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434Ceteris Paribus LawsStanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2019.Laws of nature take center stage in philosophy of science. Laws are usually believed to stand in a tight conceptual relation to many important key concepts such as causation, explanation, confirmation, determinism, counterfactuals etc. Traditionally, philosophers of science have focused on physical laws, which were taken to be at least true, universal statements that support counterfactual claims. But, although this claim about laws might be true with respect to physics, laws in the special scie…Read more
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92Thinking about Non-Universal Laws: Introduction to the Special Issue Ceteris Paribus Laws RevisitedErkenntnis 79 (S10): 1703-1713. 2014.What are ceteris paribus laws? Which disciplines appeal to cp laws and which semantics, metaphysical underpinning, and epistemological dimensions do cp law statements have? Firstly, we give a short overview of the recent discussion on cp laws, which addresses these questions. Secondly, we suggest that given the rich and diverse literature on cp laws a broad conception of cp laws should be endorsed which takes into account the different ways in which laws can be non-universal . Finally, we provid…Read more
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270Was sollen Philosoph/innen tun? Kommentar Kommentar zur Podiumsdiskussion „Bedrohtes Denken“ (DGPhil Kongress 2017)Zeitschrift für Philosophische Forschung 72 (1): 114-118. 2018.Wie können Philosoph/innen mit der Bedrohung der akademischen Freiheit umgehen, die von rechtspopulistischen Strömungen (in Deutschland, Europa und weltweit) und autoritären Staaten (wie der Türkei und Ungarn) ausgeht? – Diese Frage stand im Zentrum der Podiumsdiskussion „Bedrohtes Denken“, die während des DGPhil Kongresses in Berlin am Tag der Bundestagswahl 2017 stattfand. Es war eine Diskussion, deren Ende von der bedrückenden Nachricht überschattet wurde, die rechtsextreme AfD werde drittstä…Read more
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32When do non-epistemic values play an epistemically illegitimate role in science? How to solve one half of the new demarcation problemStudies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 92 (C): 152-161. 2022.Solving the “new demarcation problem” requires a distinction between epistemically legitimate and illegitimate roles for non-epistemic values in science. This paper addresses one ‘half’ (i.e. a sub-problem) of the new demarcation problem articulated by the Gretchenfrage: What makes the role of a non-epistemic value in science epistemically illegitimate? I will argue for the Explaining Epistemic Errors (EEE) account, according to which the epistemically illegitimate role of a non-epistemic value …Read more
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12Margaret Morrison's Reconstructing Reality (review)BJPS Review of Books 8. 2016.In her new book Reconstructing Reality (henceforth RR), Margaret Morrison’s main target is the kind of information about the world (or, more specifically, about physical and biological systems) one can extract from the ‘reconstructive methods and practices of science’ (p. 1). To address this, Morrison focuses on three central kinds of interrelated strategies for ‘recasting nature’ (p. 2) by using reconstructive methods and practices: (i) abstract mathematical explanations and understanding (Part…Read more
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122When Do Non-Epistemic Values Play an Epistemically Illegitimate Role in Science? How to Solve One Half of the New Demarcation ProblemStudies in History and Philosophy of Science 92 152-161. 2022.Solving the “new demarcation problem” requires a distinction between epistemically legitimate and illegitimate roles for non-epistemic values in science. This paper addresses one ‘half’ (i.e. a sub-problem) of the new demarcation problem articulated by the Gretchenfrage: What makes the role of a non-epistemic value in science epistemically illegitimate? I will argue for the Explaining Epistemic Errors (EEE) account, according to which the epistemically illegitimate role of a non-epistemic value …Read more
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29Objectivity as IndependenceEpisteme 1-8. 2021.Building on Nozick's invariantism about objectivity, I propose to define scientific objectivity in terms of counterfactual independence. I will argue that such a counterfactual independence account is (a) able to overcome the decisive shortcomings of Nozick's original invariantism and (b) applicable to three paradigmatic kinds of scientific objectivity (that is, objectivity as replication, objectivity as robustness, and objectivity as Mertonian universalism).
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112Objectivity as IndependenceEpisteme 1-8. 2021.Building on Nozick's invariantism about objectivity, I propose to define scientific objectivity in terms of counterfactual independence. I will argue that such a counterfactual independence account is (a) able to overcome the decisive shortcomings of Nozick's original invariantism and (b) applicable to three paradigmatic kinds of scientific objectivity (that is, objectivity as replication, objectivity as robustness, and objectivity as Mertonian universalism).
