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Conserved quantity theory: empirical analysis or metaphysical analysis of causation?
Full text linkPhil Dowe’s Conserved Quantity Theory (CQT) is based on the following theses: (a) CQT is the result of an empirical analysis and not a conceptual one, (b) CQT is metaphysically contingent, and (c) CQT is refutable. I argue, on the one hand, that theses (a), (b), and (c) are not only problematic in themselves, but also they are incompatible with each other and, on the other, that the choice of these theses is explained by the particular position that the author embraces regarding the relationship between metaphysics and physics
Disorder
Full text linkThis paper begins with some brief intellectual autobiography, recalling my first engagement with philosophy of biology. The substantive part of the paper then focuses on the plurality of possible classifications central to the theses of scientific disunity and metaphysical disorder developed in my early career. After discussing this in terms of biological classification, and introducing the reasons for thinking of classifications as typically value-laden, I discuss two sets of human classifications bearing on normatively vital questions, those around sex and gender and those involved in the distinctions between human races
What Can a Global Turn in Philosophy of Science Look Like?
Full text linkIn recent decades, the history of science has gone global. But what about philosophy of science? Taking cue from the global turn in the history of science, I put forward an account of what a global turn in philosophy of science can look like. My account draws upon the hermeneutical approaches to integrated history and philosophy of science, championed by Jutta Schickore and Hasok Chang. On the way, I demonstrate – by examining the case of the Great Trigonometrical Survey of India – that much is to be gained, by both sides, from a closer integration of global history of science and philosophy of science
Embracing Conflict: An Agonistic Framework for the Legitimation of Non-Epistemic Values in Science
Full text linkNon-epistemic values are an inextricable component of scientific research, yet their legitimacy in specific contexts remains a contested issue. Drawing on arguments from deliberative democracy, Lusk (2021) advocates “compatibilism” as a pathway to legitimize non-epistemic values in science. Nonetheless, deliberative approaches have faced substantial criticism as a legitimating framework, especially from proponents of agonistic democracy. This paper seeks to outline an epistemic framework consistent with the core insights of agonistic democracy to legitimize non-epistemic values in science. Building on Wenman (2013), I identify three key elements in agonistic democracy: constitutive pluralism, a tragic worldview, and the value of conflict. Adopting a voluntaristic approach to epistemology, I suggest that these elements can be mapped onto the epistemic domain as: i) a form of epistemic pluralism, akin to van Bouwel’s “interactive” pluralism; ii) multiple forms of uncertainty, viz., aleatoric, epistemic, and relativistic; and iii) a form of relativism that admits critical appraisal. This leads to the articulation of what I call an “agonistic” stance, which addresses key limitations of deliberative approaches in legitimizing non-epistemic values in scientific inquiry
Toward a Jurisprudential Philosophy of Science: Beyond the Value Free Ideal
Full text linkThis paper draws an analogy between the value-free ideal (VFI) found in the domains of science and law, and argues that appreciating the similarities between these misplaced ideals mutually reinforces the arguments against the VFI in each domain, and can open up new conceptual space within debates about the proper role(s) of values within the practices of science and law alike. Although a jurisprudential philosophy of science is not mutually exclusive with the development of a political philosophy of science, we believe philosophers of science would do well to consider drawing on law and jurisprudence, as opposed to moral and political philosophy, in thinking about ways forward within these debates
Why we love pictures (for the wrong reasons): A lesson from the picture of a black hole
Full text linkIn this paper, I first show that similarity accounts of scientific pictures fail with more realistic cases of scientific pictures. My primary case study is the picture of a black hole, from which I develop an interpretation-based account of picture representation analogous to how models represent: a picture represents a designated target system iff, once interpreted, it exemplifies properties that are then imputed to the target via a de-idealising function. Then, I show that justification of the inferences from pictures crucially depends on their causal mechanisms of production, in contrast with the standard justificatory strategies we employ for model inferences
Coherence as a Constraint on Scientific Inquiry
Full text linkWe investigate the epistemic role of coherence in scientific reasoning, focusing on its use as a heuristic for filtering evidence. Using a novel computational model based on Bayesian networks, we simulate agents who update their beliefs under varying levels of noise and bias. Some agents treat reductions in coherence as higher-order evidence and interpret such drops as signals that something has gone epistemically awry, even when the source of error is unclear. Our results show that this strategy can improve belief accuracy in noisy environments but tends to mislead when evidence is systematically biased. We explore the implications for the rationality of coherence-based reasoning in science
Bell Meets General Philosophers of Science : Reassessing Measurement Independence
Full text linkBell's inequality is derived from three assumptions: measurement independence, outcome independence, and parameter independence. Among these, measurement independence, often taken for granted, holds that hidden variables are statistically uncorrelated with measurement settings. Under this assumption, the violation of Bell's inequality implies that either outcome independence or parameter independence fails to hold, meaning that local hidden variables do not exist. In this paper, we refer to this interpretive stance as the nonfactorizable position. In contrast, superdeterminism represents the view that measurement independence does not hold. Despite its foundational role, this assumption has received relatively little philosophical scrutiny. This paper offers a philosophical reassessment of measurement independence through three major frameworks in the philosophy of science: de Regt's contextual theory of scientific understanding, Kuhn's criteria for theory choice, and Lakatos's methodology of scientific research programmes. Using these lenses, we evaluate the two major responses to the violation of Bell's inequality, the nonfactorizable position and superdeterminism, and argue that the nonfactorizable position currently fares better across all three criteria. Beyond this binary, we introduce a spectrum of intermediate positions that allow for partial violations of measurement independence, modeled via mutual information. These positions modify the ``positive heuristic'' of superdeterminism, a crucial component in Lakatos's definition of research programmes, offering avenues for progressive research. This analysis reframes the debate surrounding Bell's inequality and illustrates how methodological tools can effectively guide theory evaluation in physics
Gauge symmetry and the arrow of time: How to count what counts
Full text linkThis thesis addresses two major problems in the philosophy of physics. The first is how to identify the minimal physical content of a theory; that is, what features of a theory are truly needed to make predictions, and what can be removed without changing its empirical consequences. The second is the problem of time's arrow: why time seems to have a direction, even though the fundamental laws of physics treat the past and future symmetrically.
I show that answering the first question leads to insights about the second. In particular, I argue that the overall size of the Universe is not used to make predictions in cosmology, and so should not count as part of the theory's minimal physical content. Describing the Universe without this feature leads to a striking result: the arrow of time becomes a local phenomenon. Observers like us who see a Universe full of matter clumped together to form structures like stars and planets are statistically much more likely to see increasing clumpiness into the future than into the past. This tendency helps explain our experience of time's direction
With Kant, Beyond Kant: The Organisational Approach to Naturalised Biological Teleology
Full text linkThis paper critically examines the organisational approach (OA) to biological teleology in relation and opposition to Immanuel Kant’s notion of natural purpose. Whereas for Kant biological purposiveness leads to an antinomy of mechanism and teleology, the OA succeeds in naturalising biological purpose through the notion of biological organisation as self- maintaining and self-determining. In particular, I argue that the OA naturalisation strategy hinges on two theoretical moves: (1) adopting a pluralistic understanding of causality which conciliates mechanism and teleology in one causal network (through the notion of closure of constraints and Robert Rosen’s anti-Newtonian stance); (2) reinterpreting Kant’s own notion of natural purpose, by, contra Kant, centring self-organisation (‘epigenesis’) over organisation (‘design’). This work not only positions the OA in the contemporary ‘post-Kantian’ theoretical debates about biological teleology as a unique naturalising position but also identifies theoretical organisational bases for further studies regarding the role of biological self- determination in evolution