{"title":"Inferential rules for confirmatory robustness","authors":"Aki Lehtinen","doi":"10.1007/s13194-026-00722-3","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s13194-026-00722-3","url":null,"abstract":"This paper analyses when, and to what extent, the robustness of a result yields confirmation. I develop two inferential rules that specify how modellers and experimenters should update their conditional probabilities when new derivational or experimental information becomes available. While similar rules apply to derivational and experimental robustness, they are insufficient on their own to generate empirical confirmation from derivational robustness. That requires suitable indirect confirmation relations linking model results to empirical evidence. I examine several such relations and show how robustness can increase confirmation by demonstrating that both an empirically validated result and a model prediction depend on the same components, while certain false auxiliaries are irrelevant. When empirical confirmation arises from derivational robustness, it does so by strengthening these indirect links rather than by securing a high absolute probability for a robust theorem. The resulting account clarifies both the scope and limits of robust confirmatory reasoning.","PeriodicalId":48832,"journal":{"name":"European Journal for Philosophy of Science","volume":"113 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2026-04-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147642103","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}
C. Tyler DesRoches, Paul Bartha, Kian Mintz-Woo, Angela Rodriguez, Daniel Steel
{"title":"Climate nudging, catastrophes, and cost benefit analysis","authors":"C. Tyler DesRoches, Paul Bartha, Kian Mintz-Woo, Angela Rodriguez, Daniel Steel","doi":"10.1007/s13194-026-00740-1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s13194-026-00740-1","url":null,"abstract":"Green nudges (GNs) are increasingly popular behavioral interventions aimed at mitigating environmentally mediated harm, particularly in the context of climate change. The justification of GNs traditionally relies on cost-benefit analysis (CBA), which quantifies the total costs and benefits, factoring in probabilities to maximize expected utility. However, the application of CBA faces significant challenges when GNs involve potential catastrophic outcomes associated with climate change and climate nudging. We argue that the qualitative distinction between catastrophic and non-catastrophic outcomes poses a challenge for traditional CBA. While CBA is adept at assessing ordinary costs and benefits, it struggles to accommodate the putative catastrophic outcomes linked to climate change and climate nudging. To address this challenge, this article considers the lexical precautionary principle (LPP) as a viable decision-making framework for climate nudging. Unlike CBA’s decision rule, maximize expected utility, LPP maximizes lexical utility, thereby prioritizing the avoidance of catastrophic outcomes.","PeriodicalId":48832,"journal":{"name":"European Journal for Philosophy of Science","volume":"29 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2026-04-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148286289","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}
{"title":"What do black holes teach us about Wigner’s Friend?","authors":"Emily Adlam","doi":"10.1007/s13194-026-00744-x","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s13194-026-00744-x","url":null,"abstract":"Recently, Hausmann and Renner have pointed out that several famous paradoxes relating to black holes have a similar character to various Extended Wigner’s Friend paradoxes. In this paper I consider what the connection between these things could teach us about the Wigner’s Friend scenarios. I argue that if we take the analogy between these cases seriously, the black hole paradoxes appear to favour a certain class of response to the Wigner’s Friend scenario - specifically, those which posit intrinsic relationality, rather than effective and emergent relationality, and also those which posit some kind of retrocausality.","PeriodicalId":48832,"journal":{"name":"European Journal for Philosophy of Science","volume":"35 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2026-04-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148286291","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}
{"title":"Science advice for policy: enhancing the legitimacy of non-epistemic value judgments through proportionality analysis","authors":"Cathrine Holst, Silje Langvatn","doi":"10.1007/s13194-026-00734-z","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s13194-026-00734-z","url":null,"abstract":"Science advice bodies increasingly shape public policy. Yet, their analyses and recommendations routinely involve non-epistemic value judgments that sit uneasily with ideals of democracy and separation of powers. We argue that in liberal constitutional democracies the political legitimacy of such judgments can be enhanced by integrating structured proportionality analysis into the workflow of policy-recommending advisory bodies. This deliberative procedure – first developed by constitutional courts – brings attention to policies’ impact on protected rights and amounts to a multi-pronged scrutiny of the justifiability of a policy which infringe on rights. We show, first, that existing guidelines for science advice bodies nationally and in international organizations implicitly acknowledge non-epistemic judgments but under-specify how to deal