Auxiliary Hypotheses

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How Philosophy of Science Relates to Scientific Practices | Angela Potochnik

It’s widely appreciated that contemporary philosophy of science, when done well, engages with actual scientific practices. Philosophers should not sit back (in armchairs, of course), consider what we think good science would look like, then inform scientists of our findings. Rather, current thinking goes, we should take seriously what scientists actually do, using these practices as the starting points for our philosophical accounts of the aims, processes, and products of science.

BJPS Papers in The Philosopher's Annual 2017

The BJPS is pleased to note that two of the papers it published last year have been included in The Philosopher's Annual top ten papers of 2017. These papers have been made free to access, with links below.

Podcasts: BSPS Annual Conference

 

If you didn't make it to this year's BSPS annual conference in Oxford, we've teamed up with Philosophy Streaming to record the Presidential Address and the plenary discussions for your listening pleasure!

[Updated] Peer review or perish: The problem of free riders in philosophy | Beth Hannon

As any journal editor will tell you (at length, possibly via the medium of rant), the trickiest part of the job is not the papers, not the authors, and not even the typesetters. It’s the referees. It is no mean feat to secure referees who are, first, reliable in their academic judgement, second, responsive to emails, and third, willing to return reports when they say they will. But the frustrations of editors aside, the far more pressing concern is for the career prospects of early-career researchers. Jobs and funding can depend on timely decisions. Indeed, whether an early-career researcher gets to become a mid- or late-career researcher can depend on whether a decision is made in a reasonable amount of time.

Common bad behaviour from referees includes (but is not limited to!):

1) Failing to respond to invites in a timely fashion(where timeliness is calculated in days not weeks), even if it’s only to decline the invitation;

2) Agreeing to act as referee and to return the report within an agreed timeframe (in the BJPS’s case, four weeks), only to substantially exceed this timeframe (by weeks, sometimes months) and

i) asking for this substantial extra time for the weakest of reasons*;

ii) not communicating with the relevant editors whatsoever;

3) Returning a report long past the agreed timeframe, and that report being almost useless;

4) Not returning the report and not responding to emails enquiring about the report.

Opinions differ on the obligations of academics as referees. Is it unpaid labour, an act of charity towards the community that ought only to be gratefully received? As much a part of the job as teaching and writing? Something in between? Whatever the answer, authors need more from referees than they ever have done; more depends on papers being reviewed in a professional, timely manner. And at the very least, there’s a ‘pay it forward’ case to be made: A paper sent to the BJPS that isn’t desk rejected can be expected to be read by at least six people (and that’s not counting the work that goes into any resubmissions). For every paper an author submits, other people have attended to their work in detail. The author, qua referee, might be expected to return the favour.

I’ve been lucky to witness some extremely productive philosophical engagement between authors and referees. When it’s good, it’s so good. The only shame is that so much of this is hidden. The process viewed en masse—the view one gets as an editor—is primarily one of cooperation and collegiality, and it’s a wonder that puts the lie to the notion of philosophy as anything like an individualistic endeavour.

But what to do about the bad referees, the system’s free riders? Relentless pestering and various forms of emotional blackmail fall on deaf ears. At the BJPS, we operate a flag system for persistent offenders, but all this amounts to is bad referees being asked to perform fewer reviews, while good referees carry more of the load.

So here’s a radical suggestion, using the only weapon motivational device editors have: If someone fails to fulfil their duties as referee, the journal will not accept submissions from that referee, for some period of time to be determined. The time period should reflect the severity of the dereliction of duties. For instance, agreeing to act as a referee but then disappearing off the radar might warrant the most substantial ban. Delivering a meagre report that’s extremely late, and without communicating with the relevant editor about the delay, might mean some shorter period of time on the bench. First-time offenders surely deserve different treatment to persistent re-offenders. And the embargo period will need to be substantial enough to be effective (too short and it will have no real impact; too long and it’s probably not practical due to the changes in the editorial team). The details can be ironed out.

