Experimental Philosophy of Science

Prior research found correlations between reflection test performance and philosophical tendencies among laypeople. In two large studies (total N = 1299)—one pre-registered—many of these correlations were replicated in a sample that included both laypeople and philosophers. For example, reflection test performance predicted preferring atheism over theism and instrumental harm over harm avoidance on the trolley problem. However, most reflection-philosophy correlations were undetected when controlling for other factors such as numeracy, preferences for open-minded thinking, personality, philosophical training, age, and gender. Nonetheless, (...) some correlations between reflection and philosophical views survived this multivariate analysis and were only partially confounded with either education or self-reported reasoning preferences. Unreflective thinking still predicted believing in God whereas reflective thinking still predicted believing that (a) proper names like ‘Santa’ do not necessarily refer to entities that actually exist and (b) science does reveal the fundamental nature of the world. So some robust relationships between reflection and philosophical tendencies were detected even among philosophers, and yet there was clearly more to the link between reflection and philosophy. To this end, demographic and metaphilosophical hypotheses are considered. (shrink)

Sociologists, ethnologists, philosophers among others have tried to identify the norms or rules that govern scientific research; however, so far, they have not been widely accepted by scientists. This team followed a different path to identify the rules that govern scientific work by asking researchers if, in their opinion, there are rules in scientific research, and, if so, what they are. An opinion poll was conducted among 270 scientists who received academic training at universities in Mexico, Europe, and the United (...) States, and who work at three universities in Mexico. The instrument is based on a social psychology theory that divides memories into spontaneous and assisted, and a dichotomous probability distribution was used to identify variations. Between eight and nine out of ten researchers from physical, biological, and social sciences recognized that there are four rules for research: to study reality as it is, have a critical attitude, have a methodological aptitude, and express willingness to openly publish results. Despite the heterogeneity of the disciplines researchers practice and the variety of their academic training, there is a consensus among scientists about the validity of such rules to conduct scientific research, although most of the time they do not mention them spontaneously. (shrink)

It is a common view among philosophers of science that theoretical virtues (also known as epistemic or cognitive values), such as simplicity and consistency, play an important role in scientific practice. In this paper, I set out to study the role that theoretical virtues play in scientific practice empirically. I apply the methods of data science, such as text mining and corpus analysis, to study large corpora of scientific texts in order to uncover patterns of usage. These patterns of usage, (...) in turn, might shed some light on the role that theoretical virtues play in scientific practice. Overall, the results of this empirical study suggest that scientists invoke theoretical virtues explicitly, albeit rather infrequently, when they talk about models (less than 30%), theories (less than 20%), and hypotheses (less than 15%) in their published works. To the extent that they are mentioned in scientific publications, the results of this study suggest that accuracy, consistency, and simplicity are the theoretical virtues that scientists invoke more frequently than the other theoretical virtues tested in this study. Interestingly, however, depending on whether they talk about hypotheses, theories, or models, scientists may invoke one of those theoretical virtues more than the others. (shrink)

-/- Policy regulations of ethically controversial genetic technologies should, on the one hand, be based on ethical principles. On the other hand, they should be socially acceptable to ensure implementation. In addition, they should align with ethical theory. Yet to date we lack a reliable and valid scale to measure the relevant ethical judgements in laypeople. We target this lacuna. -/- We developed a scale based on ethical principles to elicit lay judgments: the Genetic Technologies Questionnaire (GTQ). In two pilot (...) studies and a pre-registered main study, we validated the scale in a representative sample of the US population. -/- The final version of the scale contains 20 items but remains highly reliable even when reduced to five. It also predicts behaviour; for example, ethical judgments as measured by the GTQ predicted hypothetical donations and grocery shopping. In addition, the GTQ may be of interest to policymakers and ethicists because it reveals coherent and ethically justified judgments in laypeople. For instance, the GTQ indicates that ethical judgments are sensitive to possible benefits and harms (in line with utilitarian ethics), but also to ethical principles such as the value of consent-autonomy. -/- In conclusion, the GTQ can be recommended for research in both experimental psychology and applied ethics, as well as a tool for ethically and empirically informed policymaking. (shrink)

Good physical experiments conform to the basic methodological standards of experimental design: they are objective, reliable, and valid. But is this also true of thought experiments? Especially problems of personal identity have engendered hypothetical scenarios that are very distant from the actual world. These imagined situations have been conspicuously ineffective at resolving conflicting intuitions and deciding between the different accounts of personal identity. Using prominent examples from the literature, I argue that this is due to many of these thought experiments (...) not adhering to the methodological standards that guide experimental design in nearly all other disciplines. I also show how empirically unwarranted background assumptions about human physiology render some of the hypothetical scenarios that are employed in the debate about personal identity highly misleading. (shrink)

