Philosophy of Science

ISSN: 0031-8248

18 found

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  1.  3
    Review of William Demopoulos’ On Theories: Logical Empiricism and the Methodology of Modern Physics- William Demopoulos, On Theories: Logical Empiricism and the Methodology of Modern Physics, edited by Michael Friedman. Cambridge: Harvard University Press (2022), 272 pp., $39.95 (hardcover). [REVIEW]Yemima Ben-Menahem - 2023 - Philosophy of Science 90 (1):222-225.
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  2. How to Think with the Global South. Essay Review of Global Epistemologies and Philosophies of Science, Routledge, 2021. [REVIEW]Andrew Buskell, Edwin Etieyibo, Catherine Kendig, Raphael Uchôa & Robert A. Wilson - 2023 - Philosophy of Science 90 (1):209-217.
    Extended Essay Review of the 26 chapters in the collection Global Epistemologies and Philosophies of Science, Routledge, 2021.
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  3.  54
    On Internal Structure, Categorical Structure, and Representation.Neil Dewar - 2023 - Philosophy of Science 90 (1):188-195.
    If categorical equivalence is a good criterion of theoretical equivalence, then it would seem that if some class of mathematical structures is represented as a category, then any other class of structures categorically equivalent to it will have the same representational capacities. Hudetz (2019a) has presented an apparent counterexample to this claim; in this note, I argue that the counterexample fails.
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  4. Responsibility for Collective Epistemic Harms.Will Fleisher & Dunja Šešelja - 2023 - Philosophy of Science 90 (1):1-20.
    Discussion of epistemic responsibility typically focuses on belief formation and actions leading to it. Similarly, accounts of collective epistemic responsibility have addressed the issue of collective belief formation and associated actions. However, there has been little discussion of collective responsibility for preventing epistemic harms, particularly those preventable only by the collective action of an unorganized group. We propose an account of collective epistemic responsibility which fills this gap. Building on Hindriks' (2019) account of collective moral responsibility, we introduce the Epistemic (...)
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  5.  21
    How to Be Humean about Idealization Laws.Toby Friend - 2023 - Philosophy of Science 90 (1):150-170.
    If one has Humean inclinations, what account should one provide for idealization laws? I introduce the currently most popular Humean approach to laws of nature, the best systems account, along with some basic requirements for how to be Humean. I then show why idealization laws are unlikely to be accommodated within this account of laws. Finally, I offer an alternative approach that takes idealization laws to be meta-laws, placing requirements on the theorems of the best system.
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  6. Forced Changes Only: A New Take on the Law of Inertia.Daniel Hoek - 2023 - Philosophy of Science 90 (1):60-76.
    Newton’s First Law of Motion is typically understood to govern only the motion of force-free bodies. This paper argues on textual and conceptual grounds that it is in fact a stronger, more general principle. The First Law limits the extent to which any body can change its state of motion –– even if that body is subject to impressed forces. The misunderstanding can be traced back to an error in the first English translation of Newton’s Principia, which was published a (...)
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  7. On Accuracy and Coherence with Infinite Opinion Sets.Mikayla Kelley - 2023 - Philosophy of Science 90 (1):92-128.
    There is a well-known equivalence between avoiding accuracy dominance and having probabilistically coherent credences (see, e.g., de Finetti 1974, Joyce 2009, Predd et al. 2009, Pettigrew 2016). However, this equivalence has been established only when the set of propositions on which credence functions are defined is finite. In this paper, I establish connections between accuracy dominance and coherence when credence functions are defined on an infinite set of propositions. In particular, I establish the necessary results to extend the classic accuracy (...)
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  8. The Unconscious Mind Worry: A Mechanistic-Explanatory Strategy.Beate Krickel - 2023 - Philosophy of Science 90 (1):39-59.
    Recent findings in different areas of psychology and cognitive science have brought the unconscious mind back to center stage. However, the unconscious mind worry remains: What renders unconscious phenomena mental? I suggest a new strategy for answering this question, which rests on the idea that categorizing unconscious phenomena as “mental” should be scientifically useful relative to the explanatory research goals. I argue that this is the case if by categorizing an unconscious phenomenon as “mental” one picks out explanatorily relevant similarities (...)
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  9.  14
    A Chemostat Model for Evolution by Persistence: Clade Selection and Its Explanatory Autonomy.Celso Neto & W. Ford Doolittle - 2023 - Philosophy of Science 90 (1):21-38.
    Many contemporary biologists and philosophers of biology admit that selection occurs at any level of the biological hierarchy at which entities showing heritable variation in fitness are found, while insisting that fitness at any level entails differential reproduction, not differential persistence. Those who allow that persistence can be selected doubt that selection on nonreproducing entities can be reiterated, to produce “complex adaptations.” We present here a verbal model of subclones evolving in a simple idealized chemostat that calls into question these (...)