It’s not just badly behaved referees that stand to suffer here. There’s a risk for the journal in question too: bad referees aren’t necessarily bad authors, and we risk losing good papers to other journals by refusing those authors’ papers. But the problem is so rife and its upshot so dire for early-career researchers that maybe something more radical is required to make clear what is expected of referees and ameliorate, at least to some degree, the problem of free-riders. All thoughts on this proposal very welcome!

 

* 'I decided to go on holidays' and ‘I have other deadlines that I decided to prioritise after agreeing to referee this paper’ are the problems, not the excuse. On the other hand, there are perfectly good reasons to be delayed in returning a report. Not only do we understand, we’ve been there. You are not the droids we’re looking for.

 

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[Update: 23 May 2018]

Thanks to everyone, here and elsewhere, for their feedback—it’s been really helpful. I thought I’d add some clarifications to the original post and respond to some of the alternative suggestions. Some concerns stem, I think, from the thought that we're concerned with a wider set of behaviours than is the case. Some alternative suggestions can't be accommodated for ethical or practical reasons. I'm sure I haven't covered every issue here, and so very happy to receive more feedback.

Common concerns:

1. The most important point is that the idea here isn’t to apply a rule mechanically (for example, being banned for being one day late). The reviewer would also receive explicit warnings so this wouldn't come out of the blue. Like every other aspect of peer review, this proposal isn’t without its drawbacks. Nonetheless, it may be that this is an imperfect solution to a much worse (and very common) problem.
2. We are not proposing any punishments for those who simply decline to review in the first place (at least, so long as they actually communicate this rather than leaving the invitation hanging—and declining here is only ever a matter of clicking a link in an email).
3. We are not asking for the intimate details of reviewers’ lives. While it’s not unknown for us to receive tearful emails from authors and reviewers in terrible situations, we do not expect reviewers to bare all; it’s simply not our business. We will take at face value your reasons for any delay or for withdrawing from a review; there’s no need to elaborate or provide ‘proof’ (whatever that might be). We just ask that reviewers make contact!
4. The aim of this proposal is to promote timeliness. It would be only the most exceptional and egregious cases where the content of the report itself might warrant an embargo—and even then only in combination with tardiness.
5. One worry that has been expressed is that people will be more inclined to turn down requests to review. It’s hard to know what to make of this, unless one is really committed to (a) the ability to walk away from a promise to review a paper while (b) not communicating this decision with the editors. But anyway: One of the reasons we’re proposing this is because we actually want people to turn us down if they can’t realistically meet the deadline. And anyone who has reviewed for us in the past and found themselves in need of a reasonable extension will know that we always accommodate this.
6. Another worry is that the proposal is disproportionally harmful to early career researchers. Our internal rating system for reviewers suggests that ECRs are not the problem here.
7. The publishing industry is evil and we oughtn’t cooperate with it: (a) I guess this might eventually harm the publisher, but it will definitely harm the authors and editors (your equally unremunerated colleagues) in the meantime; (b) not all publishers are equal and the BJPS’s income supports the British Society for the Philosophy of Science, who funnel that money right back into the philosophy of science community, via PhD and conference grants; (c) if these reasons don’t motivate you, fine—but then please don’t accept invitations to referee!

Suggested alternatives:

1. We’d love to be able to pay reviewers (and editors!), but that’s not within our gift.
2. In the past, and with their permission, we have thanked our referees by name for their work (e.g. here). We stopped doing this, and maybe we should reconsider, but we assumed reviewers didn’t care because these annual blogposts received very little interest. Also, a hypothesis: those unmoved by the multiple, pleading emails of their (again, also unpaid) colleagues and/or the potentially precarious situation of authors will not be motivated by being credited in this (admittedly very limited) way.
3. Publishing the names of the reviewers alongside published papers creates its own problems. Others have raised examples of this. Here’s another: If I suspect that the author of the paper I’m reviewing is likely to be on a hiring committee I’m soon to face, I might decide to offer a more generous review. Submissions from more senior members of the community would then have a greater chance of publication. And from an editorial perspective, no editor should welcome a move that damages the credibility of reviewers’ reports.
4. Good reviewers could have their own papers ‘fast tracked’ through the peer review system. How? If it was within our ability to fast track papers, we wouldn’t be discussing this proposal.

