In this paper we provide a compact presentation of the verisimilitudinarian approach to scientific progress (VS, for short) and defend it against the sustained attack recently mounted by Alexander Bird (2007). Advocated by such authors as Ilkka Niiniluoto and Theo Kuipers, VS is the view that progress can be explained in terms of the increasing verisimilitude (or, equivalently, truthlikeness, or approximation to the truth) of scientific theories. According to Bird, VS overlooks the central issue of the appropriate grounding of scientific (...) beliefs in the evidence, and it is therefore unable (a) to reconstruct in a satisfactory way some hypothetical cases of scientific progress, and (b) to provide an explanation of the aversion to falsity that characterizes scientific practice. We rebut both of these criticisms and argue that they reveal a misunderstanding of some key concepts underlying VS. (shrink)

The concept of approximate truth plays a prominent role in most versions of scientific realism. However, adequately conceptualizing ?approximate truth? has proved challenging. This article argues that the goal of articulating the concept of approximate truth can be advanced by first investigating the processes by which science accords theories the status of accepted or rejected. Accordingly, this article uses a path diagram model as a visual heuristic for the purpose of showing the processes in science that are involved in determining (...) a theory's status. This ?inductive realist? model of theory status then serves as a starting point for explicating an inductive realist view of approximate truth that, it is argued, can explain instances of the success of science, but does not (1) require science's theories to be strictly true in any world or (2) require a metric for measuring how close an approximately true theory is to some strictly true theory. To show the advantages of the inductive realist approach to approximate truth, an example of a major success story of science, the successful eradication of smallpox, is reviewed and then explained. (shrink)

In this article I discuss a recent argument due to Dan McArthur, who suggests that the charge that Michael Friedman’s relativised a priori leads to irrationality in theory change can be avoided by adopting structural realism. I provide several arguments to show that the conjunction of Friedman’s relativised a priori with structural realism cannot make the former avoid the charge of irrationality. I also explore the extent to which Friedman’s view and structural realism are compatible, a presupposition of McArthur’s argument. (...) This compatibility is usually questioned, due to the Kantian aspect of Friedman’s view, which clashes with the metaphysical premise of scientific realism. I argue that structural realism does not necessarily depend on this premise and as a consequence can be compatible with Friedman’s view, but more importantly I question whether Friedman’s view really implies mind dependence. (shrink)

Science is always presupposing some basic concepts that are held to be useful. These absolute presuppositions (Collingwood) are rarely debated and form the framework for what has been termed paradigm by Kuhn. Our currently accepted scientific model is predicated on a set of presuppositions that have difficulty accommodating holistic structures and relationships and are not geared towards incorporating non-local correlations. Since the theoretical models we hold also determine what we perceive and take as scientifically viable, it is important to look (...) for an alternative model that can deal with holistic relationships. One approach is to generalise algebraic quantum theory, which is an inherently holistic framework, into a generic model. Relaxing some restrictions and definitions from quantum theory proper yields an axiomatic framework that can be applied to any type of system. Most importantly, it keeps the core of the quantum theoretical formalism. It is capable of handling complementary observables, i.e. descriptors which are non-commuting, incompatible and yet collectively required to fully describe certain situations. It also predicts a generalised form of non-local correlations that in quantum theory are known as entanglement. This generalised version is not quantum entanglement but an analogue form of holistic, non-local connectedness of elements within systems, predicted to occur whenever elements within systems are described by observables which are complementary to the description of the whole system. While a considerable body of circumstantial evidence supports the plausibility of the model, we are not yet in a position to use it for clear cut predictions that could be experimentally falsified. The series of papers offered in this special issue are the beginning of what we hope will become a rich scientific debate. (shrink)

Charles Perrow used the term normal accidents to characterize a type of catastrophic failure that resulted when complex, tightly coupled production systems encountered a certain kind of anomalous event. These were events in which systems failures interacted with one another in a way that could not be anticipated, and could not be easily understood and corrected. Systems of the production of expert knowledge are increasingly becoming tightly coupled. Unlike classical science, which operated with a long time horizon, many current forms (...) of expert knowledge are directed at immediate solutions to complex problems. These are prone to breakdowns like the kind discussed by Perrow. The example of the Homestake mine experiment shows that even in modern physics complex systems can produce knowledge failures that last for decades. The concept of knowledge risk is introduced, and used to characterize the risk of failure in such systems of knowledge production. (shrink)

Assuming that progress in science means effectiveness at problem-solving, this paper discusses how a progressive scienti?c tradition can be created by a peripheral scienti?c community. A mechanism of peripheral scienti?c growth is proposed, and it is illustrated with an Indian case study. The conclusion of the paper is that scienti?c collaboration between metropolitan and peripheral research communities is frequently characterized by a persistent inequality of intellectual authority due to inequalityin their epistemic transactions.

