Evolutionary developmental biology (Evo-devo) is a vibrant area of contemporary life science that should be (and is) increasingly incorporated into teaching curricula. Although the inclusion of this content is important for biological pedagogy at multiple levels of instruction, there are also philosophical lessons that can be drawn from the scientific practices found in Evo-devo. One feature of particular significance is the interdisciplinary nature of Evo-devo investigations and their resulting explanations. Instead of a single disciplinary approach being the most explanatory or (...) fundamental, different methodologies from biological disciplines must be synthesized to generate empirically adequate explanations. Thus, Evo-devo points toward a non-reductionist epistemology in biology. I review three areas where these synthetic efforts become manifest as a result of Evo-devo’s practices (form versus function reasoning styles; problem-structured investigations; idealizations related to studying model organisms), and then sketch some possible applications to teaching biology. These philosophical considerations provide resources for life science educators to address (and challenge) key aspects of the National Science Education Standards and Benchmarks for Scientific Literacy. (shrink)

This paper supports the literature which argues that derivational robustness can have epistemic import in highly idealized economic models. The defense is based on a particular example from mathematical economic theory, the dynamic Walrasian general equilibrium model. It is argued that derivational robustness first increased and later decreased the credibility of the Walrasian model. The example demonstrates that derivational robustness correctly describes the practices of a particular group of influential economic theorists and provides support for the arguments of philosophers who (...) have offered a general epistemic justification of such practices. (shrink)

In this paper we assess the explanatory role of idealizations in ‘design explanations’, a type of functional explanation used in biology. In design explanations, idealizations highlight which factors make a difference to phenomena to be explained: hypothetical, idealized, organisms are invoked to make salient which traits of extant organisms make a difference to organismal fitness. This result negates the view that idealizations serve only pragmatic benefits, and complements the view that idealizations highlight factors that do not make a difference. This (...) analysis in particular strengthens the perspective that idealizations are means to highlight difference making factors, and identifies a novel, more direct role for idealizations in doing so. It thus offers a novel argument why in some explanatory contexts idealizations are in-eliminable. (shrink)

Karl Popper (2002) once instructed a group of physics students to carefully write down what they observed. Popper relates that the students asked what he wanted them to observe and said that the sole instruction to “observe” was absurd. This story motivated Popper’s claim that, especially in science: Observation is always selective. It needs a chosen object, a definite task, an interest, a point of view, a problem. And its description presupposes a descriptive language . . . , which in (...) its turn presupposes interests, points of view, and problems. (2002, p. 62) In Discovering the Human Connectome, the problem is how the brain works, and from Olaf Sporns’ point of view, the brain can be understood as a network (p. ix). One of Sporns’ main goals in his previous book (2011) was to introduce neuroscientists to the theory and methods of network science. That book was Sporns’ attempt to answer the “how?” questions of integrating the methods of network science with neuroscience. The current book builds on the previous one and attempts to answer more theoretical questions such as why network science is an appropriate framework for investigating the brain. (shrink)

Recent efforts to argue that nonepistemic values have a legitimate role to play in assessing scientific models, theories, and hypotheses typically either reject the distinction between epistemic and nonepistemic values or incorporate nonepistemic values only as a secondary consideration for resolving epistemic uncertainty. Given that scientific representations can legitimately be evaluated not only based on their fit with the world but also with respect to their fit with the needs of their users, we show in two case studies that nonepistemic (...) values can play a legitimate role as factors that override epistemic considerations in assessing scientific representations for practical purposes. (shrink)

In a recent paper, Kaplan (Synthese 183:339–373, 2011) takes up the task of extending Craver’s (Explaining the brain, 2007) mechanistic account of explanation in neuroscience to the new territory of computational neuroscience. He presents the model to mechanism mapping (3M) criterion as a condition for a model’s explanatory adequacy. This mechanistic approach is intended to replace earlier accounts which posited a level of computational analysis conceived as distinct and autonomous from underlying mechanistic details. In this paper I discuss work in (...) computational neuroscience that creates difficulties for the mechanist project. Carandini and Heeger (Nat Rev Neurosci 13:51–62, 2012) propose that many neural response properties can be understood in terms of canonical neural computations. These are “standard computational modules that apply the same fundamental operations in a variety of contexts.” Importantly, these computations can have numerous biophysical realisations, and so straightforward examination of the mechanisms underlying these computations carries little explanatory weight. Through a comparison between this modelling approach and minimal models in other branches of science, I argue that computational neuroscience frequently employs a distinct explanatory style, namely, efficient coding explanation. Such explanations cannot be assimilated into the mechanistic framework but do bear interesting similarities with evolutionary and optimality explanations elsewhere in biology. (shrink)