Finally, there is presumably a reward for referees already in operation: a referee's work is, in turn, reviewed by their peers (maybe in the same journal—in my original post, I mentioned that six people tend to any one BJPS paper that is not desk rejected—or maybe elsewhere).

Again, we're very happy to hear more thoughts on this and to answer any questions I've left unanswered!

 

It's not the despair, Laura. I can take the despair. It's the hope I can't stand.

BJPS Popper Prize 2017

The Editors of the BJPS and the BSPS committee are delighted to announce that Grant Ramsey and Andreas de Block are the 2017 winners of the BJPS Popper Prize for their article 'Is Cultural Fitness Hopelessly Confused?'. Here is the citation from Editors-in-Chief Wendy Parker and Steven French:

 

Grant Ramsey and Andreas de Block’s paper, ‘Is Cultural Fitness Hopelessly Confused?’ (Brit. J. Phil. Sci. 68 (2017), pp. 305–28), addresses a hotly debated topic: can evolutionary theory be extended to human culture? Those who answer ‘no’ typically point to certain well-entrenched critiques of extending biological fitness to the cultural domain. However, as Ramsey and de Block point out, there is considerable uncertainty as to how biological fitness itself should be ‘modelled and measured’ and, while granting that great caution must be exercised in exporting this concept, they argue that the pursuit of a coherent and useful notion of cultural fitness is by no means a hopeless task. In particular, they note that certain problems that arise for this notion must also be faced by its biological counterpart. Having defended its tenability, they then map out a more positive conception of cultural fitness by carefully considering how the core elements of biological evolution align with those of cultural evolution, while acknowledging the relevant differences between the two domains. In particular, by shifting the focus of individuation from memes to organisms, and tying cultural fitness to the latter rather than the former, they show how it ‘can do similar work in the study of cultural evolution as biological fitness does in the study of biological evolution’ (p. 324). Overall, this yields a sophisticated and nuanced account that sheds new light on and further advances a major contemporary debate. As such, this paper is, in the opinion of the Co-Chief Editors and the BSPS Committee, a worthy recipient of the BJPS Popper Prize for 2017.

 

The BJPS Popper Prize is awarded to the article judged to be the best published in that year's volume of the Journal, as determined by the Editors-in-Chief and the BSPS Committee. The prize includes a £500 award to the winner(s). More information about the prize and previous winners can be found here.

 

 

Lakatos Award Lectures

Endowed by the Latsis Foundation, the Lakatos Award is given to an outstanding contribution to the philosophy of science. Winners are presented with a medal and given the chance to deliver a lecture based on the winning work. To celebrate the 2015 and the 2016 award winners—Thomas Pradeu and Brian Epstein, respectively—they each delivered a lecture at the LSE last week. Introduced by Hasok Chang, Pradeu's lecture is entitled 'Why Philosophy in Science? Re-Visiting Immunology and Biological Individuality' and Epstein's is 'Rebuilding the Foundations of the Social Sciences'.

You can listen to the lectures here.

 

 

The Metaphysical Status of Quantities | J. E. Wolff

 

Paradigmatic physical attributes, like energy, mass, length, charge, or temperature are quantities. That these attributes are quantitative is important for experiments (they can be measured), as well as theories (we can formulate quantitative laws that hold between them). Quantities are arguably central to science, and especially to the physical sciences.

