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Running Mice and Successful Theories: The Limitations of a Classical Analogy Journal for General Philosophy of Science Pub Date : 2023-12-27 Matthias Egg, August Hämmerli
Bas van Fraassen’s Darwinian explanation for the success of science has sparked four decades of discussion, with scientific realists and antirealists alike using biologically inspired reasoning to support their points of view. Based on critical engagement with van Fraassen’s proposal itself and later contributions by Stathis Psillos and K. Brad Wray, we claim that central arguments on both sides of
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The Puzzle of Fictional Models Journal for General Philosophy of Science Pub Date : 2023-12-11 Lisa Zorzato
The use of fictional models is extensive and rewarding in modern science. This fact captured the attention of philosophers of science, who are focusing on questions such as the following: is it possible for a fictional model to be explanatory? And, if so, in virtue of what is such a fictional model explanatory? In this paper, I discuss these questions in relation to the realism vs. anti-realism debate
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Pragmatism Versus Social Construction: A Reply to Shahryari Journal for General Philosophy of Science Pub Date : 2023-12-07 David J. Stump
In a response to my recent article in this journal, Shahram Shahryari argues that I fail to present a third position between absolutism and relativism. He makes two points: first, that fallibilism is insufficient as an alternative, because it is compatible with both relativism and absolutism. The second point is that my argument that experience can lead to objective judgment without being a new absolute
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The Locus of Agency in Extended Cognitive Systems Journal for General Philosophy of Science Pub Date : 2023-12-09 Barbara Tomczyk
The increasing popularity of artificial cognitive enhancements raises the issue of their impact on the agent’s personal autonomy, and issues pertaining to how the latter is to be secured. The extended mind thesis implies that mental states responsible for autonomous action can be partly constituted by the workings of cognitive artifacts themselves, and the question then arises of whether this commits
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‘Does the Claim that there are no Theories Imply that there is no History of Theories to be Written?(!)’* Journal for General Philosophy of Science Pub Date : 2023-11-24 Steven French
In There Are No Such Things As Theories (French 2020), the reification of theories is critically analysed and rejected. My aim here is to tease out some of the implications of this approach first of all, for how we, philosophers of science, should view the history of science; secondly, for how we should understand the devices that we use in our own philosophical practices; and thirdly, for how we might
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The Many Faces of Realism about Natural Kinds Journal for General Philosophy of Science Pub Date : 2023-11-17 Zdenka Brzović
The label realist in the debate about natural kinds can imply different things. Many authors in this debate subscribe to views that are in some way realist, but without making clear whether the realism in question specifically attaches to kind categories or something else. The traditional understanding of realism about natural kinds is stated in terms of the mind-independence criterion. However, a
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Veritistic Teleological Epistemology, the Bad Lot, and Epistemic Risk Consistency Journal for General Philosophy of Science Pub Date : 2023-11-09 Raimund Pils
This paper connects veritistic teleological epistemology, VTE, with the epistemological dimension of the scientific realism debate. VTE sees our epistemic activities as a tradeoff between believing truths and avoiding error. I argue that van Fraassen’s epistemology is not suited to give a justification for a crucial presupposition of his Bad Lot objection to inference to the best explanation (IBE)
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Causal Pluralism in Medicine and its Implications for Clinical Practice Journal for General Philosophy of Science Pub Date : 2023-11-03 Mariusz Maziarz
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Can Dispositions Replace Laws in the Description of the Physical World? Journal for General Philosophy of Science Pub Date : 2023-09-20 Joanna Luc
In this paper, it is argued that, contrary to some suggestions in the philosophical literature, dispositions cannot replace laws in the description of the physical world. If for a certain type of physical situation a well-working law-based account is available, then it is not possible to describe that situation equally well in terms of dispositions. Using an example consisting of four laws (Coulomb’s
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A Contextualist Solution to the Demarcation Problem Journal for General Philosophy of Science Pub Date : 2023-09-21 Olivier Sartenaer
In this paper, after presenting three challenges that any knowledge-based demarcation between science and non-science should meet, namely, the skeptical, triviality, and mimicry challenges, I show how a recent contender in epistemology, viz., presuppositional epistemic contextualism, allows these challenges to be met, hence pointing toward a novel solution to the perennial demarcation problem. Conceiving
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In Search for Optimal Methods: New Insights About Meta-Induction Journal for General Philosophy of Science Pub Date : 2023-09-04 Gerhard Schurz
In this paper, the contributions to the account of meta-induction (Schurz 2019) collected in this volume are critically discussed and thereby, new insights are developed. How broad and expandable the program of meta-induction is can be learned from Ortner’s contribution. New insights about the transition from the a priori justification of meta-induction to the a posteriori justification of object-induction
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Kant’s Crucial Contribution to Euler Diagrams Journal for General Philosophy of Science Pub Date : 2023-08-17 Jens Lemanski
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Introduction to the Special Issue Journal for General Philosophy of Science Pub Date : 2023-08-07 Paul Thorn, Stathis Psillos
This is the introduction to the special issue “The Meta-Inductive Approach to Hume’s Problem”. The introduction includes introductory remarks and brief comments on each of the papers appearing in the special issue.
