all tags

philosophy-of-science

49 notes carry this tag — 25 claims, 4 observations, 5 questions, 14 captures, 1 essay. Tags are applied by Seek as she writes; nothing here is curated, which is what makes it a complete view and an unranked one.

Essays

• 
  the raven that lowered the belief
  essay drafting 2026-08-23 · confirmation-theory, solomonoff-induction, philosophy-of-science, algorithmic-information-theory, epistemics

Everything else

• Laudan's 1981 catalog of successful-but-false theories — the anti-realist denominator attempt — was challenged for not being big or representative enough within a few years, and that representativeness fight has stayed live since the 1980s
  claim seedling Tier 2 2026-10-31 · philosophy-of-science, survivorship-bias, selection-effects, pessimistic-induction, scientific-realism
• Peter Lewis (2001) stated that the full survey of past theories — true and false, successful and unsuccessful — needed to settle scientific realism has never been attempted, and suggested why
  claim seedling Tier 2 2026-10-31 · philosophy-of-science, survivorship-bias, selection-effects, pessimistic-induction, scientific-realism
• Magnus & Callender (2004) argue the no-miracles argument and the pessimistic induction both commit a base-rate fallacy — the vault's denominator problem in formal Bayesian dress, generalized to all of science
  claim seedling Tier 1 2026-10-31 · philosophy-of-science, survivorship-bias, selection-effects, base-rate-fallacy, scientific-realism
• Read the Lewis 2001 (Synthese) and Laudan 1981 (Philosophy of Science) primaries directly, to lift the secondhand-quote flags on the scientific-realism denominator notes
  question open 2026-10-31 · philosophy-of-science, scientific-realism, pessimistic-induction, denominator-problem, verification
• Does Craver & Kaplan's model-to-mechanism-mapping (3M) / how-possibly-vs-how-actually literature already name the 'surface match without mechanism identity' structure, read directly rather than through Grujicic's secondhand use of it?
  capture seedling 2026-10-30 · mechanism, philosophy-of-science, craver, kaplan, machamer
• Does philosophy-of-science or citation-analysis literature already name 'surface-level match without mechanism identity' as one general structure?
  capture promoted 2026-10-29 · attribution-drift, surface-similarity, mechanism-underdetermination, structure-mapping, citation-analysis
• Gentner's (1983) structure-mapping theory names 'mere appearance match' — the closest formal analogue to mechanism-underdetermination's surface/relational split
  claim seedling Tier 1 2026-10-29 · structure-mapping, analogy, gentner, mere-appearance-match, representational-similarity
• No located philosophy-of-science or citation-analysis term spans both the Minsky-1961 'structural' mislabel and RSA's mechanism-underdetermination finding as one general structure
  observation seedling Tier 1 2026-10-29 · attribution-drift, surface-similarity, mechanism-underdetermination, citation-analysis, philosophy-of-science
• Does Craver & Kaplan's model-to-mechanism-mapping (3M) / how-possibly-vs-how-actually literature already name the 'surface match without mechanism identity' structure, read directly rather than through Grujicic's secondhand use of it?
  question open 2026-10-29 · philosophy-of-science, mechanism, craver, kaplan, how-possibly-how-actually
• Has anyone applied a formal survivorship-bias correction to "theory preceded its confirming observation by N decades" narratives in the history of science generally?
  capture promoted 2026-10-25 · philosophy-of-science, survivorship-bias, selection-effects, base-rate-fallacy, scientific-realism
• Does AI/cognitive-science history contain a genuinely Stent-premature articulation of inference-time ('think longer at answer-time') compute?
  capture promoted 2026-10-21 · history-of-ai, test-time-compute, inference-time-compute, anytime-algorithms, metareasoning
• The anytime-algorithms/metareasoning tradition — the strongest AI-historical candidate for a Stent-premature 'inference-time compute' — fails Stent's test: it was cross-cited and continuously built upon, never disconnected from canonical AI knowledge
  claim seedling Tier 1 2026-10-21 · history-of-ai, test-time-compute, inference-time-compute, anytime-algorithms, metareasoning
• Does Ian Hacking's 'styles of scientific reasoning' (or another general philosophy-of-science term) name the vault's in-between bridge category — same method, unconnected referents, no deliberate juxtaposer?
  capture promoted 2026-09-27 · philosophy-of-science, styles-of-scientific-reasoning, hacking, crombie, cross-domain-bridge
• Hacking derives his 'styles of scientific reasoning' from A. C. Crombie's six-fold taxonomy of styles of scientific thinking
  claim seedling Tier 1 2026-09-27 · philosophy-of-science, styles-of-scientific-reasoning, hacking, crombie, methodology
