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Evidence in classical statisticsIn Maria Lasonen-Aarnio & Clayton Littlejohn (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of the Philosophy of Evidence, Routledge. 2024.
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13The Local Validity of Special Relativity, Part 2: Matter DynamicsPhilosophy of Physics 1 (1). 2023.In this two-part essay, we distinguish several senses in which general relativity has been regarded as “locally special relativistic.” In Part 1, we focused on senses in which a relativistic spacetime may be said to be “locally (approximately) Minkowskian.” Here, in Part 2, we consider what it might mean to say that a matter theory is “locally special relativistic.” We isolate and evaluate three criteria in the literature and show that they are incompatible: matter theories satisfying one will g…Read more
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19The Local Validity of Special Relativity, Part 1: GeometryPhilosophy of Physics 1 (1). 2023.In this two-part essay, we distinguish several senses in which general relativity has been regarded as “locally special relativistic.” Here, in Part 1, we focus on senses in which a relativistic spacetime has been said to be “locally (approximately) Minkowskian.” After critiquing several proposals in the literature, we present a result capturing a substantive sense in which every relativistic spacetime is locally approximately Minkowskian. We then show that Minkowski spacetime is not distinguish…Read more
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19The Stopping Rule Principle and Confirmational ReliabilityJournal for General Philosophy of Science / Zeitschrift für Allgemeine Wissenschaftstheorie 55 (1): 1-28. 2023.The stopping rule for a sequential experiment is the rule or procedure for determining when that experiment should end. Accordingly, the stopping rule principle (SRP) states that the evidential relationship between the final data from a sequential experiment and a hypothesis under consideration does not depend on the stopping rule: the same data should yield the same evidence, regardless of which stopping rule was used. I clarify and provide a novel defense of two interpretations of the main arg…Read more
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64On Representational Capacities, with an Application to General RelativityFoundations of Physics 50 (4): 228-249. 2020.Recent work on the hole argument in general relativity by Weatherall has drawn attention to the neglected concept of models’ representational capacities. I argue for several theses about the structure of these capacities, including that they should be understood not as many-to-one relations from models to the world, but in general as many-to-many relations constrained by the models’ isomorphisms. I then compare these ideas with a recent argument by Belot for the claim that some isometries “gener…Read more
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25Replication Is for Meta-AnalysisPhilosophy of Science 89 (5): 960-969. 2022.The role or function of experimental and observational replication within empirical science has implications for how replication should be measured. Broadly, there seems to be consensus that replication’s central goal is to confirm or vouchsafe the reliability of scientific findings. I argue that if this consensus is correct, then most of the measures of replication used in the scientific literature are actually poor indicators of this reliability or confirmation. Only meta-analytic measures of …Read more
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58The introduction of topology into analytic philosophy: two movements and a codaSynthese 200 (3): 1-34. 2022.Both early analytic philosophy and the branch of mathematics now known as topology were gestated and born in the early part of the 20th century. It is not well recognized that there was early interaction between the communities practicing and developing these fields. We trace the history of how topological ideas entered into analytic philosophy through two migrations, an earlier one conceiving of topology geometrically and a later one conceiving of topology algebraically. This allows us to reass…Read more
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502Changing use of formal methods in philosophy: late 2000s vs. late 2010sSynthese 199 (5-6): 14555-14576. 2021.Traditionally, logic has been the dominant formal method within philosophy. Are logical methods still dominant today, or have the types of formal methods used in philosophy changed in recent times? To address this question, we coded a sample of philosophy papers from the late 2000s and from the late 2010s for the formal methods they used. The results indicate that the proportion of papers using logical methods remained more or less constant over that time period but the proportion of papers usin…Read more
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77Two quantum logics of indeterminacySynthese 199 (5-6): 13247-13281. 2021.We implement a recent characterization of metaphysical indeterminacy in the context of orthodox quantum theory, developing the syntax and semantics of two propositional logics equipped with determinacy and indeterminacy operators. These logics, which extend a novel semantics for standard quantum logic that accounts for Hilbert spaces with superselection sectors, preserve different desirable features of quantum logic and logics of indeterminacy. In addition to comparing the relative advantages of…Read more
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114Quantum indeterminacy and the eigenstate-eigenvalue linkSynthese 199 (3-4): 1-32. 2021.Can quantum theory provide examples of metaphysical indeterminacy, indeterminacy that obtains in the world itself, independently of how one represents the world in language or thought? We provide a positive answer assuming just one constraint of orthodox quantum theory: the eigenstate-eigenvalue link. Our account adds a modal condition to preclude spurious indeterminacy in the presence of superselection sectors. No other extant account of metaphysical indeterminacy in quantum theory meets these …Read more
