Franck Varenne - 2018 - London, UK: Routledge.
    This book analyses the impact computerization has had on contemporary science and explains the origins, technical nature and epistemological consequences of the current decisive interplay between technology and science: an intertwining of formalism, computation, data acquisition, data and visualization and how these factors have led to the spread of simulation models since the 1950s. -/- Using historical, comparative and interpretative case studies from a range of disciplines, with a particular emphasis on the case of plant studies, the author shows how (...)
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  26. La surprise comme mesure de l'empiricité des simulations computationnelles.Franck Varenne - 2015 - In Natalie Depraz & Claudia Serban (eds.), La surprise. A l'épreuve des langues. Hermann. pp. 199-217.
    This chapter elaborates and develops the thesis originally put forward by Mary Morgan (2005) that some mathematical models may surprise us, but that none of them can completely confound us, i.e. let us unable to produce an ex post theoretical understanding of the outcome of the model calculations. This chapter intends to object and demonstrate that what is certainly true of classical mathematical models is however not true of pluri-formalized simulations with multiple axiomatic bases. This chapter thus proposes to show (...)
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  27. Magnets, spins, and neurons: The dissemination of model templates across disciplines.Tarja Knuuttila & Andrea Loettgers - 2014 - The Monist 97 (3):280-300.
    One of the most conspicuous features of contemporary modeling practices is the dissemination of mathematical and computational methods across disciplinary boundaries. We study this process through two applications of the Ising model: the Sherrington-Kirkpatrick model of spin glasses and the Hopfield model of associative memory. The Hopfield model successfully transferred some basic ideas and mathematical methods originally developed within the study of magnetic systems to the field of neuroscience. As an analytical resource we use Paul Humphreys's discussion of computational and (...)
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  28. Humanities’ metaphysical underpinnings of late frontier scientific research.Alcibiades Malapi-Nelson - 2014 - Humanities 214 (3):740-765.
    The behavior/structure methodological dichotomy as locus of scientific inquiry is closely related to the issue of modeling and theory change in scientific explanation. Given that the traditional tension between structure and behavior in scientific modeling is likely here to stay, considering the relevant precedents in the history of ideas could help us better understand this theoretical struggle. This better understanding might open up unforeseen possibilities and new instantiations, particularly in what concerns the proposed technological modification of the human condition. The (...)
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  29. Refounding of the activity concept? Towards a federative paradigm for modeling and simulation.Alexandre Muzy, Franck Varenne, Bernard P. Zeigler, Jonathan Caux, Patrick Coquillard, Luc Touraille, Dominique Prunetti, Philippe Caillou, Olivier Michel & David R. C. Hill - 2013 - Simulation - Transactions of the Society for Modeling and Simulation International 89 (2):156-177.
    Currently, the widely used notion of activity is increasingly present in computer science. However, because this notion is used in specific contexts, it becomes vague. Here, the notion of activity is scrutinized in various contexts and, accordingly, put in perspective. It is discussed through four scientific disciplines: computer science, biology, economics, and epistemology. The definition of activity usually used in simulation is extended to new qualitative and quantitative definitions. In computer science, biology and economics disciplines, the new simulation activity definition (...)
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  30. Introducción a “Nuevas contribuciones iberoamericanas a la metateoría estructuralista”.José A. Díez, José L. Falguera & Pablo Lorenzano - 2012 - Agora 31 (2).
    This is the introduction to the special issue of the Spanish journal Ágora-Papeles de Filosofía (31/2, 2012) devoted to new Ibero-American contributions to metatheoretical structuralism.
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  31. Models, Fictions, and Realism: Two Packages.Arnon Levy - 2012 - Philosophy of Science 79 (5):738-748.
    Some philosophers of science – the present author included – appeal to fiction as an interpretation of the practice of modeling. This raises the specter of an incompatibility with realism, since fiction-making is essentially non-truth-regulated. I argue that the prima facie conflict can be resolved in two ways, each involving a distinct notion of fiction and a corresponding formulation of realism. The main goal of the paper is to describe these two packages. Toward the end I comment on how to (...)
