Despite the recent proliferation of scientific, clinical, and narrative accounts of auditory verbal hallucinations, the phenomenology of voice hearing remains opaque and undertheorized. In this article, we outline an interdisciplinary approach to understanding hallucinatory experiences which seeks to demonstrate the value of the humanities and social sciences to advancing knowledge in clinical research and practice. We argue that an interdisciplinary approach to the phenomenology of AVH utilizes rigorous and context-appropriate methodologies to analyze a wider range of first-person accounts (...) of AVH at 3 contextual levels: cultural, social, and historical; experiential; and biographical. We go on to show that there are significant potential benefits for voice hearers, clinicians, and researchers. These include informing the development and refinement of subtypes of hallucinations within and across diagnostic categories; “front-loading” research in cognitive neuroscience; and suggesting new possibilities for therapeutic intervention. In conclusion, we argue that an interdisciplinary approach to the phenomenology of AVH can nourish the ethical core of scientific enquiry by challenging its interpretive paradigms, and offer voice hearers richer, potentially more empowering ways to make sense of their experiences. (shrink)

This article analyzes a number of recently published autobiographies by leading participants in the Human Genome Project (HGP), in order to determine to what extent they may further our understanding of the history, scientific significance and societal impact of this major research endeavor. Notably, I will focus on three publications that fall under this heading, namely The common thread by John Sulston (2002/2003), The language of God (2006) by Francis Collins and A life decoded by Craig Venter (2007).1 What may (...) we learn from these autobiographical sources about the dynamics of scientific change? What is their added value in understanding science in general and the HGP in particular? These questions will be elaborated in three directions: on the level of knowledge (epistemology), power (politics) and the Self (ethics). On the epistemological level, genomics is often presented as a paradigm shift in the life sciences, a tremendous up-scaling of research, an “informatization” of life. Autobiographies may reveal how this shift – usually discussed in more general terms from a philosophy of science or science studies perspective – manifests itself on an individual scale, on a micro- epistemological level. On the political level, autobiographies may inform us about the micro-politics of scientific change. Finally, on the level of Self, autobiographies may allow us to analyze how researchers, through practices of Self, are actively engaged in constituting themselves as responsible subjects in the face of unpredictable dynamics and unforeseen dilemmas. (shrink)

We can judge whether some activities are scientific or religious, depending on how similar they are to exemplar scientific activities or to exemplar religious activities, even if we cannot specify the necessary and sufficient conditions for science and religion. The absence of the demarcation between science and religion does not justify the school policy of teaching the creationist hypothesis that God created the universe any more than it justifies the religious policy of teaching evolutionary theory, quantum mechanics, and (...) the Big Bang theory in religious institutions. -/- . (shrink)

Artificial intelligence has arrived. In the online world it is already a part of everyday life, sitting invisibly behind a wide range of search engines and online commerce sites. It offers huge potential to enable more efficient and effective business and government but the use of artificial intelligence brings with it important questions about governance, accountability and ethics. Realising the full potential of artificial intelligence and avoiding possible adverse consequences requires societies to find satisfactory answers to these questions. This report (...) sets out some possible approaches, and describes some of the ways government is already engaging with these issues. (shrink)

Based on an epistemological approach, humanities and natural sciences are two completely different realms that are governed by different rules. From this position, it is usually concluded that these two should not interfere in each other's territory. This idea, which also has supporters in other categorizations such as science and theology, relies mainly on Wittgenstein's doctrines. The purpose of the article is to argue that such an approach ultimately leads to the isolation of different realms of knowledge. (...) We argue why this position is incorrect and has adverse consequences for the development of knowledge in all domains. (shrink)

This paper draws on the phenomenological-hermeneutical approaches to philosophy of science to develop realist perspectivism, an integration of experimental realism and perspectivism. Specifically, the paper employs the distinction between “manifestation” and “phenomenon” and it advances the view that the evidence of a real entity is “explorable” in order to argue that instrumentally-mediated robust evidence indicates real entities. Furthermore, it underpins the phenomenological notion of the horizonal nature of scientific observation with perspectivism, so accounting for scientific pluralism even in the (...) cases of inconsistent models. Overall, realist perspectivism is proposed as the way to go for (phenomenologically-hermeneutically minded) philosophers of science. (shrink)

1. Biomedical sciences are fast-growing fields with unprecedented speed of research outputs, especially in the quantities of papers. Philosophers aiming to study ongoing biomedical changes face cha...

The paper describes the author's experience in using the history of science in teaching physics to science teachers. lt was found that history becomes more useful to teachers when explicitly combined with 'investigative' experimentation, which, in turn. can benefit from various uses of the history of science.

