Compared to other animals, humans appear to have a special motivation to share experiences and mental states with others (Clark, 2006;Grice, 1975), which enables them to enter a condition of ‘we’ or shared intentionality (Tomasello & Carpenter, 2005). Shared intentionality has been suggested to be an evolutionary response to unique problems faced in complex joint action coordination (Levinson, 2006;Tomasello, Carpenter, Call, Behne, & Moll, 2005) and to be unique to humans (Tomasello, 2014). The theoretical and empirical bases for this claim, (...) however, present several issues and inconsistencies. Here, we suggest that shared intentionality can be approached as an interactional achievement, and that by studying how our closest relatives, the great apes, coordinate joint action with conspecifics, we might demonstrate some correlate abilities of shared intentionality, such as the appreciation of joint commitment. We provide seven examples from bonobo joint activities to illustrate our framework. (shrink)

When evidence-based policymaking is so often mired in disagreement and controversy, how can we know if the process is meeting its stated goals? We develop a novel mathematical model to study disagreements about adequate knowledge utilization, like those regarding wild horse culling, shark drumlines and facemask policies during pandemics. We find that, when stakeholders disagree, it is frequently impossible to tell whether any party is at fault. We demonstrate the need for a distinctive kind of transparency in evidence-based policymaking, which (...) we call transparency of reasoning. Such transparency is critical to the success of the evidence-based policy movement, as without it, we will be unable to tell whether in any instance a policy was in fact based on evidence. (shrink)

This note contains a corrective and a generalization of results by Borsboom et al. (2008), based on Heesen and Romeijn (2019). It highlights the relevance of insights from psychometrics beyond the context of psychological testing.

Social scientists use many different methods, and there are often substantial disagreements about which method is appropriate for a given research question. In response to this uncertainty about the relative merits of different methods, W. E. B. Du Bois advocated for and applied “methodological triangulation”. This is to use multiple methods simultaneously in the belief that, where one is uncertain about the reliability of any given method, if multiple methods yield the same answer that answer is confirmed more strongly than (...) it could have been by any single method. Against this, methodological purists believe that one should choose a single appropriate method and stick with it. Using tools from voting theory, we show Du Boisian methodological triangulation to be more likely to yield the correct answer than purism, assuming the scientist is subject to some degree of diffidence about the relative merits of the various methods. This holds even when in fact only one of the methods is appropriate for the given research question. (shrink)

Problem solving by autonomous, interacting computersystems has attracted much attention in the ArtificialIntelligence community. These autonomous computersystems, called agents, provide a promisingperspective for the legal knowledge-based systemscommunity, as legal problem solving often involvesdistributed problem solving capabilities that gobeyond the capabilities of individual knowledge-basedsystems.We focus on the coordination of agents andcommunication between agents by proposing a model ofcommunication between various agents using modellingtechniques such as communication primitives and statetransition diagrams. Our representation concerns theDutch Algemene Wet Bestuursrecht (AWB; GeneralAct on Administrative Law). (...) A proposal for an agentarchitecture describes how these communication aspectscan be incorporated into an architecture. (shrink)

Constantine the African's significance as the first important translator of medical texts from Arabic into Latin is indisputable due to the fact that his work contributed decisively to the enlargement of medical knowledge in the Latin West. Among his considerable œuvre the translation of al-Maˇgūsī's Kitāb al-Malakī under its Latin title Pantegni, the first real medical compendium in Latin, holds a particularly important position because of its popularity. The Pantegni is divided into the two parts Theory and Practice with ten (...) books each. Yet while the Theorica Pantegni corresponds basically to the Theory in the Kitāb al-Malakī, this is only partly the case for the Practica Pantegni. The content of the differing parts has been put together mainly from other medical texts. The identification of these other medical texts was the aim of some important researches while the last ten years. The aim of this article is to present the sources of the Pantegni, Practica’s third book and to give some indications on the person who made the compilation who – as it seems – wasn't Constantine the African himself. (shrink)

Prepublication peer review should be abolished. We consider the effects that such a change will have on the social structure of science, paying particular attention to the changed incentive structure and the likely effects on the behaviour of individual scientists. We evaluate these changes from the perspective of epistemic consequentialism. We find that where the effects of abolishing prepublication peer review can be evaluated with a reasonable level of confidence based on presently available evidence, they are either positive or neutral. (...) We conclude that on present evidence abolishing peer review weakly dominates the status quo. (shrink)