La réflexion philosophique sur la non-existence est une thématique qui a été abordée au commencement même de la philosophie et qui suscite, depuis la publication en 1905 de « On Denoting » par Russell, les plus vifs débats en philosophie analytique. Cependant, le débat féroce sur la sémantique des noms propres et des descriptions définies qui surgirent suite à la publication du « On Referring » par Strawson en 1950 n’engagea pas d’étude systématique de la sémantique des fictions. En fait, (...) le développement systématique d’un lien qui articule approches logiques, philosophiques et littéraires de la fiction devait attendre les travaux de John Woods publiés en 1974 dans son livre The Logic of Fiction : A Philosophical Sounding of Deviant Logic. Un des enjeux les plus excitants du livre de Woods se situe au niveau de l’interaction entre les points de vue internalistes ou interne-à-l’histoire (principalement pragmatiques) et les points de vue externalistes ou externe-à-la-fiction (principalement sémantiques). Sur ce point, Woods fut le premier à formuler une sémantique pour l’opérateur de fiction à lire comme « selon l’histoire… » en relation à la notion logique de portée, ce qui permettait l’étude de l’internalisme et de l’externalisme. Suite au livre de Woods, loin de s’essouffler, les débats trouvaient une nouvelle impulsion. Le fait pertinent pour notre article est que la tradition phénoménologique également, l’étude de la fiction a joué un rôle central. En effet, l’une des problématiques les plus sujettes à controverses dans l’intentionnalité est celle de l’indépendance à l’existence, c’est-à-dire le fait que les actes intentionnels n’ont pas besoin d’être forcément dirigés vers un objet existant. Influencée par les travaux de Roman Ingarden (1893-1970), l’un des plus importants disciples de Husserl, Amie L. Thomasson développe le concept phénoménologique de dépendance ontologique en vue d’expliquer les processus de références inter- et transfictionnels – dans le contexte de l’interprétation littéraire par exemple. L’enjeu essentiel de cet article est de proposer une reconstruction multimodale bi-dimensionnelle de la théorie des personnages fictionnels de Ingarden-Thomasson. Cette théorie qui entend prendre au sérieux le fait que les fictions sont des créations montre la voie pour une articulation entre les approches internalistes et externalistes. Nous motivons certains changements quant à l’approche artéfactuelle - incluant une sémantique appropriée pour l’opérateur de fictionalité qui, nous l’espérons, éveillera l’intérêt des théoriciens de la littérature. L’article est à d’autres égards un panorama de la façon dont différents concepts d’intentionnalité pourraient fonder différentes sémantiques formelles pour la fictionalité. Nous proposerons enfin un cadre dialogique qui est une extension modale d’un certain système de preuve développé par Matthieu Fontaine et Juan Redmond. Le cadre dialogique développe la contrepartie inférentielle de la sémantique bi-dimensionnelle introduite par Shahid Rahman et Tero Tulenheimo dans un article récent. (shrink)

Phylogenetic trees are meant to represent the genealogical history of life and apparently derive their justification from the existence of the tree of life and the fact that evolutionary processes are treelike. However, there are a number of problems for these assumptions. Here it is argued that once we understand the important role that phylogenetic trees play as models that contain idealizations, we can accept these criticisms and deny the reality of the tree while justifying the continued use of trees (...) in phylogenetic theory and preserving nearly all of what defenders of trees have called the “importance of tree thinking.”. (shrink)

This paper distinguishes between causal isolation robustness analysis and independent determination robustness analysis and suggests that the triangulation of the results of different epistemic means or activities serves different functions in them. Circadian clock research is presented as a case of causal isolation robustness analysis: in this field researchers made use of the notion of robustness to isolate the assumed mechanism behind the circadian rhythm. However, in contrast to the earlier philosophical case studies on causal isolation robustness analysis (Weisberg and (...) Reisman in Philos Sci 75:106–131, 2008 ; Kuorikoski et al. in Br J Philos Sci 61:541–567, 2010 ), robustness analysis in the circadian clock research did not remain in the level of mathematical modeling, but it combined it with experimentation on model organisms and a new type of model, a synthetic model. (shrink)

