{"title":"Theoretical concepts as goal-derived concepts","authors":"","doi":"10.1016/j.shpsa.2024.08.004","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.shpsa.2024.08.004","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>In this paper, I will focus on the nature of theoretical concepts, i.e., the psychological entities related to theoretical terms in science. I will first argue that the standard picture of theoretical concepts in twentieth-century philosophy of science understood them as representation-oriented common taxonomic concepts. However, I will show how, in light of recent pragmatist approaches to scientific laws and theories, several important theoretical concepts in science do not seem to fit such picture. I will then argue that these theoretical concepts should be understood instead as goal-derived concepts, since their construction and use exhibit the typical characteristics that cognitive scientists assign to goal-derived concepts. I will furthermore argue that the existence of theoretical concepts that are goal-derived concepts represents yet another example of the central role that human goals play in science.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":49467,"journal":{"name":"Studies in History and Philosophy of Science","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2024-09-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0039368124001249/pdfft?md5=9bee8ddda562cc2e7436a2e6e7003b09&pid=1-s2.0-S0039368124001249-main.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142122821","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Ancient Greek laws of nature","authors":"","doi":"10.1016/j.shpsa.2024.05.010","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.shpsa.2024.05.010","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>The prevailing narrative in the history of science maintains that the ancient Greeks did not have a concept of a ‘law of nature’. This paper overturns that narrative and shows that some ancient Greek philosophers did have an idea of laws of nature and, moreover, they referred to them as ‘laws of nature’. This paper analyzes specific examples of laws of nature in texts by Plato, Aristotle, Philo of Alexandria, Nicomachus of Gerasa, and Galen. These examples emerged out of the closely intertwined Platonic and Pythagorean traditions, and these philosophers' texts make reference to laws of nature when describing arithmetical methods, arithmological doctrines, or medical theories. Nicomachus' laws of nature are especially noteworthy, because they have features that historians look for in the search for the origin of the modern concept of laws of nature. Nicomachus' laws of nature are mathematical, universal, and necessary. This paper raises the possibility that the ancient Platonic and Pythagorean traditions influenced the subsequent development of the idea of laws of nature in medieval and early modern Europe, including the conception of laws of nature deployed by Johannes Kepler and Isaac Newton.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":49467,"journal":{"name":"Studies in History and Philosophy of Science","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2024-09-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S003936812400058X/pdfft?md5=ba88c7f0724ed3e81ace93bb82d9a460&pid=1-s2.0-S003936812400058X-main.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142122822","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Mary Hesse on the role of the human imagination in the philosophy and practice of science","authors":"","doi":"10.1016/j.shpsa.2024.07.001","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.shpsa.2024.07.001","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Although Mary Hesse remains an influential figure within the history of the philosophy of science her reflections on the role of the human imagination in science have, to date, been mostly neglected. In her first, and often overlooked monograph—<em>Science and the Human Imagination</em>—Hesse described the imagination as composed of four dimensions. Defined as the historical, the critical, the fertile and the creative imagination, these dimensions played, for Hesse, various roles in both the philosophy and practice of science.</p><p>Suffice to say, Hesse's discussion of the role of the imagination in science challenges the idea that philosophy and science are logically determined forms of practice through an appeal, as will be argued, to Immanuel Kant's seminal reflections on the ‘indispensable function’ of the imagination. Accordingly, a detailed elucidation of <em>Science and the Human Imagination</em> not only situates Hesse's reflections within the long history of the philosophy of the imagination; it revitalises anew contemporary debates on the role of the imagination in the philosophy and practice of science.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":49467,"journal":{"name":"Studies in History and Philosophy of Science","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2024-08-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0039368124001067/pdfft?md5=ffe213b64488c338ac85112f84efc855&pid=1-s2.0-S0039368124001067-main.