In this paper, I will reread the history of molecular genetics from a psychoanalytical angle, analysing it as a case history. Building on the developmental theories of Freud and his followers, I will distinguish four stages, namely: (1) oedipal childhood, notably the epoch of model building (1943–1953); (2) the latency period, with a focus on the development of basic skills (1953–1989); (3) adolescence, exemplified by the Human Genome Project, with its fierce conflicts, great expectations and grandiose claims (1989–2003) and (4) (...) adulthood (2003–present) during which revolutionary research areas such as molecular biology and genomics have achieved a certain level of normalcy—have evolved into a normal science. I will indicate how a psychoanalytical assessment conducted in this manner may help us to interpret and address some of the key normative issues that have been raised with regard to molecular genetics over the years, such as ‘relevance’, ‘responsible innovation’ and ‘promise management’. (shrink)

Cognitive science is ready for a major reconceptualization. This is not at all because efforts by its practitioners have failed, but rather because so much progress has been made. The need for reconceptualization arises from the fact that this progress has come at greater cost than necessary, largely because of more or less philosophical (at least metatheoretical) straightjackets still worn - whether wittingly or not - by those doing the work. These bonds are extremely hard to break. Even some (...) of those who have directed powerful arguments against them have failed entirely to shake them off. The bonds are often attributed to the work of René Descartes, but they are really much older than that. If even in the present effort, I fail entirely to remove the straightjacket myself (even though I am making every attempt to get it off), this will testify to its tight grip. The straightjacket I am thinking about, of course, is the vague picture of the human situation that imagines centralized, internal minds in control of bodily machines. While almost no one in the contemporary cognitive science arena imagines minds to be the kind of thing Descartes took them to be - instantiations of a unique, fully non-material substance - there is nevertheless a deep resistance, even among the most fervent professed "materialists," to giving up this picture. In what follows, I shall try to offer an approach which on the one hand capitalizes on the excellent progress that has been made in cognitive science in the last few decades, and which on the other hand offers a general approach that may help at some level in the attempt to shake "Cartesian" bonds. The approach, as the alert reader already knows from the title of the essay, is an "ecological" approach. (shrink)

In this paper, I distinguish three general approaches to public trust in science, which I call the individual approach, the semi-social approach, and the social approach, and critically examine their proposed solutions to what I call the problem of harmful distrust. I argue that, despite their differences, the individual and the semi-social approaches see the solution to the problem of harmful distrust as consisting primarily in trying to persuade individual citizens to trust science and that (...) both approaches face two general problems, which I call the problem of overidealizing science and the problem of overburdening citizens. I then argue that in order to avoid these problems we need to embrace a (thoroughly) social approach to public trust in science, which emphasizes the social dimensions of the reception, transmission, and uptake of scientific knowledge in society and the ways in which social forces influence both positively and negatively the trustworthiness of science. (shrink)

This paper is a review of Suarez, M. (ed.) Fictions in Science (Routledge).

Robert Merton judged his ethos of science as "a limited introduction to a larger problem" in his seminal article. Despite this caution, the ethos has been interpreted, used and criticized as a self-consistent normative structure. As such, critics consider the ethos of science too rudimentary, obsolete or ideological. To overcome these critics, some supporters of the concept propose to revisit or to reconstruct it. This essay is an attempt to satisfy critics and supporters while respecting Merton's legacy. For (...) that purpose, we consider a Weberian paradigm to expand this "limited introduction". (shrink)

