In the intricate tapestry of human understanding, science and philosophy have long occupied distinct yet interconnected domains. While science seeks to uncover empirical truths about the world, phi...

I clarify the difference between pluralist and monist interpretations of levels of selection disputes. Lloyd has challenged my claim that a plurality of models correctly accounts for situations such as maintenance of the sickle-cell trait, and I revisit this example to show that competing theories don’t disagree about the existence of ‘high-level’ or ‘lowlevel’ causes; rather, they parse these causes differently. Applying Woodward’s theory of causation, I analyze Sober’s distinction between ‘selection of’ versus ‘selection for’. My analysis shows that this (...) distinction separates true causes from pseudocauses, but it also reveals that the distinction is irrelevant to the levels debate; it makes no sense to say true causes are at higher levels and not lower levels. The levels debate is not about separating real causes from pseudocauses; it’s about finding useful ways to parse and disentangle causes. (shrink)

Revealed preference approaches to modelling agents’ choices face two seemingly devastating explanatory objections. The no self-explanation objection imputes a problematic explanatory circularity to revealed preference approaches, while the causal explanation objection argues that, all things equal, a scientific theory should provide causal explanations, but revealed preference approaches decidedly do not. Both objections assume a view of explanation, the constraint-based view, that the revealed preference theorist ought to reject. Instead, the revealed preference theorist should adopt a unificationist account of explanation, allowing (...) her to escape the two explanatory problems discussed in this paper. (shrink)

Metaphysical investigation often proceeds by way of linguistic meaning. This tradition relies on an assumption about meanings, namely that they can be given in terms of referential relations and truth. Chomsky and others have illustrated the difficulty with this externalist hypothesis regarding natural language meanings, which implies that natural languages are ill‐suited for the purposes of metaphysical investigation. In reply to this discordance between the features of natural languages and the goals of metaphysical investigation, metaphysicians propose that we look to (...) the invented languages used to express our best scientific theories as metaphysical guides, in the hope that these languages are better behaved. I argue that this retreat is beset with similar troubles for the metaphysician. In particular, I argue that central terms in the field of biology, namely ‘gene’ and ‘species’, exhibit a kind of lexical flexibility that renders them, much like their natural language counterparts, ill‐suited for the metaphysician's aims. (shrink)

This paper introduces the reconstitutor as a comprehensive unit of heredity within the context of evolutionary research. A reconstitutor is the structure resulting from a set of relationships between different elements or processes that are actively involved in the recreation of a specific phenotypic variant in each generation regardless of the biomolecular basis of the elements or whether they stand in a continuous line of ancestry. Firstly, we justify the necessity of introducing the reconstitutor by showing the limitations of other (...) evolutionary conceptions of the unit of heredity, such as the replicator, the reproducer, and the Darwinian individual. We argue that these conceptions are based on the requirement of lineage formation, which we argue to be unnecessary for the existence of evolutionary heredity. In the second part, we introduce the reconstitutor, which we base on the concept of Stability of Traits, and illustrate how it covers cases of hereditary phenomena not covered by the previous accounts. Secondly, we illustrate how the reconstitutor could serve as a platform to rethink ecological inheritance and other forms of inheritance that have been recently introduced under the song/singer model of evolution. (shrink)

The discovery of RNA interference in 1998 has made a lasting impact on biological research. Identifying the regulatory role of small RNAs changed the modes of molecular biological inquiry as well as biologists' understanding of genetic regulation. This article examines the early years of small RNA biology's success story. I query which factors had to come together so that small RNA research came into life in the blink of an eye. I primarily look at scientific repertoires as facilitators of rapid (...) scientific change. I show that for a short period of time, between the years 1998 and 2002, different model organism communities, investigative strategies, technological innovations, and research interests could be successfully aligned to take small RNA research off the ground. I discuss how the keystone discoveries were situated in specific experimental traditions and what strategies were employed to establish these discoveries as more general phenomena. Providing thus a practice-based approach of rapid scientific change, I ask how to relate the change in propositional bits of scientific knowledge with changes in scientific practice. (shrink)