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52How (not) to measure replicationEuropean Journal for Philosophy of Science 11 (2): 1-27. 2021.The replicability crisis refers to the apparent failures to replicate both important and typical positive experimental claims in psychological science and biomedicine, failures which have gained increasing attention in the past decade. In order to provide evidence that there is a replicability crisis in the first place, scientists have developed various measures of replication that help quantify or “count” whether one study replicates another. In this nontechnical essay, I critically examine fiv…Read more
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73The role of replication in psychological scienceEuropean Journal for Philosophy of Science 11 (1): 1-19. 2021.The replication or reproducibility crisis in psychological science has renewed attention to philosophical aspects of its methodology. I provide herein a new, functional account of the role of replication in a scientific discipline: to undercut the underdetermination of scientific hypotheses from data, typically by hypotheses that connect data with phenomena. These include hypotheses that concern sampling error, experimental control, and operationalization. How a scientific hypothesis could be un…Read more
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24Of War or Peace? Essay Review of Statistical Inference as Severe Testing (review)Philosophy of Science 87 (4): 755-762. 2020.
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41Modality in physicsIn Otávio Bueno & Scott A. Shalkowski (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Modality, Routledge. 2018.This review concerns the notions of physical possibility and necessity as they are informed by contemporary physical theories and the reconstructive explications of past physical theories according to present standards. Its primary goal is twofold: first, to motivate and introduce a range of accessible issues of philosophical relevance around these notions; and second, to provide extensive references to the research literature on them. Although I will have occasion to comment on the direction an…Read more
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34Similarity Structure and Emergent PropertiesPhilosophy of Science 87 (2): 281-301. 2020.The concept of emergence is commonly invoked in modern physics but rarely defined. Building on recent influential work by Jeremy Butterfield, I provide precise definitions of emergence concepts as they pertain to properties represented in models, applying them to some basic examples from space-time and thermostatistical physics. The chief formal innovation I employ, similarity structure, consists in a structured set of similarity relations among those models under analysis—and their properties—a…Read more
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24Similarity structure and diachronic emergenceSynthese 198 (9): 8873-8900. 2020.I provide a formally precise account of diachronic emergence of properties as described within scientific theories, extending a recent account of synchronic emergence using similarity structure on the theories’ models. This similarity structure approach to emergent properties unifies the synchronic and diachronic types by revealing that they only differ in how they delineate the domains of application of theories. This allows it to apply also to cases where the synchronic/diachronic distinction …Read more
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63The Principle of StabilityPhilosophers' Imprint 20. 2020.How can inferences from models to the phenomena they represent be justified when those models represent only imperfectly? Pierre Duhem considered just this problem, arguing that inferences from mathematical models of phenomena to real physical applications must also be demonstrated to be approximately correct when the assumptions of the model are only approximately true. Despite being little discussed among philosophers, this challenge was taken up by mathematicians and physicists both contempor…Read more
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30An invitation to approximate symmetry, with three applications to intertheoretic relationsSynthese 198 (5): 4811-4831. 2019.Merely approximate symmetry is mundane enough in physics that one rarely finds any explication of it. Among philosophers it has also received scant attention compared to exact symmetries. Herein I invite further consideration of this concept that is so essential to the practice of physics and interpretation of physical theory. After motivating why it deserves such scrutiny, I propose a minimal definition of approximate symmetry—that is, one that presupposes as little structure on a physical theo…Read more
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44Evidence amalgamation in the sciences: an introductionSynthese 196 (8): 3163-3188. 2019.Amalgamating evidence from heterogeneous sources and across levels of inquiry is becoming increasingly important in many pure and applied sciences. This special issue provides a forum for researchers from diverse scientific and philosophical perspectives to discuss evidence amalgamation, its methodologies, its history, its pitfalls, and its potential. We situate the contributions therein within six themes from the broad literature on this subject: the variety-of-evidence thesis, the philosophy o…Read more
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53On the reduction of general relativity to Newtonian gravitationStudies in History and Philosophy of Science Part B: Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 68 1-15. 2019.Intertheoretic reduction in physics aspires to be both to be explanatory and perfectly general: it endeavors to explain why an older, simpler theory continues to be as successful as it is in terms of a newer, more sophisticated theory, and it aims to relate or otherwise account for as many features of the two theories as possible. Despite often being introduced as straightforward cases of intertheoretic reduction, candidate accounts of the reduction of general relativity to Newtonian gravitation…Read more
