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The Principal Principle, admissibility, and normal informal standards of what is reasonable European Journal for Philosophy of Science (IF 0.859) Pub Date : 2021-03-27 Jürgen Landes, Christian Wallmann, Jon Williamson
This paper highlights the role of Lewis’ Principal Principle and certain auxiliary conditions on admissibility as serving to explicate normal informal standards of what is reasonable. These considerations motivate the presuppositions of the argument that the Principal Principle implies the Principle of Indifference, put forward by Hawthorne et al. (British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 68
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Making our “meta-hypotheses” clear: heterogeneity and the role of direct replications in science European Journal for Philosophy of Science (IF 0.859) Pub Date : 2021-03-24 Eirik Strømland
This paper argues that some of the discussion around meta-scientific issues can be viewed as an argument over different “meta-hypotheses” – assumptions made about how different hypotheses in a scientific literature relate to each other. I argue that, currently, such meta-hypotheses are typically left unstated except in methodological papers and that the consequence of this practice is that it is hard
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A mistaken confidence in data European Journal for Philosophy of Science (IF 0.859) Pub Date : 2021-03-20 Edouard Machery
In this paper I explore an underdiscussed factor contributing to the replication crisis: Scientists, and following them policy makers, often neglect sources of errors in the production and interpretation of data and thus overestimate what can be learnt from them. This neglect leads scientists to conduct experiments that are insufficiently informative and science consumers, including other scientists
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Hidden figures: epistemic costs and benefits of detecting (invisible) diversity in science European Journal for Philosophy of Science (IF 0.859) Pub Date : 2021-03-03 Uwe Peters
Demographic diversity might often be present in a group without group members noticing it. What are the epistemic effects if they do? Several philosophers and social scientists have recently argued that when individuals detect demographic diversity in their group, this can result in epistemic benefits even if that diversity doesn’t involve cognitive differences. Here I critically discuss research advocating
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Quantum ontology without speculation European Journal for Philosophy of Science (IF 0.859) Pub Date : 2021-01-30 Matthias Egg
Existing proposals concerning the ontology of quantum mechanics (QM) either involve speculation that goes beyond the scientific evidence or abandon realism about large parts of QM. This paper proposes a way out of this dilemma, by showing that QM as it is formulated in standard textbooks allows for a much more substantive ontological commitment than is usually acknowledged. For this purpose, I defend
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Data models, representation and adequacy-for-purpose European Journal for Philosophy of Science (IF 0.859) Pub Date : 2021-01-29 Alisa Bokulich, Wendy Parker
We critically engage two traditional views of scientific data and outline a novel philosophical view that we call the pragmatic-representational (PR) view of data. On the PR view, data are representations that are the product of a process of inquiry, and they should be evaluated in terms of their adequacy or fitness for particular purposes. Some important implications of the PR view for data assessment
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Three noncontextual hidden variable models for the Peres-Mermin square European Journal for Philosophy of Science (IF 0.859) Pub Date : 2021-01-23 Gábor Hofer-Szabó
I will argue that the Peres-Mermin square does not necessarily rule out a value-definite (deterministic) noncontextual hidden variable model if the operators are not given a physical interpretation satisfying the following two requirements: (i) each operator is uniquely realized by a single physical measurement; (ii) commuting operators are realized by simultaneous measurements. To underpin this claim
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Cosmic Bayes. Datasets and priors in the hunt for dark energy European Journal for Philosophy of Science (IF 0.859) Pub Date : 2021-01-16 Michela Massimi
Bayesian methods are ubiquitous in contemporary observational cosmology. They enter into three main tasks: (I) cross-checking datasets for consistency; (II) fixing constraints on cosmological parameters; and (III) model selection. This article explores some epistemic limits of using Bayesian methods. The first limit concerns the degree of informativeness of the Bayesian priors and an ensuing methodological
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Cosmic hylomorphism European Journal for Philosophy of Science (IF 0.859) Pub Date : 2021-01-15 William M. R. Simpson
The primitive ontology approach to quantum mechanics seeks to account for quantum phenomena in terms of a distribution of matter in three-dimensional space (or four-dimensional spacetime) and a law of nature that describes its temporal development. This approach to explaining quantum phenomena is compatible with either a Humean or powerist account of laws. In this paper, I offer a powerist ontology
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Evidence based methodology: a naturalistic analysis of epistemic policies in regulatory science European Journal for Philosophy of Science (IF 0.859) Pub Date : 2021-01-13 José Luis Luján, Oliver Todt
