Bruno Borge

The issues of laws of nature and the modality underlying natural regularity have often been treated as one. Metaphysical analysis shows, however, that only those positions that assume an ontological commitment to laws of nature can be considered within Nomological Realism (NR). Mumford (2004) proposes an alternative to NR compatible with the modal commitments commonly associated with realist positions. In this view, the weight of modality is not set on laws but on properties — understood in terms of powers and propensities. A Realist Lawlessness (RL), according to his own nomenclature. In this paper I aim to show, first, that Mumford’s arguments against NR do not justify its rejection. Second, I argue that the dispositional metaphysic of RL leads at least to the same problems as NR. Keywords: laws of nature, scientific laws, Nomological Realism, Stephen Mumford.

Mauro Dorato's "Science and Representative Democracy" argues for the essential link between science and democracy. He posits both as problem-solving systems, advocating for representative democracy to integrate scientific knowledge into policy and emphasizing scientific literacy for informed citizen participation. Revisiting the Lippmann-Dewey debate, he champions education and utilizes Condorcet's jury theorem to highlight the potential of informed decision-making. He tackles challenges like scientific disinformation and advocates for scientific literacy. By comparing the principles of science and democracy, he reveals their interconnectedness. While further exploration of practical challenges and direct democracy's potential would be beneficial, the book remains a valuable contribution to understanding the vital relationship between science and democracy in the modern world.

According to epistemic structural realism scientific theories provide us only with knowledge about the structure of the unobservable world, but not about its nature. The most significant objection that this posi- tion has faced is the so-called Newman’s problem. In this paper I offer an alternative objection to EER. I argue that its formulation leads to undesirable skeptical positions in two fields close to scientific realism: the debates on modality and laws of nature. I also show that there is an interesting sense in which my objection is stronger than the one offered by Newman.

Este artículo conecta la epistemología del desacuerdo y la metafísica de la ciencia al proponer que los desacuerdos en ontología científica pueden entenderse como instancias de desacuerdo profundo que exhiben diversos grados de profundidad. Primero establecemos las características centrales de los desacuerdos profundos y argumentamos que las explicaciones estándar fallan en acomodar su naturaleza gradual. Tomando el debate entre las stances empirista y metafísica en ontología científica como un caso paradigmático, mostramos cómo este desacuerdo satisface los criterios para ser considerado un desacuerdo profundo. Luego, basándonos en trabajos recientes en epistemología del desacuerdo, desarrollamos un marco teórico que muestra cómo la profundidad de los desacuerdos se correlaciona con la generalidad de los principios en conflicto. A través de un estudio de caso detallado de debates sobre modalidad en ontología científica, demostramos tres niveles de profundidad: desacuerdos entre perspectivas (más profundos), desacuerdos dentro de perspectivas sobre dominios específicos (intermedios), y desacuerdos dentro de sub-posiciones (menos profundos). Este análisis revela que los desacuerdos profundos en metafísica de la ciencia no son monolíticos sino que exhiben una estructura rica que explica tanto su persistencia como el progreso diferencial posible a través de diferentes debates. Nuestro marco proporciona tanto una perspectiva teórica sobre la naturaleza del desacuerdo filosófico como una orientación práctica para entender los límites y perspectivas de la metafísica de la ciencia.

The semantic view of scientific theories has been proposed as a more favorable framework for scientific realism compared to the syntactic view. However, Chakravartty argues that both views face equivalent difficulties when articulating realist commitments to unobservable entities. This paper examines Chakravartty’s challenge through an analysis of recent developments in the debate on models and scientific representation. While we acknowledge that adopting the semantic view does not resolve traditional realist problems by itself, we argue that the DEKI account (Frigg and Nguyen) offers promising conceptual tools for addressing the modelling and representation of unobservables. Our analysis reveals that, although theories of scientific representation are orthogonal to realist ontological commitments, contemporary model-theoretic developments provide new perspectives for assessing the viability of modeling unobservable entities and properties required by the defense of scientific realism.

One of the major appeals of Ontic Structural Realism (OSR) is to provide a me-taphysical proposal capable of dealing with the ontological problem of quan-tum indistinguishability. The Modal-Hamiltonian Interpretation of quantum mechanics (MHI), on the other hand, aspires to formulate a “global” solution, in which all the ontological problems of the theory can be adequately addressed in terms of a single ontology. In both proposals, the ontological category of ob-ject is absent. The purpose of the present article is to analyze the MHI ontology by suggesting that it satisfies the central motivations that led to the formulation of OSR but also overcomes the conceptual problems that OSR has faced since its formulation.

The article addresses the question of how should scientific peers revise their beliefs (if at all) upon recognized disagreement. After presenting the basics of peer disagreement in sections 1 and 2, we focus, in section 3, on a concrete case of scientific disagreement, to wit, the dispute over the evidential status of randomized control trials in medical practice. The examination of this case motivates the idea that some scientific disagreements permit a steadfast reaction. In section 4, we support this conclusion by providing a normative argument in the same direction; if we are correct, typical reasons for conciliation are absent in this kind of scientific disagreements.

Disagreements about scientific ontology have frequently been reconstructed as the result of a dispute between rival epistemic stances. In this paper, (i) we characterize some of these disagreements as deep disagreements. In addition, we show that deep disagreements about scientific ontology can arise not only from the adoption of different epistemic stances, but also between positions that fall within the same stance. The development of this point allows us, in turn, to establish a distinction between types of deep disagreement and to explore the possibility that there are differences of degree between them.