Compatibilism about Chance and Determinism | Nina Emery

Suppose that it is already determined that the coin I just flipped will land heads. Can it also be the case that that very coin, on that very flip, has some chance of landing tails? Intuitively, the answer is no. But according to an increasing number of contemporary philosophers, especially philosophers of physics, the answer is yes.^[1]

 

According to these philosophers there are non-trivial chances (chances between zero and one) in worlds where the fundamental dynamical laws are deterministic. In such worlds, at any time t, for any event e, it is already (at t) determined that e will happen or that e will not happen. Nonetheless, these philosophers say, in at least some such worlds and for at least some events, the chance of those events happening is between zero and one. Call the chances that are supposed to exist in such world ‘deterministic chances’, and the view that there are such chances ‘compatibilism about chance and determinism’, or for brevity just ‘compatibilism’.

 

Should we endorse compatibilism? You might think that before we can answer this question we first need to answer the question of what sorts of things chances are in general. (Is the chance of some event happening just the relative frequency with which that type of event happens? Or is it something more metaphysically robust, like the propensity of certain set-ups to produce that type of event? And if the latter, what on earth is a propensity?) But there’s good reason to think that we might be able to make significant progress on the question of whether to be compatibilists even if we aren’t yet willing to take a stance on the metaphysics of chance more generally. To see why, it’s helpful to keep in mind the following two distinctions.

 

First, it is helpful to distinguish between arguments that merely establish what I will call ‘weak compatibilism’, on the one hand, and arguments for ‘robust compatibilism’, on the other. Weak compatibilism about chance and determinism is the view that deterministic chances are merely metaphysically possible. Robust compatibilism is the view that deterministic chances are more than merely metaphysically possible—they exist either in the actual world or in some relatively nearby worlds. Versions of robust compatibilism can be differentiated depending on which sorts of nearby worlds they target, but of particular interest are those worlds in which our best deterministic scientific theories—like Bohmian mechanics, a deterministic interpretation of quantum theory—are true.

 

Arguments for weak compatibilism take the form of arguments against supposed platitudes about the nature of chance that seem to rule out any possibility of deterministic chance. Take, for instance, the highly intuitive thought that if there is a non-trivial chance of something happening, then it must be possible for that thing to happen and possible for it not to happen. Some philosophers (for example, Schaffer [2007]) endorse something like the following principle as a way of capturing this thought:

The Chance–Possibility Platitude (Incompatibilist Version): If the chance, at world w, at time t, of event e is greater than zero, then there exists a world, w', such that (i) w' matches w in laws, (ii) w' and w have the same micro-physical history up until time t, and (iii) e happens at w'.

According to the incompatibilist’s version of the chance–possibility platitude, if there is a non-trivial chance of something happening at some time, then it must be possible for that thing to happen and possible for it not to happen, while holding fixed both the history of the world up until that time and the laws of nature. It follows that in a deterministic world (where at any time, for any event e, it is already (at t) determined that e will happen or that e will not happen), the chance of some event happening is always either one or zero.

 

In (Emery [2015a]), I argued against the incompatibilist’s version of the chance–possibility platitude on the grounds that either it was based a highly contentious and unpopular view about the nature of time, or it was based on considerations that supported eliminating chance—deterministic or not—from our theories altogether. Given the important work that chances do for us in science, in philosophy, and in everyday reasoning, I take eliminativism about chance to be a non-starter.

 

This sort of argument is an argument for weak compatibilism. It removes a reason for thinking that the nature of chance itself makes deterministic chance impossible. If it succeeds, it gets us at least one step closer to thinking that deterministic chances are metaphysically possible. (How close precisely depends on what other supposed platitudes regarding the nature of chance are waiting in the wings.) But it doesn’t do anything to establish that deterministic chances exist in the actual world, or in any relatively nearby worlds.

 

What sort of arguments are there for robust compatibilism? Here is where the second distinction becomes helpful. On the one hand, there are metaphysics-based arguments for robust compatibilism; on the other, there are role-based arguments. Metaphysics-based arguments start from some particular metaphysical analysis of chance—various forms of frequentism, versions of the so-called best systems analysis, propensity theories, or what have you—and then argue that given this analysis, there are chances in relatively nearby worlds where the fundamental laws are deterministic. Perhaps most obviously, this sort of argument is readily available to those who endorse straightforward versions of frequentism. (Of course, there are non-trivial relative frequencies in relatively nearby worlds where the fundamental laws are deterministic, the argument would go; so, there are non-trivial chances in such worlds.) But following Albert ([2000]) and Loewer ([2004]), many advocates of the best systems analysis (according to which chances are those probability functions that appear in the simplest, most predictively powerful summary of the actual patterns of events) have also given metaphysics-based arguments for robust compatibilism.

