Keeping quiet on the ontology of models

Stein once urged us not to confuse the means of representation with that which is being represented. Yet that is precisely what philosophers of science appear to have done at the meta-level when it comes to representing the practice of science. Proponents of the so-called ‘syntactic’ view identify theories as logically closed sets of sentences or propositions and models as idealised interpretations, or ‘theoruncula, as Braithwaite called them. Adherents of the ‘semantic’ approach, on the other hand, are typically characterised as taking them to be families of models that are set-theoretic, according to Suppes and others, or abstract, as Giere has argued. da Costa and French (Science and Partial Truth. OUP, Oxford, 2003) suggested that we should refrain from ontological speculation as to the nature of scientific theories and models and focus on their appropriate representation for various purposes within the philosophy of science. Such an approach allows both linguistic and non-linguistic resources to play their appropriate role (see also French and Saatsi, Philosophy of Science, Proceedings of the 2004 PSA Meeting, 78:548–559, 2006) and can be supported by recent case studies illustrating the heterogeneity of scientific practice. My aim in this paper is to further develop this ‘quietist’ view, and to indicate how it offers a fruitful way forward for the philosophy of science.     

Ludwig Boltzmann's Bildtheorie and Scientific Understanding

Boltzmann’s Bildtheorie, which asserts that scientific theories are ‘mental pictures’ having at best a partial similarity to reality, was a core element of his philosophy of science. The aim of this article is to draw attention to a neglected aspect of it, namely its significance for the issue of scientific explanation and understanding, regarded by Boltzmann as central goals of science. I argue that, in addition to being an epistemological view of the interpretation of scientific theories Boltzmann’s Bildtheorie has implications for the nature of scientific understanding. This aspect has as yet been ignored because discussion of the Bildtheorie has been restricted to the realism-instrumentalism debate. To elucidate my analysis of Boltzmann’s Bildtheorie concrete examples are presented, and the pragmatist and Darwinist roots of Boltzmann’s view are discussed. Moreover, I propose to use Boltzmann’s ideas as a starting-point for developing a novel analysis of the notion of scientific understanding, of which a brief impression is given. It shows that the study of Boltzmann’s philosophy is not only of historical interest but can be relevant also to modern philosophy of science and to the methodology of theoretical physics. This revised version was published online in June 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Shifting Loyalties: Reconsidering Psychology’s Subject Matter

Schwarz (IPBS: Integrative Psychology & Behavioral Science 43:3, 2009) cogently demonstrates that in conjunction with scientific conventionalism psychology has developed a rather deficient view of their subject matter: the human being. Psychology based on an impoverished notion of empirical has rendered subjectivity or ‘the measuring apparatus man’ invisible. As his story implicitly demonstrates, psychologists supported by a positivistic view of science (in part to be empirical) and notion of ‘objectivity’ have learned to trust their ‘rigorous’ methods instead of their participants as capable of revealing important and interesting phenomena. If we are going to take subjectivity and experience seriously there should be a cultivation of a new attitude or orientation regarding psychology’s subject matter (i.e., the human being) and science. This commentary discusses Mark Freeman’s (2007) argument that the first requirement of science should be ‘fidelity to the phenomena’ and elaborates on the implications for psychology grounded in this view of science.     

Tracing the Development of Thought Experiments in the Philosophy of Natural Sciences

Summary  An overview is provided of how the concept of the thought experiment has developed and changed for the natural sciences in the course of the 20th century. First, we discuss the existing definitions of the term ‘thought experiment’ and the origin of the thought experimentation method, identifying it in Greek Presocratics epoch. Second, only in the end of the 19th century showed up the first systematic enquiry on thought experiments by Ernst Mach’s work. After the Mach’s work, a negative attitude towards thought experiments came in the beginning of the 20th century, which went on until the Thomas Kuhn’s and Karl Popper’s work on thought experiments. Only from the mid-1980s did thought experiments begin to be considered relevant to scientific enterprise. Finally, we show the existing empirical and ‘functional’ theories which have developed about the nature and purpose of thought experiments.     