From its inception Darwinian evolutionary biology has been seen as having a problematic relationship of fact and theory. While the forging of the modern evolutionary synthesis resolved most of these issues for biologists, critics continue to argue that natural selection and common descent are “only theories.” Much of the confusion engendered by the “evolution wars” can be clarified by applying the concept of phenomena, inferred from fact, and explained by theories, thus locating where legitimate dissent may still exist. By setting (...) such analysis in the context of research traditions, it is possible to gain further insight into the complex interplay of facts, phenomena, and theories. Two case studies are explored to assess the value of such approaches, one from within evolutionary biology, the Baldwin effect, and one from outside, intelligent design. (shrink)

Starting from the sixties of the past century theory change has become a main concern of philosophy of science. Two of the best known formal accounts of theory change are the post-Popperian theories of verisimilitude (PPV for short) and the AGM theory of belief change (AGM for short). In this paper, we will investigate the conceptual relations between PPV and AGM and, in particular, we will ask whether the AGM rules for theory change are effective means for approaching the truth, (...) i.e., for achieving the cognitive aim of science pointed out by PPV. First, the key ideas of PPV and AGM and their application to a particular kind of propositional theories - the so called "conjunctive propositions" - will be illustrated. Afterwards, we will prove that, as far as conjunctive propositions are concerned, AGM belief change is an effective tool for approaching the truth. (shrink)

In this essay we develop and argue for the adoption of a more comprehensive model of research ethics than is included within current conceptions of responsible conduct of research (RCR). We argue that our model, which we label the ethical dimensions of scientific research (EDSR), is a more comprehensive approach to encouraging ethically responsible scientific research compared to the currently typically adopted approach in RCR training. This essay focuses on developing a pedagogical approach that enables scientists to better understand and (...) appreciate one important component of this model, what we call intrinsic ethics . Intrinsic ethical issues arise when values and ethical assumptions are embedded within scientific findings and analytical methods. Through a close examination of a case study and its application in teaching, namely, evaluation of climate change integrated assessment models, this paper develops a method and case for including intrinsic ethics within research ethics training to provide scientists with a comprehensive understanding and appreciation of the critical role of values and ethical choices in the production of research outcomes. (shrink)

This chapter focuses on alternative logics. It discusses a hierarchy of logical reform. It presents case studies that illustrate particular aspects of the logical revisionism discussed in the chapter. The first case study is of intuitionistic logic. The second case study turns to quantum logic, a system proposed on empirical grounds as a resolution of the antinomies of quantum mechanics. The third case study is concerned with systems of relevance logic, which have been the subject of an especially detailed reform (...) program. Finally, the fourth case study is paraconsistent logic, perhaps the most controversial of serious proposals. (shrink)

Explanatory inquiry characteristically begins with a certain puzzlement about the world. But why do certain situations elicit our puzzlement while others leave us, in some epistemically relevant sense, cold? Moreover, what exactly is involved in the move from a state of puzzlement to a state where one's puzzlement is satisfied? In this paper I try to answer both of these questions. I also suggest ways in which our account of scientific rationality might benefit from having a better sense of the (...) kind of epistemic goal we are trying to realize, when we engage in our explanatory inquiries. Two Senses The Need for Explanation An Example Proto-understanding Conclusion CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

The paper gives an overview of key themes of twentieth century philosophical treatment of the language of science, with special emphasis on the meaning variance of scientific terms and the comparison of alternative theories. These themes are dealt with via discussion of the topics of: (a) the logical positivist principle of verifiability and the problem of the meaning of theoretical terms, (b) the postpositivist thesis of semantic incommensurability, and (c) the scientific realist response to incommensurability based on the causal theory (...) of reference. (shrink)

The paper discusses the sense in which the changes undergone by normative economics in the twentieth century can be said to be progressive. A simple criterion is proposed to decide whether a sequence of normative theories is progressive. This criterion is put to use on the historical transition from the new welfare economics to social choice theory. The paper reconstructs this classic case, and eventually concludes that the latter theory was progressive compared with the former. It also briefly comments on (...) the recent developments in normative economics and their connection with the previous two stages. (Published Online April 18 2006) Footnotes1 This paper suspersedes an earlier one entitled “Is There Progress in Normative Economics?” (Mongin 2002). I thank the organizers of the Fourth ESHET Conference (Graz 2000) for the opportunity they gave me to lecture on this topic. Thanks are also due to J. Alexander, K. Arrow, A. Bird, R. Bradley, M. Dascal, W. Gaertner, N. Gravel, D. Hausman, B. Hill, C. Howson, N. McClennen, A. Trannoy, J. Weymark, J. Worrall, two annonymous referees of this journal, and especially the editor M. Fleurbaey, for helpful comments. The editor's suggestions contributed to determine the final orientation of the paper. The author is grateful to the LSE and the Lachmann Foundation for their support at the time when he was writing the initial version. (shrink)