لقد بُذلت محاولات عديدة لتجاوز غموض قضايا العلوم الطبيعية والإنسانية من قبل المناطقة وفلاسفة اللغة، لا سيما خلال القرن العشرين، لكن تبرز منها محاولتان أكثر أهمية من غيرهما؛ تجلت الأولى في تطوير المنطق الرمزي الكلاسيكي ثنائي القيم إلى ما يُعرف بالمنطق متعدد القيم. ووفقًا لهذا الأخير لم يعد الحكم المنطقي – على أية قضية – مقصورًا على قيمتي الصدق التقليديتين: صادقة & كاذبة، كما يقضي بذلك قانون الثالث المرفوع، بل بات لدينا عدد لا متناه من القيم المتصلة التي تتوسط بين (...) الصدق التام والكذب التام. ورغم النجاح النسبي لهذه المحاولة – التي ما زالت تخضع للتطوير والتعديل – إلا أن المشكلة الأساسية ما زالت تطل برأسها في كل استخدام للكلمات وقضايا اللغة، فإذا كان المنطق متعدد القيم قد نجح في التعبير الواضح عن غموض المعرفة، إلا أنه لم يُبدد الغموض ذاته. أما المحاولة الثانية فقد تمثلت في نزعة التقييم الفائق، التي تفترض وجود عدد من التقييمات المقبولة لكل مصطلح غامض أو قضية غامضة. وليست هذه التقييمات في الحقيقة مجرد كيانات خالصة لا علاقة لها بالواقع، بل إن كل تقييم منها – كما تفترض النزعة – هو بمثابة تحديد لكيان واقعي نشير إليه بالاسم أو المصطلح محل الدراسة، ومن ثم فهو يعكس موجودًا فعليًا له حدوده الدقيقة المميزة له عن غيره. ويلزم عن ذلك أننا إذا كنا نقبل العديد من التقييمات المختلفة والمتنوعة لمصطلح واحد، فعلينا أن نقبل أيضًا وجود العديد من الكيانات الواقعية التي يشير إليها ذلك المصطلح الواحد. هذا ما نسعى إلى معالجته في هذا البحث، انطلاقًا من فرضٍ رئيس مؤداه أن ما واجه المنطق الكلاسيكي من مشكلات أدت إلى تطويره، لاسيما مشكلة الغموض، قد واجه بالمثل المنطق متعدد القيم، ولابد وأن يواجه أيضًا أية مقاربة مهما اختلفت أدواتها؛ فالغموض فيما نزعم ظاهرة إبستمولوجية في المحل الأول، مردودها إلى الذات العارفة وقصور إمكاناتها الإدراكية والقياسية، لا إلى الوجود ذاته. وبعبارة أخرى، نزعم من خلال هذه الورقة أن أية مقاربة لمشكلة الغموض ما هي إلا حلقة من حلقات العلاقة الجدلية اللامنتهية بين الإنسان والطبيعة، أو فلنقل بين ما هو مدرك وما هو موجود بالفعل. وقد ركزنا على قضايا وتصورات الجغرافيا كنموذج للتطبيق باعتبارها أحد أقرب العلوم الإنسانية إلى العلوم الطبيعية، وإن كنا نرى أن عمومية مشكلة الغموض – بأبعادها المختلفة – تُحيل أي علم إلى علم إنساني. (shrink)

I subordinated the discussion of historical and philosophical issues of science to learning scientific concepts, superimposing them so as to make them inseparable. The topics of units are the same as in regular science courses, such as "electrical conductors and nonconductors," and the goal is the same: to formulate the laws of phenomena. The difference is in the ways the unit is taught. I have found that understanding of a concept improves if it is "rediscovered" with active participation (...) on the part of the learner. Students work in small groups. The instructor shows them a historical experiment, and they begin repeating and modifying it. Periodically, students discuss their results. After they formulate their final conclusion, the instructor informs them how close 'their' law came to the historical one. Students get a lesson about various interpretations of experimental results (including the erroneous ones) and a difficulty of making the best general conclusion. The second area concerns the type of experiment used. I emphasize investigative experiments which require students to imitate scientists rather than use artificial or contrived experiments. In particular, I emphasize qualitative experiments - popular in the 18th century where students study a certain phenomenon to find a qualitative empirical law to describe it. The third area deals with the strategy of experimenting. The recommended strategy is distilled from scientific treatises of the past. Some parts of it, especially Preliminary Part, are not familiar to science teachers. Students learn, in particular, that variables appear not from guessing but from initial unplanned experiments. (shrink)

According to what Birch (2022) calls the theory-heavy approach to investigating nonhuman-animal consciousness, we select one of the well-developed theories of consciousness currently debated within contemporary cognitive science and investigate whether animals exhibit the neural structures or cognitive abilities posited by that theory as sufficient for consciousness. Birch argues, however, that this approach is in general problematic because it faces what he dubs the dilemma of demandingness—roughly, that we cannot use theories that are based on the human (...) case to assess consciousness in nonhuman animals and vice versa. We argue here that, though this dilemma may problematize the application of many current accounts of consciousness to nonhuman animals, it does not challenge the use of standard versions of the higher-order thought theory (“HOTT”) of consciousness, according to which a creature is in a conscious mental state just in case it is aware of being in that state via a suitable higher-order thought (“HOT”). We show this in two ways. First, we argue that, unlike many extant theories of consciousness, HOTT is typically motivated by a commonsense, and more importantly, neutral condition on consciousness that applies to humans and animals alike. Second, we offer new empirical and theoretical reasons to think that many nonhuman animals possess the relevant HOTs necessary for consciousness. Considering these issues not only reveals the explanatory power of HOTT and some of its advantages over rival accounts, but also enables us to further extend and clarify the theory. (shrink)

