-
164James T. Cushing, Philosophical Concepts in Physics. The Historical Relation Between Philosophy and Scientific TheoriesErkenntnis 52 (1): 133-137. 2000.This book successfully achieves to serve two different purposes. On the one hand, it is a readable physics-based introduction into the philosophy of science, written in an informal and accessible style. The author, himself a professor of physics at the University of Notre Dame and active in the philosophy of science for almost twenty years, carefully develops his metatheoretical arguments on a solid basis provided by an extensive survey along the lines of the historical development of physics. O…Read more
-
34Welfare, Voting and the Constitution of a Federal AssemblyIn Maria-Carla Galavotti (ed.), Reasoning, Rationality and Probability, Csli Publications. 2006.Equal and proportional representation are two poles of a continuum of models of representation for the assembly of a federation of states. The choice of a model has repercussions on the welfare distribution in the federation. We determine, first by means of Monte Carlo simulations, what welfare distributions result after assemblies that were constituted on the basis of different models of representation have considered a large number of motions. We assess what model of representation is favored …Read more
-
212The No Alternatives ArgumentBritish Journal for the Philosophy of Science 66 (1): 213-234. 2015.Scientific theories are hard to find, and once scientists have found a theory, H, they often believe that there are not many distinct alternatives to H. But is this belief justified? What should scientists believe about the number of alternatives to H, and how should they change these beliefs in the light of new evidence? These are some of the questions that we will address in this article. We also ask under which conditions failure to find an alternative to H confirms the theory in question. Th…Read more
-
273Effective Field Theories, Reductionism and Scientific ExplanationStudies in History and Philosophy of Science Part B: Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 32 (2): 267-304. 2001.Effective field theories have been a very popular tool in quantum physics for almost two decades. And there are good reasons for this. I will argue that effective field theories share many of the advantages of both fundamental theories and phenomenological models, while avoiding their respective shortcomings. They are, for example, flexible enough to cover a wide range of phenomena, and concrete enough to provide a detailed story of the specific mechanisms at work at a given energy scale. So wil…Read more
-
199Simulation techniques, especially those implemented on a computer, are frequently employed in natural as well as in social sciences with considerable success. There is mounting evidence that the "model-building era" (J. Niehans) that dominated the theoretical activities of the sciences for a long time is about to be succeeded or at least lastingly supplemented by the "simulation era". But what exactly are models? What is a simulation and what is the difference and the relation between a model an…Read more
-
216Too Odd (Not) to Be True? A Reply to OlssonBritish Journal for the Philosophy of Science 53 (4): 539-563. 2002.Corroborating Testimony, Probability and Surprise’, Erik J. Olsson ascribes to L. Jonathan Cohen the claims that if two witnesses provide us with the same information, then the less probable the information is, the more confident we may be that the information is true (C), and the stronger the information is corroborated (C*). We question whether Cohen intends anything like claims (C) and (C*). Furthermore, he discusses the concurrence of witness reports within a context of independent witnesses…Read more
-
138Mechanisms, Coherence, and Theory Choice in the Cognitive NeurosciencesIn Peter Machamer et al (ed.), Theory and Method in the Neurosciences., Pittsburgh University Press. 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 In a fo…Read more
-
128Coherence and the Role of Specificity: A Response to Meijs and DouvenMind 114 (454): 365-369. 2005.Meijs and Douven (2005) present an interesting pair of alleged counterexamples and an algorithm to generate such counter-examples to our criterion for a coherence quasi-ordering over information sets as outlined in our 2003a and 2003b accounts. We agree that our criterion does not always provide an ordering when we would intuitively say that one set is more coherent than the other. Nonetheless, we think that our criterion can be salvaged.
-
63The Problem of Old Evidence has troubled Bayesians ever since Clark Glymour first presented it in 1980. Several solutions have been proposed, but all of them have drawbacks and none of them is considered to be the definite solution. In this article, I propose a new solution which combines several old ideas with a new one. It circumvents the crucial omniscience problem in an elegant way and leads to a considerable confirmation of the hypothesis in question.
-
181Modelle und Forschungsdynamik: Strategien der zeitgenössischen PhysikPraxis der Naturwissenschaften - Physik 1 33-41. 1995.An Beispielen aus der Entwicklung der Elementarteilchenphysik wird aufgezeigt, welche Rolle Modelle im Entstehungsprozess einer physikalischen Theorie spielen.
-
73Probabilities in Physics (edited book)Oxford University Press. 2011.This volume is the first to provide a philosophical appraisal of probabilities in all of physics.