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  10.  7
    New Textbooks for Teaching Philosophy of Science.Viorel Pâslaru - 2023 - Philosophy of Science 90 (1):200-208.
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  11. Purely Probabilistic Measures of Explanatory Power: A Critique.William Roche & Elliott Sober - 2023 - Philosophy of Science 90 (1):129-149.
    All extant purely probabilistic measures of explanatory power satisfy the following technical condition: if Pr(E | H1) > Pr(E | H2) and Pr(E | ∼H1) < Pr(E | ∼H2), then H1’s explanatory power with respect to E is greater than H2’s explanatory power with respect to E. We argue that any measure satisfying this condition faces three serious problems—the Problem of Temporal Shallowness, the Problem of Negative Causal Interactions, and the Problem of Nonexplanations. We further argue that many such measures (...)
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  12.  29
    Backward Causation: Harder Than It Looks.Athamos Stradis - 2023 - Philosophy of Science 90 (1):77-91.
    According to David Albert, there are certain situations where we can cause events that lie in our past. In response to a well-known objection that we never observe backward causation, he argues that there are good reasons why we can’t tell when it obtains. However, I identify another difficulty with Albert’s view: at face value, it has the unattractive consequence that backward causation is not just possible, but rife. In this article, I show how this implication can be blocked. I (...)
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  13.  3
    Review of Paul A. Roth’s The Philosophical Structure of Historical Explanation- Paul A. Roth, The Philosophical Structure of Historical Explanation. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press (2020), 208 pp. $34.95 (paperback). [REVIEW]Veli Virmajoki - 2023 - Philosophy of Science 90 (1):218-221.
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  14.  37
    Thomas Kuhn, Hyperbole, and the Ashtray: Evidence of Morris’ Faulty Memory.K. Brad Wray - 2023 - Philosophy of Science 90 (1):196-199.
    Errol Morris has claimed that Kuhn threw an ashtray at him during a dispute about some matter in the history of science. Morris also claims that Kuhn threw him out of the graduate program at Princeton for disagreeing with him. I argue that Morris’ attack on Kuhn contains some degree of hyperbole. Further, I present evidence that shows that Morris is mistaken about key events during this period. In fact, Kuhn was supportive of Morris in his pursuit of a career (...)
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  15.  17
    Finding Normality in Abnormality: On the Ascription of Normal Functions to Cancer.Seth Goldwasser - 2023 - Philosophy of Science:1-14.
    Cancer biologists ascribe normal functions to parts of cancer. Normal functions are activities that parts of systems are in some minimal sense supposed to perform. Cancer biologists’ finding normality within the abnormality of cancer pose difficulties for two main approaches to normal function. One approach claims that normal functions are activities that parts are selected for. However, some parts of cancers that have normal functions aren’t selected to perform them. The other approach claims that normal functions are part-activities typical for (...)
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  16.  95
    A Dialogue among Recent Views of Entity Realism.Mahdi Khalili - 2023 - Philosophy of Science:1-35.
    This paper concerns the recent revival of entity realism. Having been started with the work of Ian Hacking, Nancy Cartwright and Ronald Giere, the project of entity realism has recently been developed by Matthias Egg, Markus Eronen, and Bence Nanay. The paper opens a dialogue among these recent views on entity realism and integrates them into a more advanced view. The result is an epistemological criterion for reality: the property-tokens of a certain type may be taken as real insofar as (...)
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  17. Functionalism, Reductionism, and Levels of Reality.Lorenzo Lorenzetti - 2023 - Philosophy of Science:1-26.
    I consider a problem for functional reductionism, based on the following tension. Say that b is functionally reduced to a. On the one hand, a and b turn out to be identical, and identity is a symmetric relation. On the other hand, functional reductionism implies that a and b are asymmetrically related: if b is functionally reduced to a, then a is not functionally reduced to b. Thus, we ask: how can a and b be asymmetrically related if they are (...)
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  18.  10
    Trusting Traumatic Memory: Considerations from Memory Science.Alison Ann Springle, Rebecca Dreier & Seth Goldwasser - 2023 - Philosophy of Science:1-14.
    Court cases involving sexual assault and police violence rely heavily on victim testimony. We consider what we call the “Traumatic Untrustworthiness Argument (TUA)” according to which we should be skeptical about victim testimony because people are particularly liable to misremember traumatic events. The TUA is not obviously based in mere distrust of women, people of color, disabled people, poor people, etc. Rather, it seeks to justify skepticism on epistemic and empirical grounds. We consider how the TUA might appeal to the (...)
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