Recent philosophical work has praised the reward structure of science, while recent empirical work has shown that many scientific results may not be reproducible. I argue that the reward structure of science incentivizes scientists to focus on speed and impact at the expense of the reproducibility of their work, thus contributing to the so-called reproducibility crisis. I use a rational choice model to identify a set of sufficient conditions for this problem to arise, and I argue that these conditions plausibly (...) apply to a wide range of research situations. Currently proposed solutions will not fully address this problem. Philosophical commentators should temper their optimism about the reward structure of science. (shrink)

A number of philosophers of science and statisticians have attempted to justify conclusions drawn from a finite sequence of evidence by appealing to results about what happens if the length of that sequence tends to infinity. If their justifications are to be successful, they need to rely on the finite sequence being either indefinitely increasing or of a large size. These assumptions are often not met in practice. This paper analyzes a simple model of collecting evidence and finds that the (...) practice of collecting only very small sets of evidence before taking a question to be settled is rationally justified. This shows that the appeal to long run results can be used neither to explain the success of actual scientific practice nor to give a rational reconstruction of that practice. (shrink)

Este artigo apresenta um pouco dos estudos de Roger Bacon sobre Alquimia. Filósofo medieval, Bacon deu sequência à tradição de estudos herméticos. Como parte de uma das ciências especiais, assim como ele a compreendia, a Alquimia teve destaque como elemento importante no seu projeto filosófico-científico. A fim de apresentar um pouco o lugar da Alquimia no corpus baconiano, o texto parte de uma breve exposição da possível origem dessa arte entre os povos da antiguidade oriental e, posteriormente, sua chegada à (...) Europa medieval. Passa-se então a apresentar os ensinamentos alquímicos transmitidos por Bacon; sua compreensão de Alquimia não como magia, mas como ciência positiva, cujos métodos e resultados podiam ser corroborados pela Ciência Experimental; a elaboração de uma breve chave de leitura dos termos alquímicos enviados ao Papa Clemente IV, juntamente com a defesa de que a Alquimia é uma arte hermética e precisa ser preservada da ignorância do homem comum, sendo revelada a quem a mereça em corpo e alma. (shrink)

Mit Carlo Ginzburgs Einführung des Begriffs Spurensicherung für das Arbeiten des Historikers im Jahr 1979 bildet sich eine neue kulturwissenschaftliche Perspektive. Daniel Spoerri und Marie Louise von Plessen initiieren in Köln das zweite Musée Sentimental, eine Ausstellung, die sich auf die Rekonstruktion vergangener Geschichten anhand von angeordneten Objekten stützt. Der Artikel richtet sein Augenmerk auf eine Ausstellungspraxis, die sich der Kulturtechnik des Spurenlesens verschreibt und aus der Hervorhebung des Alltäglichen erzeugt wird. The year 1979 marks a turning point for cultural (...) studies: Carlo Ginzburg introduces the term »securing of traces« to historiography. In Cologne, Daniel Spoerri und Marie Louise von Plessen initiate the second, an exposition that explores the reconstruction of past stories via arranged objects. The paper focuses on an exhibition strategy that dedicates itself to the cultural technique of »reading traces«, produced by an emphasis on the trivialities of everyday. (shrink)

The communist norm requires that scientists widely share the results of their work. Where did this norm come from, and how does it persist? Michael Strevens provides a partial answer to these questions by showing that scientists should be willing to sign a social contract that mandates sharing. However, he also argues that it is not in an individual credit-maximizing scientist's interest to follow this norm. I argue against Strevens that individual scientists can rationally conform to the communist norm, even (...) in the absence of a social contract or other ways of socially enforcing the norm, by proving results to this effect in a game-theoretic model. This shows that the incentives provided to scientists through the priority rule are sufficient to explain both the origins and the persistence of the communist norm, adding to previous results emphasizing the benefits of the incentive structure created by the priority rule. (shrink)

Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte, EarlyView.