This paper presents the results of an empirical study following up on Mizrahi (2021). Using the same methods of text mining and corpus analysis used by Mizrahi (2021), we test empirically a philosophical account of scientific progress that Mizrahi (2021) left out of his empirical study, namely, the so-called functional-internalist account of scientific progress according to which the aim or goal or scientific research is to solve problems. In general, our results do not lend much empirical evidence in support of (...) the problem-solving model of scientific progress over the other philosophical accounts of scientific progress (namely, the epistemic, noetic, and semantic accounts of scientific progress) tested in Mizrahi (2021) and in this follow-up study. Of all the subjects in the JSTOR database we have tested in this study, however, Mathematics is an interesting exception as far as the problem-solving model of scientific progress is concerned. For, in Mathematics alone, we have found that there is significantly more talk of the aims and/or goals of research in terms of solutions than in terms of truth, knowledge, or understanding. (shrink)

In this paper, we set out to investigate the following question: if science relies heavily on induction, does philosophy of science rely heavily on induction as well? Using data mining and text analysis methods, we study a large corpus of philosophical texts mined from the JSTOR database (n = 14,199) in order to answer this question empirically. If philosophy of science relies heavily on induction, just as science supposedly does, then we would expect to find significantly more inductive arguments than (...) deductive arguments and abductive arguments in the published works of philosophers of science. Using indicator words to classify arguments by type (namely, deductive, inductive, and abductive arguments), we search through our corpus to find patterns of argumentation. Overall, the results of our study suggest that philosophers of science do rely on inductive inference. But induction may not be as foundational to philosophy of science as it is thought to be for science, given that philosophers of science make significantly more deductive arguments than inductive arguments. Interestingly, our results also suggest that philosophers of science do not rely on abductive arguments all that much, even though philosophers of science consider abduction to be a cornerstone of scientific methodology. (shrink)

This paper details the content and structure of the folk concept of life, and discusses its relevance for scientific research on life. In four empirical studies, we investigate which features of life are considered salient, universal, central, and necessary. Functionings, such as nutrition and reproduction, but not material composition, turn out to be salient features commonly associated with living beings (Study 1). By contrast, being made of cells is considered a universal feature of living species (Study 2), a central aspect (...) of life (Study 3), and our best candidate for being necessary for life (Study 4). These results are best explained by the hypothesis that people take life to be a natural kind subject to scientific scrutiny. (shrink)

In response to crises, people sometimes prioritize fewer specific identifiable victims over many unspecified statistical victims. How other factors can explain this bias remains unclear. So two experiments investigated how complying with public health recommendations during the COVID19 pandemic depended on victim portrayal, reflection, and philosophical beliefs (Total N = 998). Only one experiment found that messaging about individual victims increased compliance compared to messaging about statistical victims—i.e., "flatten the curve" graphs—an effect that was undetected after controlling for other factors. (...) However, messaging about flu (vs. COVID19) indirectly reduced compliance by reducing perceived threat of the pandemic. Nevertheless, moral beliefs predicted compliance better than messaging and reflection in both experiments. The second experiment’s additional measures revealed that religiosity, political preferences, and beliefs about science also predicted compliance. This suggests that flouting public health recommendations may be less about ineffective messaging or reasoning than philosophical differences. (shrink)

Empirical studies have revealed a disturbing prevalence of research misconduct in a wide variety of disciplines, although not, to date, in the areas of ethics and philosophy. This study aims to provide empirical evidence on perceptions of how serious a problem research misconduct is in these two disciplines in Spain, particularly regarding the effects that the model used to evaluate academics’ research performance may have on their ethical behaviour. The methodological triangulation applied in the study combines a questionnaire, a debate (...) at the annual meeting of scientific association, and in-depth interviews. Of the 541 questionnaires sent out, 201 responses were obtained, with a significant difference in the participation of researchers in philosophy and in ethics ; 26 researchers took part in the debate and 14 interviews were conducted. The questionnaire results reveal that 91.5% of the respondents considered research misconduct to be on the rise; 63.2% considered at least three of the fraudulent practices referred to in the study to be commonplace, and 84.1% identified two or more such practices. The researchers perceived a high prevalence of duplicate publication and self-plagiarism, use of personal influence and citation manipulation, in contrast to a low perceived incidence of data falsification or fabrication. The debate and the interviews corroborated these data. Researchers associated the spread of these misconducts with the research evaluation model applied in Spain. (shrink)