Is epistocracy epistemically superior to democracy? In this paper, I scrutinize some of the arguments for and against the epistemic superiority of epistocracy. Using empirical results from the literature on the epistemic benefits of diversity as well as the epistemic contributions of citizen science, I strengthen the case against epistocracy and for democracy. Disenfranchising, or otherwise discouraging anyone to participate in political life, on the basis of them not possessing a certain body of (social scientific) knowledge, is untenable also from (...) an epistemic point of view. Rather than focussing on individual competence, we should pay attention to the social constellation through which we produce knowledge to make sure we decrease epistemic loss (by ensuring diversity and inclusion) and increase epistemic productivity (by fostering a multiplicity of perspectives interacting fruitfully). Achieving those epistemic benefits requires a more democratic approach that differs significantly from epistocracy. (shrink)

This paper aims to map out the links between style and science. Two moments mark the migration of style from the discursive field of the arts to that of the history and philosophy of science: the first occurred in the German-speaking world during the first decades of the twentieth century; the second appeared in an Anglo-American context between the late 1970s and the early 1990s, when the category of style became involved in the so-called “pluralist turn” in the history and (...) philosophy of science. Taking this framework as its point of departure, the paper uncovers neglected contributions to the epistemology of style in order to foreground the concept of style as both a vector of inclusion (highlighting the plurality, historicity, and locality of scientific ways of knowing) and of exclusion (by generalizing the most correct ways of doing science and side-lining alternative ways of knowing). (shrink)

According to methodological anti-exceptionalism, logic follows a scientific methodology. There has been some discussion about which methodology logic has. Authors such as Priest, Hjortland and Williamson have argued that logic can be characterized by an abductive methodology. We choose the logical theory that behaves better under a set of epistemic criteria. In this paper, I analyze some important discussions in the philosophy of logic, and I show that they presuppose different methodologies, involving different notions of evidence and different epistemic values. (...) I argue that, rather than having a specific methodology such as abductivism, logic can be characterized by methodological pluralism. This position can also be seen as the application of scientific pluralism to the realm of logic. (shrink)

The past decade has witnessed a growing awareness of conceptual and methodological hurdles within psychology and neuroscience that must be addressed for taxonomic and explanatory progress in understanding psychological functions to be possible. In this paper, I evaluate several recent knowledge-building initiatives aimed at overcoming these obstacles. I argue that while each initiative offers important insights about how to facilitate taxonomic and explanatory progress in psychology and neuroscience, only a “coordinated pluralism” that incorporates positive aspects of each initiative will have (...) the potential for success. (shrink)

Raymond Aron was a student of Léon Brunschvicg, a representative of French historical epistemology. This article explores Aron’s relation to this tradition through three claims. First of all, it contests that Raymond Aron’s philosophy of history constituted a complete break with this tradition. Secondly, resituating Aron in this tradition is valuable, because it highlights how Aron’s own philosophy of history is to be understood as a normative project, seen as an alternative to that of Brunschvicg. Finally, Aron’s philosophy can still (...) hold valuable lessons for present-day historical epistemology and history and philosophy of science in general. (shrink)

How should sociologists use the word theory? Gabriel Abend’s recent insistence that this question should be tackled politically raises two important issues: Is sociology political? And if so, what normative implications follow for its organization? Drawing on Wittgenstein’s notion of family resemblance and post-Gramscian theories of hegemony, I argue that Abend’s proposal that semantic questions about theory can be addressed separately from ontological, evaluative, and teleological ones is untenable. Disagreements about the latter are constitutive, not merely supplementary to the meaning (...) of theory. Against Abend’s deliberative-democratically oriented vision, I propose an agonistic politics of theory. In doing so, I consider both the internal inconsistencies of deliberativism and the practical advantages and sociological relevance of agonism. (shrink)

Journal of Social Philosophy, EarlyView.

Journal of Social Philosophy, EarlyView.