 

Role-based arguments, by contrast, start from some particular role that probabilities are supposed to play—in our best scientific theories, in our philosophical theorizing, in our everyday reasoning, or what have you—in relatively nearby deterministic worlds, and then argue that in order to play that role, the probabilities in question must be objective—they must be genuine chances.

 

For my own part, I am more interested in role-based arguments for robust compatibilism than I am in metaphysics-based arguments. For one thing, metaphysics-based arguments are inevitably as contentious as the metaphysical analyses that they are based on. They tend to do little to change the minds of those who are initially sceptical of compatibilism. But also, as I argue in (Emery [2017]), role-based arguments are some of the strongest arguments we have in metaphysics. After all, such arguments are often used to license the introduction of weird or novel entities in science. And while metaphysicians are hardly limited to the methodology of science, insofar as they make use of that methodology, their arguments are all the more convincing.

 

If you attend to our best deterministic scientific theories, it might seem at first that a role-based argument for deterministic chance is straightforward. Start from the fact that some of our best deterministic scientific theories involve probabilistic predictive rules. (Think, for instance, of Born’s rule, as it plays a role in interpretations of quantum phenomena, including Bohmian mechanics. Born’s rule says that the probability that a system with wave function  at t will be found in configuration c if we perform a measurement on it at t is given by.) This is the first premise of the argument. The second premise is that any probabilities that play a role in the predictive rules of our best scientific theories are objective probabilities.

 

On the face it, this may look like a decent argument for robust compatibilism, but after more careful examination, I find myself unconvinced. In particular, I think that whether we should endorse the second premise depends on what we mean by ‘objective’. If we mean something like ‘wholly independent of the beliefs we have, the evidence available to us, and the ways in which creatures like us reason’, then it seems as though probabilities could play a role in the predictive rules of our best scientific theories without being objective. Maybe the predictive rules of our best scientific theories depend in part on the ways in which creatures like us reason or the sorts of evidence that are available to us.

 

In (Emery [2015b]), I described a different role-based argument for robust compatibilism, which I think is more promising, though also much more complicated. This argument starts with the role that probabilities play in determining the truth conditions of counterfactuals (Lewis [2016]). For example, one natural account of those truth conditions is that the counterfactual ‘if I had dropped this glass just now, coffee would have spilled all over the floor’ is true if and only if in the nearest world where I dropped the glass just now, coffee was very likely to spill all over the floor. (Or if, like Hajek ([unpublished]), you think that most counterfactuals are not true, it starts with the role that probabilities play in determining the assertibility conditions of counterfactuals. ‘If I had dropped this glass just now, coffee would have spilled all over the floor’ is not true, but it is assertible if and only if in the nearest world where I dropped the glass just now, coffee was very likely to spill all over the floor.) Given the important role that counterfactuals play in scientific theorizing (for example, in theorizing about which universal generalizations are laws, or in theorizing about which properties of a system depend on others and which do not), if probabilities play a role in determining the truth (or assertibility) conditions of counterfactuals, then those probabilities must be objective. Or so I argued.