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288Is There A Monist Theory of Causal and Non-Causal Explanations? The Counterfactual Theory of Scientific ExplanationPhilosophy of Science 83 (5): 733-745. 2016.The goal of this paper is to develop a counterfactual theory of explanation. The CTE provides a monist framework for causal and non-causal explanations, according to which both causal and non-causal explanations are explanatory by virtue of revealing counterfactual dependencies between the explanandum and the explanans. I argue that the CTE is applicable to two paradigmatic examples of non-causal explanations: Euler’s explanation and renormalization group explanations of universality.
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6Roberts, John T. 2008. The Law-Governed Universe. New York: Oxford University Press (407 pages, Euro 66,99) (review)History of Philosophy & Logical Analysis 16 (1): 390-394. 2013.
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129The Prospects for a Monist Theory of Non-causal Explanation in Science and MathematicsErkenntnis 87 (4): 1773-1793. 2020.We explore the prospects of a monist account of explanation for both non-causal explanations in science and pure mathematics. Our starting point is the counterfactual theory of explanation for explanations in science, as advocated in the recent literature on explanation. We argue that, despite the obvious differences between mathematical and scientific explanation, the CTE can be extended to cover both non-causal explanations in science and mathematical explanations. In particular, a successful …Read more
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63What is epistemically wrong with research affected by sponsorship bias? The evidential accountEuropean Journal for Philosophy of Science 10 (2): 1-26. 2020.Biased research occurs frequently in the sciences. In this paper, I will focus on one particular kind of biased research: research that is subject to sponsorship bias. I will address the following epistemological question: what precisely is epistemically wrong with biased research of this kind? I will defend the evidential account of epistemic wrongness: that is, research affected by sponsorship bias is epistemically wrong if and only if the researchers in question make false claims about the ev…Read more
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26Natural Law and Universality in the Philosophy of BiologyEuropean Review 22 (51). 2014.Several philosophers of biology have argued for the claim that the generalizations of biology are historical and contingent.1–5 This claim divides into the following sub-claims, each of which I will contest: first, biological generalizations are restricted to a particular space-time region. I argue that biological generalizations are universal with respect to space and time. Secondly, biological generalizations are restricted to specific kinds of entities, i.e. these generalizations do not quant…Read more
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94Understanding (with) Toy ModelsBritish Journal for the Philosophy of Science 69 (4): 1069-1099. 2018.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 concerns what the epistemic goal of toy modelling 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 aim of this article is to…Read more
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187Better Best Systems – Too Good To Be TrueDialectica 68 (3): 375-390. 2014.Craig Callender, Jonathan Cohen and Markus Schrenk have recently argued for an amended version of the best system account of laws – the better best system account (BBSA). This account of lawhood is supposed to account for laws in the special sciences, among other desiderata. Unlike David Lewis's original best system account of laws, the BBSA does not rely on a privileged class of natural predicates, in terms of which the best system is formulated. According to the BBSA, a contingently true gener…Read more
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104Explanation Beyond Causation: Philosophical Perspectives on Non-Causal Explanations (edited book)Oxford University Press. 2018.Explanations are very important to us in many contexts: in science, mathematics, philosophy, and also in everyday and juridical contexts. But what is an explanation? In the philosophical study of explanation, there is long-standing, influential tradition that links explanation intimately to causation: we often explain by providing accurate information about the causes of the phenomenon to be explained. Such causal accounts have been the received view of the nature of explanation, particularly in…Read more
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32MARKUS SCHRENK The Metaphysics of Ceteris Paribus Laws (review)British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 60 (1): 229-233. 2009.
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30Warum Atheisten den methodologischen Atheismus nicht brauchenZeitschrift für Philosophische Forschung 70 (4): 550-561. 2016.
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667Taking Reductionism to the Limit: How to Rebut the Antireductionist Argument from Infinite LimitsPhilosophy of Science (3): 455-482. 2017.This paper analyses the anti-reductionist argument from renormalisation group explanations of universality, and shows how it can be rebutted if one assumes that the explanation in question is captured by the counterfactual dependence account of explanation.