In this paper we argue for a naturalistic solution to some of the methodological controversies in regulatory science, on the basis of two case studies: toxicology (risk assessment) and health claim regulation (benefit assessment). We analyze the debates related to the scientific evidence that is considered necessary for regulatory decision making in each of those two fields, with a particular attention
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Creativity as potentially valuable improbable constructions European Journal for Philosophy of Science (IF 0.859) Pub Date : 2021-01-13 Mark Fedyk, Fei Xu
We argue that creative ideas are potentially valuable improbable constructions. We arrive at this formulation of creativity after considering several problems that arise for the theories that suggest that creativity is novelty, originality, or usefulness. Our theory avoids these problems. But since we also derive our theory of creativity from the scientific commitments of a more general theory of cognitive
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Constitutive elements through perspectival lenses European Journal for Philosophy of Science (IF 0.859) Pub Date : 2021-01-12 Mariano Sanjuán
Recent debates in philosophy of science have witnessed the rise of two major proposals. On the one hand, regarding the conceptual structure of scientific theories, some believe that they exhibit constitutive elements. The constitutive elements of a theory are the components that play the role of laying the foundations of empirical meaningfulness, and whose acceptance is prior to empirical research
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The modal status of the laws of nature. Tahko’s hybrid view and the kinematical/dynamical distinction European Journal for Philosophy of Science (IF 0.859) Pub Date : 2021-01-11 Salim Hirèche, Niels Linnemann, Robert Michels, Lisa Vogt
In a recent paper, Tuomas Tahko has argued for a hybrid view of the laws of nature, according to which some physical laws are metaphysically necessary, while others are metaphysically contingent. In this paper, we show that his criterion for distinguishing between these two kinds of laws — which crucially relies on the essences of natural kinds — is on its own unsatisfactory. We then propose an alternative
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The role of replication in psychological science European Journal for Philosophy of Science (IF 0.859) Pub Date : 2021-01-08 Samuel C. Fletcher
The replication or reproducibility crisis in psychological science has renewed attention to philosophical aspects of its methodology. I provide herein a new, functional account of the role of replication in a scientific discipline: to undercut the underdetermination of scientific hypotheses from data, typically by hypotheses that connect data with phenomena. These include hypotheses that concern sampling
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Making coherent senses of success in scientific modeling European Journal for Philosophy of Science (IF 0.859) Pub Date : 2021-01-08 Beckett Sterner, Christopher DiTeresi
Making sense of why something succeeded or failed is central to scientific practice: it provides an interpretation of what happened, i.e. an hypothesized explanation for the results, that informs scientists’ deliberations over their next steps. In philosophy, the realism debate has dominated the project of making sense of scientists’ success and failure claims, restricting its focus to whether truth
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Explication as a Three-Step Procedure: the case of the Church-Turing Thesis European Journal for Philosophy of Science (IF 0.859) Pub Date : 2021-01-06 Matteo De Benedetto
In recent years two different axiomatic characterizations of the intuitive concept of effective calculability have been proposed, one by Sieg and the other by Dershowitz and Gurevich. Analyzing them from the perspective of Carnapian explication, I argue that these two characterizations explicate the intuitive notion of effective calculability in two different ways. I will trace back these two ways
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The mechanistic stance European Journal for Philosophy of Science (IF 0.859) Pub Date : 2021-01-05 Jonny Lee, Joe Dewhurst
It is generally acknowledged by proponents of ‘new mechanism’ that mechanistic explanation involves adopting a perspective, but there is less agreement on how we should understand this perspective-taking or what its implications are (if any) for practising science. This paper examines the perspectival nature of mechanistic explanation through the lens of the ‘mechanistic stance’, which falls somewhere
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Natural kind terms again European Journal for Philosophy of Science (IF 0.859) Pub Date : 2021-01-05 Panu Raatikainen
The new externalist picture of natural kind terms due to Kripke, Putnam, and others has become quite popular in philosophy. Many philosophers of science have remained sceptical. Häggqvist and Wikforss have recently criticised this view severely. They contend it depends essentially on a micro-essentialist view of natural kinds that is widely rejected among philosophers of science, and that a scientifically
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On the categoricity of quantum mechanics European Journal for Philosophy of Science (IF 0.859) Pub Date : 2020-12-17 Iulian D. Toader
The paper offers an argument against an intuitive reading of the Stone-von Neumann theorem as a categoricity result, thereby pointing out that, against what is usually taken to be the case, this theorem does not entail any model-theoretical difference between the theories that validate it and those that don’t.
