The question of whether Everettian quantum mechanics (EQM) justifies the existence of metaphysical indeterminacy has recently come to the fore. Metaphysical indeterminacy has been argued to emerge from three sources: coherent superpositions, the indefinite number of branches in the quantum multiverse and the nature of these branches. This paper reviews the evidence and concludes that those arguments don’t rely on EQM alone and rest on metaphysical auxiliary assumptions that transcend the physics of EQM. We show how EQM can be ontologically (...) interpreted without positing metaphysical indeterminacy by adopting a deflationary attitude towards branches. Two ways of developing the deflationary view are then proposed: one where branches are eliminated, and another where they are reduced to the universal quantum state. (shrink)

Grace A. de Laguna was an American philosopher of exceptional originality. Many of the arguments and positions she developed during the early decades of the twentieth century later came to be central to analytic philosophy. These arguments and positions included, even before 1930, a critique of the analytic-synthetic distinction, a private language argument, a critique of type physicalism, a functionalist theory of mind, a critique of scientific reductionism, a methodology of research programs in science and more. Nevertheless, de Laguna identified (...) herself as a defender of the speculative vision of philosophy, a vision which, in her words, “analytic philosophy condemns.” I outline her speculative vision of philosophy as well as what is, in effect, an argument she offers against analytic philosophy. This is an argument against the view that key parts of established opinion, e.g., our best theoretical physics or most certain common sense, should be assumed to be true in order to answer philosophical questions. I go on to bring out the implications of her argument for the approaches to philosophy of Bertrand Russell, Willard V. Quine and David Lewis, and I also compare the argument to recent, related arguments against analytic philosophy. I will suggest that de Laguna offers a viable critique of analytic philosophy and an alternative approach to philosophy that meets this critique. (shrink)

Generalisation, universal knowledge claims, and recommendations within disaster studies are problematic because they lead to miscommunication and the misapplication of actionable knowledge. The consequences and impacts thereof are not often considered by experts; forgone as irrelevant to the academic division of labour. There is a disconnect between expert assertions for disaster risk reduction (DRR) and their practical suitability for laypersons. Experts currently assert independently of the context within which protective action measures (PAMs) are to be used, measures unconnected to the (...) people for whom they are developed. This has knock-on effects for DRR: much expert-generated science and policy remains unused, unimplemented, and sometimes misapplied. I use philosophical accounts of assertion and epistemic blame to highlight the epistemic relationship between experts and laypersons. This relationship includes responsibilities and agreements between epistemic agents. Since multilevel DRR knowledge still transfers top-down from experts to laypersons, if experts impair the epistemic relationship, they can be held epistemically blameworthy. To address the pervasiveness of top-down systems, I analyse the epistemic framings and narratives currently shaping DRR, and more specifically PAMs and campaigns. I deconstruct universal perspectives that dominate the epistemic processes of generating, disseminating, and implementing DRR knowledge and specifically for co-seismic landslide PAMs for Nepal. I argue for more inclusive, contextual, and epistemically responsible DRR. Co-production of knowledge should begin from the standpoints of marginalised persons who may have an epistemic advantage due to their socio-politically marginalised positions. Often these epistemic contributions are left out of DRR efforts because marginalised persons are rarely afforded equal, if any, epistemic agency, which results in epistemic gaps and a large pool of relevant knowledge remaining unincorporated and unused in DRR research and policy. (shrink)

My target is the epistemological dimension of the realism debate. After establishing a stance voluntarist framework with a Jamesian background, drawing mostly on Wylie, Chakravarty, and van Fraassen, I argue that current voluntarists are too permissive. I show that especially various anti-realist stances but also some realist and selective realist stances block themselves from refutation by the history of science. I argue that such stances should be rejected. Finally, I propose that any disagreement that cannot be resolved by this strategy (...) frequently boils down to an epistemic value disagreement about balancing the truth-goal. (shrink)

Discussion of epistemic responsibility typically focuses on belief formation and actions leading to it. Similarly, accounts of collective epistemic responsibility have addressed the issue of collective belief formation and associated actions. However, there has been little discussion of collective responsibility for preventing epistemic harms, particularly those preventable only by the collective action of an unorganized group. We propose an account of collective epistemic responsibility which fills this gap. Building on Hindriks' (2019) account of collective moral responsibility, we introduce the Epistemic (...) Duty to Join Forces. Our theory provides an account of the responsibilities of scientists to prevent epistemic harms during inquiry. (shrink)