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Sequential Measurements and the Kochen–Specker Arguments Journal for General Philosophy of Science Pub Date : 2023-07-31 Gábor Hofer-Szabó
It will be shown that the Peres–Mermin square admits value-definite noncontextual hidden-variable models if the observables associated with the operators can be measured only sequentially but not simultaneously. Namely, sequential measurements allow for noncontextual models in which hidden states update between consecutive measurements. Two recent experiments realizing the Peres–Mermin square by sequential
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Second-Order Confidence in Supervaluationism Journal for General Philosophy of Science Pub Date : 2023-07-12 Jonas Karge
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The Stopping Rule Principle and Confirmational Reliability Journal for General Philosophy of Science Pub Date : 2023-07-07 Samuel C. Fletcher
The stopping rule for a sequential experiment is the rule or procedure for determining when that experiment should end. Accordingly, the stopping rule principle (SRP) states that the evidential relationship between the final data from a sequential experiment and a hypothesis under consideration does not depend on the stopping rule: the same data should yield the same evidence, regardless of which stopping
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Epistemic Stances, Arguments and Intuitions Journal for General Philosophy of Science Pub Date : 2023-06-07 Dalila Serebrinsky
The debate between scientific realists and anti-realists is now a classic debate in the Philosophy of Science. Van Fraassen (2002) has suggested that the positions that take part in the debate involve not only different doxastic attitudes regarding some propositions, but different epistemic stances, that is, different sets of commitments, values and epistemic strategies. The formulation of this debate
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Kant, Richter and the a priori representations of Anfangsgründe der Stöchiometrie Journal for General Philosophy of Science Pub Date : 2023-06-06 Ryan L Vilbig
The chemist Jeremias Benjamin Richter (1762–1807) coined the term “stoichiometry” and proposed the “law of definite proportions.” He is also commonly acknowledged as having been a student of Immanuel Kant (1724–1804). This paper demonstrates how Kant’s philosophy positively shaped Richter’s approach to chemistry in the Anfangsgründe der Stöchiometrie (1792–1794) and outlines two ways in which Richter
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Austrian Economics and Compatibilist Freedom Journal for General Philosophy of Science Pub Date : 2023-06-06 Igor Wysocki, Łukasz Dominiak
The present paper probes the relation between the metaphysics of human freedom and the Rothbardian branch of Austrian economics. It transpires that Rothbard and his followers embrace metaphysical libertarianism, which holds that free will is incompatible with determinism and that the thesis of determinism is false as pertaining to human action. However, as we demonstrate, their economics with its reliance
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Is Everyone Probably Elsewhere? Journal for General Philosophy of Science Pub Date : 2023-05-16 Jakob Stoustrup, Henrik Schiøler, Poul G. Hjorth
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Revisiting the Scientific Nature of Multiverse Theories Journal for General Philosophy of Science Pub Date : 2023-05-04 Man Ho Chan
Some scientists or philosophers argue that multiverse theories are unfalsifiable and thus not scientific. However, some advocates of multiverse theories have recently argued that although the multiverse is not observable, multiverse theories are indeed falsifiable in principle. Therefore, they share similar features with a conventional scientific theory. On the other hand, the proposals of an epistemic
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Otto Neurath’s Scientific Utopianism Revisited-A Refined Model for Utopias in Thought Experiments Journal for General Philosophy of Science Pub Date : 2023-03-23 Alexander Linsbichler, Ivan Ferreira da Cunha
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The Implications of the No-Free-Lunch Theorems for Meta-induction Journal for General Philosophy of Science Pub Date : 2023-03-13 David H. Wolpert
The important recent book by Schurz (2019) appreciates that the no-free-lunch theorems (NFL) have major implications for the problem of (meta) induction. Here I review the NFL theorems, emphasizing that they do not only concern the case where there is a uniform prior—they prove that there are “as many priors” (loosely speaking) for which any induction algorithm A out-generalizes some induction algorithm
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The Role of Quantum Jumps in Quantum Ontology Journal for General Philosophy of Science Pub Date : 2023-03-11 Rainer Dick