This essay develops a form of scientific pluralism that captures essential features of contemporary scientific practice largely ignored by the various forms of scientific pluralism currently discussed by philosophers. My starting point is Hacking's concept of style of scientific reasoning. I extend Hacking's thesis by proposing the process of “ontological enrichment” to grasp how the objects created by a style articulate with the common objects of scientific inquiry. The result is “foliated pluralism,” which puts to the fore the transdisciplinary and (...) cumulative ways of proceeding in science, as well as the historical dimension of the genesis of scientific objects. (shrink)

The standard view on economics imperialism is that it should be resisted when it is epistemically or morally harmful. I argue that the moral dimension of economics imperialism is in need of further analysis. In my view, economics imperialism is wrong when imperialists violate the epistemic responsibility they have towards scientists working in the discipline that is the target for imperialist explorations. By epistemic responsibility, I refer to a moral duty to justify one’s knowledge claims to a particular audience so (...) that the justification appeals to at least some of the standards of argumentation recognized by that audience. (shrink)

I introduce a case study from organization studies to argue that social epistemologists’ recommendation to cultivate diversity and dissent in science is unlikely to be welcomed in the social sciences unless it is coupled with another epistemic ideal: the norm of epistemic responsibility. The norm of epistemic responsibility enables me to show that organization scholars’ concern with the fragmentation of their discipline is generated by false assumptions: the assumption that a diversity of theoretical approaches will lead to fragmentation and the (...) assumption that an imposed consensus on a theoretical approach is needed to maintain the unity of the discipline. (shrink)

The movement of a pendulum is often used as a metaphor to represent the history of twentieth century American psychiatry. On this view, American psychiatry evolved by swinging back and forth between two schools of thought in constant competition: somatic accounts of mental illness and psychodynamic ones. I argue that this narrative partly misrepresents the actual development of American psychiatry. I suggest that there were some important exchanges of ideas and practices in the transition from German biological approaches to American (...) psychodynamic approaches. In particular, two kinds of pragmatism played an important role in this transition: Kraepelin’s methodological pragmatism, and pragmatic values present in the American psychiatric context, due in part to the influence of William James. From a historical standpoint, I suggest that the metaphor of the pendulum doesn’t capture the full complexities of this shift in psychiatry at the turn of the century; from a philosophical standpoint, my discussion brings to light two strands of pragmatism salient to scientific psychiatry. (shrink)

Cancer is not one, but many diseases, and each is a product of a variety of causes acting (and interacting) at distinct temporal and spatial scales, or “levels” in the biological hierarchy. In part because of this diversity of cancer types and causes, there has been a diversity of models, hypotheses, and explanations of carcinogenesis. However, there is one model of carcinogenesis that seems to have survived the diversification of cancer types: the multi-stage model of carcinogenesis. This paper examines the (...) history of the multistage theory, and uses the theory as a case study in the limits and goals of unification as a theoretical virtue, comparing and contrasting it with “integrative” research. (shrink)

The relation between models and the world is mediated by experimental procedures generating data that are used as evidence to evaluate the model. Data can serve as empirical evidence, for or against, only if they result from reliable experimental procedures. The aim of this article is to discuss the role of relevance judgments in the evaluation of reliability and to clarify the conditions under which reliability can be a strictly empirical matter. It is argued that reliability is a strictly empirical (...) issue only in the restricted case in which the claim under test/investigation is about a data-generating procedure. (shrink)

Although the literature on the issue of pluralism within the philosophy of science is very extensive, this paper focuses on the metaphysical causal pluralism that emerges from the new mechanistic discussion on causality. The main aim is to situate the new mechanistic views on causation within the account of varieties of causal pluralism framed by Psillos ( 2009 ). Paying attention to his taxonomy of metaphysical views on causation (i.e., the straightjacket view, the functional view, the two-concept view, the agnostic (...) view and the atheist view) will help clarify differences in opinion and, at the same time, make it possible to elucidate the main metaphysical theses present within the new mechanistic debate. Special attention is given to S. Glennan’s theory of causation, since it is unique in offering an overall metaphysical view of the issue. It is also argued that mechanists are not “atheists” on causation: while all of them are causal realists, most mechanists are “agnostic” on causation, with a few exceptions such as S. Glennan, P. Machamer and J. Bogen. (shrink)