Darwinism designates a distinctive form of evolutionary explanation for the history and diversity of life on earth. Its original formulation is provided in the first edition of On the Origin of Species in 1859. This entry first formulates ‘Darwin's Darwinism’ in terms of five philosophically distinctive themes: (i) probability and chance, (ii) the nature, power and scope of selection, (iii) adaptation and teleology, (iv) nominalism vs. essentialism about species and (v) the tempo and mode of evolutionary change. Both Darwin and (...) his critics recognized that his approach to evolution was distinctive on each of these topics, and it remains true that, though Darwinism has developed in many ways unforeseen by Darwin, its proponents and critics continue to differentiate it from other approaches in evolutionary biology by focusing on these themes. This point is illustrated in the second half of the entry by looking at current debates in the philosophy of evolutionary biology on these five themes, with a special focus on Stephen Jay Gould's The Structure of Evolutionary Theory. (shrink)

Recognition that biological systems are stabilized far from equilibrium by self-organizing, informed, autocatalytic cycles and structures that dissipate unusable energy and matter has led to recent attempts to reformulate evolutionary theory. We hold that such insights are consistent with the broad development of the Darwinian Tradition and with the concept of natural selection. Biological systems are selected that re not only more efficient than competitors but also enhance the integrity of the web of energetic relations in which they are embedded. (...) But the expansion of the informational phase space, upon which selection acts, is also guaranteed by the properties of open informational-energetic systems. This provides a directionality and irreversibility to evolutionary processes that are not reflected in current theory.For this thermodynamically-based program to progress, we believe that biological information should not be treated in isolation from energy flows, and that the ecological perspective must be given descriptive and explanatory primacy. Levels of the ecological hierarchy are relational parts of ecological systems in which there are stable, informed patterns of energy flow and entropic dissipation. Isomorphies between developmental patterns and ecological succession are revealing because they suggest that much of the encoded metabolic information in biological systems is internalized ecological information. The geneological hierarchy, to the extent that its information content reflects internalized ecological information, can therefore be redescribed as an ecological hierarchy. (shrink)

The nature of the distinction between rational andnon-rational accounts of the development of science isanalyzed. These two kinds of accounts differ mostlyin the status which they give to methodologicalprinciples. It is shown that there are severaldimensions with respect to which the status of suchprinciples can resemble more or less the kind ofstatus that a paradigmatic rational account would givethem. It is concluded that, under the most plausibledefinitions of a rational account, the extent to whicha philosophical account of scientific change isrational (...) is a matter of degree, and that there is nosuch clear distinction between the two kinds ofaccounts which some supporters of rational and ofnon-rational accounts have assumed to exist. (shrink)

An interdisciplinary fusion between the philosophy of science and the teaching of science can help to eradicate the disciplinary rigidity entrenched in both. In this paper I approach the history of sciencethematically, identifying general themes which transcend the boundaries of individual disciplines. Such conceptual themes can be used as a basis for an interdisciplinary introduction to university science, encouraging certain important cognitive skills not exercised during the disciplinary training emphasised in traditional approaches. Courses which teach themes such as conservation, randomness, (...) and holism/reductionism have already proved successful, and these innovations should encourage philosophers and historians to explore the exciting new possibilities which arise from stepping outside the confines of a single discipline. (shrink)

The paper introduces a special issue of the journal Philosophical Problems in Science (ZFN) on the topic of the nature and norms of scientific explanation.

Historically left to the margins, the topics of imagination and creativity have gained prominence in philosophy of science, challenging the once dominant distinction between ‘context of discovery’ and ‘context of justification’. The aim of this chapter is to explore imagination and creativity starting from issues within contemporary philosophy of science, making connections to these topics in other domains along the way. It discusses the recent literature on the role of imagination in models and thought experiments, and their comparison with fictions. (...) It then turns to the importance of constraints on imaginings in the scientific domain, as well as whether constraints can hinder creativity. The second part of the paper focuses on the social dimensions of science. It considers imagination and creativity of scientific communities, asks whether the institution of science promotes creativity (and whether we want it to) or if it encourages conservativeness, and ends with a reflection on the politics of imagination and creativity in science. (shrink)

This chapter wades into the growing discussion surrounding embodied cognition and predictive processing. After surveying a recent debate between Jakob Hohwy and Andy Clark, it articulates two outstanding issues facing discussions of compatibility. It argues that headway on these issues can be made by drawing on the resources of philosophy of science.