Dubljević and company’s proposed approach for incorporating a socio-political perspective into neuroethics has clear potential to help mitigate the effects of research ‘hype’ relating to neuroethics. Their approach serves as a social regulation meant to improve the realizability of neuroethics research. Drawing on Dubljević et al. s suggestion, we consider how incorporating a socio-political perspective in other scientific disciplines could help the scientific community as a whole move beyond the infamous ‘reproducibility crisis’ in science. The reproducibility crisis (...) is a concern in science stemming from the revelation that most scientific results are difficult, or impossible, to replicate (Frias-Navarro et al., 2020). By applying the four principles proposed by Dubljević et al., the scientific community can avoid many of the pitfalls that have led to the reproducibility crisis, such as the file drawer effect, a publication bias preventing negative results from being published, or the publish-or-perish culture - the pressure for scientists to publish highly influential papers in high impact journals in order to keep their funding (Rosenthal, 1979; Begley & Ioannidis, 2015). As such, we argue that, in its final form, this socio-political framework begs for true open science, wherein systematically sharing data would enable enlightened policymaking by showing a picture closer to the ground-level realities of scientific research. (shrink)

Philosophical treatments of natural kinds are embedded in two distinct projects. I call these the philosophy of science approach and the philosophy of language approach. Each is characterized by its own set of philosophical questions, concerns, and assumptions. The kinds studied in the philosophy of science approach are projectible categories that can ground inductive inferences and scientific explanation. The kinds studied in the philosophy of language approach are the referential objects of a special linguistic (...) category—natural kind terms—thought to refer directly. Philosophers may hope for a unified account addresses both sets of concerns. This paper argues that this cannot be done successfully. No single account can satisfy both the semantic objectives of the philosophy of language approach and the explanatory projects of the philosophy of science approach. After analyzing where the tensions arise, I make recommendations about assumptions and projects that are best abandoned, those that should be retained, and those that should go their separate ways. I also recommend adopting the disambiguating terminology of “scientific kinds” and “natural kinds” for the different notions of kinds developed in these different approaches. (shrink)

Philosophical biologists have attempted to define the distinction between life and non-life to more adequately define what it is to be human. They are reacting against idealism, but idealism is their point of departure, and they have embraced the reaction by idealists against the mechanistic notion of humans developed by the scientific materialists. Theoretical biologists also have attempted to develop a more adequate conception of life, but their point of departure has been within science itself. In their case, it (...) has involved efforts to overcome the reductionism of scientific materialism to develop a form of science able to identify and explain the distinctive characteristics of living beings. So, while both philosophical biologists and theoretical biologists are struggling to overcome scientific materialism, they are approaching the question: What is Life? from different directions. Focussing on the work of Robert Rosen, I will try to show what revisions in our understanding of science theoretical biologists need to accept in order to do justice to the insights of the philosophical biologists. I will suggest that not only will this involve major revisions in what we understand science to be, but that scientists must accept that science is indissociable from natural philosophy, and that to properly comprehend life mathematics must ultimately be subordinated to stories. (shrink)

This paper outlines and discusses the relative merits and problems of two current interpretations of Philosophy of Information (PI), the metaphysical approach and the analytical approach. The paper argues that both approaches complement one another, being normative and mutually compatible.

In Section 1, I introduce three views that explain human cognitive development from different standpoints: Marcus’s neo-nativism, standard neuroconstructivism, and neo-neuroconstructivism. In Section 2, I assess Marcus’s attempt to reconcile nativism with developmental flexibility. In Section 3, I argue that in structurally reconfiguring nativism, Marcus ends up transforming it into an unrecognizable form, and I claim that his view could be accommodated within the more general framework provided by standard neuroconstructivism. In Section 4, I focus on recent empirical findings in (...) neuropsychology and cultural/social neuroscience, and propose a friendly revision to standard neuroconstructivism, thus developing the neo-neuroconstructivist view. I conclude the article in Section 5 by analysing the implications of the results discussed in Section 4 for both neo-nativism and standard neuroconstructivism. 1 Introduction2 Marcus’s Neo-nativism3 Is Marcus’s Neo-nativism Really a Form of Nativism?4 Neo-neuroconstructivism and Dynamic Enskillment5 Conclusion. (shrink)

In this study, we aimed to investigate how prospective science teachers, who participated in a series of explicit-reflective activities for NOS teaching, understood "science in a social and cultural context" in the context of a biographical documentary film. We adopted a phenomenological approach. The data were analyzed descriptively by considering the aspects of nature of science and the levels of understanding as defined in Dilthey's hermeneutic approach. In this way, we determined participants’ levels of (...) hermeneutic understanding regarding the nature of science. The findings show that the participants regarded science within the framework of aspects of the consensus view blended with somewhat authentic interpretations and at a basic level of understanding from the point of view of hermeneutics. This finding highlights the importance of integrating the hermeneutic approach into the teaching process in understanding science. (shrink)