This PhD thesis focuses on the philosophical foundations of Neuroeconomics, an innovative research program which combines findings and modelling tools from economics, psychology and neuroscience to account for human choice behaviour. The proponents of Neuroeconomics often manifest the ambition to foster radical modifications in the accounts of choice behaviour developed by its parent disciplines. This enquiry provides a philosophically informed appraisal of the potential for success and the relevance of neuroeconomic research for economics. My central claim is that neuroeconomists can (...) help other economists to build more predictive and explanatory models, yet are unlikely to foster revolutionary modifications in the economic theory of choice. The contents are organized as follows. In chapters 1-2, I present neuroeconomists’ investigative tools, distinguish the most influential approaches to neuroeconomic research and reconstruct the case in favour of a neural enrichment of economic theory. In chapters 3-7, I combine insights from neuro-psychology, economic methodology and philosophy of science to develop a systematic critique of Neuroeconomics. In particular, I articulate four lines of argument to demonstrate that economists are provisionally justified in retaining a methodologically distinctive approach to the modelling of decision making. My first argument points to several evidential and epistemological concerns which complicate the interpretation of neural data and cast doubt on the inferences neuroeconomists often make in their studies. My second argument aims to show that the trade-offs between the modelling desiderata that neuroeconomists and other economists respectively value severely constrain the incorporation of neural insights into economic models. My third argument questions neuroeconomists’ attempts to develop a unified theory of choice behaviour by identifying some central issues on which they hold contrasting positions. My fourth argument differentiates various senses of the term ‘revolution’ and illustrates that neuroeconomists are unlikely to provide revolutionary contributions to economic theory in any of these senses. (shrink)

Understanding modeling in biology requires understanding how biology is organized as a discipline and how this organization influences the research practices of biologists. Biology includes a wide range of sub-disciplines, such as cell biology, population biology, evolutionary biology, molecular biology, and systems biology among others. Biologists in sub-disciplines such as cell, molecular, and systems biology believe that the use of a few experimental models allows them to discover biological universals, whereas biologists in sub-disciplines such as ecology and evolutionary biology believe (...) that the use of many different experimental and mathematical models is necessary in order to do this. Many practitioners of both approaches misunderstand best practices of modeling, especially those related to model testing. We stress the need for biologists to better engage with best practices and for philosophers of biology providing normative guidance for biologists to better engage with current developments in biology. This is especially important as biology transitions from a “data-poor” to a “data-rich” discipline. If 21st century biology is going to capitalize on the unprecedented availability of ecological, evolutionary, and molecular data, of computational resources, and of mathematical and statistical tools, biologists will need a better understanding of what modeling is and can be. (shrink)

Resumen: La capacidad unificadora de una teoría científica es un rasgo usualmente contemplado a la hora de evaluar su adecuación. Kitcher ha elucidado satisfactoriamente tal noción mediante su enfoque de los patrones explicativos. Sin embargo, su perspectiva adolece de ciertas carencias. Concretamente, sostendremos que el requisito de rigurosidad de los patrones para evaluar la capacidad unificadora debe ser repensado, pues atenta contra la heterogeneidad característica de las diferentes aplicaciones de teorías unificadoras. A su vez, mostraremos cómo estas dificultades bien pueden (...) ser subsanadas desde el marco del estructuralismo metateórico sin por ello resignar ninguna de las acertadas intuiciones de Kitcher. -/- Palabras clave: Explicación, Kitcher, estructuralismo metateórico, unificación, unificación espuria. -/- Abstract: Kitcher has satisfactorily explicated unification using his particular approach to scientific explanation. However, we believe that his perspective has certain problems, which have been inherited by more recent approaches to the topic. Specifically, the requirement of stringency of patterns that Kitcher proposes to determine the unifying power of an explanatory pattern undermines the typical and peculiar heterogeneity we can find in different applications of unifying theories. We will show how this topic can be better addressed by the perspective built by metatheoretical structuralism without sacrificing any of Kitcher’s correct intuitions. -/- Keywords: Explanation, Kitcher, metatheoretical structuralism, spurious unification, unification. (shrink)

This article highlights a use of analogies in science that so far has received relatively little systematic discussion: providing reasons for pursuing a model or theory. Using the development of the liquid drop model as a test case, I critically assess two extant pursuit worthiness accounts: that analogies justify pursuit by supporting plausibility arguments and that analogies can serve as a guide to potential theoretical unification. Neither of these fit the liquid drop model case. Instead, I develop an alternative account, (...) based on the idea that analogies facilitate the transfer of a well-understood modelling strategy to a new domain. 1Introduction2Case Study: The Development of the Liquid Drop Model3Plausibility Accounts 3.1Bartha on plausibility and analogical inference3.2Plausibility and the drop analogy4Analogies as a Guide to Unification5Generative Accounts 5.1Analogy-based modelling strategies5.2Did analogies play a merely generative role?6A New Pursuit Worthiness Account of Analogies 6.1Transferring understanding-with through analogies6.2Understanding-with and the liquid drop model7Conclusion. (shrink)