The scientific use of ‘representation’ and ‘function’: avoiding explanatory vacuity

Nearly all of the ways philosophers currently attempt to define the terms ‘representation’ and ‘function’ undermine the scientific application of those terms by rendering the scientific explanations in which they occur vacuous. Since this is unacceptable, we must develop analyses of these terms that avoid this vacuity. Robert Cummins argues in this fashion in Representations, Targets, and Attitudes. He accuses ‘use theories’ of representational content of generating vacuous explanations, claims that nearly all current theories of representational content are use theories, and offers a non-use theory of representational content which avoids explanatory vacuity. One task I undertake in this article is to develop an alternative non-use theory which avoids an objection fatal to that theory. My second task is to adapt Cummins’ argument to criticize most current analyses of ‘function,’ which undermine scientific explanation in an analogous way. Though Cummins does not explicitly argue in this manner, his own analysis of ‘function,’ by avoiding any appeal to use, avoids the explanatory vacuity to which they succumb. Consequently, I endorse Cummins’ notion of function. However, although use theories fail as analyses of the terms ‘representation’ and ‘function,’ they can still make significant contributions to the sciences employing these terms. For, while philosophers seeking to define ‘representation’ and ‘function’ must avoid incorporating representational and functional uses into their definitions, scientists must still find a way to determine which representations and functions are being used. Suitably re-construed use theories of representation and function may in many cases assist them in this task.     

Verisimilitude and the Dynamicsof Scientific Research Programmes

Some peculiarities of the evaluation of theories within scientific research programmes (SRPs) and of the assessing of rival SRPs are described assuming that scientists try to maximise an ‘epistemic utility function’ under economic and institutional constraints. Special attention is given to Lakatos' concepts of ‘empirical progress’ and ‘theoretical progress’. A notion of ‘empirical verisimilitude’ is defended as an appropriate utility function. The neologism ‘methodonomics’ is applied to this kind of studies. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Trustworthiness in explanation: The obligation to explain well

‘Scientific integrity’ certainly requires that data and references be beyond reproach. However, issues within the theory of scientific explanation suggest that there may be more to it than just this. While it is true that some contemporary, pragmatic analyses of explanation suffer from the ‘problem of relevance’ (an inability to ensure that explanations which are paradigmatic technically are relevant to the question being posed), it does not seem to be true that the addition of formal, metaphysical constraints is necessary to solve this problem. I argue that, when viewed as requests for help with an epistemic problem, explanation-seeking questions reveal the existence of a set of moral criteria centered in trust which, when satisfied, prevent trivial or irrelevant explanations from being offered, thereby broadening the concept of ‘scientific integrity’.     

Hierarchies and levels of reality

We examine some assumptions about the nature of ‘levels of reality’ in the light of examples drawn from physics. Three central assumptions of the standard view of such levels (for instance, Oppenheim and Putnam 1958) are (i) that levels are populated by entities of varying complexity, (ii) that there is a unique hierarchy of levels, ranging from the very small to the very large, and (iii) that the inhabitants of adjacent levels are related by the parthood relation. Using examples from physics, we argue that it is more natural to view the inhabitants of levels as the behaviors of entities, rather than entities themselves. This suggests an account of reduction between levels, according to which one behavior reduces to another if the two are related by an appropriate limit relation. By considering cases where such inter-level reduction fails, we show that the hierarchy of behaviors differs in several respects from the standard hierarchy of entities. In particular, while on the standard view, lower-level entities are ‘micro’ parts of higher-level entities, on our view, a system’s macro-level behavior can be seen as a (‘non-spatial’) part of its micro-level behavior. We argue that this second hierarchy is not really in conflict with the standard view and that it better suits examples of explanation in science.     

Informational versus functional theories of scientific representation

Recent work in the philosophy of science has generated an apparent conflict between theories attempting to explicate the nature of scientific representation. On one side, there are what one might call ‘informational’ views, which emphasize objective relations (such as similarity, isomorphism, and homomorphism) between representations (theories, models, simulations, diagrams, etc.) and their target systems. On the other side, there are what one might call ‘functional’ views, which emphasize cognitive activities performed in connection with these targets, such as interpretation and inference. The main sources of the impression of conflict here are arguments by some functionalists to the effect that informational theories are flawed: it is suggested that relations typically championed by informational theories are neither necessary nor sufficient for scientific representation, and that any theory excluding functions is inadequate. In this paper I critically examine these arguments, and contend that, as it turns out, informational and functional theories are importantly complementary.     

To Believe in Belief

Summary  Take the following version of scientific realism: we have good reason to believe that (some of the) current scientific theories tell us something specific about the underlying, i.e. unobservable, structures of the world, for instance that there are electrons with a certain electric charge, or that there are viruses that cause certain diseases. Popper, the rationalist, would not have adhered to the proposed formulation of scientific realism in terms of the rationality of existential beliefs concerning unobservables. Popper did not believe in belief. According to Van Fraassen, the empiricist, one may yet have a rational existential belief concerning unobservables, given a liberal notion of rationality of belief. In this paper I will investigate to what extent a reassessment of both Popper’s rejection of the rationality of belief and Van Fraassen’s reformulation of the rationality of belief, points towards a new and pragmatist dissolution of the ‘problem of scientific realism’.     

