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47Probabilities, Laws and Structure (edited book)Springer. 2012.This conception of natural kinds might be dubbed a 'structural kinds' view. It is the conception of kinds offered by ExtOSR within a Humean framework. To invoke structural kinds also means to invoke structural laws. For laws generalize over ...
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411Consensual Decision-Making Among Epistemic PeersEpisteme 6 (2): 110-129. 2009.This paper focuses on the question of how to resolve disagreement and uses the Lehrer-Wagner model as a formal tool for investigating consensual decision-making. The main result consists in a general definition of when agents treat each other as epistemic peers (Kelly 2005; Elga 2007), and a theorem vindicating the “equal weight view” to resolve disagreement among epistemic peers. We apply our findings to an analysis of the impact of social network structures on group deliberation processes, and…Read more
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874Bayesian Cognitive Science, Unification, and ExplanationBritish Journal for the Philosophy of Science 68 (2). 2017.It is often claimed that the greatest value of the Bayesian framework in cognitive science consists in its unifying power. Several Bayesian cognitive scientists assume that unification is obviously linked to explanatory power. But this link is not obvious, as unification in science is a heterogeneous notion, which may have little to do with explanation. While a crucial feature of most adequate explanations in cognitive science is that they reveal aspects of the causal mechanism that produces the…Read more
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118Review of Michael Strevens, Depth: An Account of Scientific Explanation (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2010 (6). 2010.
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130The Weight of Competence under a Realistic Loss FunctionLogic Journal of the IGPL 18 (2): 346-352. 2010.In many scientific, economic and policy-related problems, pieces of information from different sources have to be aggregated. Typically, the sources are not equally competent. This raises the question of how the relative weights and competences should be related to arrive at an optimal final verdict. Our paper addresses this question under a more realistic perspective of measuring the practical loss implied by an inaccurate verdict.
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46Utilitarianism, Degressive Proportionality and the Constitution of a Federal AssemblyPhilSci Archive 1. 2001.A federal assembly consists of a number of representatives for each of the nations (states, Länder, cantons,...) that make up the federation. How many representatives should each nation receive? What makes this issue worth quibbling about is that the model of representation that is instituted will have an impact on the welfare distribution over the nations in the federation that will ensue over due course. We will investigate what models of representation yield welfare distributions that score h…Read more
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28Explanation, Prediction, and Confirmation (edited book)Springer. 2011.This volume, the second in the Springer series Philosophy of Science in a European Perspective, contains selected papers from the workshops organised by the ESF Research Networking Programme PSE (The Philosophy of Science in a European Perspective) in 2009. Five general topics are addressed: 1. Formal Methods in the Philosophy of Science; 2. Philosophy of the Natural and Life Sciences; 3. Philosophy of the Cultural and Social Sciences; 4. Philosophy of the Physical Sciences; 5. History of t…Read more
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181We construct a probabilistic coherence measure for information sets which determines a partial coherence ordering. This measure is applied in constructing a criterion for expanding our beliefs in the face of new information. A number of idealizations are being made which can be relaxed by an appeal to Bayesian Networks.
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33A Probabilistic Theory of the Coherence of an Information SetIn BeckermannAnsgar (ed.), Argument & Analysis: Proceedings of the 4th International Congress of the Society for Analytical Philosophy, Bielefeld. 2001.Bonjour (1985: 101 and 1999: 124) and other coherence theorists of justification before him (e.g. Ewing, 1934: 246) have complained that we do not have a satisfactory analysis of the notion of coherence. The problem with existing accounts of coherence is that they try to bring precision to our intuitive notion of coherence independently of the particular role that it is meant to play within the coherence theory of justification (e.g Lewis, 1946: 338). This is a mistake: it does not make any …Read more
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66Transdisziplinarität – eine Herausforderung für die WissenschaftstheorieIn Gereon Wolters & Martin Carrier (eds.), Homo Sapiens und Homo Faber: epistemische und technische Rationalität in Antike und Gegenwart ; Festschrift für Jürgen Mittelstrass, De Gruyter. pp. 335--343. 2005.Die zeitgenössische Wissenschaftstheorie leidet unter ähnlichen Problemen wie die Wissenschaften, mit denen sie sich befasst. So nimmt auch in der Wissenschaftstheorie die Spezialisierung stark zu, und bei vielen der behandelten Fragestellungen geht es einzig um Detailprobleme, die sich aus einem sich verselbständigenden Diskussionszusammenhang entwickelt haben, wobei der Bezug zur jeweiligen Ausgangsfrage und die größere philosophische Perspektive leicht aus den Augen verloren geht.