While the fundamental laws of physics are time-reversal invariant, most macroscopic processes are irreversible. Given that the fundamental laws are taken to underpin all other processes, how can the fundamental time-symmetry be reconciled with the asymmetry manifest elsewhere? In statistical mechanics, progress can be made with this question. What I dub the ‘Zwanzig–Zeh–Wallace framework’ can be used to construct the irreversible equations of SM from the underlying microdynamics. Yet this framework uses coarse-graining, a procedure that has faced much criticism. I (...) focus on two objections in the literature: claims that coarse-graining makes time-asymmetry ‘illusory’ and ‘anthropocentric’. I argue that these objections arise from an unsatisfactory justification of coarse-graining prevalent in the literature, rather than from coarse-graining itself. This justification relies on the idea of measurement imprecision. By considering the role that abstraction and autonomy play, I provide an alternative justification and offer replies to the illusory and anthropocentric objections. Finally, I consider the broader consequences of this alternative justification: the connection to debates about inter-theoretic reduction and the implication that the time-asymmetry in SM is weakly emergent. 1Introduction 1.1Prospectus2The Zwanzig–Zeh–Wallace Framework3Why Does This Method Work? 3.1The special conditions account3.2When is a density forwards-compatible?4Anthropocentrism and Illusion: Two Objections 4.1The two objections in more detail4.2Against the justification by measurement imprecision5An Alternative Justification 5.1Abstraction and autonomy5.2An illustration: the Game of Life6Reply to Illusory7Reply to Anthropocentric8The Wider Landscape: Concluding Remarks 8.1Inter-theoretic relations8.2The nature of irreversibility. (shrink)

In a pioneering book, Philosophy of Microbiology, Maureen O’Malley argues for the philosophical importance of microbes through an examination of their impact on ecosystems, evolution, biological classification, collaborative behavior, and multicellular organisms. She identifies many understudied conceptual issues in the study of microbes. If philosophers follow her lead, the philosophy of biology will be expanded and enriched.

Relativism is often motivated in terms of certain types of disagreement. In this paper, we survey the philosophical debates over two such types: faultless disagreement in the case of gustatory conflict, and fundamental disagreement in the case of epistemic conflict. Each of the two discussions makes use of a implicit conception of judgement: brute judgement in the case of faultless disagreement, and rule-governed judgement in the case of fundamental disagreement. We show that the prevalent accounts work with unreasonably high levels (...) of idealization. We defend two claims. First, philosophical discussions of disagreement need to be de-idealized. Second, once a less idealized account of disagreement is available, both our conception of judgement and our understanding of relativism need to be revised. Our example is a case study in the Sociology of Scientific Knowledge: Steven Shapin and Simon Schaffer’s classic Leviathan and the Air-Pump. This case study gives a less idealized account of disagreement that conceptualizes judgements as situated. We argue that this conception can and should be applied to cases of gustatory and epistemic disagreement. The payoff will be a reformulation of relativism in terms of rationally resolvable yet contingent disagreements. (shrink)

This article examines three candidate cases of non-causal explanation in computational neuroscience. I argue that there are instances of efficient coding explanation that are strongly analogous to examples of non-causal explanation in physics and biology, as presented by Batterman, Woodward, and Lange. By integrating Lange’s and Woodward’s accounts, I offer a new way to elucidate the distinction between causal and non-causal explanation, and to address concerns about the explanatory sufficiency of non-mechanistic models in neuroscience. I also use this framework to (...) shed light on the dispute over the interpretation of dynamical models of the brain. _1_ Introduction _1.1_ Efficient coding explanation in computational neuroscience _1.2_ Defining non-causal explanation _2_ Case I: Hybrid Computation _3_ Case II: The Gabor Model Revisited _4_ Case III: A Dynamical Model of Prefrontal Cortex _4.1_ A new explanation of context-dependent computation _4.2_ Causal or non-causal? _5_ Causal and Non-causal: Does the Difference Matter? (shrink)

This paper addresses the methodological problem of analysing what it is to explain observed behaviours of engineered computing systems, focusing on the crucial role that abstraction and idealization play in explanations of both correct and incorrect BECS. First, it is argued that an understanding of explanatory requests about observed miscomputations crucially involves reference to the rich background afforded by hierarchies of functional specifications. Second, many explanations concerning incorrect BECS are found to abstract away from descriptions of physical components and processes (...) of computing systems that one finds below the logic circuit and gate layer of functional specification hierarchies. Third, model-based explanations of both correct and incorrect BECS that are provided in the framework of formal verification methods often involve idealizations. Moreover, a distinction between restrictive and permissive idealizations is introduced and their roles in BECS explanations are analysed. (shrink)

There have been recent disagreements in the philosophy of neuroscience regarding which sorts of scientific models provide mechanistic explanations, and which do not. These disagreements often hinge on two commonly adopted, but conflicting, ways of understanding mechanistic explanations: what I call the “representation-as” account, and the “representation-of” account. In this paper, I argue that neither account does justice to neuroscientific practice. In their place, I offer a new alternative that can defuse some of these disagreements. I argue that individual models (...) do not provide mechanistic explanations by themselves. Instead, individual models are always used to complement a huge body of background information and pre-existing models about the target system. With this in mind, I argue that mechanistic explanations are distributed across sets of different, and sometimes contradictory, scientific models. Each of these models contributes limited, but essential, information to the same mechanistic explanation, but none can be considered a mechanistic explanation in isolation of the others. (shrink)