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36Which Worldlines Represent Possible Particle Histories?Foundations of Physics 50 (6): 582-599. 2020.Based on three common interpretive commitments in general relativity, I raise a conceptual problem for the usual identification, in that theory, of timelike curves as those that represent the possible histories of particles in spacetime. This problem affords at least three different solutions, depending on different representational and ontological assumptions one makes about the nature of particles, fields, and their modal structure. While I advocate for a cautious pluralism regarding these opt…Read more
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37Stopping rules as experimental designEuropean Journal for Philosophy of Science 9 (2): 1-20. 2019.A “stopping rule” in a sequential experiment is a rule or procedure for deciding when that experiment should end. Accordingly, the “stopping rule principle” states that, in a sequential experiment, the evidential relationship between the final data and an hypothesis under consideration does not depend on the experiment’s stopping rule: the same data should yield the same evidence, regardless of which stopping rule was used. In this essay, I reconstruct and rebut five independent arguments for th…Read more
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55Counterfactual reasoning within physical theoriesSynthese 198 (Suppl 16): 3877-3898. 2019.If one is interested in reasoning counterfactually within a physical theory, one cannot adequately use the standard possible world semantics. As developed by Lewis and others, this semantics depends on entertaining possible worlds with miracles, worlds in which laws of nature, as described by physical theory, are violated. Van Fraassen suggested instead to use the models of a theory as worlds, but gave up on determining the needed comparative similarity relation for the semantics objectively. I …Read more
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75Infinite idealizations in science: an introductionSynthese 196 (5): 1657-1669. 2019.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.
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34Computers in Abstraction/Representation TheoryMinds and Machines 28 (3): 445-463. 2018.Recently, Horsman et al. have proposed a new framework, Abstraction/Representation theory, for understanding and evaluating claims about unconventional or non-standard computation. Among its attractive features, the theory in particular implies a novel account of what is means to be a computer. After expounding on this account, I compare it with other accounts of concrete computation, finding that it does not quite fit in the standard categorization: while it is most similar to some semantic acc…Read more
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61Would two dimensions be world enough for spacetime?Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part B: Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 63 100-113. 2018.We consider various curious features of general relativity, and relativistic field theory, in two spacetime dimensions. In particular, we discuss: the vanishing of the Einstein tensor; the failure of an initial-value formulation for vacuum spacetimes; the status of singularity theorems; the non-existence of a Newtonian limit; the status of the cosmological constant; and the character of matter fields, including perfect fluids and electromagnetic fields. We conclude with a discussion of what cons…Read more
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55On Noncontextual, Non-Kolmogorovian Hidden Variable TheoriesFoundations of Physics 47 (2): 294-315. 2017.One implication of Bell’s theorem is that there cannot in general be hidden variable models for quantum mechanics that both are noncontextual and retain the structure of a classical probability space. Thus, some hidden variable programs aim to retain noncontextuality at the cost of using a generalization of the Kolmogorov probability axioms. We generalize a theorem of Feintzeig to show that such programs are committed to the existence of a finite null cover for some quantum mechanical experiment…Read more
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30Against the Topologists: Essay Review of New Foundations for Physical Gemoetry (review)Philosophy of Science 84 (3): 595-603. 2017.
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109Physical Perspectives on Computation, Computational Perspectives on Physics (edited book)Cambridge University Press. 2018.Although computation and the science of physical systems would appear to be unrelated, there are a number of ways in which computational and physical concepts can be brought together in ways that illuminate both. This volume examines fundamental questions which connect scholars from both disciplines: is the universe a computer? Can a universal computing machine simulate every physical process? What is the source of the computational power of quantum computers? Are computational approaches to sol…Read more
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38Minimal approximations and Norton’s domeSynthese 196 (5): 1749-1760. 2019.In this note, I apply Norton’s (Philos Sci 79(2):207–232, 2012) distinction between idealizations and approximations to argue that the epistemic and inferential advantages often taken to accrue to minimal models (Batterman in Br J Philos Sci 53:21–38, 2002) could apply equally to approximations, including “infinite” ones for which there is no consistent model. This shows that the strategy of capturing essential features through minimality extends beyond models, even though the techniques for jus…Read more
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