According to Kuhn's speciation analogy, scientific specialisation is fundamentally analogous to biological speciation. In this paper, we extend Kuhn's original language-centred formulation of the speciation analogy, to account for episodes of scientific specialisation centred around methodological differences. Building upon recent views in evolutionary biology about the process of speciation by genetic divergence, we will show how these methodology-centred episodes of scientific specialisation can be understood as cases of specialisation driven by value divergence. We will apply our model of specialisation by (...) value divergence to an episode of methodology-centred scientific specialisation: the emergence of molecular biology. (shrink)

This paper aims to develop an account of the pursuitworthiness of models based on a view of models as epistemic tools. This paper is motivated by the historical question of why, in the 1960s, when many scientists hardly found QSAR models attractive, some pharmaceutical scientists pursued Quantitative Structure–Activity Relationship (QSAR) models despite the lack of potential for theoretical development or empirical success. This paper addresses this question by focusing on how models perform their heuristic functions as epistemic tools rather than (...) as potential theories. I argue that models perform their heuristic function by “constructing” phenomena from data in the sense that they allow the model users who interact with the medium of the models to recognise the phenomena as such. The constructed phenomena assist model users in identifying which conditional hypotheses that are focused on low-level regularities concerning entities such as chemical compounds are more “testworthy,” a concept that links the costs associated with hypothesis testing with the fertility of the hypothesis. (shrink)

Some philosophers search for the mark of the cognitive: a set of individually necessary and jointly sufficient conditions identifying all instances of cognition. They claim that the mark of the cognitive is needed to steer the development of cognitive science on the right path. Here, I argue that, at least at present, it cannot be provided. First (§2), I identify some of the factors motivating the search for a mark of the cognitive, each yielding a desideratum the mark is supposed (...) to satisfy (§2.1). I then (§2.2) highlight a number of tensions in the literature on the mark of the cognitive, suggesting they’re best resolved by distinguishing two distinct programs. The first program (§3) is that of identifying a mark of the cognitive capturing our everyday notion of cognition. I argue that such a program is bound to fail for a number of reasons: it is not clear whether such an everyday notion exists; and even if it existed, it would not be able to spell out individually necessary and jointly sufficient conditions for cognition; and even if it were able to spell them out, these conditions won’t satisfy the desiderata a mark of the cognitive should satisfy. The second program is that of identifying a mark of the cognitive spelling out a genuine scientific kind. But the current state of fragmentation of cognitive science, and the fact that it is splintered in a myriad of different research traditions, prevent us from identifying such a kind. And we have no reason to think that these various research traditions will converge, allowing us to identify a single mark. Or so, at least, I will argue in (§4). I then conclude the paper (§5) deflecting an intuitive objection, and exploring some of the consequences of the thesis I have defended. (shrink)

Intellectual courage requires acting to promote epistemic goods despite significant risk of harm. Courage is distinguished from recklessness and cowardice because the expected epistemic benefit of a courageous action outweighs (in some sense) the threatened harm. Sometimes, however, inquirers pursue theories that are not best supported by their current evidence. For these inquirers, the expected epistemic benefit of their actions cannot be explained by appeal to their evidence alone. The probability of pursuing the true theory cannot contribute enough to the (...) expected epistemic benefit for the action to count as courageous rather than reckless. Thus, there must be some other epistemic consideration which favors their action, besides evidence for their theory. I argue that the proper account of intellectual courage requires recognition of inquisitive reasons: a distinct category of epistemic reasons which concern successful inquiry. This category includes reasons to think a theory itself is promising, e.g., that the theory suggests potentially fruitful new research. It also includes social epistemic reasons, e.g., that pursuing a theory will improve the distribution of cognitive labor. Inquisitive reasons help explain why researchers who pursue improbable theories count as intellectually courageous, rather than reckless. The expected epistemic benefit of an action is partially determined by the inquisitive reasons in its favor. On my account, intellectually courageous inquiry requires acting in a way that is sensitive to inquisitive reasons. (shrink)

One of the critical issues in the philosophy of science is to understand scientific knowledge. This paper proposes a novel approach to the study of reflection on science, called “cognitive metascience”. In particular, it offers a new understanding of scientific knowledge as constituted by various kinds of scientific representations, framed as cognitive artifacts. It introduces a novel functional taxonomy of cognitive artifacts prevalent in scientific practice, covering a huge diversity of their formats, vehicles, and functions. As a consequence, toolboxes, conceptual (...) frameworks, theories, models, and individual hypotheses can be understood as artifacts supporting our cognitive performance. It is also shown that by empirically studying how artifacts function, we may discover hitherto undiscussed virtues and vices of these scientific representations. This paper relies on the use of language technology to analyze scientific discourse empirically, which allows us to uncover the metascientific views of researchers. This, in turn, can become part of normative considerations concerning virtues and vices of cognitive artifacts. (shrink)

Philosophers of science have in recent years become increasingly interested in the notion of interdisciplinarity. One important form interdisciplinarity can take is that of a dynamic exchange of problems and solutions between disciplines—what has recently been called problem-feeding. On this model problems arising within specific disciplines are sometimes solved more effectively by, or in collaboration with, other disciplines. In this paper we explore this model as a framework for thinking about, and actively structuring, interdisciplinary research. We point to the applicability (...) of the problem-feeding model, and to some of the prerequisites of problem-feeding interdisciplinarity, highlighting in particular the harmonisation of goals and the establishment of mutual trust between disciplines. (shrink)