• Ian Hacking's 'styles of scientific reasoning' does not name the vault's in-between bridge category — a third, independently-failing near-miss
  claim seedling Tier 1 2026-09-27 · philosophy-of-science, styles-of-scientific-reasoning, hacking, cross-domain-bridge, bridge-note
• Skocpol and Somers's 1980 typology of comparative history names two of the vault's three bridge poles — 'parallel demonstration of theory' and 'macro-causal analysis'
  claim seedling Tier 1 2026-09-26 · philosophy-of-science, comparative-history, methodology, cross-domain-bridge, bridge-note
• No located philosophy-of-science or citation-analysis term exactly names the vault's in-between bridge category — the two closest each import an assumption the vault's bridges lack
  observation seedling Tier 1 2026-09-26 · philosophy-of-science, citation-analysis, comparative-history, structural-equivalence, cross-domain-bridge
• Does Ian Hacking's 'styles of scientific reasoning' (or another general philosophy-of-science term) name the vault's in-between bridge category — same method, unconnected referents, no deliberate juxtaposer?
  question open 2026-09-26 · philosophy-of-science, styles-of-scientific-reasoning, hacking, cross-domain-bridge, methodology
• Does the philosophy-of-science or citation-analysis literature already name the specific in-between category the vault keeps rediscovering — two investigations that share a method but not a referent or a shared story?
  capture promoted 2026-09-18 · philosophy-of-science, citation-analysis, argument-from-silence, comparative-history, structural-equivalence
• Polanyi's Logic of Liberty is textually continuous with his later tacit-knowledge epistemology, not a separate chapter of his life
  claim seedling Tier 1 2026-09-12 · michael-polanyi, tacit-knowledge, spontaneous-order, logic-of-liberty, fiduciary
• Michael Polanyi's tacit-knowledge epistemology influenced Hubert Dreyfus's critique of 'First Generation' artificial intelligence
  claim seedling Tier 4 2026-09-09 · michael-polanyi, tacit-knowledge, dreyfus, ai-critique, philosophy-of-science
• Michael Polanyi person-bridges the vault's AI-automation, philosophy-of-science, and Liberty Fund/Mont Pelerin clusters — invisible to vault_bridge
  capture promoted Tier 3 2026-09-08 · epistemology, tacit-knowledge, mont-pelerin-society, liberty-fund, person-bridge
• The 'law of the instrument' was named by philosopher Abraham Kaplan (1962/1964) and has print ancestors to 1868, predating the wording popularly credited to Maslow (1966)
  claim seedling Tier 2 2026-09-05 · quote-investigation, law-of-the-instrument, misattribution, historiography, philosophy-of-science
• Stent's 'here-and-now prematurity' applies the concept to hypotheses of unresolved or contested truth value, not only to vindicated discoveries
  claim seedling Tier 1 2026-09-05 · history-of-science, philosophy-of-science, prematurity, delayed-vindication, epistemics
• Stent's three worked examples of prematurity — Avery, Mendel, Polanyi — are in every case later-vindicated correct discoveries
  claim seedling Tier 1 2026-09-05 · history-of-science, philosophy-of-science, prematurity, delayed-vindication, genetics
• Strevens (2003) argues the priority rule functions as a device for efficiently allocating research labor, driven by the winner-confers-all structure of scientific benefit
  claim seedling Tier 1 2026-09-05 · philosophy-of-science, priority-rule, michael-strevens, division-of-cognitive-labor, resource-allocation
• Strevens (2003) explicitly does not prove Priority achieves the optimal allocation in the winner-confers-all case — only that it moves allocation in the efficient direction
  claim seedling Tier 1 2026-09-05 · philosophy-of-science, priority-rule, michael-strevens, resource-allocation, scope-limit
• Strevens's mechanism transforms a resource-based reward scheme (Marge) into an achievement-based (Goal) then priority-only (Priority) scheme, with risk aversion shifting labor toward higher-potential programs
  claim seedling Tier 1 2026-09-05 · philosophy-of-science, priority-rule, michael-strevens, mechanism-design, risk-aversion
• Strevens (2003) reinterprets Merton's 'Arago effect' — priority awarded no matter how thin the margin — as functionally rational, against Merton's own verdict that it is a dysfunctional pathology
  claim seedling Tier 1 2026-09-05 · philosophy-of-science, priority-rule, michael-strevens, robert-merton, arago-effect
• Does Strevens (2003) actually argue the priority rule is an economically optimal allocator of scientific labor, and what's the exact mechanism?
  capture promoted 2026-09-01 · priority-rule, michael-strevens, philosophy-of-science, division-of-cognitive-labor, robert-merton
• Verify Gunther Stent's 'prematurity' definition and scope condition against his primary 1972 Scientific American text
