•  9
    The Problem of Perceptual Agreement
    Croatian Journal of Philosophy 23 (68): 133-138. 2023.
    We present the problem of perceptual agreement (of determinate color) and submit that it proves to be a serious and long overlooked obstacle for those insisting that colors are not objective features of objects, viz., nonobjectivist theories like C. L. Hardin’s (2003) eliminativism and Jonathan Cohen’s (2009) relationalism.
  •  11
    Prima facie, accounts of scientific representation should illuminate how models support justified surrogative reasoning while remaining neutral on the nature of inductive inference. We argue that doing both at once is harder than it first appears. Accounts like “DEKI,” which distinguish justified and unjustified surrogative inferences by appealing to a distinction between derivational and factual correctness, cannot accommodate non-formal, non-rule-based accounts of inference such as John Norton…Read more
  •  26
    Chunglin Kwa. Styles of Knowing: A New History of Science from Ancient Times to the Present. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2011. Pp. viii+366. $27.95 (review)
    Hopos: The Journal of the International Society for the History of Philosophy of Science 4 (1): 161-165. 2014.
  •  15
    Idealizations in Physics
    Cambridge University Press. 2023.
    Idealizations are ubiquitous in physics. They are distortions or falsities that enter into theories, laws, models, and scientific representations. Various questions suggest themselves: What are idealizations? Why do we appeal to idealizations and how do we justify them? Are idealizations essential to physics and, if so, in what sense and for which purpose? How can idealizations provide genuine understanding? If our motivation for believing in the existence of unobservable entities like electrons…Read more
  •  48
    Machine understanding and deep learning representation
    with Michael Tamir
    Synthese 201 (2): 1-27. 2023.
    Practical ability manifested through robust and reliable task performance, as well as information relevance and well-structured representation, are key factors indicative of understanding in the philosophical literature. We explore these factors in the context of deep learning, identifying prominent patterns in how the results of these algorithms represent information. While the estimation applications of modern neural networks do not qualify as the mental activity of persons, we argue that coup…Read more
  •  30
    Idealizations in Physics
    Cambridge University Press. 2023.
    Idealizations are ubiquitous in physics. They are distortions or falsities that enter into theories, laws, models, and scientific representations. Various questions suggest themselves: What are idealizations? Why do we appeal to idealizations and how do we justify them? Are idealizations essential to physics and, if so, in what sense and for which purpose? How can idealizations provide genuine understanding? If our motivation for believing in the existence of unobservable entities like electrons…Read more
  •  220
    Introduction
    In Insa Lawler, Kareem Khalifa & Elay Shech (eds.), Scientific Understanding and Representation: Modeling in the Physical Sciences, Routledge. 2022.
    This chapter gives an overview of the various themes and issues discussed in the volume. It includes summaries of all chapters and places the contributions, some of which are part of a critical conversation format, in the context of the larger literature and debates.
  •  22
    Idealization, representation, and explanation in the sciences
    Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 99 (C): 10-14. 2023.
    A central goal of the scientific endeavor is to explain phenomena. Scientists often attempt to explain a phenomenon by way of representing it in some manner—such as with mathematical equations, models, or theory—which allows for an explanation of the phenomenon under investigation. However, in developing scientific representations, scientists typically deploy simplifications and idealizations. As a result, scientific representations provide only partial, and often distorted, accounts of the phen…Read more
  •  19
    Darwinian-Selectionist Explanation, Radical Theory Change, and the Observable-Unobservable Dichotomy
    International Studies in the Philosophy of Science 34 (4): 221-241. 2021.
    In his recent 2018 book, Resisting Scientific Realism, K. Brad Wray provides a detailed, full-fledged defense of anti-realism about science. In this paper, I argue against the two main claims that constitute Wray’s positive and novel argument for his position, viz., his suggested Darwinian-selectionist explanation of the success of science and his skepticism about unobservables based on radical theory change. My goal is not wholly negative though. Instead, I aim to identify the type of work that…Read more
  •  14
    Scientific understanding in the Aharonov‐Bohm effect
    Theoria 88 (5): 943-971. 2022.
    By appealing to resources found in the scientific understanding literature, I identify in what senses idealisations afford understanding in the context of the (magnetic) Aharonov-Bohm effect. Three types of concepts of understanding are discussed: understanding-what, which has to do with understanding a phenomenon; understanding-with, which has to do with understanding a scientific theory; and understanding-why, which has to do with the reason some phenomenon occurs. Consequently, I outline an a…Read more
  •  22
  •  22
    Middle path realism and anti-realism
    Metascience 31 (2): 175-178. 2022.