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220Does the Counterfactual Theory of Explanation Apply to Non-Causal Explanations in Metaphysics?European Journal for Philosophy of Science 1-18. 2016.In the recent philosophy of explanation, a growing attention to and discussion of non-causal explanations has emerged, as there seem to be compelling examples of non-causal explanations in the sciences, in pure mathematics, and in metaphysics. I defend the claim that the counterfactual theory of explanation (CTE) captures the explanatory character of both non-causal scientific and metaphysical explanations. According to the CTE, scientific and metaphysical explanations are explanatory by virtue …Read more
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35What's Wrong with the Pragmatic-Ontic Account of Mechanistic Explanation?In Dennis Dieks, Wenceslao Gonzalo, Thomas Uebel, Stephan Hartmann & Marcel Weber (eds.), Explanation, Prediction, and Confirmation, Springer. pp. 141--152. 2011.
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118Does the counterfactual theory of explanation apply to non-causal explanations in metaphysics?European Journal for Philosophy of Science 7 (2): 239-256. 2017.In the recent philosophy of explanation, a growing attention to and discussion of non-causal explanations has emerged, as there seem to be compelling examples of non-causal explanations in the sciences, in pure mathematics, and in metaphysics. I defend the claim that the counterfactual theory of explanation captures the explanatory character of both non-causal scientific and metaphysical explanations. According to the CTE, scientific and metaphysical explanations are explanatory by virtue of rev…Read more
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142Why Is There Universal Macrobehavior? Renormalization Group Explanation as Noncausal ExplanationPhilosophy of Science 81 (5): 1157-1170. 2014.Renormalization group (RG) methods are an established strategy to explain how it is possible that microscopically different systems exhibit virtually the same macro behavior when undergoing phase-transitions. I argue – in agreement with Robert Batterman – that RG explanations are non-causal explanations. However, Batterman misidentifies the reason why RG explanations are non-causal: it is not the case that an explanation is non- causal if it ignores causal details. I propose an alternative argum…Read more
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171Abstract versus Causal Explanations?International Studies in the Philosophy of Science 30 (2): 129-146. 2016.In the recent literature on causal and non-causal scientific explanations, there is an intuitive assumption according to which an explanation is non-causal by virtue of being abstract. In this context, to be ‘abstract’ means that the explanans in question leaves out many or almost all causal microphysical details of the target system. After motivating this assumption, we argue that the abstractness assumption, in placing the abstract and the causal character of an explanation in tension, is misg…Read more
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50Metaphysics as a constraint on science: John Heil: The universe as we find it. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012, 311pp, $55 HBMetascience 22 (2): 297-301. 2013.
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72A theory of causation in the social and biological sciencesPalgrave-Macmillan. 2013.What exactly do social scientists and biologists say when they make causal claims? This question is one of the central puzzles in philosophy of science. Alexander Reutlinger sets out to answer this question. He aims to provide a theory of causation in the special sciences (that is, a theory causation in the social sciences, the biological sciences and other higher-level sciences). According one recent prominent view, causation is that causation is intimately tied to manipulability and the possib…Read more
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329Explanation beyond causation? New directions in the philosophy of scientific explanationPhilosophy Compass 12 (2). 2017.In this paper, I aim to provide access to the current debate on non-causal explanations in philosophy of science. I will first present examples of non-causal explanations in the sciences. Then, I will outline three alternative approaches to non-causal explanations – that is, causal reductionism, pluralism, and monism – and, corresponding to these three approaches, different strategies for distinguishing between causal and non-causal explanation. Finally, I will raise questions for future researc…Read more
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127Modelling InequalityBritish Journal for the Philosophy of Science 69 (3): 691-718. 2018.Econophysics is a new and exciting cross-disciplinary research field that applies models and modelling techniques from statistical physics to economic systems. It is not, however, without its critics: prominent figures in more mainstream economic theory have criticized some elements of the methodology of econophysics. One of the main lines of criticism concerns the nature of the modelling assumptions and idealizations involved, and a particular target are ‘kinetic exchange’ approaches used to mo…Read more
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Ludwig Maximilians Universität, MünchenFaculty of Philosophy, Philosophy of Science and Study of ReligionRegular Faculty
Areas of Specialization
Metaphysics |
Philosophy of Social Science |
Philosophy of Physical Science |
General Philosophy of Science |