In this paper I apply the mechanistic account of explanation to engineering science. I discuss two ways in which this extension offers further development of the mechanistic view. First, functional individuation of mechanisms in engineering science proceeds by means of two distinct sub types of role function, behavior function and effect function, rather than role function simpliciter. Second, it offers refined assessment of the explanatory power of mechanistic explanations. It is argued that in the context of malfunction explanations of technical (...) systems, two key desiderata for mechanistic explanations, ‘completeness and specificity’ and ‘abstraction’, pull in opposite directions. I elaborate a novel explanatory desideratum to accommodate this explanatory context, dubbed ‘local specificity and global abstraction’, and further argue that it also holds for mechanistic explanations of malfunctions in the biological domain. The overall result is empirically-informed understanding of mechanistic explanation in engineering science, thus contributing to the ongoing project of understanding mechanistic explanation in novel or relatively unexplored domains. I illustrate these claims in terms of reverse engineering and malfunction explanations in engineering science. (shrink)

Many criticisms of epistemic logic have centered around its use of devices such as idealized knowers with logical omniscience and perfect self-knowledge. One possible response to such criticisms is to say that these idealizations are normative devices, and that epistemic logic tells us how agents ought to behave. This paper will take a different approach, treating epistemic logic as descriptive, and drawing the analogy between its formal models and idealized scientific models on that basis. Treating it as descriptive matches the (...) way in which some philosophers, including one of its founders, Jaako Hintikka, have thought about epistemic logic early in its history. Further, the analogy between the two fields will give us a way to defuse criticisms that see epistemic logic as unrealistic. For example, criticizing models of epistemic logic in which agents know all propositional tautologies as being unrealistic would be like criticizing frictionless planes in physics for being unrealistic. Each one would certainly be an unsuitable model for studying some kinds of phenomena, but is entirely appropriate for others. After outlining the analogy between epistemic and scientific models, we will discuss some ways in which idealizations are used by different research programs in epistemic logic. (shrink)

Engineering is often said to be ‘scientific’, but the nature of knowledge in engineering is different to science. Engineering has a different ontological basis—its theories address different entities and are judged by different criteria. In this paper I use Popper’s three worlds ontological framework to propose a model of engineering theories, and provide an abstract logical view of engineering theories analogous to the deductive-nomological view of scientific theories. These models frame three key elements from definitions of engineering: requirements, designs of (...) artefacts, and theories for reasoning about how artefacts will meet requirements. In a subsequent paper I use this ontological basis to explore methodological issues in the growth of engineering knowledge from the perspective of critical rationalism. (shrink)

Despite the burgeoning interest in new and more complex accounts of the organism-environment dyad by biologists and philosophers, little attention has been paid in the resulting discussions to the history of these ideas and to their deployment in disciplines outside biology—especially in the social sciences. Even in biology and philosophy, there is a lack of detailed conceptual models of the organism-environment relationship. This volume is designed to fill these lacunae by providing the first multidisciplinary discussion of the topic of organism-environment (...) interaction. It brings together scholars from history, philosophy, psychology, anthropology, medicine, and biology to discuss the common focus of their work: entangled life, or the complex interaction of organisms and environments. (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 the recent literature at the interface between economics, biology and neuroscience, several authors argue that by adopting an interdisciplinary approach to the analysis of decision making, economists will be able to construct predictively and explanatorily superior models. However, most economists remain quite reluctant to import biological or neural insights into their account of choice behaviour. In this paper, I reconstruct and critique one of the main arguments by means of which economists attempt to vindicate their conservative position. Furthermore, I (...) develop an alternative defense of the thesis that economists justifiably rely on a methodologically distinctive approach to the modelling of choice behaviour. (shrink)

Biologists and economists use models to study complex systems. This similarity between these disciplines has led to an interesting development: the borrowing of various components of model-based theorizing between the two domains. A major recent example of this strategy is economists’ utilization of the resources of evolutionary biology in order to construct models of economic systems. This general strategy has come to be called evolutionary economics and has been a source of much debate among economists. Although philosophers have developed literatures (...) on the nature of models and modeling, the unique issues surrounding this kind of interdisciplinary model building have yet to be independently investigated. In this paper, we utilize evolutionary economics as a case study in the investigation of more general issues concerning interdisciplinary modeling. We begin by critiquing the distinctions currently used within the evolutionary economics literature and propose an alternative carving of the conceptual terrain. We then argue that the three types of evolutionary economics we distinguish capture distinctions that will be important whenever resources of model-based theorizing are borrowed across distinct scientific domains. Our analysis of these model-building strategies identifies several of the unique methodological and philosophical issues that confront interdisciplinary modeling. (shrink)

