Philosophy of Science

I argue that the epistemic aim of scientific theorizing (EAST) is producing theories with the highest possible number and degree of theoretical virtues (call this “TV-EAST”). I trace TV-EAST’s logical empiricist origins and discuss its close connections to Kuhn’s and Laudan’s problem-solving accounts of the aim of science. Despite TV-EAST’s antirealist roots, I argue that if one adopts the realis…

Human computers and micro-observers were scientific workers who performed calculations or reduced and analysed data before the advent of electronic computers. They were a staple of big science during the nineteenth and early to mid twentieth century. Despite their prevalence within big science, their epistemic roles remain unexamined by philosophy of science. This paper investigates the epistemic…

I use Swampman to illuminate the role of thought experiments in philosophy of science. Against Millikan and others, I argue that even outlandish thought experiments can shed light on science and scientific kinds, so long as we understand them as illustrations of scientific reasoning , not as examples of scientific kinds . The logic of thought experiments, understood as illustrations, is analogous…

I present a heretofore untheorized form of lay science, called extitutional science , whereby lay scientists, by virtue of their collective experience, are able to detect errors committed by institutional scientists and attempt to have them corrected. I argue that the epistemic success of institutional science is enhanced to the extent that it takes up this extitutional criticism. Because this up…

In this discussion note, we contrast two models of pluralistic policy advice that have recently been proposed: Stephen John’s ( 2025 ) representative model and our integrative model (Bschir and Lohse 2022 , 2024 ). We believe that the contrast between representative and integrative pluralism is of high relevance for the broader philosophical discussion on scientific policy advice.

Cognitive neuroscientists typically posit representations that relate to various aspects of the world, which philosophers call representational content. Anti-realists about representational content argue that contents play no role in neuroscientific explanations of cognitive capacities. In this paper, I defend realism against an anti-realist argument due to Frances Egan, who argues that for conte…

Comparativists (about mass) eliminate absolute masses from the fundamental ontological picture by virtue of a principle of economy, the “Comparative Razor,” which requires that only mass-relations, which are invariant under (metrical) symmetries, be considered fundamental. I show how this weapon backfires. If mass-relations are endowed with a standard (multiplicative) concatenation structure, pow…

Philosophers have spilled much ink over the discovery of ideas in the classical “context of discovery.” However, there has been little engagement with the question of what constitutes a discovery of “things in the world.” A much-overlooked answer to this question is provided by T. S. Kuhn. In this article, I show that discoveries awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics over the past 53 years accord wi…

This article proves two no-go results against the conventionality of geometry. I then argue that any remaining conventionality arises from scientific incompleteness. I illustrate by introducing a new kind of conventionality arising in the presence of higher spatial dimensions, where the incompleteness is resolved by introducing new physical theories like Kaluza–Klein theory. Thus, conventional ch…

Current models of scientific inquiry assume that scientists all share the same evaluative standards. However, scientists often rely on different yet legitimate ones, a feature we call evaluative diversity . We investigate how scientific success is affected by diversity in evaluative standards through computer-based simulations. Our results show that communities with diverse standards benefit subs…

The range of putatively medical animal practices varies widely both functionally and mechanistically. In this article, we argue that the definitions of medicine available in the empirical literature are inadequate for distinguishing genuinely medical practices from other adaptive behaviors. We aim to improve this conceptual landscape by proposing a definition that incorporates both cognitive and …

One cannot justifiably presuppose the physical salience of structures derived via decoherence theory based upon an entirely uninterpreted use of the quantum formalism. Non-probabilistic accounts of the emergence of probability via decoherence are unconvincing. An alternative account of the emergence of probability involves the combination of a partially interpreted decoherence model and an averag…

Some authors maintain that we can use causal Bayes nets to infer whether or by consulting a probability distribution defined over some exogenous source of variation for or . We raise a problem for this approach. Specifically, we point out that there are cases where an exogenous cause of ( ) has no probabilistic influence on no matter the direction of causation—namely, cases where and are probabil…

As technology fosters connections among like-minded individuals, concerns about the effects of homogeneous clusters—often criticized as ideological bubbles and echo chambers—have intensified. While these clusters are commonly seen as obstacles to independent thought and progress, this paper argues that they can, under certain conditions, drive significant advancements. By revising computational m…

We propose an approach to the evolution of joint agency and cooperative behavior that contrasts with views that take joint agency to be a uniquely human trait. We argue that there is huge variation in cooperative behavior and that while much human cooperative behavior may be explained by invoking cognitively rich capacities, there is cooperative behavior that does not require such explanation. On…