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Rethinking creative intelligence: comparative psychology and the concept of creativity European Journal for Philosophy of Science (IF 0.859) Pub Date : 2020-12-17 Henry Shevlin
The concept of creativity is a central one in folk psychological explanation and has long been prominent in philosophical debates about the nature of art, genius, and the imagination. The scientific investigation of creativity in humans is also well established, and there has been increasing interest in the question of whether the concept can be rigorously applied to non-human animals. In this paper
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The dissipative approach to quantum field theory: conceptual foundations and ontological implications European Journal for Philosophy of Science (IF 0.859) Pub Date : 2020-12-17 Andrea Oldofredi, Hans Christian Öttinger
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
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Powers ontology and the quantum revolution European Journal for Philosophy of Science (IF 0.859) Pub Date : 2020-11-28 Robert C. Koons
An Aristotelian philosophy of nature rejects the modern prejudice in favor of the microscopic, a rejection that is crucial if we are to penetrate the mysteries of the quantum world. I defend an Aristotelian model by drawing on both quantum chemistry and recent work on the measurement problem. By building on the work of Hans Primas, using the distinction between quantum and classical properties that
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Measurement perspective, process, and the pandemic European Journal for Philosophy of Science (IF 0.859) Pub Date : 2020-11-21 Vadim Keyser, Hannah Howland
This discussion centers on two desiderata: the role of measurement in information-gathering and physical interaction in scientific practice. By taking inspiration from van Fraassen’s (2008) view, we present a methodological account of perspectival measurement that addresses empirical practice where there is complex intervention, disagreeing results, and limited theory. The specific aim of our account
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Scientific Perspectivism and psychiatric diagnoses: respecting history and constraining relativism European Journal for Philosophy of Science (IF 0.859) Pub Date : 2020-10-27 Sam Fellowes
Historians and sociologists of psychiatry often claim that psychiatric diagnoses are discontinuous. That is, a particular diagnoses will be described in one way in one era and described quite differently in a different era. Historians and sociologists often draw epistemic consequences from such discontinuities, claiming that truth is pluralistic, provisional and historicised. These arguments do not
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The power of meta-analysis: a challenge for evidence-based medicine European Journal for Philosophy of Science (IF 0.859) Pub Date : 2020-10-26 Paola Berchialla,Daniele Chiffi,Giovanni Valente,Ari Voutilainen
This paper discusses the outstanding problem of replicability of empirical data in the context of recent work on meta-analysis, especially within the field of evidence-based medicine. Specifically, it deals with the methodological issue of how to determine the degrees of heterogeneity between different collected studies. After critically reviewing the standard measures used to quantify meta-analytical
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No laws and (thin) powers in, no (governing) laws out European Journal for Philosophy of Science (IF 0.859) Pub Date : 2020-10-26 Stavros Ioannidis,Vassilis Livanios,Stathis Psillos
Non-Humean accounts of the metaphysics of nature posit either laws or powers in order to account for natural necessity and world-order. We argue that such monistic views face fundamental problems. On the one hand, neo-Aristotelians cannot give unproblematic power-based accounts of the functional laws among quantities offered by physical theories, as well as of the place of conservation laws and symmetries
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Visibility, creativity, and collective working practices in art and science European Journal for Philosophy of Science (IF 0.859) Pub Date : 2020-10-24 Claire Anscomb
Visual artists and scientists frequently employ the labour of assistants and technicians, however these workers generally receive little recognition for their contribution to the production of artistic and scientific work. They are effectively “invisible”. This invisible status however, comes at the cost of a better understanding of artistic and scientific work, and improvements in artistic and scientific
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The self and its causal powers between metaphysics and science European Journal for Philosophy of Science (IF 0.859) Pub Date : 2020-10-14 Rodolfo Giorgi,Andrea Lavazza