This paper investigates the ethical implications of research at the interface between biodiversity and both human and animal health. Health and sanitary crises often lead to ethical debates, especially when it comes to disruptive interventions such as forced vaccinations, quarantine, or mass culling of domestic or wild animals. In such debates, the emergence of a “Planetary health ethics” can be highlighted. Ethics and accountability principles apply to all aspects of scientific research including its technological and engineering applications, regardless of whether (...) they are considered “hard sciences”, such as state-of-the-art technology in the fields of medicine, veterinary medicine, agronomy, or environment, or “soft”, such as local or global governance, health, socio-ecosystems, and the environment. Ethical reflection in the interdisciplinary field of biodiversity and health requires the examination of relevant scientific domains, such as biology, ecology, evolution, human medicine, animal medicine, anthropology, and law, and their epistemology and representation as well as scientific pluralism, which is crucial to establish genuine interdisciplinarity. Navigating the ethics-scape necessitates going beyond the hierarchy of science by recognising that scientific knowledge has implications for both scientific and non-scientific perspectives on the study of nature. The example of a Nipah virus outbreak is used to illustrate how the so-called “modern epidemiological” approach often focuses on risk factors associated with individual behavioural characteristics or collective practices, whereas the so-called “eco-social” approach focuses on global, socio-economic, and environmental factors that are the contextual causes of the health problem affecting the community. “Modern epidemiologists” aim to “correct” individual or practice factors using a “minimal set” of ethics, whereas “eco-social” scientists have to act systemically, which requires integrated research that acknowledges scientific pluralism, avoids the hierarchy of sciences, but accepts the pluralism of ethics and values. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to elaborate an objection against the realist argument that, in the debate on scientific realism, is known as the ‘No-Miracles Argument’ (NMA). This argument hinges on the assumption that scientific realism is the philosophy that best explains the success of science. Here, it is objected that if the considerations from scientific pluralism are to be taken seriously, there is no univocal conception of «success» at hand. From this it follows that either we are not (...) able to infer theory’s «truth» from theory’s «success», or that we must accept that science offers several truths about the same inquiry’s domain. I outline three solutions to face this issue: first, to defend the NMA against the pluralist’s objections, nevertheless there is no account in the literature that can meet these objections. Second, either to reconceptualize the notion of «truth» or embrace a metaphysical pluralism, yet these accounts are highly counterintuitive. Finally, to dispense the NMA from scientific realism debate, and, instead, to assume an empiricist pluralism that can account for sciences’ plurality without a compromise with alternative notions of «truth» or metaphysical interpretations of scientific pluralism. (shrink)

While some form of evaluation has always been employed in science (e.g. peer review, hiring), formal systems of evaluation of research and researchers have recently come to play a more prominent role in many countries because of the adoption of new models of governance. According to such models, the quality of the output of both researchers and their institutions is measured, and issues such as eligibility for tenure or the allocation of public funding to research institutions crucially depends on the (...) outcomes of such measures. However, concerns have been raised over the risk that such evaluation may be threatening epistemic pluralism by penalizing the existent heterodox schools of thought and discouraging the pursuit of new ones. It has been proposed that this may happen because of epistemic bias favouring mainstream research programmes. In this paper, I claim that (1) epistemic pluralism is desirable and should be preserved; (2) formal evaluation exercises may threaten epistemic pluralism because they may be affected by some form of epistemic bias; therefore, (3) to preserve epistemic pluralism, we need some strategy to actively dampen epistemic bias. (shrink)

Interdisciplinarity is one of the most prominent ideas driving science and research policy today.1 It is applied widely as a conception of what particularly creative and socially relevant research processes should consist of, whether in the natural sciences, the social sciences, the humanities, or elsewhere. Its advocates, many of whom are located in current science and research administration themselves, are using ideas of interdisciplinarity to reshape university organization and research funding. For the last 40 years, researchers studying interdisciplinarity have built (...) up a substantial body of literature constructing various visions of what it should be and how to taxonomize the different forms it can... (shrink)