There is a commonly made distinction between two types of scientists: risk-taking, trailblazing mavericks and detail-oriented followers. A number of recent papers have discussed the question what a desirable mixture of mavericks and followers looks like. Answering this question is most useful if a scientific community can be steered toward such a desirable mixture. One attractive route is through credit incentives: manipulating rewards so that reward-seeking scientists are likely to form the desired mixture of their own accord. Here I argue (...) that this idea is less straightforward than it may seem. Interpreting mavericks as scientists who prioritize rewards over speed and risk, I show in a deliberatively simple model that there is a fixed mixture which is not particularly likely to be desirable and which credit incentives cannot alter. I consider a way around this result, but this has some major drawbacks. I conclude that credit incentives are not as promising a way to create a desirable mixture of mavericks and followers as one might have thought. (shrink)

I show that the social stratification of academic science can arise as a result of academics’ preference for reading work of high epistemic value. This is consistent with a view on which academic superstars are highly competent academics, but also with a view on which superstars arise primarily due to luck. I argue that stratification is beneficial if most superstars are competent, but not if most superstars are lucky. I also argue that it is impossible to tell whether most superstars (...) are in fact competent or lucky, or which group a given superstar belongs to, and hence whether stratification is overall beneficial. (shrink)

This article deals with the technical genesis of ubiquitous computing and the opportunities for social participation in the development of technology. In this context, the ability of the system to protect the private sphere is identified as one of the most important criteria for a socially acceptable constitution. On the basis of the relationship between privacy and freedom, it is shown that the trust necessary for the social establishment of global IT networks is only developed through the preservation of the (...) freedoms of choice and action. (shrink)

In the following contribution we will investigate the digital divide with respect to a philosophically and ideologically founded concept of universalisation. The documents of the World Summit on the Information Society show that the creation of a global information society not only concerns a technical structural transformation, but also a technical implementation of a normative guiding principle. I will show that overcoming the digital divide corresponds to the inner logic of universalisation as an ethical model of reasoning. Furthermore, we will (...) see that in reality this formal approach to reasoning proves to be a means of realising certain ideological perspectives. This interdependency of cultural dispositions and technical developments in the global information society will be shown in five aspects: • The creation of a global social utopia based on the concept of the information society. • The objectification of the concept of universalisation in information and communication technology. • The linking of global internet use to a normative idea of the public sphere. • The tendency towards totality as a problem of the public sphere and ICT. • Possible reasons for demanding ICT-free areas. (shrink)

The presentation of nature as part of natural history is usually connected with a natural cabinet or natural history museum. A closer look at travel and field work, however, shows that display of nature as a spatial concept and material conditions begins already in the first moment of collecting objects, specimens, and economis news about a region to be investigated. In the year 1720 the German physician Daniel Gottlieb Messerschmidt was sent to Siberia by the Tsar Peter I of Russia (...) to explore this hithero terra incognita. During his travels Messerschmidt established two main instruments for collecting data and things, which I shall describe as organizing, material principles for his field work: written lists and notes, and boxes and cases. An analysis of these material objects and their specific uses reveals the intellectual and practical traditions in which learned activities and strategies took place in the beginning of the eighteenth century. (shrink)

This paper offers a new angle on the common idea that the process of science does not support epistemic diversity. Under minimal assumptions on the nature of journal editing, we prove that editorial procedures, even when impartial in themselves, disadvantage less prominent research programs. This purely statistical bias in article selection further skews existing differences in the success rate and hence attractiveness of research programs, and exacerbates the reputation difference between the programs. After a discussion of the modeling assumptions, the (...) paper ends with a number of recommendations that may help promote scientific diversity through editorial decision making. (shrink)

This text describes a single engraving of the picture encyclopediaBilder-Akademie für die Jugend published from 1780 to 1784. It consisted of 52 picture tableaus, each with nine images that were connected through the biblical topic. The particular image under examination, the “Table 38”, shows the healing wonders of Christ, the electrifying maschine, a healing physician and the structure of ear and eye. Goal of this text will be to describe the different connections and meanings of these depicted scenes, as in (...) the same time I will argue, that pictures can not only be interpreted by understanding how people looked at them, but also to take into question what people did with them. (shrink)