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142094643","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Pursuit-worthy research in health: Three examples and a suggestion","authors":"","doi":"10.1016/j.shpsa.2024.08.001","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.shpsa.2024.08.001","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>This paper, in a nutshell, is a plea for community participation in research along with an adapted idea for how such participation should be shaped and understood. I will give varied examples of the ways in which scientists viewing a perceived problem solely from an external perspective has led to mistakes. If we do not properly take into account the knowledge and values of people with a condition, we are liable to pursue the wrong sorts of treatments. In particular, I provide examples of three ways (exemplified in the cases of “female hysteria”, autism, and chronic fatigue syndrome) scientists are liable to pursue treatment of what they perceive to be at least partially mental illnesses that they/we shouldn't. I present the idea of <em>deliberative research</em>—the concept is based on that of deliberative democracy. The idea of deliberative democracy is that decisions should be made on the basis of reasons that would be acceptable to the target population. I similarly argue that research decisions should be made on the basis of reasons that would be acceptable to the target population, even if it requires other experts to determine how those reasons are best to be respected in the context of a particular project.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":49467,"journal":{"name":"Studies in History and Philosophy of Science","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2024-08-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0039368124001213/pdfft?md5=6326aa9d83efcc20bfce256869ee679d&pid=1-s2.0-S0039368124001213-main.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142050023","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Selection in molecular evolution","authors":"","doi":"10.1016/j.shpsa.2024.07.004","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.shpsa.2024.07.004","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Evolution requires selection. Molecular/chemical/preDarwinian evolution is no exception. One molecule must be selected over another for molecular evolution to occur and advance. Evolution, however, has no goal. The laws of physics have no utilitarian desire, intent or proficiency. Laws and constraints are blind to “usefulness.” How then were potential multi-step processes anticipated, valued and pursued by inanimate nature? Can orchestration of formal systems be physico-chemically spontaneous? The purely physico-dynamic self-ordering of Chaos Theory and irreversible non-equilibrium thermodynamic “engines of disequilibria conversion” achieve neither orchestration nor formal organization. Natural selection is a passive and after-the-fact-of-life selection. Darwinian selection reduces to the differential survival and reproduction of the fittest <em>already-living</em> organisms. In the case of abiogenesis, selection had to be 1) Active, 2) Pre-Function, and 3) Efficacious. Selection had to take place at the molecular level prior to the existence of non-trivial functional processes. It could not have been passive or secondary. What naturalistic mechanisms might have been at play?</p></div>","PeriodicalId":49467,"journal":{"name":"Studies in History and Philosophy of Science","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2024-08-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0039368124001110/pdfft?md5=539ef50b9b39e2d5e86c8fa51585d7be&pid=1-s2.0-S0039368124001110-main.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141977021","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"A reinterpretation of Heisenberg’s Umdeutung in prescriptive-dynamical terms","authors":"","doi":"10.1016/j.shpsa.2024.07.002","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.shpsa.2024.07.002","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>There has been a lot of discussion about Heisenberg’s Umdeutung paper of 1925, which is universally credited as the first formulation of modern quantum mechanics. Much of this discussion has been characterized by puzzlement over the manner in which Heisenberg arrived at his formulation, supposedly through Bohr’s atomic theory in conjunction with two philosophical principles, namely the Correspondence Principle and the Observability Principle. I provide textual, contextual, and philosophical evidence that the “prescriptive-dynamical framework” – recently advocated in the literature on independent grounds – is the perfect perspective from which to understand Heisenberg’s work and the significance of the two principles he utilized to arrive at it.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":49467,"journal":{"name":"Studies in History and Philosophy of Science","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2024-08-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141977020","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Inference to the best neuroscientific explanation","authors":"","doi":"10.1016/j.shpsa.2024.06.009","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.shpsa.2024.06.009","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Neuroscientists routinely use reverse inference (RI) to draw conclusions about cognitive processes from neural activation data. However, despite its widespread use, the methodological status of RI is a matter of ongoing controversy, with some critics arguing that it should be rejected wholesale on the grounds that it instantiates a deductively invalid argument form. In response to these critiques, some have proposed to conceive of RI as a form of abduction or inference to the best explanation (IBE). We side with this response but at the same time argue that a defense of RI requires more than identifying it as a form of IBE. In this paper, we give an analysis of what determines the quality of an RI conceived as an IBE and on that basis argue that whether an RI is warranted needs to be decided on a case-by-case basis. Support for our argument will come from a detailed methodological discussion of RI in cognitive neuroscience in light of what the recent literature on IBE has identified as the main quality indicators for IBEs.