Current debates about the integration of traditional and academic ecological knowledge struggle with a dilemma of division and assimilation. On the one hand, the emphasis on differences between traditional and academic perspectives has been criticized as creating an artificial divide that brands TEK as “non-scientific” and contributes to its marginalization. On the other hand, there has been increased concern about inadequate assimilation of Indigenous and other traditional perspectives into scientific practices that disregards the holistic nature and values of TEK. The (...) aim of this article is to develop a practice-based account of the epistemic relations between TEK and AEK that avoids both horns of the dilemma. While relations between TEK and AEK are often described in terms of the “holistic” nature of the former and the “mechanistic” character of the latter, we argue that a simple holism–mechanism divide misrepresents the epistemic resources of both TEK and AEK. Based on the literature on mechanistic explanations in philosophy of science, we argue that holders of TEK are perfectly capable of identifying mechanisms that underlie ecological phenomena while AEK often relies on non-mechanistic strategies of dealing with ecological complexity. Instead of generic characterizations of knowledge systems as either mechanistic or holistic, we propose to approach epistemic relations between knowledge systems by analyzing their heuristics in practice. (shrink)

Using the context of controversies surrounding evolutionary developmental biology (EvoDevo) and the possibility of an Extended Evolutionary Synthesis, I provide an account of theory structure as idealized theory presentations that are always incomplete (partial) and shaped by their conceptual content (material rather than formal organization). These two characteristics are salient because the goals that organize and regulate scientific practice, including the activity of using a theory, are heterogeneous. This means that the same theory can be structured differently, in part because (...) theory presentations (as idealizations) intentionally depart from different features known to be present in a theory. Since there are diverse and potentially incompatible theory structures derived from heterogeneous goals found in scientific practices, a question arises about the absence of a unifying theory structure in the background. The notion of a “theory façade” offers a fruitful perspective on this potentially unsettling result. (shrink)

In this paper we consider some questions surrounding whether or not regional climate models “add value,” a controversial issue in climate science today. We highlight some objections frequently made about regional climate models both within and outside the community of modelers, including several claims that regional climate models do not “add value.” We show that there are a number of issues involved in the latter claims, the primary ones centering on the fact that different research questions are being pursued by (...) the modelers making the complaints against regional climate models. Further issues focus on historical deficiencies of particular—but not generalizable—failures of individual regional models. We provide tools to sort out these different research questions and particular failures, and to improve communication and understanding surrounding added value in climate modeling and philosophy of climate science. (shrink)

Philosophers have nothing to lose, and much to gain, by paying close attention to developments in the natural sciences. This insight amounts to a case for a tempered, eclectic naturalism. But the case for naturalism is often overstated. We should not overestimate the heuristic benefits of close attention to scientists’ claims, nor should we give up on traditional “armchair” philosophical methods. We should not draw solely on the natural sciences (at the expense of the humanities) when seeking to enrich and (...) discipline our philosophical theorising. Finally, philosophers should not shy away from criticising some scientists’ claims, at the same time as they learn from others. (shrink)

Bio-ontologies are digital frameworks for handling biological and biomedical data. They consist of theoretical entities and relations with explicitly defined logical structures and precise definitions, whose purpose is to provide a shared language for representing information to be distributed and integrated across diverse scientific contexts. It is tempting to view bio-ontologies as clear and formal expressions of a scientific community’s ontological commitments about their domain of inquiry, and to view their integration as tantamount to the metaphysical unification of science that (...) some philosophers have envisaged. However, I argue that the local, practical, social and technological factors that influence their design prevent us from straightforwardly reading metaphysical conclusions from them. I discuss these complications and suggest how they can be overcome, revealing more general lessons for the development of a well-founded scientific metaphysics. (shrink)

In a number of papers and in his recent book, Is Water H₂O? Evidence, Realism, Pluralism (2012), Hasok Chang has argued that the correct interpretation of the Chemical Revolution provides a strong case for the view that progress in science is served by maintaining several incommensurable “systems of practice” in the same discipline, and concerning the same region of nature. This paper is a critical discussion of Chang's reading of the Chemical Revolution. It seeks to establish, first, that Chang's assessment (...) of Lavoisier's and Priestley's work and character follows the phlogistonists' “actors' sociology”; second, that Chang simplifies late-eighteenth-century chemical debates by reducing them to an alleged conflict between two systems of practice; third, that Chang's evidence for a slow transition from phlogistonist theory to oxygen theory is not strong; and fourth, that he is wrong to assume that chemists at the time did not have overwhelming good reasons to favour Lavoisier's over the phlogistonists' views. (shrink)