According to the multiple realization argument, mental states or processes can be realized in diverse and heterogeneous physical systems; and that fact implies that mental state or process kinds cannot be identified with particular kinds of physical states or processes. More specifically, mental processes cannot be identified with brain processes. Moreover, the argument provides a general model for the autonomy of the special sciences. The multiple realization argument is widely influential, but over the last thirty years it has also faced (...) serious objections. Despite those objections, most philosophers regard the fact of multiple realization and the cogency of the multiple realization argument as plainly correct. Why is that? What is it about the multiple realization argument that makes it so resilient? One reason is that the multiple realization argument is deeply intertwined with a view that minds are, in some sense, computational. But we argue that the sense in which minds are computational does not support the conclusion that they are ipso facto multiply realized. We argue that the sense in which brains compute does not imply that brains implement multiply realizable computational processes, and it does not provide a general model for the autonomy of the special sciences. (shrink)

Bruineberg and colleagues' critique of Friston blankets relies on what we call the “literalist fallacy”: the assumption that in order for Friston blankets to represent real boundaries, biological systems must literally possess or instantiate Markov blankets. We argue that it is important to distinguish a realist view of Friston blankets from the literalist view of Bruineberg and colleagues’ critique.

This paper has two aims. The first is critical: it argues that our mainstream epistemology of disagreement does not have the resources to explain what goes wrong in cases of group-level epistemic injustice. The second is positive: we argue that a functionalist account of group belief and group justification delivers an account of the epistemic peerhood relation between groups that accommodates minority and oppressed groups, and diagnoses the epistemic injustice cases correctly as cases of unwarranted belief on the part of (...) the oppressor group. (shrink)

Every model leaves out or distorts some factors that are causally connected to its target phenomenon -- the phenomenon that it seeks to predict or explain. If we want to make predictions, and we want to base decisions on those predictions, what is it safe to omit or to simplify, and what ought a causal model to describe fully and correctly? A schematic answer: the factors that matter are those that make a difference to the target phenomenon. There are several (...) ways to understand differencemaking. This paper advances a view as to which is the most relevant to the forecaster and the decision-maker. It turns out that the right notion of differencemaking for thinking about idealization in prediction is also the right notion for thinking about idealization in explanation; this suggests a carefully circumscribed version of Hempel's famous thesis that there is a symmetry between explanation and prediction. (shrink)

This thesis investigates the epistemological and metaphysical relations between chemistry and quantum mechanics. These relations are examined with respect to how chemistry and quantum mechanics each describe a single inert molecule. A review of how these relations are understood in the literature shows that there is a proliferation of positions which focus on how chemistry is separate from quantum mechanics. This proliferation is accompanied by a tendency within the philosophy of chemistry community to connect the legitimacy of the field with (...) the autonomy of chemistry. First, it is argued that this connection should not be made. Secondly, it is argued that chemistry and quantum mechanics are unified in accordance with Harold Kincaid’s model of non-reductive unity because the two theories exhibit particular epistemic and metaphysical interconnections. Thirdly, a metaphysical account is examined which is incompatible with Kincaid’s model of unity; namely strong emergence as understood by Robin Hendry. According to Hendry, the structure of a single inert molecule strongly emerges from its quantum mechanical entities in the sense that there is downward causation. However, Hendry’s defense of this account faces certain problems. Moreover, the putative empirical evidence for his understanding of strong emergence can be explained without invoking strong emergence. This is shown by considering how quantum mechanics assumes an idealized understanding of a molecule’s stability and structure. In the light of the philosophical literature on idealizations, this idealization can be interpreted in two different ways, both of which explain why quantum mechanics describes the structure of a single molecule the way it does, without assuming strong emergence in Hendry’s sense. Each interpretation has philosophical implications regarding the nature of chemical properties, and the relation of chemistry and quantum mechanics. These implications are consistent with Kincaid’s model of unity and thus further support chemistry’s unity with quantum mechanics (as per Kincaid). (shrink)

On standard accounts of scientific theorizing, the role of idealizations is to facilitate the analysis of some real world system by employing a simplified representation of the target system, raising the obvious worry about how reliable knowledge can be obtained from inaccurate descriptions. The idealizations involved in the Aharonov–Bohm effect do not, it is claimed, fit this paradigm; rather the target system is a fictional system characterized by features that, though physically possible, are not realized in the actual world. The (...) point of studying such a fictional system is to understand the foundations of quantum mechanics and how its predictions depart from those of classical mechanics. The original worry about the use of idealizations is replaced by a new one; namely, how can actual world experiments serve to confirm the AB effect if it concerns the behavior of a fictional system? Struggle with this issue helps to account for the fact that almost three decades elapsed before a consensus emerged that the predicted AB effect had received solid experimental support. Standard accounts of idealizations tout the role they play in making tractable the analysis of the target system; by contrast, the idealizations involved in the AB effect make its analysis both conceptually and mathematically challenging. The idealizations required for the AB effect are also responsible for the existence of unitarily inequivalent representations of the canonical commutation relations and of the current algebra, representations which an observer confined to the electron’s configuration space could invoke to ‘explain’ AB-type effect without the need to posit a hidden magnetic field. The goal of this paper is to bring to the attention of the philosophers of science these and other aspects of the AB effect which are neglected or inadequately treated in literature. (shrink)