with them. Second, recent philosophy of science rightly foregrounds the democratic scrutiny of values (and so representation, alignment, and participation) but underemphasizes rights-based constraints. Our proposal reorients advisory practice toward rights-sensitive, deliberative justification that science advice bodies can apply ex ante—where these bodies often possess superior expertise on relevant aspects such as the suitability and necessity of a policy. Embedding proportionality analysis both mid-stream (to shape option generation) and in public justifications (to enable contestation and deliberation across branches and publics) improves transparency, mitigates overreach, and aligns advice with the rule-of-law and rights commitments of liberal democracies. The final part discusses scope conditions, institutional implications and limitations of our proposal. Structured proportionality analysis does not guarantee optimal outcomes, but supplies a stable, recognized method to discipline non-epistemic judgments and thereby enhance the legitimacy of science-based policy advice.","PeriodicalId":48832,"journal":{"name":"European Journal for Philosophy of Science","volume":"24 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2026-04-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147702319","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}
{"title":"The structural heterogeneity of concepts in scientific practice","authors":"Hyundeuk Cheon","doi":"10.1007/s13194-026-00741-0","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s13194-026-00741-0","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":48832,"journal":{"name":"European Journal for Philosophy of Science","volume":"54 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2026-03-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147586579","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}
{"title":"The problem of explaining shifting targets","authors":"David Colaço","doi":"10.1007/s13194-026-00729-w","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s13194-026-00729-w","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":48832,"journal":{"name":"European Journal for Philosophy of Science","volume":"106 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2026-03-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147536276","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}
{"title":"Quantum entanglement, internality and dependence","authors":"Matías Daniel Pasqualini","doi":"10.1007/s13194-026-00737-w","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s13194-026-00737-w","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":48832,"journal":{"name":"European Journal for Philosophy of Science","volume":"4 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2026-03-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147536315","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}
{"title":"Chang’s hermeneutic operational coherence: ambiguities and prospects","authors":"Fons Dewulf","doi":"10.1007/s13194-026-00735-y","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s13194-026-00735-y","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":48832,"journal":{"name":"European Journal for Philosophy of Science","volume":"58 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2026-03-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147535922","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}
{"title":"The value of credit in science.","authors":"Thijs Ringelberg","doi":"10.1007/s13194-026-00731-2","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s13194-026-00731-2","url":null,"abstract":"The Credit Economy Approach (CEA) explains scientific behaviour in terms of credit-seeking: scientists pursue social credit, which furthers their careers. This paper investigates the relationship between such credit incentives and the normative motivations often attributed to scientists, such as epistemic and ethical commitments. A default assumption - which I call the cumulative view - holds that these are distinct sources of motivation, each exerting independent influence. Drawing on a conceptual analysis of social credit and findings from social psychology, I argue instead for an entangled view: credit incentives operate through, and depend upon, shared normative commitments. On this view, the credit economy functions in virtue of a scientific community's shared evaluative norms. This account deepens existing work that situates the credit economy within a broader social context, and offers a framework for further research integrating formal work in the CEA, conceptual analysis in philosophy of science, and empirical insights from the social sciences.","PeriodicalId":48832,"journal":{"name":"European Journal for Philosophy of Science","volume":"22 1","pages":"24"},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2026-03-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147495247","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}
{"title":"Inductive risk meets engineering risk: Error management and pursuitworthiness in collider physics","authors":"Marianne van Panhuys, Daria Jadreškić","doi":"10.1007/s13194-026-00730-3","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s13194-026-00730-3","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":48832,"journal":{"name":"European Journal for Philosophy of Science","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2026-03-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147461833","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}