  •  85
    This volume brings together leading scholars working on understanding and representation in philosophy of science. It features a critical conversation format between contributors that advances debates concerning scientific understanding, scientific representation, and their delicate interplay.
  •  13
    Roles of mitonuclear ecology and sex in conceptualizing evolutionary fitness
    with Kyle B. Heine
    Biology and Philosophy 36 (3): 1-20. 2021.
    We look to mitonuclear ecology and the phenomenon of Mother’s Curse to argue that the sex of parents and offspring among populations of eukaryotic organisms, as well as the mitochondrial genome, ought to be taken into account in the conceptualization of evolutionary fitness. Subsequently, we show how characterizations of fitness considered by philosophers that do not take sex and the mitochondrial genome into account may suffer. Last, we reflect on the debate regarding the fundamentality of trai…Read more
  •  32
    Introduction
    Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 85 30-33. 2021.
  •  57
    Two approaches to understanding the idealizations that arise in the Aharonov–Bohm effect are presented. It is argued that a common topological approach, which takes the non-simply connected electron configuration space to be an essential element in the explanation and understanding of the effect, is flawed. An alternative approach is outlined. Consequently, it is shown that the existence and uniqueness of self-adjoint extensions of symmetric operators in quantum mechanics have important implicat…Read more
  •  28
    We examine arguments for distinguishing between ontological and epistemological concepts of fundamentality, focusing in particular on the role that scale plays in these concepts. Using the fractional quantum Hall effect as a case study, we show that we can draw a distinction between ontologically fundamental and non-fundamental theories without insisting that it is only the fundamental theories that get the ontology right: there are cases where non-fundamental theories involve distinct ontologie…Read more
  •  70
    We offer a framework for organizing the literature regarding the debates revolving around infinite idealizations in science, and a short summary of the contributions to this special issue.
  •  80
    Historical Inductions Meet the Material Theory
    Philosophy of Science 86 (5): 918-929. 2019.
    Historical inductions, that is, the pessimistic metainduction and the problem of unconceived alternatives, are critically analyzed via John D. Norton’s material theory of induction and subsequently rejected as noncogent arguments. It is suggested that the material theory is amenable to a local version of the pessimistic metainduction, for example, in the context of some medical studies.
  •  101
    In this article we argue that idealizations and limiting cases in models play an exploratory role in science. Four senses of exploration are presented: exploration of the structure and representational capacities of theory; proof-of-principle demonstrations; potential explanations; and exploring the suitability of target systems. We illustrate our claims through three case studies, including the Aharonov-Bohm effect, the emergence of anyons and fractional quantum statistics, and the Hubbard mode…Read more
  •  32
    In this essay, I provide an overview of the debate on infinite and essential idealizations in physics. I will first present two ostensible examples: phase transitions and the Aharonov–Bohm effect. Then, I will describe the literature on the topic as a debate between two positions: Essentialists claim that idealizations are essential or indispensable for scientific accounts of certain physical phenomena, while dispensabilists maintain that idealizations are dispensable from mature scientific theo…Read more
  •  73
    Infinite idealizations in physics
    Philosophy Compass 13 (9). 2018.
    In this essay, I provide an overview of the debate on infinite and essential idealizations in physics. I will first present two ostensible examples: phase transitions and the Aharonov– Bohm effect. Then, I will describe the literature on the topic as a debate between two positions: Essentialists claim that idealizations are essential or indispensable for scientific accounts of certain physical phenomena, while dispensabilists maintain that idealizations are dispensable from mature scientific the…Read more
  •  45
    Various claims regarding intertheoretic reduction, weak and strong notions of emergence, and explanatory fictions have been made in the context of first-order thermodynamic phase transitions. By appealing to John Norton’s recent distinction between approximation and idealization, I argue that the case study of anyons and fractional statistics, which has received little attention in the philosophy of science literature, is more hospitable to such claims. In doing so, I also identify three novel r…Read more
  •  59
    It has been recently debated whether there exists a so-called “easy road” to nominalism. In this essay, I attempt to fill a lacuna in the debate by making a connection with the literature on infinite and infinitesimal idealization in science through an example from mathematical physics that has been largely ignored by philosophers. Specifically, by appealing to John Norton’s distinction between idealization and approximation, I argue that the phenomena of fractional quantum statistics bears nega…Read more
  •  34
    In this paper, I appeal to a distinction made by David Lewis between identifying and determining semantic content in order to defend a complementarity thesis expressed by Anjan Chakravartty. The thesis states that there is no conflict between informational and functional views of scientific modeling and representation. I then apply the complementarity thesis to well-received theories of pictorial representation, thereby stressing the fruitfulness of drawing an analogy between the nature of ficti…Read more