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  32. Complessità in fisica: che cos’è il cambiamento?Ignazio Licata - 2012 - Nuova Civiltà Delle Macchine 10 (4):59-76.
    IN FISICA LA COMPLESSITÀ FA IL SUO INGRESSO NELLA FISICA STATISTICA PER POI APPARIRE NELLO STUDIO DEI COMPORTAMENTI COLLETTIVI NELLA MATERIA CONDENSATA E DELLA SOFT MATTER, E DA ULTIMO NELLA NUOVA TEORIA DEL CAMBIAMENTO. RIDUZIONISMO ED EMERGENZA NON SONO APPROCCI OPPOSTI BENSÌ COMPLEMENTARI.
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  33. On the epistemological foundations of the law of the lever.Maarten Van Dyck - 2009 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 40 (3):315-318.
    In this paper I challenge Paolo Palmieri’s reading of the Mach-Vailati debate on Archimedes’s proof of the law of the lever. I argue that the actual import of the debate concerns the possible epistemic (as opposed to merely pragmatic) role of mathematical arguments in empirical physics, and that construed in this light Vailati carries the upper hand. This claim is defended by showing that Archimedes’s proof of the law of the lever is not a way of appealing to a non-empirical (...)
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  34. (1 other version)Agent-Based Models and Simulations in Economics and Social Sciences: from conceptual exploration to distinct ways of experimenting.Franck Varenne & Denis Phan - 2008 - In Nuno David, José Castro Caldas & Helder Coelho (eds.), Proceedings of the 3rd EPOS congress (Epistemological Perspectives On Simulations). pp. 51-69.
    Now that complex Agent-Based Models and computer simulations spread over economics and social sciences - as in most sciences of complex systems -, epistemological puzzles (re)emerge. We introduce new epistemological tools so as to show to what precise extent each author is right when he focuses on some empirical, instrumental or conceptual significance of his model or simulation. By distinguishing between models and simulations, between types of models, between types of computer simulations and between types of empiricity, section 2 gives (...)
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  35. Bachelard avec la simulation informatique: nous faut-il reconduire sa critique de l'intuition ?Franck Varenne - 2006 - In Robert Damien & Benoit Hufschmitt (eds.), Bachelard: confiance raisonnée et défiance rationnelle. Besançon: Presses universitaires de Franche-Comté. pp. 111-143.
    Dans un nombre croissant de domaines scientifiques - sciences de la nature, sciences humaines aussi bien que sciences des artefacts -, la simulation ne joue plus le rôle de succédané temporaire d'une théorie encore en gésine parce que non encore élaborée ; c'est-à-dire qu'elle ne joue plus systématiquement le rôle d'un modèle provisoire ou d'un schéma servant à condenser les mesures. C'est qu'elle n'a pas la nature d'un signe graphique, linguistique ou mathématique. Elle joue au contraire de plus en plus (...)
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  36. Comentarios a «Explicación teórica y compromisos ontológicos: un modelo estructuralista», de C. Ulises Moulines.Pablo Lorenzano - 2005 - Enrahonar: Quaderns de Filosofía 37:55-59.
    In this comment on the work by Ulises Moulines I shall not refer to the interesting analysis of the ontological commitments that depends the treatment of the so-called «data models», nor shall I debate the general metaphysical principles proposed in his approach, adopting an experimentalist, instrumentalist, anti-realistic, positivist or empirical stance. I shall focus on the last part of his article in which he elaborates on the links between Wesley Salmon's causalist approach and the structuralist analysis of explanation viewed as (...)
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  37. Dynamika nauki: filozoficzne aspekty modelowania rozwoju nauki przy pomocy układów dynamicznych.Paweł Polak - 2004 - Kraków - Tarnów: OBI-Biblos.
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