According to the thesis of powerism, our world is pervaded by causal powers which are metaphysically basic. The aim of this paper is to defend the existence of the self, defined as a substantial entity, and its mental powers . This claim, which may seem a bold one, should not be deemed as inconsistent with scientific evidence. In fact, this approach does not ignore empirical knowledge, but is not bound
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Relativity without miracles European Journal for Philosophy of Science (IF 0.859) Pub Date : 2020-10-12 Adán Sus
It has been claimed, recently, that the fact that all the non-gravitational fields are locally Poincaré invariant and that these invariances coincide, in a certain regime, with the symmetries of the spacetime metric is miraculous in general relativity (GR). In this paper I show that, in the context of GR, it is possible to account for these so-called miracles of relativity. The way to do so involves
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Local explanation in historiography of science European Journal for Philosophy of Science (IF 0.859) Pub Date : 2020-10-06 Veli Virmajoki
In this paper, I offer an explication of the notion of local explanation. In the literature, local explanations are considered as metaphysically and methodologically satisfactory: local explanations reveal the contingency of science and provide a methodologically sound historiography of science. However, the lack of explication of the notion of local explanation makes these claims difficult to assess
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Measuring creativity: an account of natural and artificial creativity European Journal for Philosophy of Science (IF 0.859) Pub Date : 2020-10-02 Caterina Moruzzi
Despite the recent upsurge of interest in the investigation of creativity, the question of how to measure creativity is arguably underdiscussed. The aim of this paper is to address this gap, proposing a multidimensional account of creativity which identifies problem-solving, evaluation, and naivety as measurable features that are common among creative processes. The benefits that result from the adoption
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Double trouble? The communication dimension of the reproducibility crisis in experimental psychology and neuroscience European Journal for Philosophy of Science (IF 0.859) Pub Date : 2020-10-01 Witold M. Hensel
Most discussions of the reproducibility crisis focus on its epistemic aspect: the fact that the scientific community fails to follow some norms of scientific investigation, which leads to high rates of irreproducibility via a high rate of false positive findings. The purpose of this paper is to argue that there is a heretofore underappreciated and understudied dimension to the reproducibility crisis
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The strong emergence of molecular structure European Journal for Philosophy of Science (IF 0.859) Pub Date : 2020-10-01 Vanessa A. Seifert
One of the most plausible and widely discussed examples of strong emergence is molecular structure. The only detailed account of it, which has been very influential, is due to Robin Hendry and is formulated in terms of downward causation. This paper explains Hendry’s account of the strong emergence of molecular structure and argues that it is coherent only if one assumes a diachronic reflexive notion
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Novel & worthy: creativity as a thick epistemic concept European Journal for Philosophy of Science (IF 0.859) Pub Date : 2020-09-17 Julia Sánchez-Dorado
The standard view in current philosophy of creativity says that being creative has two requirements: being novel and being valuable (to which a third intentionality requirement is often added; Sternberg and Lubart 1999 ; Boden 2004 ; Gaut 2010 ). The standard view on creativity has recently become an object of critical scrutiny. Hills and Bird ( 2018 ) have specifically proposed to remove the value
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Perspectivism in current epigenetics European Journal for Philosophy of Science (IF 0.859) Pub Date : 2020-09-17 Karim Bschir
Discussions about perspectivism in the current philosophical literature often focus on questions concerning perspectival modeling or the compatibility between perspectivism and realism. In this paper, I propose to extend the debate on perspectivism by taking into account the social dimension of scientific perspectives. Scientific perspectives are always adopted and advocated for by individual scientists
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Reply to Cartwright, Pemberton, Wieten: “mechanisms, laws and explanation” European Journal for Philosophy of Science (IF 0.859) Pub Date : 2020-09-01 Beate Krickel
