BJPS

17/10/2024

New from BJPS Short Reads: Jamie Shaw on lotteries, biases, and affirmative action

Jamie Shaw on lotteries, biases, and affirmative action

16/10/2024

The British Society for the Philosophy of Science has appointed a replacement for outgoing Co-Editor-in-Chief, Wendy Parker

The British Society for the Philosophy of Science has appointed a replacement for outgoing Co-Editor-in-Chief, Wendy Parker

15/10/2024

New from the BJPS Review of Books: Felipe De Brigard reviews The Entangled Brain, by Luiz Pessoa

"The theoretical physicist Michio Kaku once stated that the brain is ‘the most complicated object in the known universe’. For decades, neuroscientists have been trying to disentangle the brain’s complexity in order to understand how it can support our behaviours and mental life. In his latest book, Luiz Pessoa wants us instead to embrace the entanglement of this intricate organ, not as a way to give up on our quest to understand its workings, but as a change in strategy to better comprehend its complexity."

Felipe De Brigard reviews The Entangled Brain, by Luiz Pessoa

10/10/2024

New from BJPS Short Reads: Caspar Jacobs explains why the Bureau International des Poids et Mesures is wrong

Read or listen here: 👇

Caspar Jacobs explains why the Bureau International des Poids et Mesures is wrong

08/10/2024

New on the BJPS Review of Books: Travis McKenna reviews Humean Laws for Human Agents, edited by Michael Townsen Hicks, Siegfried Jaag & Christian Loew (eds)

"People are quite fond of the best systems account of laws of nature. From a certain vantage point, it’s not hard to see why: it offers an intuitive picture of laws that avoids appeal to any spooky metaphysical gizmos like universals, and it dovetails neatly with Humean analyses of other related notions. Given these motivations, however, one might be troubled by the fact that the canonical formulation of the account does not seem to marry up particularly well with what we see scientists doing with laws in the course of their inquiries. Enter pragmatic Humeanism."

Read it here:

Travis McKenna reviews Humean Laws for Human Agents, edited by Michael Townsen Hicks, Siegfried Jaagand Christian Loew

07/10/2024

Multilevel Selection and Cancer: Correspondence from Andy Gardner and Samir Okasha

Correspondence from Andy Gardner; Samir Okasha responds

03/10/2024

New from BJPS Short Reads: Alex Thinius and Rose Trappes on how scientists construct s*x as a binary and categorical variable. Read it here:

Alex Thinius and Rose Trappes on how scientists construct s*x as a binary and categorical variable

01/10/2024

New from the BJPS review of Books: Kelvin McQueen reviews A Phenomenological Approach to Quantum Mechanics, by Steven French�
"In A Phenomenological Approach to Quantum Mechanics, Steven French offers what he says will be his final words on two key issues that he has for decades been trying to get across to the philosophy of physics community, one historical and one theoretical."

Kelvin J McQueen reviews A Phenomenological Approach to Quantum Mechanics, by Steven French

17/09/2024

Has this ever happened to you? You read a philosophy paper, have one brief, specific point to make in response, realize that in order to make that point in print you have to write a whole full-sized article, and then wait for it to be refereed and accepted—and then you decide not to bother? If so,...

16/09/2024

We are delighted to announce the arrival of BJPS Letters to the Editors. Something in the BJPS is wrong, you say? Highly implausible. But on the off-chance, write to us!

Letters must be in direct response to a BJPS article, concern factual errors, overlooked literature, objections, counterexamples, or any other matter of philosophical interest

19/08/2024

Are you a philosophy of science grad student? Are you responsible for philosophy of science grad students? Are there philosophy of science grad students in your vicinity right now? If so, this is for you! Sign up for PSA office hours. Experts are waiting to chat to you about climate science, psychology and engaged philosophy of science...

The PSA Office Hour aims to facilitate interactions between our graduate student membership and prominent philosophers of science, and in a more controlled, accessible, and carbon-conscious setting than is provided by our biennial conference. To this end, a theme will be chosen for each month during...

27/07/2024

By popular demand (!), we've extended the deadline for applications for the position of Co-Editor-in-Chief to Monday 12 August. More info in the link.

New Co-Editor-in-Chief sought

19/07/2024

Fantastic plenary discussion today at : ‘Doing Philosophy with Scientists; Doing Science with Philosophers’

With Anncy Thresher, Marta Halina & James Wakefield

18/07/2024

All our stats for 2023 are now available, for the perusal of the quant-curious. Acceptance rates, time to decisions, demographics, and more...

Acceptance rates, time to decisions, and more

16/07/2024

Attending the BSPS conference in York? Don’t miss our ‘meet the editors’ session at 2pm on Wednesday. We’ll reveal the dark secrets of publishing: Are blood sacrifices always appropriate? How can hexes work for you? What’s up with referee 2?

News - BSPS

20/06/2024

New on the BJPS Review of Books: Michael Bishop reviews 𝗦𝗰𝗶𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗶𝗳𝗶𝗰 𝗘𝗽𝗶𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗺𝗼𝗹𝗼𝗴𝘆, by Hilary Kornblith

"Philosophers like to tell stories about knowledge that crackle with drama. We have wizards (who deceive), adventure (kidnapping neuroscientists), and surprise endings (‘and it turns out that Brown was in Barcelona!’). A cynic might wonder whether all the whiz-bang is cover for weak material. Hilary Kornblith puts these cynical doubts to rest in this slim, elegant book about knowledge. Kornblith spins a yarn that is accessible enough for a general reader and theoretically compelling enough for epistemologists and philosophers of science. Kornblith’s story is distinctive because he takes knowledge to be a scientific category—it’s a concept that manages to do a lot of explanatory work without all the whiz-bang."