Topological relations such as inside, outside, or intersection are ubiquitous to our spatial thinking. Here, we examined how people reason deductively with topological relations between points, lines, and circles in geometric diagrams. We hypothesized in particular that a counterexample search generally underlies this type of reasoning. We first verified that educated adults without specific math training were able to produce correct diagrammatic representations contained in the premisses of an inference. Our first experiment then revealed that subjects who correctly judged an (...) inference as invalid almost always produced a counterexample to support their answer. Noticeably, even if the counterexample always bore a certain level of similarity to the initial diagram, we observed that an object was more likely to be varied between the two drawings if it was present in the conclusion of the inference. Experiments 2 and 3 then directly probed counterexample search. While participants were asked to evaluate a conclusion on the basis of a given diagram and some premisses, we modulated the difficulty of reaching a counterexample from the diagram. Our results indicate that both decreasing the counterexample density and increasing the counterexample distance impaired reasoning performance. Taken together, our results suggest that a search procedure for counterexamples, which proceeds object‐wise, could underlie diagram‐based geometric reasoning. Transposing points, lines, and circles to our spatial environment, the present study may ultimately provide insights on how humans reason about topological relations between positions, paths, and regions. (shrink)

Experimental philosophy is a relatively recent discipline that employs experimental methods to investigate the intuitions, concepts, and assumptions behind traditional philosophical arguments, problems, and theories. While experimental philosophy initially served to interrogate the role that intuitions play in philosophy, it has since branched out to bring empirical methods to bear on problems within a variety of traditional areas of philosophy—including metaphysics, philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, and epistemology. To date, no connection has been made between developments in experimental philosophy (...) and philosophy of technology. In this paper, I develop and defend a research program for an experimental philosophy of technology. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to contribute to the debate over the nature of scientific progress in philosophy of science by taking a quantitative, corpus-based approach. By employing the methods of data science and corpus linguistics, the following philosophical accounts of scientific progress are tested empirically: the semantic account of scientific progress, the epistemic account of scientific progress, and the noetic account of scientific progress. Overall, the results of this quantitative, corpus-based study lend some empirical support to the epistemic (...) and the noetic accounts over the semantic account of scientific progress, for they suggest that practicing scientists use the terms ‘knowledge’ and ‘understanding’ significantly more often than the term ‘truth’ when they talk about the aims or goals of scientific research in their published works. But the results do not favor the epistemic account over the noetic account, or vice versa, for they reveal no significant differences between the frequency with which practicing scientists use the terms ‘knowledge’ and ‘understanding’ when they talk about the aims or goals of scientific research in their published works. (shrink)

In a reply to Mizrahi (2019), Bryant (2020) raises several methodological concerns regarding my attempt to test hypotheses about the observation that academic philosophers tend to find “scientism” threatening empirically using quantitative, corpus based methods. Chief among her methodological concerns is that numbers of philosophical publications that mention “scientism” are a “poor proxy for scholarly sentiment” (Bryant 2020, 31). In reply, I conduct a sentiment analysis that is designed to find out whether academic philosophers have negative, positive, or neutral sentiments (...) toward “scientism.” The results of this analysis suggest that, for the most part, articles on “scientism” written by academic philosophers tend to contain mostly negative rather than positive (or neutral) sentiments about “scientism.”. (shrink)

The epistemic attitudes of scientists, such as epistemic tolerance and authoritarianism, play important roles in the discourse about rivaling theories. Epistemic tolerance stands for the mental attitude of an epistemic agent, e.g., a scientist, who is open to opposing views, while epistemic authoritarianism represents the tendency to uncritically accept views of authorities. Another relevant epistemic factor when it comes to the epistemic decisions of scientists is the skepticism towards the scientific method. However, the question is whether these epistemic attitudes are (...) influenced by their sociopolitical counterparts, such as the researcher’s degree of conservatism. To empirically investigate the interplay between epistemic and sociopolitical attitudes of scientists, we conducted a survey with researchers across different disciplines. We propose scales for measuring epistemic tolerance and epistemic authoritarianism, as well as a scale for detecting the participants' readiness to question the scientific method. Furthermore, we investigate the relationship between epistemic tolerance and epistemic authoritarianism on the one hand, and career stage and sociopolitical views on the other hand. Interestingly, our study found only small correlations between the participants' degree of conservatism and their epistemic attitudes. This suggests that political views, against common argumentation, actually do not play an important role in one’s scientific decisions. Moreover, social scientists scored higher on the epistemic tolerance and lower on the epistemic authoritarianism scale than natural scientists. Finally, the results indicate that natural scientists question the scientific method less than social scientists. (shrink)