Cartwright et al. in European Journal for Philosophy of Science, 10 (3) ( 2020 ) and the new mechanists agree that regular behaviors described in cp laws are generated by mechanisms. However, there is disagreement with regard to the two questions that Cartwright at al. ask: the epistemological question (“What kind of explanation is involved?”) and the ontological question (“What is going on in the
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“Repeated sampling from the same population?” A critique of Neyman and Pearson’s responses to Fisher European Journal for Philosophy of Science (IF 0.859) Pub Date : 2020-09-01 Mark Rubin
Fisher ( 1945a , 1945b , 1955 , 1956 , 1960 ) criticised the Neyman-Pearson approach to hypothesis testing by arguing that it relies on the assumption of “repeated sampling from the same population.” The present article considers the responses to this criticism provided by Pearson ( 1947 ) and Neyman ( 1977 ). Pearson interpreted alpha levels in relation to imaginary replications of the original test
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Realism, reference & perspective European Journal for Philosophy of Science (IF 0.859) Pub Date : 2020-09-01 Carl Hoefer, Genoveva Martí
This paper continues the defense of a version of scientific realism, Tautological Scientific Realism (TSR), that rests on the claim that, excluding some areas of fundamental physics about which doubts are entirely justified, many areas of contemporary science cannot be coherently imagined to be false other than via postulation of radically skeptical scenarios, which are not relevant to the realism
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What can bouncing oil droplets tell us about quantum mechanics? European Journal for Philosophy of Science (IF 0.859) Pub Date : 2020-09-01 Peter W. Evans, Karim P. Y. Thébault
A recent series of experiments have demonstrated that a classical fluid mechanical system, constituted by an oil droplet bouncing on a vibrating fluid surface, can be induced to display a number of behaviours previously considered to be distinctly quantum. To explain this correspondence it has been suggested that the fluid mechanical system provides a single-particle classical model of de Broglie’s
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Social constructionism and climate science denial European Journal for Philosophy of Science (IF 0.859) Pub Date : 2020-08-29 Sven Ove Hansson
It has been much debated whether epistemic relativism in academia, for instance in the form of social constructivism, the strong programme, deconstructionism, and postmodernism, has paved the way for the recent upsurge in science denial, in particular climate science denial. In order to provide an empirical basis for this discussion, an extensive search of the social science literature was performed
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Calling for explanation: the case of the thermodynamic past state European Journal for Philosophy of Science (IF 0.859) Pub Date : 2020-08-07 Dan Baras, Orly Shenker
Philosophers of physics have long debated whether the Past State of low entropy of our universe calls for explanation. What is meant by “calls for explanation”? In this article we analyze this notion, distinguishing between several possible meanings that may be attached to it. Taking the debate around the Past State as a case study, we show how our analysis of what “calling for explanation” might mean
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Mechanistic explanations and components of social mechanisms European Journal for Philosophy of Science (IF 0.859) Pub Date : 2020-08-06 Saúl Pérez-González
The past two decades have witnessed an increase in interest in social mechanisms and mechanistic explanations of social macro-phenomena. This paper addresses the question of what the components of social mechanisms in mechanistic explanations of social macro-phenomena must be. Analytical sociology’s initial position and the main new proposals by analytical sociologists are discussed. It is argued that
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A theory of contrastive causal explanation and its implications concerning the explanatoriness of deterministic and probabilistic hypotheses European Journal for Philosophy of Science (IF 0.859) Pub Date : 2020-07-25 Elliott Sober
Carl Hempel (1965) argued that probabilistic hypotheses are limited in what they can explain. He contended that a hypothesis cannot explain why E is true if the hypothesis says that E has a probability less than 0.5. Wesley Salmon (1971, 1984, 1990, 1998) and Richard Jeffrey (1969) argued to the contrary, contending that P can explain why E is true even when P says that E’s probability is very low
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Synchronic and diachronic identity for elementary particles European Journal for Philosophy of Science (IF 0.859) Pub Date : 2020-07-14 Tomasz Bigaj