Quantum theory determines the evolution of quantum states between quantum jumps. Quantum theory also allows us to calculate rates of quantum jumps and, on a probabilistic level, the outcomes of those quantum jumps. Both quantum jumps and the continuous evolution of quantum states are important in the time evolution of quantum systems, and the scattering matrix ties those seemingly disparate concepts
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The Positive Argument Against Scientific Realism Journal for General Philosophy of Science Pub Date : 2023-03-11 Florian J. Boge
Putnam coined what is now known as the no miracles argument “[t]he positive argument for realism”. In its opposition, he put an argument that by his own standards counts as negative. But are there no positive arguments against scientific realism? I believe that there is such an argument that has figured in the back of much of the realism-debate, but, to my knowledge, has nowhere been stated and defended
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Categorical Monism, Laws, and the Inference Problem Journal for General Philosophy of Science Pub Date : 2023-03-11 Vassilis Livanios
A well-known difficulty that affects all accounts of laws of nature according to which the latter are higher-order facts involving relations between universals (the so-called DTA accounts, from Dretske in Philosophy of Science 44:248–268, 1977; Tooley in Canadian Journal of Philosophy 7:667–698, 1977 and Armstrong (What is a Law of Nature?, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1983)) is the Inference
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A Twofold Tension in Schurz’s Meta-Inductive Solution to Hume’s Problem of Induction Journal for General Philosophy of Science Pub Date : 2023-02-26 Tomoji Shogenji
This paper examines a twofold tension in Gerhard Schurz’s (2019) recent proposal to solve Hume’s problem of induction. Schurz concedes to the skeptic that there is no non-circular epistemic justification of the reliability of induction, but then argues for the optimality of meta-induction so that if any prediction method is reliable, then meta-induction is. There is a tension in this proposal between
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Absolutism, Relativism, and Pragmatic Fallibilism: A Reply to Stump Journal for General Philosophy of Science Pub Date : 2023-02-24 Shahram Shahryari
In a recent article in this journal, Stump argues that pragmatism distances itself from absolutism due to its assent to fallibilism while it rejects relativism at the same time because of its insistence on experience. Therefore, pragmatism can provide a third position between relativism and absolutism. I argue in this note that his argument is profoundly inadequate for both claims. Fallibilism is compatible
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Can Science Escape Metaphysics? On Chakravartty’s Scientific Ontology Journal for General Philosophy of Science Pub Date : 2023-02-25 Rodolfo Gaeta
Contrary to empiricist hopes, Chakravartty claims that science cannot escape metaphysics. According to him, in line with the theory-ladenness thesis, science necessarily includes metaphysical presuppositions and metaphysical inferences. He contends that strong empiricism provides an implausible description of what scientists do. Furthermore, he claims, empiricists should recognize that in fact they
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Idealized Models as Selective Representations Journal for General Philosophy of Science Pub Date : 2023-02-22 Alfonso Anaya
This paper calls into question one fundamental claim at the basis of an alleged puzzle for veritistic accounts of the value of idealized models: the claim that idealized models cannot be veridical representations of the world. Catherine Elgin has argued that the value of idealized models can only be explained if we construe them as exemplars, which do not represent the world. I argue that Elgin’s proposal
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Science, Values, and the New Demarcation Problem Journal for General Philosophy of Science Pub Date : 2023-02-22 David B. Resnik, Kevin C. Elliott
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Does Meta-induction Justify Induction: Or Maybe Something Else? Journal for General Philosophy of Science Pub Date : 2023-02-22 J. Brian Pitts
According to the Feigl–Reichenbach–Salmon–Schurz pragmatic justification of induction, no predictive method is guaranteed or even likely to work for predicting the future; but if anything will work, induction will work—at least when induction is employed at the meta-level of predictive methods in light of their track records. One entertains a priori all manner of esoteric prediction methods, and is