We report the results of a study that investigated the views of researchers working in seven scientific disciplines and in history and philosophy of science in regard to four hypothesized dimensions of scientific realism. Among other things, we found that natural scientists tended to express more strongly realist views than social scientists, that history and philosophy of science scholars tended to express more antirealist views than natural scientists, that van Fraassen’s characterization of scientific realism failed to cluster with more standard (...) characterizations, and that those who endorsed the pessimistic induction were no more or less likely to endorse antirealism. (shrink)

In recent years, the full text of papers are increasingly available electronically which opens up the possibility of quantitatively investigating citation contexts in more detail. In this study, we introduce a new form of citation analysis, which we call citation concept analysis (CCA). CCA is intended to reveal the cognitive impact certain concepts—published in a highly-cited landmark publication—have on the citing authors. It counts the number of times the concepts are mentioned (cited) in the citation context of citing publications. We (...) demonstrate the method using three classical highly cited books: (1) The structure of scientific revolutions by Thomas S. Kuhn, (2) The logic of scientific discovery—Logik der Forschung: Zur Erkenntnistheorie der modernen Naturwissenschaft in German—, and (3) Conjectures and refutations: the growth of scientific knowledge by Karl R. Popper. It is not surprising—as our results show—that Kuhn’s “paradigm” concept seems to have had a significant impact. What is surprising is that our results indicate a much larger impact of the concept “paradigm” than Kuhn’s other concepts, e.g., “scientific revolution”. The paradigm concept accounts for about 40% of the concept-related citations to Kuhn’s work, and its impact is resilient across all disciplines and over time. With respect to Popper, “falsification” is the most used concept derived from his books. Falsification is the cornerstone of Popper’s critical rationalism. (shrink)

Experimental philosophy is a popular approach to addressing philosophical questions. Though not without controversy, this approach has impacted epistemology (Weinberg, Nichols, and...

There is an ongoing methodological debate in philosophy of science concerning the use of case studies as evidence for and/or against theories about science. In this paper, I aim to make a contribution to this debate by taking an empirical approach. I present the results of a systematic survey of the PhilSci-Archive, which suggest that a sizeable proportion of papers in philosophy of science contain appeals to case studies, as indicated by the occurrence of the indicator words “case study” and/or (...) “case studies.” These results are confirmed by data mined from the JSTOR database on research articles published in leading journals in the field: Philosophy of Science, the British Journal for the Philosophy of Science (BJPS), and the Journal for General Philosophy of Science (JGPS), as well as the Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association (PSA). The data also show upward trends in appeals to case studies in articles published in Philosophy of Science, the BJPS, and the JGPS. The empirical work I have done for this paper provides philosophers of science who are wary of the use of case studies as evidence for and/or against theories about science with a way to do philosophy of science that is informed by data rather than case studies. (shrink)

If one had to identify the biggest change within the philosophical tradition in the twenty-first century, it would certainly be the rapid rise of experimental philosophy to address differences in intuitions about concepts. It is, therefore, surprising that the philosophy of medicine has so far not drawn on the tools of experimental philosophy in the context of a particular conceptual debate that has overshadowed all others in the field: the long-standing dispute between so-called naturalists and normativists about the concepts of (...) health and disease. In this paper, I defend and advocate the use of empirical methods to inform and advance this and other debates within the philosophy of medicine. (shrink)

If one had to identify the biggest change within the philosophical tradition in the twenty-first century, it would certainly be the rapid rise of experimental philosophy to address differences in intuitions about concepts. It is, therefore, surprising that the philosophy of medicine has so far not drawn on the tools of experimental philosophy in the context of a particular conceptual debate that has overshadowed all others in the field: the long-standing dispute between so-called naturalists and normativists about the concepts of (...) health and disease. In this paper, I defend and advocate the use of empirical methods to inform and advance this and other debates within the philosophy of medicine. (shrink)

This paper presents scientists’ understanding of their roles in society and corresponding responsibilities. It discusses the researchers’ perspective against the background of the contemporary literature on scientific responsibility in the social sciences and philosophy and proposes a heuristic that improves the understanding of the complexity of scientific responsibility. The study is based on qualitative interviews with senior scientists. The presented results show what researchers themselves see as their responsibilities, how they assume them, and what challenges they perceive with respect to (...) their responsibilities. Regarding the latter, the interviewed researchers highlight those aspects of responsibility that go beyond the expertise of their professional role, and thus cannot be carried by scientists alone. For example, scientists alone cannot determine the general direction science takes, or the useful application of their research. The interviewed researchers describe those challenges as responsibilities that must be shared across different societal groups. In the theoretical literature, responsibility has been described as a relation between an actor (who), the action for which someone is responsible (what), and the normative framework against which someone is responsible (why). We will draw on this concept of “relational responsibility” to identify the various actors, normative frameworks, and actions relevant to scientific responsibility. This will serve as a heuristic tool to help identify the entanglement of responsibilities spread across several societal groups. (shrink)