信息哲学与未来中国科技哲学的基础

The research programme of the philosophy of information (PI) proposed in 2002 made it an independent area or discipline in philosophical research. The scientific concept of ‘information’ is formally accepted in philosophical inquiry. Hence a new and tool-driven philosophical discipline of PI with its interdisciplinary nature has been established. Philosophy of information is an ‘orientative’ rather than ‘cognitive’ philosophy. When PI is under consideration in the history of Western philosophy, it can be regarded as a shift of large tradition. There are three large traditions at large, known as Platonic, Kantian and Leibniz-Russellian. In the discussion of the position of the possible worlds, we have modal Platonism and modal realism, but both of the theories are made in the framework of Western philosophy. In this essay, it is argued that possible worlds could be seen as worlds in information, which is then an interpretation of modal information theory (MIT). Our interpretation is made on the basis of Leibniz’s lifelong connection with China, a fact often overlooked by the Western philosophers. Possible world theory was influenced by the Neo-Confucianism flourishing since the Song Dynasty of China, the foundation of which is Yijing. It could be argued that Leibniz’s possible world theory was formulated in respect to the impact of the thoughts reflected in Yijing, in that one of the prominent features is the model-theoretic construction of theories. There are two approaches to theory construction, i.e., axiom-theoretic and model-theoretic. The origin of the former is from ancient Greece and the latter from ancient China. And they determined the different features of theoretic structures between the oriental and occidental traditions of science and technology. The tendency of the future development of science and technology is changing from the axiom-theoretic to the model-theoretic orientation, at least the two approaches being complementary each other. To some extent, this means the retrospective of tradition in the turning point of history, and some of the China’s cultural traditions might become the starting points in formulating the future Chinese philosophy of science and technology.     

Analog and digital,continuous and discrete

Representation is central to contemporary theories regarding the mind/brain. But the nature of representation—both in the mind/brain and more generally—is a source of ongoing controversy. One way of categorizing representational types is to distinguish between the analog and the digital: the received view is that analog representations vary smoothly, while digital representations vary in a step-wise manner. In other words, ‘digital’ is synonymous with ‘discrete’, while ‘analog’ is synonymous with ‘continuous’. I argue that this characterization is inadequate to account for the ways in which representation is (and should be) used in cognitive science; in its place, I suggest an alternative taxonomy. I will defend and extend David Lewis’s account of analog and digital representation, distinguishing analog from continuous representation, as well as digital from discrete representation. I will argue that the distinctions available in this fourfold account better accord with representational features of interest in cognitive science than the received analog/digital dichotomy.     

Mismatches between ‘Scientific’ and ‘Non-Scientific’ Ways of Knowing and Their Contributions to Public Understanding of Science

As differentiation within scientific disciplines increases, so does differentiation between the sciences and other ways of knowing. This distancing between ‘scientific’ and ‘non-scientific’ cultures reflects differences in what are considered valid and reliable approaches to acquiring knowledge and has played a major role in recent science-oriented controversies. Scientists’ reluctance to actively engage in science communication, coupled with journalists’ reliance on the norms of balance, conflict, and human interest in covering scientific issues, have combined to exacerbate public mistrust of science on issues like the measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine. The failure of effective communications between scientists and non-scientists has hindered the progress of both effective science and effective policy. In order to better bridge the gap between the ‘scientific’ and ‘non-scientific’ cultures, renewed efforts must be made to encourage substantive public engagement, with the ultimate goal of facilitating an open, democratic policy-making process.     

How To Engage With Experimental Practices? Moderate Versus Radical Constructivism

A central question in constructivist studies of science is how the analyst should deal with the material objects handled by scientific practitioners in laboratories. Representatives of ‘radical constructivism’ such as Knorr-Cetina and Latour have gone furthest in exploring the role of these ‘non-humans’ but have also maneuvered themselves in untenable positions due to a fatal conflation of different meanings of the term ‘construction’. The epistemological and ontological commitments of ‘moderate constructivism’ especially of the Strong Program defended by Barnes and Bloor, are more suitable for dealing with the task at hand. While radical constructivists treat the domains of nature and human society as largely coterminous, an alternative ontology stresses that natural reality is never fully absorbed into the world of culture but only interacts with the latter at localizable interfaces such as practices and artifacts. This perspective promises a more relaxed relationship with current forms of scientific realism. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Publics in the Making: Mediating Different Methods of Engagement and the Publics These Construct

The potential for public engagement to democratise science has come under increasing scrutiny amid concerns that conflicting motivations have led to confusion about what engagement means to those who mediate science and publics. This raises important yet relatively unexplored questions regarding how publics are constituted by different forms of engagement used by intermediary scholars and other actors. It is possible to identify at least two possible ‘rationalities of mediation’ that mobilise different versions of the public and the roles they are assumed to play, as ‘citizens’ or ‘users’, in discussions around technology. However, combinations of rationalities are found in practice and these have significant implications for the ‘new’ scientific democracy.     