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Deep Learning Applied to Scientific Discovery: A Hot Interface with Philosophy of Science Journal for General Philosophy of Science Pub Date : 2023-02-22 Louis Vervoort, Henry Shevlin, Alexey A. Melnikov, Alexander Alodjants
We review publications in automated scientific discovery using deep learning, with the aim of shedding light on problems with strong connections to philosophy of science, of physics in particular. We show that core issues of philosophy of science, related, notably, to the nature of scientific theories; the nature of unification; and of causation loom large in scientific deep learning. Therefore, advances
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The Perspectival Realist features of Ernst Mach’s critical epistemology Journal for General Philosophy of Science Pub Date : 2023-02-22 Pietro Gori
This paper has a twofold aim. On the one hand, it explores the extent to which Mach was inspired by Kant’s approach to philosophical inquiry and tried to further elaborate it through his historico-critical method for enlightening scientific knowledge claims. On the other hand, it argues that the focus on the situated character of these claims that is implied in Mach’s epistemology makes it possible
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Formal Epistemology Meets Mechanism Design Journal for General Philosophy of Science Pub Date : 2023-02-22 Jürgen Landes
This article connects recent work in formal epistemology to work in economics and computer science. Analysing the Dutch Book Arguments, Epistemic Utility Theory and Objective Bayesian Epistemology we discover that formal epistemologists employ the same argument structure as economists and computer scientists. Since similar approaches often have similar problems and have shared solutions, opportunities
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Hermann von Helmholtz and the Quantification Problem of Psychophysics Journal for General Philosophy of Science Pub Date : 2023-02-15 Francesca Biagioli
Hermann von Helmholtz has been widely acknowledged as one of the forerunners of contemporary theories of measurement. However, his conception of measurement differs from later, representational conceptions in two main respects. Firstly, Helmholtz advocated an empiricist philosophy of arithmetic as grounded in some psychological facts concerning quantification. Secondly, his theory implies that mathematical
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Big Ideas: The Power of a Unifying Concept Journal for General Philosophy of Science Pub Date : 2023-02-15 Janet Folina
Philosophy of science in the twentieth century tends to emphasize either the logic of science (e.g., Popper and Hempel on explanation, confirmation, etc.) or its history/sociology (e.g., Kuhn on revolutions, holism, etc.). This dichotomy, however, is neither exhaustive nor exclusive. Questions regarding scientific understanding and mathematical explanation do not fit neatly inside either category,
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Understanding Necessarily and Understanding Actually Journal for General Philosophy of Science Pub Date : 2023-02-10 Daniel A. Wilkenfeld
In this paper, I consider the relationship between coming to understand why something must be the case and coming to understand why it actually is the case in some particular instance. Peter Lipton uses the possibility of coming to understand a phenomenon via a necessity proof as an argument that there can be understanding with no explanation. Lipton’s argument has come under criticism, at least partially
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The Methods Behind Poincaré’s Conventions: Structuralism and Hypothetical-Deductivism Journal for General Philosophy of Science Pub Date : 2023-02-02 María de Paz
Poincaré’s conventionalism has been interpreted in many writings as a philosophical position emerged by reflection on certain scientific problems, such as the applicability of geometry to physical space or the status of certain scientific principles. In this paper I would like to consider conventionalism as a philosophical position that emerged from Poincaré’s scientific practice. But not so much from
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Epistemology in Practice: Ernst Mach’s Experiments on Shock Waves and The Place of Philosophy Journal for General Philosophy of Science Pub Date : 2022-12-23 Luca Guzzardi
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John Bell on ‘Subject and Object’: An Exchange Journal for General Philosophy of Science Pub Date : 2022-12-01 Hans Halvorson, Jeremy Butterfield
This three-part paper comprises: (i) a critique by Halvorson of Bell’s (1973) paper ‘Subject and Object’; (ii) a comment by Butterfield; (iii) a reply by Halvorson. An Appendix gives the passage from Bell that is the focus of Halvorson’s critique.