There is now a significant body of literature on consequentialist ethics that propose satisficing instead of maximizing accounts. Even though epistemology recently witnessed a widespread discussion of teleological and consequentialist theories, a satisficing account is surprisingly not developed yet. The aim of this paper is to do just that. The rough idea is that epistemic rules are justified if and only if they satisfice the epistemic good, i.e., reach some threshold of epistemic value (which varies with practical context), and believing (...) is justified if and only if it follows said rules.I argue that this alternative to the implicitly established way of thinking in maximizing terms has significant advantages. First, maximizing epistemic value can be unreasonably demanding; second, a satisficing theory can make finding reasonable rules for belief formation and sustenance much more accessible; and third, a satisficing approach is a better alternative to both general subjectivist and maximizing objectivist attempts to spell out epistemic blame. (shrink)

One of the most lively debates on scientific understanding is standardly presented as a controversy between the so-called factivists, who argue that understanding implies truth, and the non-factivists whose position is that truth is neither necessary nor sufficient for understanding. A closer look at the debate, however, reveals that the borderline between factivism and non-factivism is not as clear-cut as it looks at first glance. Some of those who claim to be quasi-factivists come suspiciously close to the position of their (...) opponents, the non-factivist, from whom they pretend to differ. The non-factivist, in turn, acknowledges that some sort of ‘answering to the facts’ is indispensable for understanding. This paper discusses an example of convergence of the initially rival positions in the debate on understanding and truth: the use of the same substitute for truth by the quasi-factivist Kareem Khalifa and the non-factivists Henk de Regt and Victor Gijsbers. It is argued that the use of ‘effectiveness’ as a substitute for truth by both parties is not an occasional coincidence of terms, it rather speaks about a deeper similarity which have important implications for understanding the essential features of scientific understanding. (shrink)

Históricamente, en los principales análisis filosóficos sobre el concepto de ‘verdad’ estuvo implícita lo que hoy se conoce como la teoría correspondentista de la verdad, la cual puede ser trazada desde Aristóteles hasta Immanuel Kant. A principios del siglo XIX, los detractores de la teoría correspondentista de la verdad comenzaron a argumentar, entre otras cosas, que esta postura es oscura, demasiado estrecha y autocomplaciente o argumentativamente circular. No obstante, en el ámbito científico algunos defensores de ciertas posturas realistas de la (...) ciencia han considerado que la verdad es la meta cognoscitva más importante de la actividad científica. Este estudio se realizó para establecer la plausibilidad de este argumento realista. Mediante el análisis de la validez de algunos argumentos de tipo ontológico, semántico y epistémico propuestos por algunos defensores de distintas versiones del llamado ‘Realismo Científico’, con los que se intenta relacionar el éxito empírico y predictivo de las mejores teorías científicas con la verdad, se muestra que, desde un punto de vista lógico, parece difícil confirmar que tales teorías nos proporcionen conocimiento confiable del mundo natural. Se sugiere que los científicos no son agentes confirmadores; sino agentes probabilísticos, esto es, agentes que buscan calcular la probabilidad con la que un hacedor de verdad convierte en verdadero a un portador de verdad con el que la ciencia comunica sus resultados. (shrink)

The literature on values in science struggles with questions about how to describe and manage the role of values in scientific research. We argue that progress can be made by shifting this literature’s current emphasis. Rather than arguing about how non-epistemic values can or should figure into scientific assessment, we suggest analyzing how scientific assessment can accommodate non-epistemic values. For scientific assessment to do so, it arguably needs to incorporate goals that have been traditionally characterized as non-epistemic. Building on this (...) insight, we show how the adequacy-for-purpose framework recently developed for assessing scientific models can provide a general framework for describing scientific assessment so that it goes beyond purely epistemic considerations. Adopting this framework has significant advantages and opens the possibility of effecting a partial rapprochement between critics and proponents of the value-free ideal. (shrink)

The aim or goal of science has long been discussed by both philosophers of science and scientists themselves. In The Scientific Image (van Fraassen 1980), the aim of science is famously employed to characterize scientific realism and a version of anti-realism, called constructive empiricism. Since the publication of The Scientific Image, however, various changes have occurred in scientific practice. The increasing use of machine learning technology, especially deep learning (DL), is probably one of the major changes in the last decade. (...) This paper aims to explore the implications of DL-aided research for the aim of science debate. I argue that, while the emerging DL-aided research is unlikely to change the state of classic opposition between constructive empiricism and scientific realism, it could offer interesting cases regarding the opposition between those who espouse truth as the aim of science and those oriented to understanding (of the kind that sacrifices truth). (shrink)