Merging of opinions results underwrite Bayesian rejoinders to complaints about the subjective nature of personal probability. Such results establish that sufficiently similar priors achieve consensus in the long run when fed the same increasing stream of evidence. Initial subjectivity, the line goes, is of mere transient significance, giving way to intersubjective agreement eventually. Here, we establish a merging result for sets of probability measures that are updated by Jeffrey conditioning. This generalizes a number of different merging results in the literature. (...) We also show that such sets converge to a shared, maximally informed opinion. Convergence to a maximally informed opinion is a (weak) Jeffrey conditioning analogue of Bayesian “convergence to the truth” for conditional probabilities. Finally, we demonstrate the philosophical significance of our study by detailing applications to the topics of dynamic coherence, imprecise probabilities, and probabilistic opinion pooling. (shrink)

In evolutionary biology, niche construction is sometimes described as a genuine evolutionary process whereby organisms, through their activities and regulatory mechanisms, modify their environment such as to steer their own evolutionary trajectory, and that of other species. There is ongoing debate, however, on the extent to which niche construction ought to be considered a bona fide evolutionary force, on a par with natural selection. Recent formulations of the variational free-energy principle as applied to the life sciences describe the properties of (...) living systems, and their selection in evolution, in terms of variational inference. We argue that niche construction can be described using a variational approach. We propose new arguments to support the niche construction perspective, and to extend the variational approach to niche construction to current perspectives in various scientific fields. (shrink)

Research misconduct remains an important problem in health research despite decades of local, national, regional, and international efforts to eliminate it. The ultimate goal of every health research project, irrespective of setting, is to produce trustworthy findings to address local as well as global health issues. To be able to lead or participate meaningfully in international research collaborations, individual and institutional capacities for research integrity are paramount. Accordingly, this paper concerns itself not only with individuals’ research skills but also with (...) institutional and national policies and governance. Such policies and governance provide an ethical scaffold for the production of knowledge and structure incentives. This paper’s operational definition of research therefore draws from Institute of Medicine’s articulation of health research as an inquiry that aims to produce knowledge about the structure, processes, or effects of personal health services; and from an existing health systems framework. The paper reviews the research regulatory environment and the ethics apparatus in Ghana, and describes a project jointly undertaken by Ghanaian researchers in collaboration with New York University to assess the perceived adequacy of current institutional practices, opportunities, and incentives for promoting RI. (shrink)

This article develops and defends a new functional approach to scientific progress. I begin with a review of the problems of the traditional functional approach. Then I propose a new functional account of scientific progress, in which scientific progress is defined in terms of usefulness of problem defining and problem solving. I illustrate and defend my account by applying it to the history of genetics. Finally, I highlight the advantages of my new functional approach over the epistemic (...) and semantic approaches and dismiss some potential objections to my approach. (shrink)

In this commentary, I propose a framework for thinking about data quality in the context of scientific research. I start by analyzing conceptualizations of quality as a property of information, evidence and data and reviewing research in the philosophy of information, the philosophy of science and the philosophy of biomedicine. I identify a push for purpose dependency as one of the main results of this review. On this basis, I present a contextual approach to data quality in scientific (...) research, whereby the quality of a dataset is dependent on the context of use of the dataset as much as the dataset itself. I exemplify the approach by discussing current critiques and debates of scientific quality, thus showcasing how data quality can be approached contextually. (shrink)

The framework of a simple opposition realism – anti-realism is not enough to analyze the views on the reality of unobservable objects of quantum theory. First, it is necessary to distinguish between realism in relation to the theory and realism in relation to the theory’s objects. Secondly, realism in relation to classical objects can be combined, both with realism and with anti-realism in relation to quantum objects. Third, the concept of “existence” and “to exist objectively” can have different meanings. To (...) take into account these factors, the article describes three approaches: classical realism, quantum anti-realism, and quantum realism. I show that the debate around quantum reality has intensified in recent decades due to a series of new quantum experiments. The current stage of the debate is caused by the second quantum revolution relating to the transfer and processing of quantum information. Classical realism and old versions of quantum anti-realism have become insufficiently effective to explain the results of a series of experiments. Proponents of quantum realism, in turn, refer to the possibility of using the wave function to manipulate quantum objects before their measurement. In conclusion, I assume that not only theoretical discussions but also experiments and new technologies can have a major impact on the seemingly purely philosophical debate about reality. (shrink)

In this paper, we evaluate the pragmatic turn towards embodied, enactive thinking in cognitive science, in the context of recent empirical research on the memory palace technique. The memory palace is a powerful method for remembering yet it faces two problems. First, cognitive scientists are currently unable to clarify its efficacy. Second, the technique faces significant practical challenges to its users. Virtual reality devices are sometimes presented as a way to solve these practical challenges, but currently fall short of (...) delivering on that promise. We address both issues in this paper. First, we argue that an embodied, enactive approach to memory can better help us understand the effectiveness of the memory palace. Second, we present design recommendations for a virtual memory palace. Our theoretical proposal and design recommendations contribute to solving both problems and provide reasons for preferring an embodied, enactive account over an information-processing treatment of the memory palace. (shrink)