Why are there so many controversies in evolutionary psychology? Using a couple of concepts from philosophy of science, this paper argues that evolutionary psychology has not reached the stage of mature, normal science, since it does not currently have a unifying research program that guides individual scientists working in the discipline. The argument goes against claims made by certain proponents and opponents of evolutionary psychology, and it is supported by discussion of several examples. The paper notes that just because evolutionary (...) psychology has not reached the stage of normal science, the discipline is nevertheless a source of many progressive theoretical developments and interesting empirical discoveries. (shrink)

Predictive processing (PP) and embodied cognition (EC) have emerged as two influential approaches within cognitive science in recent years. Not only have PP and EC been heralded as “revolutions” and “paradigm shifts” but they have motivated a number of new and interesting areas of research. This has prompted some to wonder how compatible the two views might be. This paper looks to weigh in on the issue of PP-EC compatibility. After outlining two recent proposals, I argue that further clarity can (...) be achieved on the issue by considering a model of scientific progress. Specifically, I suggest that Larry Laudan’s “problem solving model” can provide important insights into a number of outstanding challenges that face existing accounts of PP-EC compatibility. I conclude by outlining additional implications of the problem solving model for PP and EC more generally. (shrink)

Despite continued attention, finding adequate criteria for distinguishing “good” from “bad” scholarly journals remains an elusive goal. In this essay, I propose a solution informed by the work of Imre Lakatos and his methodology of scientific research programmes (MSRP). I begin by reviewing several notable attempts at appraising journal quality – focusing primarily on the impact factor and development of journal blacklists and whitelists. In doing so, I note their limitations and link their overarching goals to those found within the (...) philosophy of science. I argue that Lakatos’s MSRP and specifically his classifications of “progressive” and “degenerative” research programmes can be analogized and repurposed for the evaluation of scholarly journals. I argue that this alternative framework resolves some of the limitations discussed above and offers a more considered evaluation of journal quality – one that helps account for the historical evolution of journal-level publication practices and attendant contributions to the growth (or stunting) of scholarly knowledge. By doing so, the seeming problem of journal demarcation is diminished. In the process I utilize two novel tools (the mistake index and scite index) to further illustrate and operationalize aspects of the MSRP. (shrink)

The predictive processing account of action, cognition, and perception is one of the most influential approaches to unifying research in cognitive science. However, its promises of grand unification will remain unfulfilled unless the account becomes theoretically robust. In this paper, we focus on empirical commitments of PP, since they are necessary both for its theoretical status to be established and for explanations of individual phenomena to be falsifiable. First, we argue that PP is a varied research tradition, which may employ (...) various kinds of scientific representations, differing in the scope of empirical commitments they entail. Two major perspectives on PP qua cognitive theory may then be distinguished: generalized vs. hierarchical. The first one fails to provide empirical detail, and the latter constrains possible physical implementations. However, we show that even hierarchical PP is insufficiently restrictive to disallow incorrect models and may be adjusted to explain any neurocognitive phenomenon–including non-existent or impossible ones–through flexible adjustments. This renders PP a universal modeling tool with an unrestricted number of degrees of freedom. Therefore, in contrast with declarations of its proponents, it should not be understood as a unifying theoretical perspective, but as a computational framework, possibly informing further theory development in cognitive science. (shrink)

This paper contributes to the ongoing reassessment of the controversy between William Bateson and Karl Pearson by characterising what we call “Batesonian Mendelism” and “Pearsonian biometry” as coherent and competing scientific outlooks. Contrary to the thesis that such a controversy stemmed from diverging theoretical commitments on the nature of heredity and evolution, we argue that Pearson’s and Bateson’s alternative views on those processes ultimately relied on different appraisals of the methodological value of the statistical apparatus developed by Francis Galton. Accordingly, (...) we contend that Bateson’s belief in the primacy of cross-breeding experiments over statistical analysis constituted a minimal methodological unifying condition ensuring the internal coherence of Batesonian Mendelism. Moreover, this same belief implied a view of the study of heredity and evolution as an experimental endeavour and a conception of heredity and evolution as fundamentally discontinuous processes. Similarly, we identify a minimal methodological unifying condition for Pearsonian biometry, which we characterise as the view that experimental methods had to be subordinate to statistical analysis, according to methodological standards set by biometrical research. This other methodological commitment entailed conceiving the study of heredity and evolution as subsumable under biometry and primed Pearson to regard discontinuous hereditary and evolutionary processes as exceptions to a statistical norm. Finally, we conclude that Batesonian Mendelism and Pearsonian biometry represented two potential versions of a single genetics-based evolutionary synthesis since the methodological principles and the phenomena that played a central role in the former were also acknowledged by the latter—albeit as fringe cases—and conversely. (shrink)

Developing tools is a crucial aspect of experimental practice, yet most discussions of scientific change traditionally emphasize theoretical over technological change. To elaborate on the role of tools in scientific change, I offer an account that shows how scientists use tools in exploratory experiments to form novel concepts. I apply this account to two cases in neuroscience and show how tool development and concept formation are often intertwined in episodes of tool-driven change. I support this view by proposing common normative (...) principles that specify when exploratory concept formation and tool development succeed to initiate scientific change. (shrink)