-
5Editorial to "Coherence, Truth and Testimony"Erkenntnis 63 (3): 293-294. 2005.Coherence is a burgeoning topic of research. Diverse methodologies have been applied to shed light on the topic and its relevance to fundamental questions throughout philosophy. The collection brings together the full scope of this research in a single volume. The first group of essays attack the core topic of the book: coherence. Authors in this section take up the challenging and controversial task of measuring the coherence of an information set, while others criticize this endeavor. The seco…Read more
-
127Models and Stories in Hadron PhysicsIn Margaret Morrison & Mary Morgan (eds.), Models as Mediators: Perspectives on Natural and Social Science, . pp. 52--326. 1999.Fundamental theories are hard to come by. But even if we had them, they would be too complicated to apply. Quantum chromodynamics is a case in point. This theory is supposed to govern all strong interactions, but it is extremely hard to apply and test at energies where protons, neutrons and ions are the effective degrees of freedom. Instead, scientists typically use highly idealized models such as the MIT Bag Model or the Nambu Jona-Lasinio Model to account for phenomena in this domain, to expla…Read more
-
258Imprecise Probabilities in Quantum MechanicsIn Colleen E. Crangle, Adolfo García de la Sienra & Helen E. Longino (eds.), Foundations and Methods From Mathematics to Neuroscience: Essays Inspired by Patrick Suppes, Stanford Univ Center For the Study. pp. 77-82. 2015.In his entry on "Quantum Logic and Probability Theory" in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Alexander Wilce (2012) writes that "it is uncontroversial (though remarkable) the formal apparatus quantum mechanics reduces neatly to a generalization of classical probability in which the role played by a Boolean algebra of events in the latter is taken over the 'quantum logic' of projection operators on a Hilbert space." For a long time, Patrick Suppes has opposed this view (see, for example, t…Read more
-
93Why are there descriptive norms? Because we looked for themSynthese 191 (18): 4409-4429. 2014.In this work, we present a mathematical model for the emergence of descriptive norms, where the individual decision problem is formalized with the standard Bayesian belief revision machinery. Previous work on the emergence of descriptive norms has relied on heuristic modeling. In this paper we show that with a Bayesian model we can provide a more general picture of the emergence of norms, which helps to motivate the assumptions made in heuristic models. In our model, the priors formalize the bel…Read more
-
969Who’s Afraid of Nagelian Reduction?Erkenntnis 73 (3): 393-412. 2010.We reconsider the Nagelian theory of reduction and argue that, contrary to a widely held view, it is the right analysis of intertheoretic reduction. The alleged difficulties of the theory either vanish upon closer inspection or turn out to be substantive philosophical questions rather than knock-down arguments.
-
132Idealization in Quantum Field TheoryIn Niall Shanks (ed.), Idealization in Contemporary Physics, . pp. 99-122. 1998.This paper explores various functions of idealizations in quantum field theory. To this end it is important to first distinguish between different kinds of theories and models of or inspired by quantum field theory. Idealizations have pragmatic and cognitive functions. Analyzing a case-study from hadron physics, I demonstrate the virtues of studying highly idealized models for exploring the features of theories with an extremely rich structure such as quantum field theory and for gaining some un…Read more
-
81Verfolgt die Elementarteilchenphysik ein reduktionistisches Programm?In Georg Meggle (ed.), Perspectives in Analytical Philosophy, De Gruyter. pp. 374-380. 1997.Die Elementarteilchenphysik gilt weithin als eine Teildisziplin der Physik, die ein reduktionistisches Programm par excellence verfolgt. In dieser Arbeit soll versucht werden, unter Berücksichtigung einer Analyse neuerer Methoden der Elementarteilchenphysik, die Berechtigung dieser Behauptung zu klären. Die Reduktionismusproblemtik läßt sich in ontologische, epistemologische und methodologische Aspekte untergliedern.
-
27Editorial to “Reduction and the Special Sciences”Erkenntnis 73 (3): 293-293. 2010.Science presents us with a variety of accounts of the world. While some of these accounts posit deep theoretical structure and fundamental entities, others do not. But which of these approaches is the right one? How should science conceptualize the world? And what is the relation between the various accounts? Opinions on these issues diverge wildly in philosophy of science. At one extreme are reductionists who argue that higher-level theories should, in principle, be incorporated in, or eliminat…Read more
-
201Bose-Einstein-Kondensation ultrakalter AtomeIn W. Schneider (ed.), Wege in der Physikdidaktik, Band IV, Palm & Enke. pp. 165-183. 1998.Am 14. Juli 1995 berichteten die angesehene Wissenschaftszeitschrift Science sowie die berühmte amerikanische Tageszeitung New York Times – auf dem Titelblatt – gleichzeitig über die erstmalige experimentelle Erzeugung eines Bose-Einstein-Kondensates aus einem Gas schwach wechselwirkender Alkaliatome am Joint Institute for Laboratory Astrophy- sics (JILA) in Boulder/Colorado (USA). Was war an dieser Leistung so bedeutsam, dass man sich entschloss, sie auf jene Weise bekannt zu geben?