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137Welfarism and the Assessment of Social Decision RulesIn Jerome Lang & Ulle Endriss (eds.), Computational Social Choice 2006, University of Amsterdam. 2006.The choice of a social decision rule for a federal assembly affects the welfare distribution within the federation. But which decision rules can be recommended on welfarist grounds? In this paper, we focus on two welfarist desiderata, viz. (i) maximizing the expected utility of the whole federation and (ii) equalizing the expected utilities of people from different states in the federation. We consider the European Union as an example, set up a probabilistic model of decision making and explore h…Read more
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50Models, Simulations, and the Reduction of Complexity (edited book)De Gruyter. 2013.Modern science is, to a large extent, a model-building activity. But how are models contructed? How are they related to theories and data? How do they explain complex scientific phenomena, and which role do computer simulations play here? These questions have kept philosophers of science busy for many years, and much work has been done to identify modeling as the central activity of theoretical science. At the same time, these questions have been addressed by methodologically-minded scientists, …Read more
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146On CorrespondenceStudies in History and Philosophy of Science Part B: Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 33 (1): 79-94. 2002.This paper is an essay review of Steven French and Harmke Kamminga (eds.), Correspondence, Invariance and Heuristics. Essays in Honour of Heinz Post (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1993). I distinguish a varity of correspondence relations between scientific theories (exemplified by cases from the book under review) and examine how one can make sense of the the prevailing continuity in scientific theorizing.
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179Understanding (With) Toy ModelsBritish Journal for the Philosophy of Science. 2016.Toy models are highly idealized and extremely simple models. Although they are omnipresent across scientific disciplines, toy models are a surprisingly under-appreciated subject in the philosophy of science. The main philosophical puzzle regarding toy models is that it is an unsettled question what the epistemic goal of toy modeling is. One promising proposal for answering this question is the claim that the epistemic goal of toy models is to provide individual scientists with understanding. The…Read more
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166Review of Inference to the Best ExplanationNotre Dame Philosophical Reviews 1 (6). 2005.The first edition of Peter Lipton's Inference to the Best Explanation, which appeared in 1991, is a modern classic in the philosophy of science. Yet in the second edition of the book, Lipton proves that even a classic can be improved. Not only does Lipton elaborate and expand on the themes covered in the first edition, but he also adds a new chapter on Bayesianism. In particular, he attempts a reconciliation between the Bayesian approach and that offered by Inference to the Best Explanation (IBE…Read more
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132Mechanisms, Coherence, and Theory Choice in the Cognitive NeurosciencesIn Peter McLaughlin, Peter Machamer & Rick Grush (eds.), Theory and Method in the Neurosciences, Pittsburgh University Press. pp. 70-80. 2001.Let me first state that I like Antti Revonsuo’s discussion of the various methodological and interpretational problems in neuroscience. It shows how careful and methodologically reflected scientists have to proceed in this fascinating field of research. I have nothing to add here. Furthermore, I am very sympathetic towards Revonsuo’s general proposal to call for a Philosophy of Neuroscience that stresses foundational issues, but also focuses on methodological and explanatory strategies.2 I…Read more
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219Kohärent/Kohärenz; Kohärenz, explanatorische; Kohärenz, probabilistischeIn J. Mittelstraß (ed.), Enzyklopädie der Wissenschaftsphilosophie und analytischen Philosophie vol. 4, Metzler. pp. 250-258. 2010.Erklärungstheoretisch bestimmter Kohärenzbegriff
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57Welfarist Evaluations of Decision Rules under Interstate Utility DependenciesSocial Choice and Welfare 34 (2): 315-344. 2010.We provide welfarist evaluations of decision rules for federations of states and consider models, under which the interests of people from different states are stochastically dependent. We concentrate on two welfarist standards; they require that the expected utility for the federation be maximized or that the expected utilities for people from different states be equal. We discuss an analytic result that characterizes the decision rule with maximum expected utility, set up a class of models tha…Read more
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211Models, Mechanisms, and CoherenceBritish Journal for the Philosophy of Science 66 (1): 181-212. 2015.Life-science phenomena are often explained by specifying the mechanisms that bring them about. The new mechanistic philosophers have done much to substantiate this claim and to provide us with a better understanding of what mechanisms are and how they explain. Although there is disagreement among current mechanists on various issues, they share a common core position and a seeming commitment to some form of scientific realism. But is such a commitment necessary? Is it the best way to go about me…Read more
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336Judgment aggregation and the problem of tracking the truthSynthese 187 (1): 209-221. 2012.The aggregation of consistent individual judgments on logically interconnected propositions into a collective judgment on those propositions has recently drawn much attention. Seemingly reasonable aggregation procedures, such as propositionwise majority voting, cannot ensure an equally consistent collective conclusion. The literature on judgment aggregation refers to that problem as the discursive dilemma. In this paper, we motivate that many groups do not only want to reach a factually right co…Read more
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35Review: The Sun, the Genome and the Internet by F. Dyson (review)Physikalische Blätter 56. 2000.