Scientific revolution has been one of the most controversial topics in the history and philosophy of science. Yet it has been no consensus on what is the best unit of analysis in the historiography of scientific revolutions. Nor is there a consensus on what best explains the nature of scientific revolutions. This chapter provides a critical examination of the historiography of scientific revolutions. It begins with a brief introduction to the historical development of the concept of scientific revolution, followed by (...) an overview of the five main philosophical accounts of scientific revolutions. It then challenges two historiographical assumptions of the philosophical analyses of scientific revolutions. (shrink)

Our scientific theories, like our cognitive structures in general, consist of propositions linked by evidential, explanatory, probabilistic, and logical connections. Those theoretical webs ‘impinge on the world at their edges,’ subject to a continuing barrage of incoming evidence. Our credences in the various elements of those structures change in response to that continuing barrage of evidence, as do the perceived connections between them. Here we model scientific theories as Bayesian nets, with credences at nodes and conditional links between them modelled (...) as conditional probabilities. We update those networks, in terms of both credences at nodes and conditional probabilities at links, through a temporal barrage of random incoming evidence. Robust patterns of punctuated equilibrium, suggestive of ‘normal science’ alternating with ‘paradigm shifts,’ emerge prominently in that change dynamics. The suggestion is that at least some of the phenomena at the core of the Kuhnian tradition are predictable in the typical dynamics of scientific theory change captured as Bayesian nets under even a random evidence barrage. (shrink)

Steve Fuller has replied to my critique of his endorsement of a post-truth epistemology. I trace the divergence in our approach to social epistemology by examining our distinct responses to the principle of symmetry in the sociology of scientific knowledge. Fuller has extended the concept of symmetry and challenged the field to embrace a post-truth condition that flattens the difference between experts and the public. By contrast, I have criticized the concept of symmetry for policing the field to rule ideology (...) critique out of court. I argue that a focus on post-truth populism obscures the role of counter-elites and ideologies that restrict political choice. A better way to promote democracy would be to support minority positions within science that promise to open up suppressed political possibilities and to seek the coordinated use of different disciplines to address significant public problems. (shrink)

In recent years, several philosophers have argued that their discipline makes no progress (or not enough in comparison to the “hard sciences”). A key argument for this pessimistic position appeals to the purported fact that philosophers widely and systematically disagree on most major philosophical issues. In this paper, we take a step back from the debate about progress in philosophy specifically and consider the general question: How (if at all) would disagreement within a discipline undermine that discipline’s progress? We reject (...) two arguments from disagreement to a lack of progress, and spell out two accounts of progress on which progress is compatible with disagreements that persist or increase over time. However, we also argue that disagreement can undermine our ability to tell which developments are progressive (and to what degree). So, while disagreement can indeed be a threat to progress, the precise nature of the threat has not been appreciated. (shrink)

Scientific progress is a hot topic in the philosophy of science. However, as yet we lack a comprehensive philosophical examination of scientific progress. First, the recent debate pays too much attention to the epistemic approach and the semantic approach. Shan’s new functional approach and Dellsén’s noetic approach are still insufficiently assessed. Second, there is little in-depth analysis of the progress in the history of the sciences. Third, many related philosophical issues are still to be explored. For example, what are the (...) implications of scientific progress for the scientific realism/antirealism debate? Is the incommensurability thesis a challenge to scientific progress? What role does aesthetic values play in scientific progress? Does idealisation impede scientific progress? This book fills this gap. It offers a new assessment of the four main approaches to scientific progress (Part I). It also features eight historical case studies to investigate the notion of progress in different disciplines: physics, chemistry, evolutionary biology, seismology, psychology, sociology, economics, and medicine respectively (Part II). It discusses some issues related to scientific progress: scientific realism, incommensurability, values in science, idealisation, scientific speculation, interdisciplinarity, and scientific perspectivalism (Part III). (shrink)

The functional approach to scientific progress has been mainly developed by Kuhn, Lakatos, Popper, Laudan, and more recently by Shan. The basic idea is that science progresses if key functions of science are fulfilled in a better way. This chapter defends the function approach. It begins with an overview of the two old versions of the functional approach by examining the work of Kuhn, Laudan, Popper, and Lakatos. It then argues for Shan’s new functional approach, in which scientific progress is (...) defined as an increase of usefulness of exemplary practices. (shrink)