Scientific models are used to predict and understand the target phenomena in the reality. The kind of epistemic relationship between the model and the reality is always regarded by most of the philosophers as a representational one. I argue that, complementary to this representational role, some of the scientific models have a constructive role to play in altering and reconstructing the reality in a physical way. I hold that the idealized model assumptions and elements bestow the constructive force of a (...) model on the reality. By recognizing the physical constructive force of some scientific models, the merit of these models could be judged by how successful they are in the reality construction, rather than by the traditional criterion of model-world representation. (shrink)

Because they contain idealizations, scientific models are often considered to be misrepresentations of their target systems. An important question is therefore how models can explain the behaviours of these systems. Most of the answers to this question are representationalist in nature. Proponents of this view are generally committed to the claim that models are explanatory if they represent their target systems to some degree of accuracy; in other words, they try to determine the conditions under which idealizations can be made (...) without jeopardizing the representational function of models. In this article, we first outline several forms of this representationalist view. We then argue that this view, in each of these forms, omits an important role of idealizations: that of facilitating the identification of the explanatory components within a model. Via examination of a case study from contemporary astrophysics, we show that one way in which idealizations can do this is by creating a comparison case that s... (shrink)

In this paper I argue, first, that ecologists have routinely treated humans—or more specifically, anthropogenic causal factors—as disturbing conditions. I define disturbing conditions as exogenous variables, variables “outside” a model, that when present in a target system, inhibit the applicability or accuracy of the model. This treatment is surprising given that humans play a dominant role in many ecosystems and definitions of ecology contain no fundamental distinction between human and natural. Second, I argue that the treatment of humans as disturbing (...) conditions is an idealization: since it is, and has long been, known that humans are pervasive, this treatment amounts to an intentionally introduced theoretical distortion. Finally, characterizing this treatment as idealization forces us to confront the question of its justification, and so, drawing on three different kinds of idealization, I evaluate how this treatment may be justified. (shrink)

Empirical agreement is often used as an important criterion when assessing the validity of scientific models. However, it is by no means a sufficient criterion as a model can be so adjusted as to fit available data even though it is based on hypotheses whose plausibility is known to be questionable. Our aim in this paper is to investigate into the uses of empirical agreement within the process of model validation.

This paper examines two recent approaches to the nature and functioning of economic models: models as isolating representations and models as credible constructions. The isolationist view conceives of economic models as surrogate systems that isolate some of the causal mechanisms or tendencies of their respective target systems, while the constructionist approach treats them rather like pure constructions or fictional entities that nevertheless license different kinds of inferences. I will argue that whereas the isolationist view is still tied to the representationalist (...) understanding of models that takes the model-target dyad as the basic unit of analysis, the constructionist perspective can better accommodate the way we actually acquire knowledge through them. Using the example of Tobin’s ultra-Keynesian model I will show how many of the epistemic characteristics of modelling tend to go unrecognised if too much focus is placed on the model-target dyad. (shrink)

This paper analyzes two ways idealized biological models produce factive scientific understanding. I then argue that models can provide factive scientific understanding of a phenomenon without providing an accurate representation of the features of their real-world target system. My analysis of these cases also suggests that the debate over scientific realism needs to investigate the factive scientific understanding produced by scientists’ use of idealized models rather than the accuracy of scientific models themselves.

Understanding the dynamics of information is crucial to many areas of research, both inside and outside of philosophy. Using computer simulations of three kinds of information, germs, genes, and memes, we show that the mechanism of information transfer often swamps network structure in terms of its effects on both the dynamics and the fitness of the information. This insight has both obvious and subtle implications for a number of questions in philosophy, including questions about the nature of information, whether there (...) is genetic information, and how to arrange scientific communities. (shrink)

In recent papers and a book, Heather Douglas has expanded on the well-known argument from inductive risk, thereby launching an influential contemporary critique of the value-free ideal for science. This paper distills Douglas’s critique into four major claims. The first three claims provide a significant challenge to the value-free ideal for science. However, the fourth claim, which delineates her positive proposal to regulate values in science by distinguishing direct and indirect roles for values, is ambiguous between two interpretations, and both (...) have weaknesses. Fortunately, two elements of Douglas’s work that have previously received much less emphasis provide resources for developing a more promising approach for regulating values in science. (shrink)