Read it here:

Michael Bishop reviews Scientific Epistemology, by Hilary Kornblith

11/06/2024

New BJPS Short Read! What lies beyond simple rules? David Thorstad on institutional decision-making heuristics. Read (or listen) here:

David Thorstad on what lies beyond simple rules

05/06/2024

New on the BJPS Review of Books: Marion Godman reviews Pieter Adriaens & Andreas de Block's 𝐎𝐟 𝐌𝐚𝐲𝐛𝐮𝐠𝐬 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐌𝐞𝐧

"The book is ambitious in that it critically assesses several different (histories of) types of research on male homos*xuality—though with more focus on the natural than the social sciences… Perhaps unsurprisingly, because of the range of historical and scientific ground covered, Adriaens and de Block do not arrive at a unified thesis about homos*xuality from these sciences. Nor do they offer a unified philosophy of the gay sciences. In fact, they often observe opposing trends motivating the scientific explanations.”

Marion Godman reviews Of Maybugs and Men, by Pieter R Adriaens & Andreas de Block

23/05/2024

New on the BJPS Review of Books: Katherine Valde reviews Stavros Ioannidis & Stathis Psillos’s 𝐌𝐞𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐧𝐢𝐬𝐦𝐬 𝐢𝐧 𝐒𝐜𝐢𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐞

“Ioannidis and Psillos offer a metaphysically minimal account of the concept of mechanism as it is used in science. They believe that what scientists mean when they talk about mechanisms can be adequately captured by what they call causal mechanism: ‘a mechanism is a causal pathway described in theoretical language’. Simply put, they argue that mechanism in science is a methodology, not an ontology. The larger aim of the book is to defend this claim on the grounds of both metaphysics and the practices of science."

Katherine Valde reviews Mechanisms in Science, by Stavros Ioannidis & Stathis Psillos

20/05/2024

The British Society for the Philosophy of Science invites expressions of interest regarding the appointment of a new Co-Editor in Chief for the British Journal for the Philosophy of Science. More details here 👇

Changes to the BJPS editorial team

08/05/2024

New on the BJPS Review of Books: Richard Pettigrew reviews Gerhard Schurz’s 𝐎𝐩𝐭𝐢𝐦𝐚𝐥𝐢𝐭𝐲 𝐉𝐮𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐟𝐢𝐜𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬

"Optimality Justifications is the triumphant culmination of a research programme pursued by Gerhard Schurz for a little over fifteen years. At its heart is a mathematical result that Schurz proves, building on a tradition of related results from the computational theory of learning [...] Upon this result, Schurz wishes to build a novel a posteriori justification of inductive inference as a rational method by which to form empirical beliefs. And around this justification, he wishes to construct a comprehensive internalist foundationalist epistemology. The basic beliefs of this foundationalist system are certain analytic truths and certain of those beliefs formed by introspection; and the inferences by which we are justified in forming new beliefs on the basis of ones already justified are classical logical deduction, induction, and abduction (or inference to the best explanation)."

Read it here:

Richard Pettigrew reviews Optimality Justifications, by Gerhard Schurz

30/04/2024

New BJPS Short Read! Davide Serpico & Valentina Petrolini on rethinking mental health and pathology through epigenetics. Read (or listen) here:

Davide Serpico and Valentina Petrolini on rethinking mental health and pathology through epigenetics

23/04/2024

New on the BJPS Review of Books: Jo Wolff reviews Nina Emery’s 𝐍𝐚𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐚𝐥𝐢𝐬𝐦 𝐛𝐞𝐲𝐨𝐧𝐝 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐋𝐢𝐦𝐢𝐭𝐬 𝐨𝐟 𝐒𝐜𝐢𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐞

"An exciting and much needed contribution to the ongoing debate over naturalistic metaphysics. The return of metaphysics—understood as the philosophical study of what the world is like—has prompted difficult questions about the relationship of this branch of philosophy to science, which is arguably our best way of addressing questions about what the world is like. Are metaphysicians offering an alternative to scientific theories about the world, is their work complementary, or should they feel constrained by our best scientific theories? Emery frames these questions as a dilemma: either metaphysicians and scientists are doing the same thing, in which case, ‘what is the point of doing metaphysics at all?’; or else metaphysicians are doing something substantially different, in which case, ‘metaphysics starts to seem like a pretty mysterious enterprise’.”

Jo Wolff reviews Naturalism beyond the Limits of Science, by Nina Emery

18/04/2024

Some changes in the BJPS editorial team… Alyssa Ney, Anya Plutynski, and Paul Weirich step down (boo!), while Lauren Ross, Jonah Schupbach, and Al Wilson join the ranks (yay!). More here:

Changes to the BJPS editorial team

16/04/2024

New BJPS Short Read! James Ladyman and Lorenzo Lorenzetti on understanding effective realism through the lens of structural realism. Read (or listen) here:

James Ladyman and Lorenzo Lorenzetti on understanding effective realism through the lens of structural realism