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10Empirical Bayes as a ToolIn Martin Carrier & Johannes Lenhard (eds.), Mathematics as a Tool: Tracing New Roles of Mathematics in the Sciences, Springer Verlag. 2017.Bayesian methods are currently underdoing a deep transformation due to the use of computing power. The aim of this chapter is to analyze this transformation by examining a specific example: the use of Baysian methods in climate science.
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155Cellular Automata (CA) based simulations are widely used in a great variety of domains, fromstatistical physics to social science. They allow for spectacular displays and numerical predictions. Are they forall that a revolutionary modeling tool, allowing for “direct simulation”, or for the simulation of “the phenomenon itself”? Or are they merely models "of a phenomenological nature rather than of a fundamental one”? How do they compareto other modeling techniques? In order to answer these quest…Read more
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96Person as Moralist and ScientistBehavioral and Brain Sciences 33 (4): 331. 2010.Scientific inquiry possibly shares with people's ordinary understanding the same evolutionary determinants, and affect-laden intuitions that shape moral judgments also play a decisive role in decision-making, planning, and scientific reasoning. Therefore, if ordinary understanding does differ from scientific inquiry, the reason does not reside in the fact that the former (but not the latter) is endowed with moral considerations.
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21Cellular Automata in fluid dynamics: not so differentStudies in History and Philosophy of Science Part B: Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics. forthcoming.
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96Were Maxwell and Boltzmann irrational to develop statistical mechanics whereas it was empirically refuted by the specific heats problem? My analysis of this historical episode departs from the current proposals about belief change. I first give a detailed description of Maxwell's and Boltzmann's epistemic states in the years they were working on statistical mechanics and then make some methodological proposals in epistemology that would account for the complexity of this case.
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17Are specific heats dispositions?In Gnassounou Bruno & Kistler Max (eds.), Dispositions and Causal Powers, Ashgate. pp. 271--282. 2007.
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33Scientific models need to be investigated if they are to provide valuable information about the systems they represent. Surprisingly, the epistemological question of what enables this investigation has hardly been investigated. Even authors who consider the inferential role of models as central, like Hughes or Bueno and Colyvan, content themselves with claiming that models contain mathematical resources that provide inferential power. We claim that these notions require further analysis and argu…Read more
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83About the warrants of computer-based empirical knowledgeSynthese 191 (15): 3595-3620. 2014.Computer simulations are widely used in current scientific practice, as a tool to obtain information about various phenomena. Scientists accordingly rely on the outputs of computer simulations to make statements about the empirical world. In that sense, simulations seem to enable scientists to acquire empirical knowledge. The aim of this paper is to assess whether computer simulations actually allow for the production of empirical knowledge, and how. It provides an epistemological analysis of pr…Read more
Areas of Specialization
Science, Logic, and Mathematics |
Areas of Interest
Metaphysics and Epistemology |
Science, Logic, and Mathematics |