In the first issue of the renewed Analyic Teaching, A. T. Lardner opens a debate on how to react to postmodern and multi-culturalist positions and their critique on Philosophy for Children. Lardner concludes: This paper has not been set out to disagree with either the postmodern or multi-culturalist positions. Indeed, it accepts most of the claims made. It has attempted to show that the critique from these quarters of the work of Philosophy for Children in settings outside the USA is (...) based on a misunderstanding of what we do. It has suggested how those working in the program might answer such critiques along with suggesting caution in how we describe our goals and methods. Finally, it has suggested an uncomfortable parallel between the extreme postmodern and multi-cultualist position about eduactional work based on critical, reflective inquiry, and previous, elitist notions which the same people are sure to reject.I'd like to comment on some of Lardner's theses. (shrink)

Should editors of scientific journals practice triple-anonymous reviewing? I consider two arguments in favor. The first says that insofar as editors’ decisions are affected by information they would not have had under triple-anonymous review, an injustice is committed against certain authors. I show that even well-meaning editors would commit this wrong and I endorse this argument. The second argument says that insofar as editors’ decisions are affected by information they would not have had under triple-anonymous review, it will negatively affect (...) the quality of published papers. I distinguish between two kinds of biases that an editor might have. I show that one of them has a positive effect on quality and the other a negative one, and that the combined effect could be either positive or negative. Thus I do not endorse the second argument in general. However, I do endorse this argument for certain fields, for which I argue that the positive effect does not apply. (shrink)

In this paper we propose and analyze a game-theoretic model of the epistemology of peer disagreement. In this model, the peers' rationality is evaluated in terms of their probability of ending the disagreement with a true belief. We find that different strategies---in particular, one based on the Steadfast View and one based on the Conciliatory View---are rational depending on the truth-sensitivity of the individuals involved in the disagreement. Interestingly, the Steadfast and the Conciliatory Views can even be rational simultaneously in (...) some circumstances. We tentatively provide some reasons to favor the Conciliatory View in such cases. We argue that the game-theoretic perspective is a fruitful one in this debate, and this fruitfulness has not been exhausted by the present paper. (shrink)

What differentiates scientific research from non-scientific inquiry? Philosophers addressing this question have typically been inspired by the exalted social place and intellectual achievements of science. They have hence tended to point to some epistemic virtue or methodological feature of science that sets it apart. Our discussion on the other hand is motivated by the case of commercial research, which we argue is distinct from (and often epistemically inferior to) academic research. We consider a deflationary view in which science refers to (...) whatever is regarded as epistemically successful, but find that this does not leave room for the important notion of scientific error and fails to capture distinctive social elements of science. This leads us to the view that a demarcation criterion should be a widely upheld social norm without immediate epistemic connotations. Our tentative answer is the communist norm, which calls on scientists to share their work widely for public scrutiny and evaluation. (shrink)

This paper investigates how the credit incentive to engage in questionable research practices interacts with cumulative advantage, the process whereby high-status academics more easily increase their status than low-status academics. I use a mathematical model to highlight two dynamics that have not yet received much attention. First, due to cumulative advantage, questionable research practices may pay off over the course of an academic career even if they do not appear attractive at the level of individual publications. Second, because of the (...) role of bottleneck moments in academic careers, questionable research practices may be selected for even if they do not provide a benefit in expectation. I also observe that, within the model, the most successful academics are the most likely to have benefited from fraud. -/- This paper has been published under a different title. See PhilPapers record HEECAA or DOI 10.1086/716235. (shrink)

This text describes a single engraving of the picture encyclopediaBilder-Akademie für die Jugend published from 1780 to 1784. It consisted of 52 picture tableaus, each with nine images that were connected through the biblical topic. The particular image under examination, the “Table 38”, shows the healing wonders of Christ, the electrifying maschine, a healing physician and the structure of ear and eye. Goal of this text will be to describe the different connections and meanings of these depicted scenes, as in (...) the same time I will argue, that pictures can not only be interpreted by understanding how people looked at them, but also to take into question what people did with them. (shrink)

Big data-analysis is linked to the expectation to provide a general image of socially relevant topics and processes. Similar to this, the idea of the public sphere involves being representative of all citizens and of important topics and problems. This contribution, on one side, aims to explain how a normative concept of the public sphere could be infiltrated by big data. On the other, it will discuss how participative processes and common wealth can profit from a thorough use of big (...) data analysis. As important parts of the argument, two concepts will be introduced: the numerical public and total politicisation. (shrink)