The multiple-models approach, which has its origins in Levins’s work, is gaining broader acceptance among philosophers. Levins asserted that there is a trade-off between modeling desiderata, which justified the multiple-models approach through two separate justificatory paths. Some attention has been paid to the trade-off thesis, culminating in a paper by Matthewson and Weisberg. However, no attention has been paid to how the trade-off is supposed to justify the multiple-models approach. I argue that a trade-off between generality and precision cannot support (...) one of Levins’s justificatory paths, and I consider what that might mean for the multiple-models approach. (shrink)

The most discussed puzzle about weakness of will (WoW) is how it is possible: how can a person freely and intentionally perform actions that she judges she ought not perform, or that she has resolved not to perform? In this paper, we are concerned with a much less discussed puzzle about WoW?how is overcoming it possible? We explain some of the ways in which previously weak-willed agents manage to overcome their weakness. Some of these are relatively straightforward?as agents learn of (...) the real costs of weakness, or as those costs mount dramatically, they can become strongly motivated to do what they already judged best. But other cases are more difficult to explain: sometimes, agents with a long history of forming and then weakly abandoning resolutions manage to stick to their guns. We argue that these cases can be explained by combining George Ainslie's model of agents as multiple preference orderings competing in game theoretic interactions along with the insights of evolutionary game theory. This can explain the puzzling cases where agents suddenly adopt successful strategies for avoiding weak-willed behavior, especially where agents gain no new information about themselves or the consequences of their actions. (shrink)

Is there a unique way to de-idealize models? If not, how might the possible ways of reducing the distortion between models and reality differ from each other? Based on an empirical case study conducted in financial markets, this paper discusses how a popular valuation model (the Discounted Cash Flow model) idealizes reality and how the market participants de-idealize it in concrete market situations. In contrast to Cartwright's view that economic models are generally over-constrained, this paper suggests that valuation models are (...) under-constrained. This serves as the reason why the relaxation of simplifying assumptions and concretization do not work as methods of de-idealization. The paper finds that financial market participants de-idealize models using commentary that takes the form of judgment. As a conclusion, a hypothesis is formulated that proposes that the more underdetermined the model is the bigger role narrative and other pragmatic elements play in the process of model application. (shrink)

Modelling cannot be characterized as isolating, nor models as isolations. This article presents three arguments to that effect, against Uskali Mäki's account of models. First, while isolation proceeds through a process of manipulation and control, modelling typically does not proceed through such a process. Rather, modellers postulate assumptions, without seeking to justify them by reference to a process of isolation. Second, while isolation identifies an isolation base—a concrete environment it seeks to control and manipulate—modelling typically does not identify such a (...) base. Rather, modellers construct their models without reference to concrete environments, and only later seek to connect their models to concrete situations of the real world. Third, Mäki argues that isolation employs idealization to control for disturbing factors, but does not affect the factors or mechanisms that are supposed to be isolated. However, models typically make idealizing assumptions about the factors and mechanisms that are the focus of investigation. Thus, even the product of modelling often cannot be characterized as isolation. (shrink)

The question of how to frame agential preferences in economics finds one caught between Scylla and Charybdis. If preferences are framed in as minimal and deflationary a manner as revealed preference theory recommends, the theory falls prey to objections about its predictiveness and explanatory power. Alternatively, if too many cognitive and causal intricacies are incorporated into the preference concept, revealed preference models will violate pragmatic norms of model construction, surrendering model simplicity and generality. This paper charts a middle course, arguing (...) that the path to salvation lies through an understanding of revealed preference models as program explanations. (shrink)

In scientific modeling, continuum idealizations bridge scales but at the cost of fundamentally misrepresenting the microstructure of the system. This engenders a mystery. If continuum idealizations are dispensable in principle, this de-problematizes their representational inaccuracy, since continuum properties reduce to lower-scale properties, but the mystery of how this reduction could be carried out endures. Alternatively, if continuum idealizations are indispensable in principle, this is consistent with their explanatory and predictive success but renders their representational inaccuracy mysterious. I argue for a (...) deflationary solution, enlisting the applied scientific method of upscaling as demonstrated in a case from soil hydrology. (shrink)

That many of our most successful scientific theories involve one or more idealizations poses a challenge to traditional models of theory confirmation. One popular response amongst scientific realists is the “improvement model of confirmation”: if tightening up one or more of the idealizations leads to greater predictive accuracy, then this supports the belief that the theory’s inaccuracy is a result of its idealizations and not because it is wrong. In this article I argue that the improvement model is deeply flawed (...) and that therefore idealizations continue to undermine “success-to-truth” arguments for scientific realism. (shrink)