European Journal for Philosophy of Science最新文献

Parallel convergences: Cassirer and Vienna indeterminism 平行收敛：卡西尔与维也纳不确定性

IF 1.5 1区哲学

European Journal for Philosophy of Science Pub Date : 2025-05-15 DOI: 10.1007/s13194-025-00659-z

Marco Giovanelli

{"title":"Parallel convergences: Cassirer and Vienna indeterminism","authors":"Marco Giovanelli","doi":"10.1007/s13194-025-00659-z","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s13194-025-00659-z","url":null,"abstract":"Stöltzner coined the expression ‘Vienna indeterminism’ to describe a philosophical tradition centered on the Viennese physicist Exner, serving as the ‘historical link’ between Mach and Boltzmann, on the one hand, and von Mises and Frank, on the other. During the early 1930s debate on quantum mechanics, there was a ‘rapprochement’ between Vienna indeterminism and Schlick’s work on causality. However, it was Cassirer’s 1936 monograph Determinismus und Indeterminismus that showed a full ‘convergence’ with major tenets of Vienna indeterminism: the fundamentality of statistical laws, the frequency interpretation of probability, and the statistical interpretation of the uncertainty relations. Yet, Cassirer used these conceptual tools to pursue ‘in parallel’ different philosophical goals. While for the Viennese quantum mechanics represented a fatal blow to the already discredited notion of ‘causality,’ for Cassirer it challenged the classical notion of ‘substantiality,’ the ideas of ‘particles’ as individual substances endowed with properties. The paper concludes that this ‘parallel convergence’ is the most striking and overlooked aspect of Determinismus und Indeterminismus, serving as the keystone of its argumentative structure.","PeriodicalId":48832,"journal":{"name":"European Journal for Philosophy of Science","volume":"216 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2025-05-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143979382","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

Scientific constitutive abduction 科学本构溯因

IF 1.5 1区哲学

European Journal for Philosophy of Science Pub Date : 2025-04-26 DOI: 10.1007/s13194-025-00655-3

Ken Aizawa, Drew B. Headley

引用次数: 0

Operational equivalence and causal structure 操作等价和因果结构

IF 1.5 1区哲学

European Journal for Philosophy of Science Pub Date : 2025-04-26 DOI: 10.1007/s13194-025-00652-6

Gábor Hofer-Szabó

引用次数: 0

Mechanisms and principles: two approaches to scientific generalization 机制和原理：科学概括的两种方法

IF 1.5 1区哲学

European Journal for Philosophy of Science Pub Date : 2025-04-25 DOI: 10.1007/s13194-025-00650-8

Yoshinari Yoshida, Alan C. Love

{"title":"Mechanisms and principles: two approaches to scientific generalization","authors":"Yoshinari Yoshida, Alan C. Love","doi":"10.1007/s13194-025-00650-8","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s13194-025-00650-8","url":null,"abstract":"Many philosophers have explored the extensive use of non-universal generalizations in different sciences for inductive and explanatory purposes, analyzing properties such as how widely a generalization holds in space and time. In the present paper, we concentrate on developmental biology to distinguish and characterize two common approaches to scientific generalization—mechanism generalization and principle generalization. The former approach seeks detailed descriptions of causal relationships among specific types of biological entities that produce a characteristic phenomenon across some range of different biological entities; the latter approach abstractly describes relations or interactions that occur during ontogeny and are exemplified in a wide variety of different biological entities. These two approaches to generalization correspond to different investigative aims. Our analysis shows why each approach is sought in a research context, thereby accounting for how practices of inquiry are structured. It also diagnoses problematic assumptions in prior discussions, such as abstraction always being correlated positively with generalizations of wide scope.","PeriodicalId":48832,"journal":{"name":"European Journal for Philosophy of Science","volume":"33 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2025-04-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143872807","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

Performative paternalism 表述行为的家长作风

IF 1.5 1区哲学

European Journal for Philosophy of Science Pub Date : 2025-04-14 DOI: 10.1007/s13194-025-00651-7

Jakob Ortmann

引用次数: 0

Kant’s essentialism and mechanism and their relevance for present-day philosophy of psychiatry 康德的本质论和机制及其对当今精神病学哲学的意义

IF 1.5 1区哲学

European Journal for Philosophy of Science Pub Date : 2025-04-12 DOI: 10.1007/s13194-025-00654-4