The paper looks at challenges related to the ideas of integration and knowledge systems in extra-academic transdisciplinarity. Philosophers of science are only starting to pay attention to the increasingly common practice of introducing extra-academic perspectives or engaging extra-academic parties in academic knowledge production. So far the rather scant philosophical discussion on the subject has mainly concentrated on the question whether such engagement is beneficial in science or not. Meanwhile, there is quite a large and growing literature on extra-academic TD, mostly (...) authored by non-philosophers, seeking to develop TD research practices. We examine this literature in the light of recent discussions in pluralist philosophies of science. Some philosophical pluralists see the increase of extra-academic collaboration and participation in science as a potentially positive development. However, certain views promoted in the non-philosophical literature on extra-academic TD appear problematic in the light of the pluralistic discussions. For instance, the literature on TD appears to be overly optimistic with regard to integration, and the notion of knowledge systems used in it is problematic. We believe it would be worthwhile for scientific pluralists sympathetic to the aims of TD to look more closely into the complex settings in which extra-academic collaboration and participation happens in actual TD projects, and to offer constructive criticisms, exploiting insights developed within pluralist philosophy of science. (shrink)

Several prominent voices have called for a democratization of science through deliberative processes that include a diverse range of perspectives and values. We bring these scholars into conversation with extant research on democratic deliberation in political theory and the social sciences. In doing so, we identify systematic barriers to the effectiveness of inclusive deliberation in both scientific and political settings. We are particularly interested in what we call misidentified dissent, where deliberations are starkly framed at the outset in terms of (...) dissenting positions without properly distinguishing the kinds of difference and disagreement motivating dissent. (shrink)

In this paper, I present a philosophical analysis of interdisciplinary scientific activities. I suggest that it is a fruitful approach to view interdisciplinarity in light of the recent literature on scientific representations. For this purpose I develop a meta-representational model in which interdisciplinarity is viewed in part as a process of integrating distinct scientific representational approaches. The analysis suggests that present methods for the evaluation of interdisciplinary projects places too much emphasis non-epistemic aspects of disciplinary integrations while more or less (...) ignoring whether specific interdisciplinary collaborations puts us in a better, or worse, epistemic position. This leads to the conclusion that there are very good reasons for recommending a more cautious, systematic, and stringent approach to the development, evaluation, and execution of interdisciplinary science. (shrink)

Talk of “levels” can be found throughout the sciences, from “levels of abstraction”, to “levels of organization”, to “levels of analysis”. This has led to substantial disagreement regarding the ontology of levels, and whether the various senses of levels each have genuine value and utility to scientific practice. In this paper, I propose a unified framework for thinking about levels in science which ties together the various ways in which levels are invoked in science, and which can overcome the problems (...) that different senses of levels have faced. I argue that levels can best be understood as choices scientists make regarding what sort of information to foreground in their models and theories, and what sort of information to push into the background. To change levels is to change the foregrounding and backgrounding of information for different representational and pragmatic purposes. (shrink)

Cognitive and social sciences such as psychology and sociology are often described as immature sciences. But what is immaturity? According to the received view, immaturity is disunity, where disunity can usefully be cashed out in terms of having a plurality of disunified frameworks in play, where these frameworks consist of concepts, theories, goals, practices, methods, criteria for what counts as a good explanation, etc. However, there are some reasons to think that the cognitive and social sciences should be disunified in (...) this sense. If that is right, either these sciences should remain immature, or we need a new account of immaturity. The former option is unappealing. I therefore provide an alternative account of immaturity, based on Dudley Shapere’s work on the internal/external distinction. I then go on to use this account to argue against the imposition of unification on the cognitive and social sciences. Acceptance of disunity may be the route to maturity, rather than a sign of immaturity. (shrink)