According to a particular interpretation of quantum mechanics, the causal role of human consciousness in the measuring process is called upon to solve a foundational problem called the “measurement problem.” Traditionally, this interpretation is tied up with the metaphysics of substance dualism. As such, this interpretation of quantum mechanics inherits the dualist’s mind-body problem. Our working hypothesis is that a process-based approach to the consciousness causes collapse interpretation (CCCI) ---leaning on Whitehead’s solution to the mind-body problem--- offers a better (...) metaphysical understanding of consciousness and its role in interpreting quantum mechanics. This article is the kickoff for such a research program in the metaphysics of science. (shrink)

This paper engages with the following closely related questions that have recently received some attention in the literature: what is the status of the equivalence principle in general relativity?; how does the metric field obtain its property of being able to act as a metric?; and is the metric of GR derivative on the dynamics of the matter fields? The paper attempts to complement these debates by studying the spin-2 approach to gravity. In particular, the paper argues that three (...) lessons can be drawn from the spin-2 approach: different from what is sometimes claimed in the literature, central aspects of the non-linear theory of GR are already derivable in classical spin-2 theory; in particular, ‘universal coupling’ can be considered a derived ‘theorem’ in both the classical and the quantum spin-2 approach; this provides new insights for the investigation of the equivalence principle; the ‘second miracle’ that Read et al. argue characterises GR is explained in the classical as well as in the quantum version of the spin-2 approach; the spin-2 approach allows for an ontological reduction of the metrical part of spacetime to the dynamics of matter fields. (shrink)

In the framework of judgment aggregation, we assume that some formulas of the agenda are singled out as premisses, and that both Independence (formula-wise aggregation) and Unanimity Preservation hold for them. Whether premiss-based aggregation thus defined is compatible with conclusion-based aggregation, as defined by Unanimity Preservation on the non-premisses, depends on how the premisses are logically connected, both among themselves and with other formulas. We state necessary and sufficient conditions under which the combination of both approaches leads to dictatorship (resp. (...) oligarchy), either just on the premisses or on the whole agenda. This framework is inspired by the doctrinal paradox of legal theory and arguably relevant to this field as well as political science and political economy. When the set of premisses coincides with the whole agenda, a limiting case of our assumptions, we obtain several existing results in judgment aggregation theory. (shrink)

Critics have often misunderstood the higher-order theory (HOT) of consciousness. Here we clarify its position on several issues, and distinguish it from other views such as the global The higher-order theory (HOT) of consciousness has often been misunderstood by critics. Here we clarify its position on several issues, and distinguish it from other views such as the global workspace theory (GWT) and early sensory models (e.g. first-order local recurrency theories). For example, HOT has been criticized for over-intellectualizing consciousness. We show (...) that while higher-order states are cognitively assembled, the requirements are actually considerably less than often presumed. In this sense HOT may be viewed as an intermediate position between GWT and early sensory views. Also, we clarify that most proponents of HOT do not stipulate consciousness as equivalent to metacognition or confidence. Further, compared to other existing theories, HOT can arguably account better for complex everyday experiences, such as of emotions and episodic memories. This makes HOT particularly useful as a framework for conceptualizing pathological mental states. (shrink)

A precise formulation of the structure of modern evolutionary theory has proved elusive. In this paper, I introduce and develop a formal approach to the structure of population genetics, evolutionary theory's most developed sub-theory. Under the semantic approach, used as a framework in this paper, presenting a theory consists in presenting a related family of models. I offer general guidelines and examples for the classification of population genetics models; the defining features of the models are taken to be (...) their state spaces, parameters, and laws. The suggestions regarding the various aspects of the characterization of population genetics models provide an outline for further detailed research. (shrink)

This chapter examines the influence of the empirical sciences (e.g., physics, biology, psychology) in contemporary analytic philosophy, with focus on philosophical theories that are guided by findings from the empirical sciences. Scientific approaches to philosophy follow a tradition of philosophical naturalism associated with Quine, which strives to ally philosophical methods and theories more closely with the empirical sciences and away from a priori theorizing and conceptual analysis.

We study a new formal logic LD introduced by Prof. Grzegorczyk. The logic is based on so-called descriptive equivalence, corresponding to the idea of shared meaning rather than shared truth value. We construct a semantics for LD based on a new type of algebras and prove its soundness and completeness. We further show several examples of classical laws that hold for LD as well as laws that fail. Finally, we list a number of open problems. -/- .