The main focus of this paper is on the notion of transtemporal (diachronic) identity applied to quantum particles. I pose the question of how the symmetrization postulate with respect to instantaneous states of particles of the same type affects the possibility of identifying interacting particles before and after their interaction. The answer to this question turns out to be contingent upon the choice
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Giere’s instrumental Perspectivism European Journal for Philosophy of Science (IF 0.859) Pub Date : 2020-07-14 Kane Baker
When Ron Giere (1999, 2006) introduced perspectivism into philosophy of science, he provided a perspectivist analysis of both scientific instruments and scientific theorizing. Today, there is a burgeoning literature that extends Giere’s analysis of theorizing, with many philosophers examining the perspectivist approach to aspects of theorizing such as models, laws, explanations, and so on. However
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The role of disciplinary perspectives in an epistemology of scientific models European Journal for Philosophy of Science (IF 0.859) Pub Date : 2020-07-01 Mieke Boon
The purpose of this article is to develop an epistemology of scientific models in scientific research practices, and to show that disciplinary perspectives have crucial role in such an epistemology. A transcendental (Kantian) approach is taken, aimed at explanations of the kinds of questions relevant to the intended epistemology, such as “How is it possible that models provide knowledge about aspects
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Scientific perspectivism in the phenomenological tradition European Journal for Philosophy of Science (IF 0.859) Pub Date : 2020-06-16 Philipp Berghofer
In current debates, many philosophers of science have sympathies for the project of introducing a new approach to the scientific realism debate that forges a middle way between traditional forms of scientific realism and anti-realism. One promising approach is perspectivism. Although different proponents of perspectivism differ in their respective characterizations of perspectivism, the common idea
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Reconstructing rational reconstructions: on Lakatos’s account on the relation between history and philosophy of science European Journal for Philosophy of Science (IF 0.859) Pub Date : 2020-06-04 Thodoris Dimitrakos
In this paper, I argue that Imre Lakatos’s account on the relation between the history and the philosophy of science, if properly understood and also if properly modified, can be valuable for the philosophical comprehension of the relation between the history and the philosophy of science. The paper is divided into three main parts. In the first part, I provide a charitable exegesis of the Lakatosian
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Modality and constitution in distinctively mathematical explanations European Journal for Philosophy of Science (IF 0.859) Pub Date : 2020-05-27 Mark Povich
Lange ( 2013 , 2016 ) argues that some natural phenomena can be explained by appeal to mathematical, rather than natural, facts. In these “distinctively mathematical” explanations (DMEs), the core explanatory facts are either modally stronger than facts about ordinary causal law or understood to be constitutive of the physical task or arrangement at issue. Craver and Povich ( 2017 ) argue that Lange’s
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Imagination in Scientific Practice European Journal for Philosophy of Science (IF 0.859) Pub Date : 2020-05-20 Steven French
What is the role of the imagination in scientific practice? Here I focus on the nature and role of invitations to imagine in certain scientific texts as represented by the example of Einstein’s Special Relativity paper from 1905. Drawing on related discussions in aesthetics, I argue, on the one hand, that this role cannot be simply subsumed under ‘supposition’ but that, on the other, concerns about
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On Shackel’s nothing from infinity paradox European Journal for Philosophy of Science (IF 0.859) Pub Date : 2020-05-19 Amaia Corral-Villate
The objective of this article is to provide a discussion that counters the infinite particle disappearance conclusion argued by Shackel ( European Journal for Philosophy of Science , 8 (3), 417–433, 2018 ). In order to do this, clear criteria to disprove the results of the applications of his continuity principles are provided, in addition to the consideration of the fundamental Classical Mechanical
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Mechanisms, laws and explanation European Journal for Philosophy of Science (IF 0.859) Pub Date : 2020-05-15 Nancy Cartwright, John Pemberton, Sarah Wieten
Mechanisms are now taken widely in philosophy of science to provide one of modern science’s basic explanatory devices. This has raised lively debate concerning the relationship between mechanisms, laws and explanation. This paper focuses on cases where a mechanism gives rise to a ceteris paribus law, addressing two inter-related questions: (1) What kind of explanation is involved? and (2) What is going