Objectivity, as one of the key attributes of science, has become an indispensable part of its ethos and a central theme of the philosophy of science. As such, it has been a subject of philosophical reflection by a number of authors. In our project – in which both philosophers of science and scientists participate – we examine the concept of objectivity in the natural sciences with the tools of experimental philosophy. We aim to identify specific operational dimensions of objectivity, those (...) with which current scientist actually work, thus making them accessible for further theoretical analysis and research. In this text, we present results from the first, qualitative phase of our research based on in-depth interviews and focus groups with scientists working in the Czech Republic. Further, we confront this empirical data with theoretical notions of objectivity. We also present other findings from the research and formulate hypotheses for the research’s subsequent phases. (shrink)

Interdisciplinarity is one of the most prominent ideas driving science and research policy today.1 It is applied widely as a conception of what particularly creative and socially relevant research processes should consist of, whether in the natural sciences, the social sciences, the humanities, or elsewhere. Its advocates, many of whom are located in current science and research administration themselves, are using ideas of interdisciplinarity to reshape university organization and research funding. For the last 40 years, researchers studying interdisciplinarity have built (...) up a substantial body of literature constructing various visions of what it should be and how to taxonomize the different forms it can... (shrink)

In this chapter we use methods of corpus linguistics to investigate the ways in which mathematicians describe their work as explanatory in their research papers. We analyse use of the words explain/explanation (and various related words and expressions) in a large corpus of texts containing research papers in mathematics and in physical sciences, comparing this with their use in corpora of general, day-to-day English. We find that although mathematicians do use this family of words, such use is considerably less prevalent (...) in mathematics papers than in physics papers or in general English. Furthermore, we find that the proportion with which mathematicians use expressions related to ‘explaining why’ and ‘explaining how’ is significantly different to the equivalent proportion in physics and in general English. We discuss possible accounts for these differences. (shrink)

Traditional whistleblowing theories have purported that whistleblowers engage in a rational process in determining whether or not to blow the whistle on misconduct. However, stressors inherent to whistleblowing often impede rational thinking and act as a barrier to effective whistleblowing. The negative impact of these stressors on whistleblowing may be made worse depending on who engages in the misconduct: a peer or advisor. In the present study, participants are presented with an ethical scenario where either a peer or advisor engages (...) in misconduct, and positive and the negative consequences of whistleblowing are either directed to the wrongdoer, department, or university. Participant responses to case questions were evaluated for whistleblowing intentions, moral intensity, metacognitive reasoning strategies, and positive and negative, active and passive emotions. Findings indicate that participants were less likely to report the observed misconduct of an advisor compared to a peer. Furthermore, the findings also suggest that when an advisor is the source of misconduct, greater negative affect results. Post-hoc analyses were also conducted examining the differences between those who did and did not intend to blow the whistle under the circumstances of either having to report an advisor or peer. The implications of these findings for understanding the complexities involved in whistleblowing are discussed. (shrink)

Economists and philosophers disagree about the concept of choice used in economics. Some behavioural economists argue that economic models of choice will improve as they become more and more psychologically realistic. Don Ross argues that this argument fails because its hidden assumption – that the economic concept of choice is the same as the psychological counterpart – is false. Ross conjectures that the economic concept of choice concerns a population-scale pattern of behavioural changes in response to incentives. We conduct a (...) survey experiment to test two predictions that Ross’s conjecture generates. The statistical analysis of our data confirms our predictions, although with some qualifications. In interpreting our results, we distinguish two versions of commonsensible realism, strong and weak, and propose the weak one as a plausible explanation of our results. Weak commonsensible realism also produces further testable hypotheses. Some methodological implications of our study are discussed. (shrink)