Philosophers of logic are particularly interested in understanding the aims, epistemology, and methodology of logic. This raises the question of how the philosophy of logic should go about these enquires. According to the practice-based approach, the most reliable method we have to investigate the methodology and epistemology of a research field is by considering in detail the activities of its practitioners. This holds just as true for logic as it does for the recognised empirical and abstract sciences. If we (...) wish to systematically understand the aims and epistemology of logic, we are best placed achieving this by looking at what logicians do, rather than reflecting upon the nature of logic itself. In this entry, we outline the motivations for a practice-based approach towards the philosophy of logic and highlight its advantages over more “top-down” approaches, which attempt to infer conclusions about the nature of logic and its methodology on the basis of traditional assumptions about knowledge, metaphysics, or logic itself. We end by addressing several prominent concerns raised against the practice-based approach. (shrink)

Vitalism has been given different definitions and diverse figures have been labelled as vitalists throughout the history of ideas. Concentrating on the seventeenth century, we find that scholars identify as vitalists authors who endorse notions that are in diametrical opposition with each other. I briefly present the ideas of dualist vitalists and monist vitalists and the philosophical and theological considerations informing their thought. In all these varied forms of vitalism the identifiable common motives are the essential irreducibility of life and (...) the universality of life. (shrink)

I propose an approach that expands philosophical views of scientific change, on the basis of an analysis of contemporary biomedical research and recent developments in the philosophy of scientific change. Focusing on the establishment of the exposome in epidemiology as a case study and the role of data as a context for contrasting views on change, I discuss change at conceptual, methodological, material, and social levels of biomedical epistemology. Available models of change provide key resources to discuss this type (...) of change, but I present the need for an approach that models transfer, alignment, and influence as key processes of change. I develop this as a pragmatic approach to scientific change, where processes might change substantially depending on specific circumstances, thus contributing to and complementing the debate on a crucial epistemological issue. (shrink)

This paper proposes a new classification algorithm for the partitioning of a conceptual space. All the algorithms which have been used until now have mostly been based on the theory of Voronoi diagrams. This paper proposes an approach based on potential theory, with the criteria for measuring similarities between objects in the conceptual space being based on the Newtonian potential function. The notion of a fuzzy prototype, which generalizes the previous definition of a prototype, is introduced. Furthermore, the necessary (...) conditions that a natural concept must meet are discussed. Instead of convexity, as proposed by Gärdenfors, the notion of geodesically convex sets is used. Thus, if a concept corresponds to a set which is geodesically convex, it is a natural concept. This definition applies, for example, if the conceptual space is an Euclidean space. As a by-product of the construction of the algorithm, an extension of the conceptual space to d-dimensional Riemannian manifolds is obtained. (shrink)

Information is a central notion for cognitive sciences and neurosciences, but there is no agreement on what it means for a cognitive system to acquire information about its surroundings. In this paper, we approximate three influential views on information: the one at play in ecological psychology, which is sometimes called information for action; the notion of information as covariance as developed by some enactivists, and the idea of information as minimization of uncertainty as presented by Shannon. Our main thesis is (...) that information for action can be construed as covariant information, and that learning to perceive covariant information is a matter of minimizing uncertainty through skilled performance. We argue that the agent’s cognitive system conveys information for acting in an environment by minimizing uncertainty about how to achieve her intended goals in that environment. We conclude by reviewing empirical findings that support our view and by showing how direct learning, seen as instance of ecological rationality at work, is how mere possibilities for action are turned into embodied know-how. Finally, we indicate the affinity between direct learning and sense-making activity. (shrink)

Ruetsche ([2011]) argues that the occurrence of unitarily inequivalent representations in quantum theories with infinitely many degrees of freedom poses a novel interpretational problem. According to Ruetsche, such theories compel us to reject the so-called ideal of pristine interpretation; she puts forward the ‘coalescence approach’ as an alternative. In this paper I offer a novel defence of the coalescence approach. The defence rests on the claim that the ideal of pristine interpretation already fails before one considers the peculiarities (...) of QM∞: there are pre-QM∞ parallels to coalescence. Despite this departure from pristinism, the ‘modest’ view that emerges poses no threat to scientific realism. (shrink)

Conventional approaches to consciousness assume that our current science tells us within tolerable limits what physical nature is. Because nature so understood cannot explain consciousness as we seem to experience it ourselves, explaining consciousness becomes a problem. One solution is to rethink what consciousness is so that it becomes the sort of thing our current natural science could in principle explain. Whitehead takes the opposite approach, using the existence of consciousness as a clue to what nature must (...) be if it can generate something like consciousness. The justification for this approach can be found in Whitehead’s implicit indictment of descriptive phenomenology. According to Whitehead, the seemingly insoluble problem of explaining consciousness naturalistically is an artifact created by the assumption that consciousness faithfully samples the world, when in fact it obscures the very aspects of nature that are indispensable to understanding how anything, including consciousness itself, could emerge through a physical process. (shrink)