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Perspectivism and the epistemology of experimentation European Journal for Philosophy of Science (IF 0.859) Pub Date : 2020-04-29 Jan Potters
My aim in this paper is to propose a way to study the role of perspectives in both the production and justification of experimental knowledge claims. My starting point for this will be Anjan Chakravartty’s claim that Ronald Giere’s perspectival account of the role of instruments in the production of such claims entails relativism in the form of irreducibly incompatible truths. This led Michela Massimi
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On metaphysically necessary laws from physics European Journal for Philosophy of Science (IF 0.859) Pub Date : 2020-04-28 Niels Linnemann
How does metaphysical necessity relate to the modal force often associated with natural laws (natural necessity)? Fine ( 2002 ) argues that natural necessity can neither be obtained from metaphysical necessity via forms of restriction nor of relativization — and therefore pleads for modal pluralism concerning natural and metaphysical necessity. Wolff ( Philosophy of Science, 80 (5), 898–906, 2013 )
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The Big Data razor European Journal for Philosophy of Science (IF 0.859) Pub Date : 2020-04-20 Ezequiel López-Rubio
Classic conceptions of model simplicity for machine learning are mainly based on the analysis of the structure of the model. Bayesian, Frequentist, information theoretic and expressive power concepts are the best known of them, which are reviewed in this work, along with their underlying assumptions and weaknesses. These approaches were developed before the advent of the Big Data deluge, which has
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Perspectival realism and norms of scientific representation European Journal for Philosophy of Science (IF 0.859) Pub Date : 2020-03-24 Quentin Ruyant
Perspectival realism combines two apparently contradictory aspects: the epistemic relativity of perspectives and the mind-independence of realism. This paper examines the prospects for a coherent perspectival realism, taking the literature on scientific representation as a starting point. It is argued that representation involves two types of norms, referred to as norms of relevance and norms of accuracy
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The Evidence for the accelerating universe: endorsement and robust consistency European Journal for Philosophy of Science (IF 0.859) Pub Date : 2020-03-24 Genco Guralp
The 2011 Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to researchers from the Supernova Cosmology Project and the High- z Supernova Search Team for the discovery of the accelerating expansion of the universe. In this paper, I provide a historical analysis of the supernova cosmology evidence put forward by these teams for the accelerating universe, in terms of an iterative model of scientific progress developed
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Perspectival objectivity European Journal for Philosophy of Science (IF 0.859) Pub Date : 2020-03-21 Peter W. Evans
Brukner (2018) proposes a no-go theorem for observer-independent facts. A possible consequence of the theorem is that there can be no absolute facts about the world, only facts relative to an observer. However, admitting such observer dependency runs the risk of licensing pernicious anthropocentrism in our account of reality, thereby precluding the possibility of objectivity in scientific inquiry,
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Putting multidisciplinarity (back) on the map European Journal for Philosophy of Science (IF 0.859) Pub Date : 2020-03-20 Julie Mennes
The dominant theory of cross-disciplinarity represents multidisciplinarity as ‘lower’ or ‘less interesting’ than interdisciplinarity. In this paper, it is argued that this unfavorable representation of multidisciplinarity is ungrounded because it is an effect of the theory being incomplete. It is also explained that the unfavorable, ungrounded representation of multidisciplinarity is problematic: when
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String theory, loop quantum gravity and eternalism European Journal for Philosophy of Science (IF 0.859) Pub Date : 2020-03-17 Baptiste Le Bihan
Eternalism, the view that what we regard locally as being located in the past, the present and the future equally exists, is the best ontological account of temporal existence in line with special and general relativity. However, special and general relativity are not fundamental theories and several research programs aim at finding a more fundamental theory of quantum gravity weaving together all