-
1088Bayesian Cognitive Science, Unification, and ExplanationBritish Journal for the Philosophy of Science 68 (2). 2017.It is often claimed that the greatest value of the Bayesian framework in cognitive science consists in its unifying power. Several Bayesian cognitive scientists assume that unification is obviously linked to explanatory power. But this link is not obvious, as unification in science is a heterogeneous notion, which may have little to do with explanation. While a crucial feature of most adequate explanations in cognitive science is that they reveal aspects of the causal mechanism that produces the…Read more
-
909Bayesian EpistemologyIn Jonathan Dancy & Ernest Sosa (eds.), A Companion to Epistemology, Wiley-blackwell. 1992.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
-
791Mathematics and Statistics in the Social SciencesIn Ian C. Jarvie & Jesus Zamora-Bonilla (eds.), The SAGE Handbook of the Philosophy of Social Sciences, Sage Publications. pp. 594-612. 2011.Over the years, mathematics and statistics have become increasingly important in the social sciences1 . A look at history quickly confirms this claim. At the beginning of the 20th century most theories in the social sciences were formulated in qualitative terms while quantitative methods did not play a substantial role in their formulation and establishment. Moreover, many practitioners considered mathematical methods to be inappropriate and simply unsuited to foster our understanding of t…Read more
-
727Deliberation and confidence changeSynthese 200 (1): 1-13. 2022.We argue that social deliberation may increase an agent’s confidence and credence under certain circumstances. An agent considers a proposition H and assigns a probability to it. However, she is not fully confident that she herself is reliable in this assignment. She then endorses H during deliberation with another person, expecting him to raise serious objections. To her surprise, however, the other person does not raise any objections to H. How should her attitudes toward H change? It seems pl…Read more
-
721Conventional and Objective Invariance: Debs and Redhead on Symmetry (review)Metascience 19 (1): 15-23. 2010.This review is a critical discussion of three main claims in Debs and Redhead’s thought-provoking book Objectivity, Invariance, and Convention. These claims are: (i) Social acts impinge upon formal aspects of scientific representation; (ii) symmetries introduce the need for conventional choice; (iii) perspectival symmetry is a necessary and sufficient condition for objectivity, while symmetry simpliciter fails to be necessary.
-
686Why There Cannot be a Single Probabilistic Measure of CoherenceErkenntnis 63 (3): 361-374. 2005.Bayesian Coherence Theory of Justification or, for short, Bayesian Coherentism, is characterized by two theses, viz. (i) that our degree of confidence in the content of a set of propositions is positively affected by the coherence of the set, and (ii) that coherence can be characterized in probabilistic terms. There has been a longstanding question of how to construct a measure of coherence. We will show that Bayesian Coherentism cannot rest on a single measure of coherence, but requires a vecto…Read more
-
658ModelleIn Hans Jörg Sandkühler & Others (eds.), Enzyklopädie Philosophie, Meiner Verlag. pp. 1627-1632. 2010.Der Begriff ‘Modell’ leitet sich vom Lateinischen ‘modulus’ (das Maß) ab, im Italienischen existiert seit dem 16. Jh. ‘modello’ und R. Descartes verwendet im 17. Jh. ‘modèlle’. Während der Begriff in Architektur und Kunst schon seit der Renaissance gängig ist, wird er in den Naturwissenschaften erst im 19. Jh. verwendet.1 Dort greifen wissenschaftliche Modelle die für eine gegebene Problemstellung als wesentlich erachteten Charakteristika (Eigenschaften, Beziehungen, etc.) eines Untersuc…Read more
-
606Normativität 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
-
512Intertheoretic relations are an important topic in the philosophy of science. However, since their classical discussion by Ernest Nagel, such relations have mostly been restricted to relations between pairs of theories in the natural sciences. In this paper, we present a model of a new type of intertheoretic relation, called 'Montague Reduction', which is assumed in Montague's framework for the analysis and interpretation of natural language syntax. To motivate the adoption of our new model, we …Read more