Introduction: The aim of the present study was to explore the relationship between sophisticated view of induction and science education. Method: This study is a critical review on the relation between philosophical approaches to science and science education. Thus, an analytic method is used in investigating the theories of science and their relationship to science education. Results: Analysing the arguments against induction, we argue that the sophisticated view of induction is not only resistant against the (...) critiques but also inspiring for science education. Conclusion: This paper concludes that the sophisticated view of induction provides the merits of both positivism and falsificationism in science and science education while avoiding their disadvantages. Accordingly, to avoid positivism, science education should reinforce students' imagination and theory development and to avoid falsificationism, it should embrace observation and induction. (shrink)

This article provides a conceptual account of causal understanding by connecting current psychological research on time and causality with philosophical debates on the causal asymmetry. I argue that causal relations are viewed as asymmetric because they are understood in temporal terms. I investigate evidence from causal learning and reasoning in both children and adults: causal perception, the temporal priority principle, and the use of temporal cues for causal inference. While this account does not suffice for correct inferences of causal structure, (...) I show it to serve as a preliminary understanding of causal concepts as asymmetric, that later incorporates other types of evidence. This approach supplies causal models with an asymmetric concept of causation that underlies hypotheses about causal structure, as I will illustrate from the framework of the knowledge-based causal induction model. I further argue for an integrating perspective, showing how the understanding of causes as preceding their effects underlies both psychological models and philosophical debates over time and the causal asymmetry, particularly regarding problem cases such as simultaneous causation or backwards causation, and the conceptual connection between causation and action. (shrink)

In some quarters within philosophy of medicine, more particularly in the phenomenological approaches, naturalism is looked upon with suspicion. This paper argues, first, that it is necessary to distinguish between two expressions of this attitude towards naturalism: phenomenological approaches to illness disagree with naturalism regarding various theoretical claims and they disapprove of naturalism on an ethical level. Second, this paper argues that both the disagreement with and the disapproval of naturalism are to a large extent confused. It then offers some (...) proposals to set up an agenda for future collaboration. (shrink)

R&D collaborations between industry, government, civil society, and research ) have recently gained attention from R&D theorists and practitioners. In aiming to come to grips with their complexity, past models have generally taken a stakeholder-analytical approach based on stakeholder types. Yet stakeholder types are difficult to operationalise. We therefore argue that a processual model is more suited for studying the interaction in QHCs because it eschews matters of titles and identities. We develop such a model in which the QHC (...) is represented as a process of generating four types of value: research value, market value, political value, and societal value. We then apply this processual model in analysing real-life cases of friction in QHCs. Friction is seen, not as an interpersonal clash, but as a discrepancy between two or more value-creation processes that compete for limited resources. (shrink)

Many attempts have been made to provide Quantum Field Theory with conceptually clear and mathematically rigorous foundations; remarkable examples are the Bohmian and the algebraic perspectives respectively. In this essay we introduce the dissipative approach to QFT, a new alternative formulation of the theory explaining the phenomena of particle creation and annihilation starting from nonequilibrium thermodynamics. It is shown that DQFT presents a rigorous mathematical structure, and a clear particle ontology, taking the best from the mentioned perspectives. Finally, after (...) the discussion of its principal implications and consequences, we compare it with the main Bohmian QFTs implementing a particle ontology. (shrink)

In addressing the Lucretian symmetry problem, the temporal bias approach claims that death is bad because it deprives us of something about which it is rational to care (e.g., future pleasures), whereas prenatal nonexistence is not bad because it only deprives us of something about which it is rational to remain indifferent (e.g., past pleasures). In a recent contribution to the debate on this approach, Miguel and Santos argue that a late beginning can deprive us of a future (...) pleasure. Their argument is based on the claim that for birth or death to deprive a person of any value in life, the historically closest counterfactual situation that contains the value is such that the person begins to exist earlier or dies later. This is what they call the Historical Condition. However, the Historical Condition is untenable for several reasons. First, this condition substantially weakens the explanatory capacity of the deprivation account because it implies that most ordinary sorts of pleasures are not deprived by death. In addition, the Historical Condition is vulnerable to counterexamples. In particular, what they offer as a standard case of the deprivation of future pleasure due to a late beginning (what they call Seeing The Beatles), or some of its variants, can be used to falsify this condition. Finally, the Historical Condition is theoretically indefensible because it is based on a faulty analysis of deprivation. (shrink)