Philosophy of Science

ISSNs: 0031-8248, 1539-767X

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  1. Inconsistent belief aggregation in diverse and polarised groups.Felix Kopecky & Gregor Betz - 2025 - Philosophy of Science 92 (1):40-58.
    How do opinion diversity and belief polarisation affect epistemic group decision-making, particularly if decisions must be made without delay and on the basis of permissive evidence? In an agent-based model, we track the consistency of group opinions aggregated through sentence-wise majority voting. Simulations on the model reveal that high opinion diversity, but not polarisation, incurs a significant inconsistency risk. These results indicate that epistemic group decisions based on permissive evidence can be particularly difficult for diverse groups. The results also improve (...)
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  2. Construct Validity in Automated Counterterrorism Analysis.Adrian K. Yee - 2025 - Philosophy of Science 92 (1):1-18.
    Governments and social scientists are increasingly developing machine learning methods to automate the process of identifying terrorists in real time and predict future attacks. However, current operationalizations of “terrorist”’ in artificial intelligence are difficult to justify given three issues that remain neglected: insufficient construct legitimacy, insufficient criterion validity, and insufficient construct validity. I conclude that machine learning methods should be at most used for the identification of singular individuals deemed terrorists and not for identifying possible terrorists from some more general (...)
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  3. On the Epistemic Roles of the Individualized Niche Concept in Ecology, Behavioral and Evolutionary Biology.Marie I. Kaiser & Katie H. Morrow - 2025 - Philosophy of Science 92:162–184.
    We characterize four fruitful and underappreciated epistemic roles played by the concept of an individualized niche in contemporary biology, utilizing results of a qualitative empirical study conducted within an interdisciplinary biological research center. We argue that the individualized niche concept (1) shapes the research agenda of the center, (2) facilitates explaining core phenomena related to inter-individual differences, (3) helps with managing individual-level causal complexity, and (4) promotes integrating local knowledge from ecology, evolutionary biology, behavioral biology and other biological fields. We (...)
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    The Mitonuclear Compatibility Species Concept, Intrinsic Essentialism, and Natural Kinds.Kyle Heine & Elay Shech - 2025 - Philosophy of Science ( Issue 1):59 - 81.
    This essay introduces, develops, and appraises the mitonuclear compatibility species concept (MCSC), identifying advantages and limitations with respect to alternative species concepts. While the consensus amongst most philosophers of biology is that (kind) essentialism about species is mistaken, and that species at most have relational essences, we appeal to the MCSC to defend thoroughgoing intrinsic essentialism. Namely, the doctrine that species have fully intrinsic essences and, thus, are natural kinds (of sorts), while allowing that species aren’t categorically distinct.
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    Rediscovering Bernard and Cannon: Restoring the Broader Vision of Homeostasis Eclipsed by the Cyberneticists.William Bechtel & Leonardo Bich - 2025 - Philosophy of Science:1-22.
    Since Cannon, inspired by Bernard’s discussion of the conditions required for free and independent life, introduced the term homeostasis, many have embraced it as the main theoretical principle guiding physiology and medicine. Nonetheless, critics have argued that homeostasis is too limiting and have advanced a variety of alternative concepts such as heterostasis, rheostasis, and allostasis. We argue that the critics target a much narrower understanding of homeostasis put forward by the cyberneticists and that Bernard and Cannon embraced a far broader (...)
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  6. Not the Measurement Problem's Problem: Black Hole Information Loss with Schrödinger's Cat.Saakshi Dulani - 2025 - Philosophy of Science.
    Recently, several philosophers and physicists have increasingly noticed the hegemony of unitarity in the black hole information loss discourse and are challenging its legitimacy in the face of the measurement problem. They proclaim that embracing non-unitarity solves two paradoxes for the price of one. Though I share their distaste over the philosophical bias, I disagree with their strategy of still privileging certain interpretations of quantum theory. I argue that information-restoring solutions can be interpretation-neutral because the manifestation of non-unitarity in Hawking's (...)
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