We present two case studies from contemporary biology in which we observe conflicts between established and emerging approaches. The first case study discusses the relation between molecular biology and systems biology regarding the explanation of cellular processes, while the second deals with phylogenetic systematics and the challenge posed by recent network approaches to established ideas of evolutionary processes. We show that the emergence of new fields is in both cases driven by the development of high-throughput data generation technologies and the (...) transfer of modeling techniques from other fields. New and emerging views are characterized by different philosophies of nature, i.e. by different ontological and methodological assumptions and epistemic values and virtues. This results in a kind of conflict we call “epistemic competition” that manifests in two ways: On the one hand, opponents engage in mutual critique and defense of their fundamental assumptions. On the other hand, they compete for the acceptance and integration of the knowledge they provide by a broader scientific community. Despite an initial rhetoric of replacement, the views as well as the respective audiences come to be seen as more clearly distinct during the course of the debate. Hence, we observe—contrary to many other accounts of scientific change—that conflict results in the formation of new niches of research, leading to co-existence and perceived complementarity of approaches. Our model thus contributes to the understanding of the pluralization of the scientific landscape. (shrink)

Even though complexity is a concept that is ubiquitously used by biologists and philosophers of biology, it is rarely made precise. I argue that a clarification of the concept is neither trivial nor unachievable, and I propose a unifying framework based on the technical notion of “effective complexity” that allows me to do justice to conflicting intuitions about biological complexity, while taking into account several distinctions in the usage of the concept that are often overlooked. In particular, I propose a (...) distinction between two kinds of complexity, “mechanical” and “emergent”, which can be understood as different ways of relating the effective complexity of mechanisms and of behaviors in biological explanations. I illustrate the adequacy of this framework by discussing different attempts to understand intracellular organization in terms of pathways and networks. My framework provides a different way of thinking about recent philosophical debates, for example, on the difference between mechanistic and topological explanations and about the concept of emergence. Moreover, it can contribute to a proper assessment of metascientific arguments that invoke biological complexity. (shrink)

The appearance of consciousness in the universe remains one of the major mysteries unsolved by science or philosophy. Absent an agreed-upon definition of consciousness or even a convenient system to test theories of consciousness, a confusing heterogeneity of theories proliferate. In pursuit of clarifying this complicated discourse, we here interpret various frameworks for the scientific and philosophical study of consciousness through the lens of social insect evolutionary biology. To do so, we first discuss the notion of a forward test versus (...) a reverse test, analogous to the normal and revolutionary phases of the scientific process. Contemporary theories of consciousness are forward tests for consciousness, in that they strive to become a means to classify the level of consciousness of arbitrary states and systems. Yet no such theory of consciousness has earned sufficient confidence such that it might be actually used as a forward test in ambiguous settings. What is needed now is thus a legitimate reverse test for theories of consciousness, to provide internal and external calibration of different frameworks. A reverse test for consciousness would ideally look like a method for referencing theories of consciousness to a tractable (and non-human) model system. We introduce the Ant Colony Test (ACT) as a rigorous reverse test for consciousness. We show that social insect colonies, though disaggregated collectives, fulfill many of the prerequisites for conscious awareness met by humans and honey bee workers. A long lineage of philosophically-neutral neurobehavioral, evolutionary, and ecological studies on social insect colonies can thus be redeployed for the study of consciousness in general. We suggest that the ACT can provide insight into the nature of consciousness, and highlight the ant colony as a model system for ethically performing clarifying experiments about consciousness. (shrink)

In this paper we examine the epistemic value of highly idealized agent-based models of social aspects of scientific inquiry. On the one hand, we argue that taking the results of such simulations as informative of actual scientific inquiry is unwarranted, at least for the class of models proposed in recent literature. Moreover, we argue that a weaker approach, which takes these models as providing only “how-possibly” explanations, does not help to improve their epistemic value. On the other hand, we suggest (...) that if ABMs of science underwent two types of robustness analysis, they could indeed have a clear epistemic function, namely by providing evidence for philosophical and historical hypotheses. In this sense, ABMs can obtain evidential and explanatory properties and thus be a useful tool for integrated history and philosophy of science. We illustrate our point with an example of a model—building on the work by Kevin Zollman—which we apply to a concrete historical case study. (shrink)