-
488A New Probabilistic Explanation of the Modus Ponens–Modus Tollens AsymmetryIn Stephan Hartmann, Benjamin Eva & Henrik Singmann (eds.), CogSci 2019 Proceedings, . 2019.A consistent finding in research on conditional reasoning is that individuals are more likely to endorse the valid modus ponens (MP) inference than the equally valid modus tollens (MT) inference. This pattern holds for both abstract task and probabilistic task. The existing explanation for this phenomenon within a Bayesian framework (e.g., Oaksford & Chater, 2008) accounts for this asymmetry by assuming separate probability distributions for both MP and MT. We propose a novel explanation wi…Read more
-
482The Open Systems ViewPhilosophy of Physics 2 (1). 2024.There is a deeply entrenched view in philosophy and physics, the closed systems view, according to which isolated systems are conceived of as fundamental. On this view, when a system is under the influence of its environment this is described in terms of a coupling between it and a separate system which taken together are isolated. We argue against this view, and in favor of the alternative open systems view, for which systems interacting with their environment are conceived of as fundamental, a…Read more
-
478Assessing Scientific Theories: The Bayesian ApproachIn Dawid Richard, Dardashti Radin & Thebault Karim (eds.), Epistemology of Fundamental Physics: Why Trust a Theory?, Cambridge University Press. 2019.Scientific theories are used for a variety of purposes. For example, physical theories such as classical mechanics and electrodynamics have important applications in engineering and technology, and we trust that this results in useful machines, stable bridges, and the like. Similarly, theories such as quantum mechanics and relativity theory have many applications as well. Beyond that, these theories provide us with an understanding of the world and address fundamental questions about space,…Read more
-
475The Chromodielectric Soliton Model: Quark Self-Energy and Hadron BagsPhysical Review C 55 2067-2077. 1997.The chromodielectric soliton model is Lorentz and chirally invariant. It has been demonstrated to exhibit dynamical chiral symmetry breaking and spatial confinement in the locally uniform approximation. We here study the full nonlocal quark self-energy in a color-dielectric medium modeled by a two-parameter Fermi function. Here color confinement is manifest. The self-energy thus obtained is used to calculate quark wave functions in the medium which, in turn, are used to calculate the nucleon and…Read more
-
469Bayesian Networks and the Problem of Unreliable InstrumentsPhilosophy of Science 69 (1): 29-72. 2002.We appeal to the theory of Bayesian Networks to model different strategies for obtaining confirmation for a hypothesis from experimental test results provided by less than fully reliable instruments. In particular, we consider (i) repeated measurements of a single test consequence of the hypothesis, (ii) measurements of multiple test consequences of the hypothesis, (iii) theoretical support for the reliability of the instrument, and (iv) calibration procedures. We evaluate these strategies on th…Read more
-
444Learning from ConditionalsMind 129 (514): 461-508. 2020.In this article, we address a major outstanding question of probabilistic Bayesian epistemology: how should a rational Bayesian agent update their beliefs upon learning an indicative conditional? A number of authors have recently contended that this question is fundamentally underdetermined by Bayesian norms, and hence that there is no single update procedure that rational agents are obliged to follow upon learning an indicative conditional. Here we resist this trend and argue that a core set of…Read more
-
431On the Origins of Old EvidenceAustralasian Journal of Philosophy 98 (3): 481-494. 2020.The problem of old evidence, first described by Glymour [1980], is still widely regarded as one of the most pressing foundational challenges to the Bayesian account of scientific reasoning. Many solutions have been proposed, but all of them have drawbacks and none is considered to be definitive. Here, we introduce and defend a new kind of solution, according to which hypotheses are confirmed when we become more confident that they provide the only way of accounting for the known evidence.
-
424Who’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.