-
160Models as a Tool for Theory Construction: Some Strategies of Preliminary PhysicsIn William Herfel, Władysław Krajewski, Ilkka Niiniluoto & Ryszard Wójcicki (eds.), Theories and Models in Scientific Processes, Rodopi. pp. 49-67. 1995.Theoretical models are an important tool for many aspects of scientific activity. They are used, i.a., to structure data, to apply theories or even to construct new theories. But what exactly is a model? It turns out that there is no proper definition of the term "model" that covers all these aspects. Thus, I restrict myself here to evaluate the function of models in the research process while using "model" in the loose way physicists do. To this end, I distinguish four kinds of models. These ar…Read more
-
85Special issue of Synthese on Bayesian EpistemologySynthese 156 (3): 403-403. 2007.The papers in this collection were presented at a workshop on Bayesian Epistemology at the 26th International Wittgenstein Symposium in Kirchberg, Austria (August 4–7, 2003), at a workshop on Philosophy and Probability at the conference GAP5 in Bielefeld, Germany (September 20–22, 2003), at a workshop on Bayesian Epistemology at the Centre for Philosophy of Natural and Social Science, London School of Economics and Political Science in London, UK (June 28, 2004), or at the seminar of the res…Read more
-
161SimulationIn Jürgen Mittelstrass (ed.), Enzyklopädie Philosophie und Wissenschaftstheorie, Vol. 3, Metzler. 1995.Simulation (von lat. simulare, engl. simulation, franz. simulation, ital. simulazione), Bezeichnung für die Nachahmung eines Prozesses durch einen anderen Prozeß. Beide Prozesse laufen auf einem bestimmten System ab. Simuliertes u. simulierendes System (der Simulator in der Kybernetik) können dabei auf gleichen oder unterschiedlichen Substraten realisiert sein.
-
210An Impossibility Result for Coherence RankingsPhilosophical Studies 128 (1): 77-91. 2006.If we receive information from multiple independent and partially reliable information sources, then whether we are justified to believe these information items is affected by how reliable the sources are, by how well the information coheres with our background beliefs and by how internally coherent the information is. We consider the following question. Is coherence a separable determinant of our degree of belief, i.e. is it the case that the more coherent the new information is, the more justi…Read more
-
13Artificial Intelligence and Its Methodological ImplicationsVienna Circle Institute Yearbook 11 217-223. 2004.Donald Gillies is one of the pioneers in the philosophical analysis of artificial intelligence. In his recent book, Gillies not only makes a new and rapidly developing field of science accessible to philosophers; he also introduces philosophical topics relevant to researchers in AI and thereby helps establish a dialogue between the two disciplines. His book clearly and convincingly demonstrates the fruitful interplay between AI and philosophy of science.
-
71Merging Judgments and the Problem of Truth-TrackingIn Jerome Lang & Ulle Endriss (eds.), Computational Social Choice 2006, University of Amsterdam. 2006.The problem of the aggregation of consistent individual judgments on logically interconnected propositions into a collective judgment on the same propositions has recently drawn much attention. The dificulty lies in the fact that a seemingly reasonable aggregation procedure, such as propositionwise majority voting, cannot ensure an equally consistent collective outcome. The literature on judgment aggregation refers to such dilemmas as the discursive paradox. So far, three procedures have been pr…Read more
-
468Normativität und BayesianismusIn Bernward Gesang (ed.), Deskriptive oder normative Wissenschaftstheorie, Ontos-verlag. pp. 177-204. 2004.Das Thema dieses Bandes ist die Frage, ob die Wissenschaftstheorie eine normative Disziplin ist. Zunächst überrascht die Frage, denn für viele Wissenschaftstheoretiker ist die Antwort ein klares „Ja“; sie halten es für einen Allgemeinplatz, dass die Wissenschaftstheorie ein normatives Unternehmen ist. Bei genauerem Hinsehen stellt sich jedoch heraus, dass die Frage unterschiedliche Interpretationen zulässt, die einzeln diskutiert werden müssen. Dies geschieht im ersten Abschnitt. Im zweite…Read more
-
68Models and SimulationsSynthese 169 (3). 2009.Special issue. With contributions by Anouk Barberouse, Sarah Francescelli and Cyrille Imbert, Robert Batterman, Roman Frigg and Julian Reiss, Axel Gelfert, Till Grüne-Yanoff, Paul Humphreys, James Mattingly and Walter Warwick, Matthew Parker, Wendy Parker, Dirk Schlimm, and Eric Winsberg.
-
19Kopenhagen contra Bohm – eine Herausforderung für den Realismus?Praxis der Naturwissenschaften - Physik 4 12-17. 1999.Der bedeutende amerikanische Logiker und Philosoph W.V.O. Quine hat die folgende Frage ins Zentrum seines Schaffens gestellt: "Wie kommen wir von unseren Sinnesdaten zu Theorien über die Welt?“ Bei der Beantwortung dieser Frage tritt ein grundlegendes Problem auf, das damit zusammenhängt, dass uns immer nur ein endlicher Satz an Informationen über die Welt zugänglich ist. Jedes Experiment liefert z. B. nur eine endliche Anzahl von Messpunkten.
-
721Bayesian EpistemologyIn DancyJ (ed.), A Companion to Epistemology, Blackwell. 2010.Bayesianism is our leading theory of uncertainty. Epistemology is defined as the theory of knowledge. So “Bayesian Epistemology” may sound like an oxymoron. Bayesianism, after all, studies the properties and dynamics of degrees of belief, understood to be probabilities. Traditional epistemology, on the other hand, places the singularly non-probabilistic notion of knowledge at centre stage, and to the extent that it traffics in belief, that notion does not come in degrees. So how can there be a B…Read more
-
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 |