Expanding on recent philosophical contributions to the conceptual and normative framework of scientific imperialism, I examine whether the economics approach to social epistemology can be considered a case of economics imperialism and determine whether economics’ explanatory expansionism appropriately contributes to this philosophical subfield or not. I argue first that the economics approach to social epistemology counts as a case of economics imperialism under a broad conception of the term, and second that we have good reasons to doubt the appropriateness of (...) the incursion of economics into social epistemology, insofar as economics’ attempt at explanatory unification fails to express significant human interests. (shrink)

In my contribution to this special issue, I draw attention to the topic of the imagination at the interface of modern science and Christian theology. The paper entertains in critical perspective the notion that language divides, while the imagination unites. While the paper is intended to be explorative, a clear thesis emerges: in its commitment to consilience, Christian theology is directed to the imagination under the pressure of the pluralizing effects of a reason that is constrained by language.

This article focuses on recent discussions about holobionts and evolutionary individuality to evaluate the merits of integrative pluralism. I argue that integrative pluralism is the wrong approach to take when it comes to holobiont research because integrative pluralism is not liberal enough to accommodate both single-species and multispecies individuals. I conclude by suggesting two points. First, a pluralistic view helps us better understand holobiont research. Second, the case of holobionts helps us develop a better account of scientific pluralism.

Many of our cognitive capacities are the result of enculturation. Enculturation is the temporally extended transformative acquisition of cognitive practices in the cognitive niche. Cognitive practices are embodied and normatively constrained ways to interact with epistemic resources in the cognitive niche in order to complete a cognitive task. The emerging predictive processing perspective offers new functional principles and conceptual tools to account for the cerebral and extra-cerebral bodily components that give rise to cognitive practices. According to this emerging perspective, many (...) cases of perception, action, and cognition are realized by the on-going minimization of prediction error. Predictive processing provides us with a mechanistic perspective that helps investigate the functional details of the acquisition of cognitive practices. The argument of this paper is that research on enculturation and recent work on predictive processing are complementary. The main reason is that predictive processing operates at a sub-personal level and on a physiological time scale of explanation only. A complete account of enculturated cognition needs to take additional levels and temporal scales of explanation into account. This complementarity assumption leads to a new framework—enculturated predictive processing—that operates on multiple levels and temporal scales for the explanation of the enculturated predictive acquisition of cognitive practices. Enculturated predictive processing is committed to explanatory pluralism. That is, it subscribes to the idea that we need multiple perspectives and explanatory strategies to account for the complexity of enculturation. The upshot is that predictive processing needs to be complemented by additional considerations and conceptual tools to realize its full explanatory potential. (shrink)

Traditionally, cognitive values have been thought of as a collective pool of considerations in science that frequently trade against each other. I argue here that a finer-grained account of the value of cognitive values can help reduce such tensions. I separate the values into groups, minimal epistemic criteria, pragmatic considerations, and genuine epistemic assurance, based in part on the distinction between values that describe theories per se and values that describe theory-evidence relationships. This allows us to clarify why these values (...) are central to science and what role they should play, while reducing the tensions among them. (shrink)

Normative realists tend to consider evolutionary debunking arguments as posing epistemological challenges to their view. By understanding Sharon Street’s ‘Darwinian dilemma’ argument in this way, they have overlooked and left unanswered her unique scientific challenge to normative realism. This paper counters Street’s scientific challenge and shows that normative realism is compatible with an evolutionary view of human evaluative judgment. After presenting several problems that her adaptive link account of evaluative judgments faces, I outline and defend an evolutionary byproduct perspective on (...) evaluative judgment. I then argue that a consideration of levels of analysis in biological–behavioral explanation suggests that the realist who adopts the byproduct perspective I outline is not at a prima facie disadvantage to the normative anti-realist on grounds of parsimony. This perspective, I suggest, can enable normative realists to answer evolutionary challenges to their view. (shrink)