Hein van den Berg

{"title":"Kant’s essentialism and mechanism and their relevance for present-day philosophy of psychiatry","authors":"Hein van den Berg","doi":"10.1007/s13194-025-00654-4","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s13194-025-00654-4","url":null,"abstract":"This paper aims to evaluate the relevance of Kant’s much discussed essentialism and mechanism for present-day philosophy of psychiatry. Kendler et al. (Psychological Medicine 41(6):1143–1150, 2011) have argued that essentialism is inadequate for conceptualizing psychiatric disorders. In this paper, I develop this argument in detail by highlighting a variety of essentialism that differs from the one rejected by Kendler et al. I show that Kant’s essentialism is not directly affected by the argument of Kendler et al. (Psychological Medicine 41(6):1143–1150, 2011), and that Kendler et al.’s (Psychological Medicine 41(6):1143–1150, 2011) argument also does not affect other essentialist positions in psychiatry. Hence, the rejection of essentialism in psychiatry needs more arguments than the one supplied by Kendler et al. Nevertheless, the study of current psychiatry also provides reasons to reject Kant’s essentialism and his transcendental project. I argue that Kant’s theory of mechanical explanation is more relevant for analyzing present-day philosophy of psychiatry, insofar as (a) modern psychiatric research into the causes of psychiatric disorders fits the mechanist paradigm, (b) Kant’s theory of mechanical explanation is importantly similar to modern theories of mechanical explanation applicable to psychiatry, such as those of Bechtel and associates, and (c) Kant’s stance that mechanism constitutes a regulative ideal points to useful arguments for the pursuit of mechanical explanations in psychiatry.","PeriodicalId":48832,"journal":{"name":"European Journal for Philosophy of Science","volume":"66 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2025-04-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143823104","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

Probabilistic empiricism 概率经验主义

IF 1.5 1区哲学

European Journal for Philosophy of Science Pub Date : 2025-04-12 DOI: 10.1007/s13194-025-00653-5

Quentin Ruyant, Mauricio Suárez

引用次数: 0

Grounded empiricism 接地经验主义

IF 1.5 1区哲学

European Journal for Philosophy of Science Pub Date : 2025-04-07 DOI: 10.1007/s13194-025-00644-6

Ioannis Votsis

{"title":"Grounded empiricism","authors":"Ioannis Votsis","doi":"10.1007/s13194-025-00644-6","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s13194-025-00644-6","url":null,"abstract":"Empiricism has a long and venerable history. Aristotle, the Epicureans, Sextus Empiricus, Bacon, Locke, Hume, Mill, Mach and the Logical Empiricists, among others, represent a long line of historically influential empiricists who, one way or another, placed an emphasis on knowledge gained through the senses. In recent times the most highly articulated and influential edition of empiricism is undoubtedly Bas van Fraassen’s constructive empiricism. Science, according to this view, aims at empirically adequate theories, i.e. theories that save all and only the observable phenomena. Roughly put, something is observable in van Fraassen’s view if members of the human epistemic community can detect it with their unaided senses. Critics have contested this notion, citing, among other reasons, that much of what counts as knowledge for scientists, especially in the natural sciences, concerns things that are detectable only with instruments, i.e. things that are unobservable and hence unknowable by van Fraassen’s lights. The current paper seeks to overcome this objection by putting forth and defending a liberalised conception of observability and an associated, and accordingly liberalised, conception of empiricism. ‘Grounded observability’ and ‘grounded empiricism’, as we call them, unchain themselves from the burdens of traditional conceptions of experience, while at the same time tethering themselves to the source of epistemic credibility in the senses, and, hence to the true spirit of empiricism.","PeriodicalId":48832,"journal":{"name":"European Journal for Philosophy of Science","volume":"18 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2025-04-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143790125","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

The place of explanation in scientific inquiry: Inference to the best explanation vs inference to the only explanation 解释在科学探索中的地位：推论最佳解释与推论唯一解释

IF 1.5 1区哲学

European Journal for Philosophy of Science Pub Date : 2025-04-02 DOI: 10.1007/s13194-025-00649-1

James Woodward

{"title":"The place of explanation in scientific inquiry: Inference to the best explanation vs inference to the only explanation","authors":"James Woodward","doi":"10.1007/s13194-025-00649-1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s13194-025-00649-1","url":null,"abstract":"This paper investigates the status of inference to the best explanation (IBE), in contrast to inference to the only explanation (IOE) against the background of Woodward's what-if-things- had-been-different (w) account of explanation. It argues that IBE is not a defensible form of inference. By contrast IOE is defensible and objections to its use (e.g., on the basis of claims about underdetermination) are exaggerated. Although some accounts of explanation in conjunction support IBE, the w-account does not. It is also argued that we should think of explanation as an independent goal of scientific investigation that is valuable in its own right and not because it is a means to discovering truths via IBE. The correct picture of the connection between explanation and truth is simply that successful explanation requires a true or effectively correct explanans. However, we cannot establish that an explanans has this feature by appealing to its potential explanatory power– that it would if true explain well. Instead, evidence that is independent of potential explanatory power is required. This is what IOE provides.","PeriodicalId":48832,"journal":{"name":"European Journal for Philosophy of Science","volume":"56 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2025-04-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143757998","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

Epistemic niche construction and non-epistemic values: the case of 19th century craniology 认知的生态位建构与非认知的价值：以19世纪的颅骨学为例

IF 1.5 1区哲学

European Journal for Philosophy of Science Pub Date : 2025-04-01 DOI: 10.1007/s13194-025-00648-2

Matteo De Benedetto, Michele Luchetti

引用次数: 0