-
386Imprecise 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
-
382Judgment aggregation and the problem of tracking the truthSynthese 187 (1): 209-221. 2012.The aggregation of consistent individual judgments on logically interconnected propositions into a collective judgment on those propositions has recently drawn much attention. Seemingly reasonable aggregation procedures, such as propositionwise majority voting, cannot ensure an equally consistent collective conclusion. The literature on judgment aggregation refers to that problem as the discursive dilemma. In this paper, we motivate that many groups do not only want to reach a factually right co…Read more
-
364Models in Science (2nd ed.)The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2021.Models are of central importance in many scientific contexts. The centrality of models such as inflationary models in cosmology, general-circulation models of the global climate, the double-helix model of DNA, evolutionary models in biology, agent-based models in the social sciences, and general-equilibrium models of markets in their respective domains is a case in point (the Other Internet Resources section at the end of this entry contains links to online resources that discuss these models). …Read more
-
363Consensual Decision-Making Among Epistemic PeersEpisteme 6 (2): 110-129. 2009.This paper focuses on the question of how to resolve disagreement and uses the Lehrer-Wagner model as a formal tool for investigating consensual decision-making. The main result consists in a general definition of when agents treat each other as epistemic peers (Kelly 2005; Elga 2007), and a theorem vindicating the “equal weight view” to resolve disagreement among epistemic peers. We apply our findings to an analysis of the impact of social network structures on group deliberation processes, and…Read more
-
359The Wisdom of the Small Crowd: Myside Bias and Group DiscussionJournal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation. forthcoming.The my-side bias is a well-documented cognitive bias in the evaluation of arguments, in which reasoners in a discussion tend to overvalue arguments that confirm their prior beliefs, while undervaluing arguments that attack their prior beliefs. The first part of this paper develops and justifies a Bayesian model of myside bias at the level of individual reasoning. In the second part, this Bayesian model is implemented in an agent-based model of group discussion among myside-biased agents. The age…Read more
-
357Models, Unification, and Simulations: Margaret C. Morrison (1954–2021)Journal for General Philosophy of Science / Zeitschrift für Allgemeine Wissenschaftstheorie 52 (1): 25-33. 2021.The philosophy of science community mourns the loss of Margaret Catherine Morrison, who passed away on January 9, 2021, after a long battle with cancer. Margie, as she was known to all who knew her, was highly regarded for her influential contributions to the philosophy of science, particularly her studies of the role of models and simulations in the natural and social sciences. These contributions made her a world-leading philosopher of science, instrumental in shifting philosophers' attention …Read more
-
344Bayesian EpistemologyIn Sven Bernecker & Duncan Pritchard (eds.), The Routledge Companion to Epistemology, Routledge. pp. 609-620. 2010.Bayesian epistemology addresses epistemological problems with the help of the mathematical theory of probability. It turns out that the probability calculus is especially suited to represent degrees of belief (credences) and to deal with questions of belief change, confirmation, evidence, justification, and coherence. Compared to the informal discussions in traditional epistemology, Bayesian epis- temology allows for a more precise and fine-grained analysis which takes the gradual aspects of the…Read more
-
333Confirmation, Coherence and the Strength of ArgumentsProceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society 45 1473-1479. 2023.Alongside science and law, argumentation is also of central importance in everyday life. But what characterizes a good argument? This question has occupied philosophers and psychologists for centuries. The theory of Bayesian argumentation is particularly suitable for clarifying it, because it allows us to take into account in a natural way the role of uncertainty, which is central to much argumentation. Moreover, it offers the possibility of measuring the strength of an argument in probabilistic…Read more
-
332Being Realist about Bayes, and the Predictive Processing Theory of MindBritish Journal for the Philosophy of Science 72 (1): 185-220. 2021.Some naturalistic philosophers of mind subscribing to the predictive processing theory of mind have adopted a realist attitude towards the results of Bayesian cognitive science. In this paper, we argue that this realist attitude is unwarranted. The Bayesian research program in cognitive science does not possess special epistemic virtues over alternative approaches for explaining mental phenomena involving uncertainty. In particular, the Bayesian approach is not simpler, more unifying, or more ra…Read more
-
319Computational modeling in philosophy: introduction to a topical collectionSynthese 200 (2): 1-10. 2022.Computational modeling should play a central role in philosophy. In this introduction to our topical collection, we propose a small topology of computational modeling in philosophy in general, and show how the various contributions to our topical collection fit into this overall picture. On this basis, we describe some of the ways in which computational models from other disciplines have found their way into philosophy, and how the principles one found here still underlie current trends in the f…Read more
-
318Solving the Riddle of CoherenceMind 112 (448): 601-634. 2003.A coherent story is a story that fits together well. This notion plays a central role in the coherence theory of justification and has been proposed as a criterion for scientific theory choice. Many attempts have been made to give a probabilistic account of this notion. A proper account of coherence must not start from some partial intuitions, but should pay attention to the role that this notion is supposed to play within a particular context. Coherence is a property of an information set that …Read more
-
315The Myside Bias in Argument Evaluation: A Bayesian ModelProceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society 44 1512-1518. 2022.The "myside bias'' in evaluating arguments is an empirically well-confirmed phenomenon that consists of overweighting arguments that endorse one's beliefs or attack alternative beliefs while underweighting arguments that attack one's beliefs or defend alternative beliefs. This paper makes two contributions: First, it proposes a probabilistic model that adequately captures three salient features of myside bias in argument evaluation. Second, it provides a Bayesian justification of this model, thu…Read more
Munich, BY, Germany
Areas of Interest
Philosophy of Social Science |
Philosophy of Computing and Information |