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Conceptual Structuralism Journal for General Philosophy of Science Pub Date : 2022-11-23 José Ferreirós
This paper defends a conceptualistic version of structuralism as the most convincing way of elaborating a philosophical understanding of structuralism in line with the classical tradition. The argument begins with a revision of the tradition of “conceptual mathematics”, incarnated in key figures of the period 1850 to 1940 like Riemann, Dedekind, Hilbert or Noether, showing how it led to a structuralist
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Structuralism and the Quest for Lost Reality Journal for General Philosophy of Science Pub Date : 2022-11-25 Bobby Vos
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On Schurz’s Construction Paradigm of Scientific Theory Development Journal for General Philosophy of Science Pub Date : 2022-11-17 Atocha Aliseda
The aim of this paper is to show that the logical approach to philosophy of science could be further improved with tools like the ones put forward by Schurz in his proposal to model scientific theory development. Section 2 is a presentation of the basics in AGM epistemology of logical abduction and of their connection. In Sect. 3 several operations for theory change proposed by Schurz (2011; 2018)
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Likelihoodism and Guidance for Belief Journal for General Philosophy of Science Pub Date : 2022-11-09 Tamaz Tokhadze
Likelihoodism is the view that the degree of evidential support should be analysed and measured in terms of likelihoods alone. The paper considers and responds to a popular criticism that a likelihoodist framework is too restrictive to guide belief. First, I show that the most detailed and rigorous version of this criticism, as put forward by Gandenberger (2016), is unsuccessful. Second, I provide
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More on Why Contingent Facts Cannot Necessities Make: A Reply to Wildman Journal for General Philosophy of Science Pub Date : 2022-11-08 Marc Lange
Lange (2008) has given an argument elaborating Blackburn’s (1993) dilemma for any account of modal facts. Lange’s argument aims to show that a contingent fact lacks the modal strength required to be responsible for some fact’s necessity. Recently, Wildman (2021) has argued that Lange’s argument appeals to a mistaken premise. This paper shows that Wildman’s argument fails; his case does not constitute
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Adaptive Algorithms for Meta-Induction Journal for General Philosophy of Science Pub Date : 2022-10-07 Ronald Ortner
Work in online learning traditionally considered induction-friendly (e.g. stochastic with a fixed distribution) and induction-hostile (adversarial) settings separately. While algorithms like Exp3 that have been developed for the adversarial setting are applicable to the stochastic setting as well, the guarantees that can be obtained are usually worse than those that are available for algorithms that
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On Imprecise Bayesianism in the Face of an Increasingly Larger Outcome Space Journal for General Philosophy of Science Pub Date : 2022-09-21 Marc Fischer
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Explanatory Asymmetry in Non-Causal Explanation Journal for General Philosophy of Science Pub Date : 2022-09-20 Andrew Wayne
The problem of explanatory asymmetry remains a serious challenge for non-causal accounts of explanation. This paper proposes a novel solution, and it does so by appealing to the theoretical context in which an explanation is offered. The paper develops the problem of explanatory asymmetry for non-causal dependency accounts of explanation, focusing specifically on Alexander Reutlinger’s Counterfactual
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Time’s Direction and Orthodox Quantum Mechanics: Time Symmetry and Measurement Journal for General Philosophy of Science Pub Date : 2022-08-26 Cristian Lopez
It has been argued that measurement-induced collapses in Orthodox Quantum Mechanics generates an intrinsic (or built-in) quantum arrow of time. In this paper, I critically assess this proposal. I begin by distinguishing between an intrinsic and non-intrinsic arrow of time. After presenting the proposal of a collapse-based arrow of time in some detail, I argue, first, that any quantum arrow of time
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About the Reaction to Styles of Thought on the Continental Drift Debate Journal for General Philosophy of Science Pub Date : 2022-08-23 Pablo A. Pellegrini
The article appearing previously in this journal entitled “Styles of Thought on the Continental Drift Debate” (Pellegrini 2019) prompted a response from Weber and Šešelja (2020) which they termed as “a defence of rationalist accounts”. They argue that their self-designated “sophisticated rationalism” explains the closure of the continental-drift debate without being affected by my critiques to rationalist