 

Lately I’ve been thinking more about a different, and to my mind even more promising, role-based argument for robust compatibilism. This argument starts from the explanatory role that probabilities play in our best deterministic scientific theories and argues that in order to play that role, such probabilities must be genuine chances. This argument is often suggested in the literature, but has rarely been developed in detail.^[2]

 

One reason to be especially interested in this sort of explanatory role argument is that if it works, it has the potential to suggest a novel metaphysics for deterministic chance. Thus far, most proponents of deterministic chance in the literature tend to be Humeans, in the sense that they think that the laws and chances in each world are determined (in some important sense) by the patterns of events that actually occur in those worlds. But it is well known that Humean analyses of laws have trouble justifying the explanatory power of laws (Armstrong [1985]; Maudlin [2007]). After all, if the laws are determined by the patterns of actually occurring events, how can they also explain those patterns of events? And it is plausible to think that similar worries will trouble Humean analyses of chance (Emery [2017]). So insofar as it is the explanatory role that deterministic chances play that motivate us to be compatibilists, we may end up adopting a more metaphysically robust, non-Humean account of such chances. Allowing such chances into their ontology will violate the scruples of many a Humean metaphysician and philosopher of physics. But recall what I mentioned earlier about role-based arguments: such arguments are often used in science to introduce weird or novel entities. Indeed, there’s a natural reading on which the introduction of all sorts of strange or sui generis scientific entities—from the electromagnetic field, to the wave function, to the neutrino, to dark energy—was originally, or still is, justified by the explanatory role that those entities play. So insofar as a plausible explanatory role argument forces us to posit deterministic chances—and non-Humean deterministic chances at that—even the Humeans among us may be forced to set their scruples aside.

 

Mount Holyoke College

 

References

Albert, D. Z. [2000]: Time and Chance, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Armstrong, D. M. [1985]: What Is a Law of Nature? Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Emery, N. [2015a]: ‘Chance, Possibility, and Explanation’, British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 66, pp. 95–120. 

Emery, N. [2015b]: ‘The Metaphysical Consequences of Counterfactual Skepticism’, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 94, pp. 399–432. 

Emery, N. [2017]: ‘A Naturalist’s Guide to Objective Chance’, Philosophy of Science, 84, pp. 480–99. 

Glynn, L. [2010]: ‘Deterministic Chance’, British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 61, pp. 51–80.

Hájek, A. [unpublished]: ‘Most Counterfactuals Are False’.

Handfield, T. and Wilson, A. [2014]: ‘Chance and Context’, in A. Wilson (ed.), Chance and Temporal Asymmetry, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 19–44.

Hoefer. C. [2007]: ‘The Third Way on Objective Probability: A Sceptic’s Guide to Objective Chance’, Mind, 116, pp. 549–96. 

Ismael, J. T. [2009]: ‘Probability in Deterministic Physics’, The Journal of Philosophy, 106, pp. 89–108. 

Lewis, K. S. [2016]: ‘Elusive Counterfactuals’, Noûs, 50, pp. 286–313. 

Loewer, B. [2001]: ‘Determinism and Chance’, Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics, 32, 609–20. 

Loewer, B. [2004]: ‘David Lewis’s Humean Theory of Objective Chance’, Philosophy of Science, 71, pp. 1115–25.

Maudlin, T. [2007]: The Metaphysics within Physics, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Meacham, C. J. G. [2005]: ‘Three Proposals Regarding a Theory of Chance’, Philosophical Perspectives, 19, pp. 281–307. 

Schaffer, J. [2007]: ‘Deterministic Chance?’, British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 58, pp. 113–40.

 

Notes

^[1] See, for example, (Loewer [2001]; Ismael [2009]; Hoefer [2007]; Glynn [2010]; Handfield and Wilson [2011]; Emery [2015a], [2015b]).

^[2] See (Albert [2000]; Loewer [2001]; Meacham [2005]; Emery [2015a]).

 

Image credit: Georges de la Tour, 'The Dice Players'

Christian Wüthrich's 'The Temporal and Atemporal Emergence of (Space-)Time'

 

Christian Wüthrich delivered one of the plenary talks at this summer's BSPS conference in Edinburgh and lo! It was recorded (future is now!). For your listening pleasure, here is his 'The Temporal and Atemporal Emergence of (Space-)Time' with a link to the slides below.

 

The Temporal and Atemporal Emergence of (Space-)Time

Christian Wüthrich

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