Informationsethik ist ein Teilbereich der angewandten Ethik der sich auf Anwendungen des Internets, das Informationsmanagement und die Computernutzung insgesamt bezieht. Die Informationsethik beschäftig sich z. B. mit Fragen der Mensch-Maschine-Interaktion – wie etwa Transparenz im Umgang mit informationstechnischen Systemen – mit ihrer wertbezogenen Gestaltung oder mit dem Thema Überwachung.

ArgumentIn the spring of 1893, the Austrian writer and critic Hermann Bahr began interviewing various people on antisemitism, a subject of heated discussion in the European feuilleton around 1900. “Once again, I am travelling the world sounding out people’s opinions and listening to what they have to say,” he wrote in his introduction to a series of articles on that issue that appeared in the feuilleton of the Deutsche Zeitung between March and September 1893. A year later, the Berlin publishing (...) house S. Fischer turned Bahr’s articles into a book. Bahr conducted a total of thirty-eight interviews with prominent personages, such as August Bebel, Theodor Mommsen, Ernst Haeckel, Henrik Ibsen and Jules Simon. Bahr did not focus on the arguments in favour or against antisemitism. Instead, he set out explicitly to investigate the sentiments, perceptions and opinions on this topic within the cultured classes. Yet, as I will show in this article, Bahr tried to capture not only the “sentiments” [Empfindungen] aired by his interviewees, but also the settings and interiors in which the interviews took place. I argue that these descriptions of physical space served Bahr as authentication, as a three-dimensional certificate for the “facts of opinion” [Meinungstatsachen] he recorded. (shrink)

The rational price of the Pasadena and Altadena games, introduced by Nover and Hájek (2004 ), has been the subject of considerable discussion. Easwaran (2008 ) has suggested that weak expectations — the value to which the average payoffs converge in probability — can give the rational price of such games. We argue against the normative force of weak expectations in the standard framework. Furthermore, we propose to replace this framework by a bounded utility perspective: this shift renders the problem (...) more realistic and accounts for the role of weak expectations. In particular, we demonstrate that in a bounded utility framework, all agents, even if they have different value functions and disagree on the price of an individual game, will finally agree on the rational price of a repeated, averaged game. Thus, we explain the intuitive appeal of weak expectations, while avoiding both trivialization of the original paradox and the drawbacks of previous approaches. (shrink)

Peer reviewers at many funding agencies and scientific journals are asked to score submissions both on individual criteria and overall. The overall scores should be some kind of aggregate of the criteria scores. Carole Lee identifies this as a potential locus for bias to enter the peer review process, which she calls commensuration bias. Here I view the aggregation of scores through the lens of social choice theory. I argue that, when reviewing grant proposals, it is in many cases impossible (...) to avoid commensuration bias. (shrink)

It is well-known that some scientists are more prominent than others. But what makes one scientist more prominent than another? I propose a possible mechanism that produces differences in prominence: scientists' desire for information. In a model of a scientific community exchanging information, I show that this mechanism indeed produces the kind of patterns of prominence that are actually observed. I discuss the implications of this result for three possible explanations of an individual scientist's prominence: an explanation based on scientific (...) merit, an explanation based on epistemically irrelevant factors, and an explanation based on epistemic luck. Depending on which of these explanations is correct one may draw different conclusions about a scientist based on prominence. I discuss policy recommendations that result from this, including suggestions about when it is appropriate to use measures of prominence in giving out grants and awards. (shrink)

This paper investigates how the credit incentive to engage in questionable research practices interacts with cumulative advantage, the process whereby high-status academics more easily increase their status than low-status academics. I use a mathematical model to highlight two dynamics that have not yet received much attention. First, due to cumulative advantage, questionable research practices may pay off over the course of an academic career even if they are not attractive at the level of individual publications. Second, because of the role (...) of bottleneck moments in academic careers, questionable research practices may be selected for even if they do not provide a benefit in expectation. I also observe that, within the model, the most successful academics are the most likely to have benefited from fraud. (shrink)