Philosophers of science are increasingly arguing for the importance of doing scientifically- and socially-engaged work, suggesting that we need to reduce barriers to extra-disciplinary engagement and broaden our impact. Yet, we currently lack empirical data to inform these discussions, leaving a number of important questions unanswered. How common is it for philosophers of science to engage other communities, and in what ways are they engaging? What barriers are most prevalent when it comes to broadly disseminating one’s work or collaborating with (...) others? To what extent do philosophers of science actually value an engaged approach? Our project addresses this gap in our collective knowledge by providing empirical data regarding the state of philosophy of science today. We report the results of a survey of 299 philosophers of science about their attitudes towards and experiences with engaging those outside the discipline. Our data suggest that a significant majority of philosophers of science think it is important for non-philosophers to read and make use of their work; most are engaging with communities outside the discipline; and many think philosophy of science, as a discipline, has an obligation to ensure it has a broader impact. Interestingly, however, many of these same philosophers believe engaged work is generally undervalued in the discipline. We think these findings call for cautious optimism on the part of those who value engaged work—while there seems to be more interest in engaging other communities than many assume, significant barriers still remain. (shrink)

This paper contributes to the underdeveloped field of experimental philosophy of science. We examine variability in the philosophical views of scientists. Using data from Toolbox Dialogue Initiative, we analyze scientists’ responses to prompts on philosophical issues (methodology, confirmation, values, reality, reductionism, and motivation for scientific research) to assess variance in the philosophical views of physical scientists, life scientists, and social and behavioral scientists. We find six prompts about which differences arose, with several more that look promising for future research. We (...) then evaluate the difference between the natural and social sciences and the challenge of interdisciplinary integration across scientific branches. (shrink)

This volume gathers together leading philosophers of science and cognitive scientists from around the world to provide one of the first book-length studies of this important and emerging field. Specific topics considered include learning and the nature of scientific knowledge, the cognitive consequences of exposure to explanations, climate change, and mechanistic reasoning and abstraction. Chapters explore how experimental methods can be applied to questions about the nature of science and show how to fruitfully theorize about the nature and role of (...) science with well-grounded empirical research. Advances in Experimental Philosophy of Science presents a new direction in the philosophical exploration of science and paves a path for those who might seek to pursue research in experimental philosophy of science. (shrink)

In this chapter we explain what experimental philosophy of science is, how it relates to the philosophy of science, and STS more broadly, and what sorts of contributions is can make to ongoing research in the philosophy of science.

The ‘model approach’ facilitates a quantitative-oriented study of conceptual changes in large corpora. This paper implements the ‘model approach’ to investigate the erosion of the traditional art-nature distinction in early modern natural philosophy. I argue that a condition for this transformation has to be located in the late scholastic conception of final causation. I design a conceptual model to capture the art-nature distinction and formulate a working hypothesis about its early modern fate. I test my hypothesis on a selected corpus (...) of 25 works published in the Dutch academic milieu between 1607 and 1748. I analyse the corpus through a procedure based on concordancing of keywords associated with the model. I argue that the results obtained constitute a successful pilot study for the implementation of the model approach on larger scale research. (shrink)

Imagination is necessary for scientific practice, yet there are no in vivo sociological studies on the ways that imagination is taught, thought of, or evaluated by scientists. This article begins to remedy this by presenting the results of a qualitative study performed on two systems biology laboratories. I found that the more advanced a participant was in their scientific career, the more they valued imagination. Further, positive attitudes toward imagination were primarily due to the perceived role of imagination in problem-solving. (...) But not all problem-solving episodes involved clear appeals to imagination, only maximally specific problems did. This pattern is explained by the presence of an implicit norm governing imagination use in the two labs: only use imagination on maximally specific problems, and only when all other available methods have failed. This norm was confirmed by the participants, and I argue that it has epistemological reasons in its favour. I also found that its strength varies inversely with career stage, such that more advanced scientists do (and should) occasionally bring their imaginations to bear on more general problems. A story about scientific pedagogy explains the trend away from (and back to) imagination over the course of a scientific career. Finally, some positive recommendations are given for a more imagination-friendly scientific pedagogy. (shrink)