Foregrounding Desire: A Defense of Kant’s Incorporation Thesis

In this paper I defend Kant’s Incorporation Thesis, which holds that we must “incorporate” our incentives into our maxims if we are to act on them. I see this as a thesis about what is necessary for a human being to make the transition from ‘having a desire’ to ‘acting on it’. As such, I consider the widely held view that ‘having a desire’ involves being focused on the world, and not on ourselves or on the desire. I try to show how this view is connected with a denial of any deep distinction between reason and inclination. I then argue for an alternative view of what ‘having a desire’ involves, one according to which it involves being focused both on the world and on ourselves. I show how this view fits naturally with the Kantian distinction between reason and inclination, accounts for independent intuitions about ‘having a desire’, and supports the Incorporation Thesis. I then make some further suggestions about how we might conceive of the object of incorporation.     

The Machine Paradigm and Alternative Approaches in Cognitive Science

In a recent paper called To think human out of the machine paradigm, it is stated that psychological science operates within a machine paradigm that is committed to mechanical causality. In addition, it is emphasizes the epistemological and methodological limitations of explanations based in deterministic mechanics and instead argues for the need of an ‘organic paradigm’ that takes into consideration psychological processes such as subjectivity, inter-subjectivity, and agency. Although there is no doubt that much psychological science has operated under a machine paradigm, we argue that recent psychological research is pursued using a wide variety of approaches and with an absence of a partially integrated meta-theoretical corpus. The present situation looks more like a Tower of Babel of epistemological approaches and empirical programs. The reconsideration of the organic paradigm and an explicitly addressed epistemological framework could constitute a step forward and lead to an explanatory pluralism built on greater dialogue within the psychological sciences.     

Aspects of Fluency in Writing

The notion of ‘fluency’ is most often associated with spoken-language phenomena such as stuttering. The present article investigates the relevance of considering fluency in writing. The basic argument for raising this question is empirical—it follows from a focus on difficulties in written and spoken language as manifestations of different problems which should be investigated separately on the basis of their symptoms. Key-logging instruments provide new possibilities for the study of writing. The obvious use of this new technology is to study writing as it unfolds in real time, instead of focusing only on aspects of the end product. A more sophisticated application is to exploit the key-logging instrument in order to test basic assumptions of contemporary theories of spelling. The present study is a dictation task involving words and ‘non-words’, intended to investigate spelling in nine-year-old pupils with regard to their mastery of the doubling of consonants in Norwegian. In this study, we report on differences with regard to temporal measures between a group of strong writers and a group of poor ones. On the basis of these pupils’ writing behavior, the relevance of the concept of ‘fluency’ in writing is highlighted. The interpretation of the results questions basic assumptions of the cognitive hypothesis about spelling; the article concludes by hypothesizing a different conception of spelling.     

Wittgenstein’s ‘Non-Cognitivism’ – Explained and Vindicated

The later Wittgenstein advanced a revolutionary but puzzling conception of how philosophy ought to be practised: Philosophical problems are not to be coped with by establishing substantive claims or devising explanations or theories. Instead, philosophical questions ought to be treated ‘like an illness’. Even though this ‘non-cognitivism’ about philosophy has become a focus of debate, the specifically ‘therapeutic’ aims and ‘non-theoretical’ methods constitutive of it remain ill understood. They are motivated by Wittgenstein’s view that the problems he addresses result from misinterpretation, driven by ‘urges to misunderstand’. The present paper clarifies this neglected concept and analyses how such ‘urges’ give rise to pseudo-problems of one particular, hitherto little understood, kind. This will reveal ‘therapeutic’ aims reasonable and ‘non-theoretical’ methods necessary, in one clearly delineated and important part of philosophy. I.e.: By developing a novel account of nature and genesis of one important class of philosophical problems, the paper explains and vindicates a revolutionary reorientation of philosophical work, at the level of both aims and methods.