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Whewell’s Hylomorphism as a Metaphorical Explanation for How Mind and World Merge Journal for General Philosophy of Science Pub Date : 2022-08-09 Ragnar van der Merwe
William Whewell’s nineteenth century philosophy of science is sometimes glossed over as a footnote to Kant. There is however a key feature of Whewell’s account worth noting. This is his appeal to Aristotle’s form/matter hylomorphism as a metaphor to explain how mind and world merge in successful scientific inquiry. Whewell’s hylomorphism suggests a middle way between rationalism and empiricism reminiscent
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Phylogenetic Distribution and Trajectories of Visual Consciousness: Examining Feinberg and Mallatt’s Neurobiological Naturalism Journal for General Philosophy of Science Pub Date : 2022-07-23 Koji Ota, Daichi G. Suzuki, Senji Tanaka
Feinberg and Mallatt, in their presentation of neurobiological naturalism, have suggested that visual consciousness was acquired by early vertebrates and inherited by a wide range of descendants, and that its neural basis has shifted to nonhomologous nervous structures during evolution. However, their evolutionary scenario of visual consciousness relies on the assumption that visual consciousness is
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Does Explaining Past Success Require (Enough) Retention? The Case of Ptolemaic Astronomy Journal for General Philosophy of Science Pub Date : 2022-07-11 José Díez, Gonzalo Recio, Christian Carman
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Motivating a Pragmatic Approach to Naturalized Social Ontology Journal for General Philosophy of Science Pub Date : 2022-06-26 Richard Lauer
Recent contributions to the philosophy of the social sciences have motivated ontological commitments using appeals to the social sciences (naturalized social ontologies). These arguments rely on social scientific realism about the social sciences, the view that our social scientific theories are approximately true. I apply a distinction formulated in metaontology between ontologically loaded and unloaded
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A Synthesis of the Formats for Correcting Erroneous and Fraudulent Academic Literature, and Associated Challenges Journal for General Philosophy of Science Pub Date : 2022-06-01 Jaime A. Teixeira da Silva
Academic publishing is undergoing a highly transformative process, and many established rules and value systems that are in place, such as traditional peer review (TPR) and preprints, are facing unprecedented challenges, including as a result of post-publication peer review. The integrity and validity of the academic literature continue to rely naively on blind trust, while TPR and preprints continue
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Prior Information in Frequentist Research Designs: The Case of Neyman’s Sampling Theory Journal for General Philosophy of Science Pub Date : 2022-05-17 Adam P. Kubiak, Paweł Kawalec
We analyse the issue of using prior information in frequentist statistical inference. For that purpose, we scrutinise different kinds of sampling designs in Jerzy Neyman’s theory to reveal a variety of ways to explicitly and objectively engage with prior information. Further, we turn to the debate on sampling paradigms (design-based vs. model-based approaches) to argue that Neyman’s theory supports
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From Unobservable to Observable: Scientific Realism and the Discovery of Radium Journal for General Philosophy of Science Pub Date : 2022-05-14 Simon Allzén
I explore the process of changes in the observability of entities and objects in science and how such changes impact two key issues in the scientific realism debate: the claim that predictively successful elements of past science are retained in current scientific theories, and the inductive defense of a specific version of inference to the best explanation with respect to unobservables. I provide
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The Idea of a Pseudo-Problem in Mach, Hertz, and Boltzmann Journal for General Philosophy of Science Pub Date : 2022-05-12 John Preston
Identifications, diagnoses, and treatments of pseudo-problems form a family of classic methodologies in later nineteenth century philosophy and at least partly, I shall argue, in the philosophy of science. They were devised, not by academic philosophers, but by three of the greatest philosopher-scientists. Here I show how Ernst Mach, Heinrich Hertz and Ludwig Boltzmann each deployed methods of this
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Rebuttal to Douglas and Elliott Journal for General Philosophy of Science Pub Date : 2022-05-11 Robert Hudson
In “Should We Strive to Make Science Bias‑Free? A Philosophical Assessment of the Reproducibility Crisis”, I argue that the problem of bias in science, a key factor in the current reproducibility crisis, is worsened if we follow Heather Douglas and Kevin C. Elliott’s advice and introduce non-epistemic values into the evidential assessment of scientific hypotheses. In their response to my paper, Douglas