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212Computersimulationen in der Angewandten Politischen Philosophie - Ein BeispielIn Carl-Friedrich Gethmann (ed.), Lebenswelt und Wissenschaft, Meiner. pp. 601-634. forthcoming.In den vergangenen Jahren hat die Europäische Union (EU) wiederholt versucht, ihre Institutionen zu reformieren. Als der Entwurf für eine Europäische Verfassung und später der Vertrag von Lissabon ausgehandelt wurden, betraf einer der meistdiskutiertesten Streitpunkte die Frage, nach welcher Entscheidungsregel der EU-Ministerrat abstimmen sollte. Diese Frage ist eine genuin normative Frage. Deshalb sollten auch politische Philosophen und Ethiker etwas zu dieser Frage beitragen können. Im folgend…Read more
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18EditorialLogic Journal of the IGPL 18 (2): 277-277. 2010.Social epistemology is a relatively new and booming field of research. It studies the social dimension of the pursuit of acquiring true beliefs and requires philosophical as well as sociological and economic expertise. The insights gained in social epistemology are not only of theoretical interest; they also improve our understanding of social and political processes, as the field includes the analysis of group deliberation and group decision-making. However, surprisingly little work has so far …Read more
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1Book Review: Luc Bovens and Stephan Hartmann "Bayesian Epistemology" (review)Studia Logica 81 (2): 289-292. 2005.Book Review of Luc Bovens and Stephan Hartmann *Bayesian Epistemology* by Erik J. Olsson
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13One of the major problems that artificial intelligence needs to tackle is the combination of different and potentially conflicting sources of information. Examples are multi-sensor fusion, database integration and expert systems development. In this paper we are interested in the aggregation of propositional logic-based information, a problem recently addressed in the literature on information fusion. It has applications in multi-agent systems that aim at aggregating the distributed agent-based …Read more
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51Special Issue of Minds and Machines on Causality, Uncertainty and Ignorance (edited book)Springer. 2006.In everyday life, as well as in science, we have to deal with and act on the basis of partial (i.e. incomplete, uncertain, or even inconsistent) information. This observation is the source of a broad research activity from which a number of competing approaches have arisen. There is some disagreement concerning the way in which partial or full ignorance is and should be handled. The most successful approaches include both quantitative aspects (by means of probability theory) and qualitative aspe…Read more
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328The Chromodielectric Soliton Model: Quark Self-Energy and Hadron BagsPhysical Review C 55 2067-2077. 1997.The chromodielectric soliton model is Lorentz and chirally invariant. It has been demonstrated to exhibit dynamical chiral symmetry breaking and spatial confinement in the locally uniform approximation. We here study the full nonlocal quark self-energy in a color-dielectric medium modeled by a two-parameter Fermi function. Here color confinement is manifest. The self-energy thus obtained is used to calculate quark wave functions in the medium which, in turn, are used to calculate the nucleon and…Read more
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27PrefaceSynthese 180 (1): 1-2. 2011.The roles models play in science have long been recognised and sparked rich and varied philosophical debates. In recent years attention has also been paid to the computational techniques used in the sciences, and the question arose what the implications were of the use of computer simulations for our understanding of scientific modelling, and science more generally. This was the subject of the conference “Models and Simulations”, which took place at the IHPST in Paris in June 2006. Selected …Read more
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155Modeling Partially Reliable Information Sources: A General Approach Based on Dempster-Shafer TheoryInformation Fusion 7 361-379. 2006.Combining testimonial reports from independent and partially reliable information sources is an important epistemological problem of uncertain reasoning. Within the framework of Dempster–Shafer theory, we propose a general model of partially reliable sources, which includes several previously known results as special cases. The paper reproduces these results on the basis of a comprehensive model taxonomy. This gives a number of new insights and thereby contributes to a better understanding of th…Read more
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574Conventional and Objective Invariance: Debs and Redhead on Symmetry (review)Metascience 19 (1): 15-23. 2010.This review is a critical discussion of three main claims in Debs and Redhead’s thought-provoking book Objectivity, Invariance, and Convention. These claims are: (i) Social acts impinge upon formal aspects of scientific representation; (ii) symmetries introduce the need for conventional choice; (iii) perspectival symmetry is a necessary and sufficient condition for objectivity, while symmetry simpliciter fails to be necessary.
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Ludwig Maximilians Universität, MünchenFaculty of Philosophy, Philosophy of Science and Study of ReligionRegular Faculty
Areas of Interest
Philosophy of Social Science |
Philosophy of Computing and Information |