Concepts related to the nature of science have been considered an important part of scientific literacy as reflected in its inclusion in curriculum documents. A significant amount of science education research has focused on improving learners’ understanding of NOS. One approach that has often been advocated is an explicit and reflective approach. Some researchers have used the history of science to provide learners with explicit and reflective experiences with NOS concepts. Previous research on using the history of science in science (...) instruction has approached HOS in many different ways and consequently has led to inconsistent findings regarding its utility for improving learning. One promising method for overcoming this inconsistency and teaching NOS with more traditional science content is using stories based in the history of science. A mixed method approach was used to determine whether and how the use of science stories influences undergraduates’ understanding of NOS. Particular attention was paid to the explanations that students used for their understandings. Intervention and control groups completed the Student Understanding of Science and Scientific Inquiry instrument. The intervention group was taught using two historical narratives while the control group was taught using minimal history. A subset of both groups was also interviewed regarding their SUSSI responses and their experiences in the course. Results indicated that the introduction of science stories helped participants gain a better understanding of the role of imagination and creativity in science. Participants mentioned science stories in their explanations for why they changed towards more informed views on SUSSI items related to imagination and creativity. The current study adds to a growing body of literature regarding the use of stories in the science classroom. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to study the level of consideration afforded to indexing standards of reliable international databases by Persian philosophical journals. In this research, forty-one websites of Persian philosophical journals which are published under the supervision of the Committee of Scientific Journals have been reviewed based on the main indexing standards of journals in reliable international databases. The results of this study showed that twenty-six percent of journals have a DOI code, twelve percent possess a Creative Commons (...) permit and only the Journal of Philosophy and Theology published by Ferdowsi University of Mashhad is part of the International Committee on Publication Ethics. Despite the importance of the ethical and legal aspects of the journals, this area was very weak; generalization and presentation of incomplete information are the most important defects of websites of philosophical journals. The topic-wise indexing of philosophical journals in reliable general and specialized international databases was very weak and the limited numbers that are present in international indexing have not been properly presented to the viewers in the journals’ websites. Altogether, the Journal of Philosophical-Theological Research of Qum University – with the exception of the foreign articles section and international members in the Editorial Board – has the required readiness in other areas for being indexed in reliable international databases as compared to other Persian philosophical journals. (shrink)

Can video games teach students about the history and philosophy of science? This paper reports the results of a study investigating the effects of playing an educational video game on students’ knowledge of Galileo’s life and times, the nature of scientific evidence, and Aristotle’s and Galileo’s views of the cosmos. In the game, students were immersed in a computer simulation of 16th century Venice where they interacted with an avatar of Galileo and other characters. Over a period of two weeks, (...) 71 undergraduates were exposed to lectures about Galileo and the Copernican revolution in a traditional classroom setting. However, only half of the students also played the game. The other half were only exposed to lectures. The knowledge of both groups was assessed at the beginning and end of the two-week period. The results demonstrated objective improvements in knowledge for the experimental group while the control group showed virtually no change. Implications of these findings for teaching and learning the history and philosophy of science are discussed. (shrink)

This paper brings together results from the philosophy and the psychology of explanation to argue that there are multiple concepts of explanation in human psychology. Specifically, it is shown that pluralism about explanation coheres with the multiplicity of models of explanation available in the philosophy of science, and it is supported by evidence from the psychology of explanatory judgment. Focusing on the case of a norm of explanatory power, the paper concludes by responding to the worry that if there is (...) a plurality of concepts of explanation, one will not be able to normatively evaluate what counts as good explanation. (shrink)

Each day people are presented with circumstances that may require speculation. Scientists may ponder questions such as why a star is born or how rainbows are made, psychologists may ask social questions such as why people are prejudiced, and military strategists may imagine what the consequences of their actions might be. Speculations may lead to the generation of putative explanations called hypotheses. But it is by checking if hypotheses accurately reflect the encountered facts that lead to sensible behaviour demonstrating a (...) true understanding. If evidence shows a hypothesis to be false, then people should rationally abandon it, especially if there are negative consequences. The aim of this thesis is to examine how effectively people search for evidence in their hypothesis testing to test whether or not their hypotheses are true or false in competitive games. -/- Research findings from six studies of hypothesis testing behaviour in competitive deductive tasks are explored. Chapter by chapter the thesis tests how everyday people, and master chess players, tackle hypothesis testing in mathematical tasks, such as how to solve sequential number sequence puzzles when thinking about an opponent, or how to solve chess problems in a variety of contexts. The implications of the results are discussed in light of aspects of general cognition: such as reasoning, social hypothesis testing and planning. (shrink)

This summary note series outlines legal empirical approaches to the study of juries and jury decision-making behaviour for undergraduate students of sociology, criminology and legal systems, and forensic psychology. The note series is divided into two lectures. The first lecture attends to the background relevant to the historical rise of juries and socio-legal methodologies used to understand jury behaviour. The second lecture attends to questions surrounding jury competence, classic studies illustrative of juror bias, and a critical comparison of juries to (...) legal alternatives not reliant on jury deliberation for judicial process. Where appropriate the note series indicates key readings relevant to each core component of the note series, for students to develop their understanding in self-study time. (shrink)