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":49467,"journal":{"name":"Studies in History and Philosophy of Science","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2024-08-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141917902","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Classical Stance: Dennett’s Criterion in Wallacian quantum mechanics","authors":"","doi":"10.1016/j.shpsa.2024.06.005","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.shpsa.2024.06.005","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>David Wallace’s ‘Dennett’s Criterion’ plays a key part in establishing realist claims about the existence of a multiverse emerging from the mathematical formalism of quantum physics, even after decoherence is fully appreciated. Although the philosophical preconditions of this criterion are not neutral, they are rarely explicitly addressed conceptually. I tease apart three: (I) a rejection of conceptual bridge laws even in cases of inhomogeneous reduction; (II) a reliance on the pragmatic notion of usefulness to highlight quasi-classical patterns, as seen in a decoherence basis, over others; and (III) a structural realist or ‘functional realist’ point of view that leads to individuating those patterns as real macroscopic objects at the coarse-grained level, as they are seen from the Classical Stance (analogous to Dennett’s Intentional Stance). I conclude that the justification of Dennett’s Criterion will be intimately tied up with the fate of strong forms of naturalism, and in particular that Wallacian quantum mechanics is a key case study for concretely evaluating his ‘math-first’ structural realism (Wallace 2022).</p></div>","PeriodicalId":49467,"journal":{"name":"Studies in History and Philosophy of Science","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2024-08-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0039368124001055/pdfft?md5=28b013cc964b2577bfbc140d5e7ef842&pid=1-s2.0-S0039368124001055-main.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141903366","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"“Oh, how beautiful life is and how terrible death is!” (Th. Dobzhansky and religion)","authors":"","doi":"10.1016/j.shpsa.2024.07.003","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.shpsa.2024.07.003","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>In the article, mainly based on the reference to the entries in the diary of Th. Dobzhansky, a geneticist and one of the founders of the “synthetic theory of evolution”, examines how Dobzhansky tried to combine science, primarily evolutionary theory, and religion. It is argued that although Dobxzhansky was a believer during whole his life, he became a peculiar believer who revised for himself and for others the former, primarily religious answers to the “ultimate questions” of existence, and posed these questions in a new, evolutionary way. Even more, he tried to substantiate and justify religion and his belief in God through the evolutionary theory, to demonstrate that science and religion are not incompatible, and to offer his believe in the usefulness of science and religion to each other. This Dobzhansky's attempt was perceived and evaluated ambiguously by both scientists and religious figures. In addition, Dobzhansky owing to his search for these answers, made a number of world outlook and general cultural conclusions for himself and presented these conclusions in articles and books written not only for colleagues in the scientific community, but also for other people.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":49467,"journal":{"name":"Studies in History and Philosophy of Science","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2024-08-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141903365","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"When “replicability” is more than just “reliability”: The Hubble constant controversy","authors":"","doi":"10.1016/j.shpsa.2024.07.005","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.shpsa.2024.07.005","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>We propose that the epistemic functions of replication in science are best understood by relating them to kinds of experimental error/uncertainty. One kind of replication, which we call “direct replications,” principally serves to assess the reliability of an experiment through its precision: the presence and degree of random error/statistical uncertainty. The other kind of replication, which we call “conceptual replications,” principally serves to assess the validity of an experiment through its accuracy: the presence and degree of systematic errors/uncertainties. To illustrate the aptness of this general view, we examine the Hubble constant controversy in astronomy, showing how astronomers have responded to the concordances and discordances in their results by carrying out the different kinds of replication that we identify, with the aim of establishing a precise, accurate value for the Hubble constant. We contrast our view with Machery's “re-sampling” account of replication, which maintains that replications only assess reliability.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":49467,"journal":{"name":"Studies in History and Philosophy of Science","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2024-08-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141898748","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}