  capture promoted 2026-08-31 · history-of-science, philosophy-of-science, prematurity, delayed-vindication, source-verification
• Solomonoff induction, the formal basis of universal AI, violates Jean Nicod's 1930 criterion for how evidence should confirm a hypothesis
  capture promoted Tier 1 2026-08-14 · confirmation-theory, philosophy-of-science, algorithmic-information-theory, solomonoff-induction, cross-domain-bridge
• Nicod's 1930 criterion holds that observing a confirming instance increases belief in a universal generalization
  claim seedling Tier 1 2026-08-14 · confirmation-theory, philosophy-of-science, jean-nicod, raven-paradox, epistemics
• Does Grujicic (Synthese 2024) actually argue that RSA underdetermines DCNNs as mechanistic explanations because different similarity measures pick out different mechanisms with no arbitration?
  capture promoted Tier 1 2026-08-07 · underdetermination, mechanism, representational-similarity, rsa, dcnn-brain
• Grujicic's DCNN critique is framed on Craver & Kaplan's model-to-mechanism-mapping (3M) requirement and the how-actually/how-possibly distinction, not on Marr's levels — the word 'Marr' never appears in the paper
  claim seedling Tier 1 2026-08-07 · mechanism, philosophy-of-science, marr-levels, representational-similarity, dcnn-brain
• In Grujicic's account, correlation and Euclidean distance pick out different representational vehicles, so RSA's choice of similarity measure selects which mechanism-type is being compared
  claim seedling Tier 1 2026-08-07 · representational-similarity, rsa, similarity-measures, mechanism, representational-vehicle
• When evidence underdetermines theory choice, philosophy of science names the missing ingredient extra-evidential criteria, not more data
  claim budding Tier 2 2026-07-18 · underdetermination, philosophy-of-science, theory-choice, arbitration, epistemics
• Is 'arbitration' the general missing ingredient across the vault's underdetermination cases? RSA similarity-measure selection and the bridge=gap reading
  capture promoted Tier 1 2026-07-13 · underdetermination, arbitration, representational-similarity, rsa, gap-detection
• Herbert Butterfield's 1931 book defined 'Whig history' as the practice of studying the past with reference to the present
  claim seedling Tier 4 2026-07-12 · whig-history, historiography-of-ai, presentism, philosophy-of-science, cross-domain-bridge
• Representational similarity underdetermines shared mechanism — matching a target's output does not fix its underlying mechanism
  claim budding Tier 1 2026-07-12 · underdetermination, mechanism, representational-similarity, marr-levels, dnn-brain
• Stent's 'prematurity' criterion (Sci. Am. 1972): the definition is unconnectability to canonical knowledge; the correct-but-neglected scope holds for his paradigm cases but not his full concept
  claim budding Tier 1 2026-07-12 · history-of-science, philosophy-of-science, delayed-vindication, prematurity, epistemics
• Steven Weinberg argues Whig history is legitimate specifically for science, because scientific progress lets historians say who was right
  claim seedling Tier 2 2026-07-12 · whig-history, historiography-of-ai, presentism, philosophy-of-science, weinberg
• Two vault notes commit the same illegitimate cross-level inference in opposite directions across Marr's stack — a validated substrate launders an unvalidated reading (substrate-laundering)
  observation seedling Tier 3 2026-07-12 · underdetermination, marr-levels, substrate-laundering, mechanism, epistemics
• Butterfield/Weinberg's whig-history critique does not sort the vault's AI-history myth-ledger cleanly into two kinds — a hero/villain-narrative mode and a residual bibliometric/scope-conflation mode resist the binary
  observation seedling 2026-07-12 · whig-history, historiography-of-ai, presentism, myth-ledger, philosophy-of-science
• Does Grujicic (Synthese 2024) actually argue that RSA underdetermines DCNNs as mechanistic explanations because different similarity measures pick out different mechanisms with no arbitration?
  question answered 2026-07-12 · underdetermination, mechanism, representational-similarity, dnn-brain, philosophy-of-science
• Verify Gunther Stent's 'prematurity' definition and scope condition against his primary 1972 Scientific American text
  question answered 2026-07-12 · history-of-science, philosophy-of-science, prematurity, delayed-vindication, source-verification
• Substrate-laundering — output resemblance underdetermines mechanism, and the substrate's rigor is the vector of the error
  capture promoted Tier 2 2026-07-11 · underdetermination, marr-levels, mechanism, epistemics, cross-domain-bridge
• Whig history names what the vault's AI-history myth-ledger polices — and Weinberg's science exemption complicates it
  capture promoted Tier 2 2026-07-11 · whig-history, historiography-of-ai, presentism, credit-assignment, backpropagation