Does hindsight knowledge make research seem more ethical and predictable? In line with the notion of hindsight bias, students in 3 experiments knowing the outcome of an animal experiment judged the results as more foreseeable and ethical relative to students who did not know the outcome. Via self to other comparisons, students evaluate themselves more favorably compared to a peer but exhibited hindsight bias in doing so. Uniquely, the findings reveal the possibility that students deem themselves to be more skeptical (...) and objective than their peers. Implications for teaching animal ethics and for Institutional Review Boards are discussed. (shrink)

The book examines the emerging approach of using qualitative methods, such as interviews and field observations, in the philosophy of science. Qualitative methods are gaining popularity among philosophers of science as more and more scholars are resorting to empirical work in their study of scientific practices. At the same time, the results produced through empirical work are quite different from those gained through the kind of introspective conceptual analysis more typical of philosophy. This volume explores the benefits and challenges of (...) an empirical philosophy of science and addresses questions such as: What do philosophers gain from empirical work? How can empirical research help to develop philosophical concepts? How do we integrate philosophical frameworks and empirical research? What constraints do we accept when choosing an empirical approach? What constraints does a pronounced theoretical focus impose on empirical work? Nine experts discuss their thoughts and empirical results in the chapters of this book with the aim of providing readers with an answer to these questions. (shrink)

Two main cognitive theories predict that people find refuting evidence that falsifies their theorising difficult, if not impossible to consider, even though such reasoning may be pivotal to grounding their everyday thoughts in reality (i.e., Poletiek, 1996; Klayman & Ha, 1987). In the classic 2-4-6 number sequence task devised by psychologists to test such reasoning skills in a simulated environment – people fail the test more often than not. In the 2-4-6 task participants try to discover what rule the number (...) triple 2-4-6 conforms to. The rule is ‘ascending numbers’, but it is tricky to discover this rule. Participants tend to generate hypotheses with the properties of the 2-4-6 triple, for example, ‘even numbers ascending in twos’. They must search for evidence to test whether their hypothesis is the rule. But experimental evidence has shown that they tend to generate confirming triples that they expect to be consistent with their hypothesis rather than inconsistent falsifying triples. Counter to the two main hypothesis testing theories this paper demonstrates that falsification is possible in five 2-4-6 task experiments when participants consider an Imaginary Participant’s hypothesis. Experiment 1 and 2 show that competition with an opponent hypothesis tester facilitates falsification. Experiments 3 to 5 show that the consideration of an alternative hypothesis helps this falsification of hypotheses lead to rule discovery. The implications of the results for theories of hypothesis testing and reasoning are discussed. (shrink)

Abstract In the new millennium there have been important empirical developments in the philosophy of mathematics. One of these is the so-called “Empirical Philosophy of Mathematics”(EPM) of Buldt, Löwe, Müller and Müller-Hill, which aims to complement the methodology of the philosophy of mathematics with empirical work. Among other things, this includes surveys of mathematicians, which EPM believes to give philosophically important results. In this paper I take a critical look at the sociological part of EPM as a case study of (...) ... (shrink)

This study develops a Science–Technology–Society (STS)-based science ethics education program for high school students majoring in or planning to major in science and engineering. Our education program includes the fields of philosophy, history, sociology and ethics of science and technology, and other STS-related theories. We expected our STS-based science ethics education program to promote students’ epistemological beliefs and moral judgment development. These psychological constructs are needed to properly solve complicated moral and social dilemmas in the fields of science and engineering. (...) We applied this program to a group of Korean high school science students gifted in science and engineering. To measure the effects of this program, we used an essay-based qualitative measurement. The results indicate that there was significant development in both epistemological beliefs and moral judgment. In closing, we briefly discuss the need to develop epistemological beliefs and moral judgment using an STS-based science ethics education program. (shrink)

Many philosophers of science follow Hempel in embracing both substantive and methodological anti-psychologism regarding the study of explanation. The former thesis denies that explanations are constituted by psychological events, and the latter denies that psychological research can contribute much to the philosophical investigation of the nature of explanation. Substantive anti-psychologism is commonly defended by citing cases, such as hyper-complex descriptions or vast computer simulations, which are reputedly generally agreed to constitute explanations but which defy human comprehension and, as a result, (...) fail to engender any relevant psychological events. It is commonly held that the truth of the substantive thesis would lend support to the methodological thesis. However, the standard argument for the substantive thesis presumes that philosophers’ own judgments about the aforementioned cases issues from mastery of the lay or scientific norms regarding the use of ‘explanation.’ Here we challenge this presumption with a series of experiments indicating that both lay and scientific populations require of explanations that they actually render their targets intelligible. This research not only undermines a standard line of argument for substantive anti-psychologism, it demonstrates the utility of psychological research methods for answering meta-questions about the norms regarding the use of ‘explanation.’. (shrink)