The approach to issues such as good and evil from philosophy leads us to specify what is understood by ethics and morals. Canonically, ethics is a branch of philosophy that studies and systematizes these concepts and aims to rationally define what constitutes a good or virtuous act, regardless of the culture in which it is framed. Morality is defined as the set of norms that govern the behavior of people who are part of a given society, thus contributing to the (...) maintenance of stability and social structure. Based on these definitions, naturalization consists of seeking foundations in the empirical sciences to justify moral principles. The objective of this work is to see to what extent science can contribute knowledge that supports ethics and moral principles, a project based on the naturalization of philosophy, questioning any apriorism that ignores science. First, the naturalizing program and its main variants in philosophy will be examined. Second, two proposals from the philosophy of science that can be framed in naturalism will be analyzed, namely: Philip Kitcher and Patricia S. Churchland. Next, some of the main theses that provide scientific explanation of human behavior from the point of view of moral virtues will be addressed. (shrink)

Sometimes inquirers may rationally pursue a theory even when the available evidence does not favor that theory over others. Features of a theory that favor pursuing it are known as considerations of promise or pursuitworthiness. Examples of such reasons include that a theory is testable, that it has a useful associated analogy, and that it suggests new research and experiments. These reasons need not be evidence in favor of the theory. This raises the question: what kinds of reasons are provided (...) by pursuitworthiness considerations? Are they epistemic reasons or practical reasons? I argue that pursuitworthiness considerations are a kind of non-evidential epistemic reason, which I call an inquisitive reason. In support of this, I first point out two important similarities between the traditional pursuitworthiness considerations discussed in philosophy of science, which I call promise reasons, and certain social epistemic reasons that I call social inquisitive reasons. Specifically, both kinds of reason (1) favor pursuing a theory in a non-evidential way, and (2) concern promoting successful inquiry. I then propose recognition of a new category of normative reason: inquisitive reasons. This category contains both promise and social inquisitive reasons. Finally, I argue that inquisitive reasons share three essential features with previously recognized epistemic reasons: a connection to epistemic aims, explanatory independence, and the presence of a specific right-kind/wrong-kind reasons distinction. Each of these features have been used to argue that evidence should be treated as part of a distinct, independent domain of epistemic normativity. Since inquisitive reasons share these features, they too should be considered part of this independent epistemic domain. Thus, inquisitive reasons, including pursuitworthiness considerations, are epistemic reasons. (shrink)

The demarcation between science and pseudoscience is a long-standing problem in philosophy of science. Although philosophers have been hesitant to engage in this project since Larry Laudan announce...

In this article, I will provide a critical overview of the form of non-deductive reasoning commonly known as “Inference to the Best Explanation” (IBE). Roughly speaking, according to IBE, we ought to infer the hypothesis that provides the best explanation of our evidence. In section 2, I survey some contemporary formulations of IBE and highlight some of its putative applications. In section 3, I distinguish IBE from C.S. Peirce’s notion of abduction. After underlining some of the essential elements of IBE, (...) the rest of the entry is organized around an examination of various problems that IBE confronts, along with some extant attempts to address these problems. In section 4, I consider the question of when a fact requires an explanation, since presumably IBE applies only in cases where some explanation is called for. In section 5, I consider the difficult question of how we ought to understand IBE in light of the fact that among philosophers, there is significant disagreement about what constitutes an explanation. In section 6, I consider different strategies for justifying the truth-conduciveness of the explanatory virtues, e.g., simplicity, unification, scope, etc., criteria which play an indispensable role in any given application of IBE. In section 7, I survey some of the most recent literature on IBE, much of which consists of investigations of the status of IBE from the standpoint of the Bayesian philosophy of science. (shrink)

Contemporary debate surrounding the nature of scientific progress has focused upon the precise role played by justification, with two realist accounts having dominated proceedings. Recently, however, a third realist account has been put forward, one which offers no role for justification at all. According to Finnur Dellsén’s (Stud Hist Philos Sci Part A 56:72–83, 2016) noetic account, science progresses when understanding increases, that is, when scientists grasp how to correctly explain or predict more aspects of the world that they could (...) before. In this paper, we argue that the noetic account is severely undermotivated. Dellsén provides three examples intended to show that understanding can increase absent the justification required for true belief to constitute knowledge. However, we demonstrate that a lack of clarity in each case allows for two contrasting interpretations, neither of which serves its intended purpose. On the first, the agent involved lacks both knowledge and understanding; and, on the second, the agent involved successfully gains both knowledge and understanding. While neither interpretation supports Dellsén’s claim that understanding can be prised apart from knowledge, we argue that, in general, agents in such cases ought to be attributed neither knowledge nor understanding. Given that the separability of knowledge and understanding is a necessary component of the noetic account, we conclude that there is little support for the idea that science progresses through increasing understanding rather than the accumulation of knowledge. (shrink)

The idea of ‘reversion’ or ‘atavism’ has a peculiar history. For many authors in the latenineteenth and early-twentieth centuries – including Darwin, Galton, Pearson, Weismann, and Spencer, among others – reversion was one of the central phenomena which a theory of heredity ought to explain. By only a few decades later, however, Fisher and others could look back upon reversion as a historical curiosity, a non-problem, or even an impediment to clear theorizing. I explore various reasons that reversion might have (...) appeared to be a central problem for this first group of figures, focusing on their commitment to a variety of conceptual features of evolutionary theory; discuss why reversion might have then ceased to be an interesting phenomenon; and, finally, close with some more general thoughts about the death of scientific problems. (shrink)

Criticism is a staple of the scientific enterprise and of the social epistemology of science. Philosophical discussions of criticism have traditionally focused on its roles in relation to objectivity, confirmation, and theory choice. However, attention to criticism and to criticizability should also inform our thinking about scientific pursuits: the allocation of resources with the aim of developing scientific tools and ideas. In this paper, we offer an account of scientific pursuitworthiness which takes criticizability as its starting point. We call this (...) the apokritic model of pursuit. Its core ideas are that pursuits are practices governed by norms for asking and answering questions, and that criticism arises from the breach of these norms. We illustrate and advertise our approach using examples from institutional grant review, neuroscience, and sociology. We show that the apokritic model can unify several indices of criticizability, that it can account for the importance of criticizing pursuits in scientific practice, and that it can offer ameliorative advice to erstwhile pursuers. (shrink)

The problem of fair machine learning has drawn much attention over the last few years and the bulk of offered solutions are, in principle, empirical. However, algorithmic fairness also raises important conceptual issues that would fail to be addressed if one relies entirely on empirical considerations. Herein, I will argue that the current debate has developed an empirical framework that has brought important contributions to the development of algorithmic decision-making, such as new techniques to discover and prevent discrimination, additional assessment (...) criteria, and analyses of the interaction between fairness and predictive accuracy. However, the same framework has also suggested higher-order issues regarding the translation of fairness into metrics and quantifiable trade-offs. Although the tools which have been developed so far are essential to address discrimination encoded in data and algorithms, their integration into society elicits key questions such as: What kind of assumptions and decisions underlies the empirical framework? How do the results of the empirical approach penetrate public debate? What kind of reflection and deliberation should stakeholders have over available fairness metrics? I will outline the empirical approach to fair machine learning, i.e. how the problem is framed and addressed, and suggest that there are important non-empirical issues that should be tackled. While this work will focus on the problem of algorithmic fairness, the lesson can extend to other conceptual problems in the analysis of algorithmic decision-making such as privacy and explainability. (shrink)

William Whewell’s 19th century philosophy of science is sometimes glossed over as a footnote to Kant. There is however a key feature of Whewell’s account worth noting. This is his appeal to Aristotle’s form/matter hylomorphism as a metaphor to explain how mind and world merge in successful scientific inquiry. Whewell’s hylomorphism suggests a middle way between rationalism and empiricism reminiscent of experience pragmatists like Steven Levine’s view that mind and world are entwined in experience. I argue however that Levine does (...) not adequately explain exactly how mind and world entwine. He could nonetheless do so if he appealed to Whewell’s hylomorphic metaphor. We may prefer a reductive metaphysical explanation, but I suggest that pragmatists only have recourse to metaphor in this case. Both reductive and metaphorical explanations can enjoy great explanatory power if they exhibit a suitable measure of what I will call sematic distance. Semantic distance measures how close or how far apart explanandum and explanans are from each other in meaning. Metaphorical explanation - as evident in Whewell’s hylomorphism and as detailed via the notion of semantic distance - presents a valuable new explanatory tool to those who hold that mind and world are entwined sans recourse to metaphysics. (shrink)

This book develops a naturalistic aesthetic theory that accounts for aesthetic phenomena in mathematics in the same terms as it accounts for more traditional aesthetic phenomena. Building upon a view advanced by James McAllister, the assertion is that beauty in science does not confine itself to anecdotes or personal idiosyncrasies, but rather that it had played a role in shaping the development of science. Mathematicians often evaluate certain pieces of mathematics using words like beautiful, elegant, or even ugly. Such evaluations (...) are prevalent, however, rigorous investigation of them, of mathematical beauty, is much less common. The volume integrates the basic elements of aesthetics, as it has been developed over the last 200 years, with recent findings in neuropsychology as well as a good knowledge of mathematics. The volume begins with a discussion of the reasons to interpret mathematical beauty in a literal or non-literal fashion, which also serves to survey historical and contemporary approaches to mathematical beauty. The author concludes that literal approaches are much more coherent and fruitful, however, much is yet to be done. In this respect two chapters are devoted to the revision and improvement of McAllister’s theory of the role of beauty in science. These antecedents are used as a foundation to formulate a naturalistic aesthetic theory. The central idea of the theory is that aesthetic phenomena should be seen as constituting a complex dynamical system which the author calls the aesthetic as process theory. The theory comprises explications of three central topics: aesthetic experience, aesthetic value and aesthetic judgment. The theory is applied in the final part of the volume and is used to account for the three most salient and often used aesthetic terms often used in mathematics: beautiful, elegant and ugly. This application of the theory serves to illustrate the theory in action, but also to further discuss and develop some details and to showcase the theory’s explanatory capabilities. (shrink)