The computational philosophy: simulation as a core philosophical method

Mayo-Wilson, Conor; Zollman, Kevin J. S.

doi:10.1007/s11229-020-02950-3

Cited by 14 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 84 publications

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“…While it may turn out that such a threat is indeed relevant under specific conditions of inquiry, which exact conditions these are (when interpreted in terms of actual scientific practice) has remained largely underspecified in the literature. 20 From a more general point of view, our study provides support to recent calls for a modest treatment of results obtained by highly idealized agent-based models of scientific inquiry unless they have been empirically validated (Martini & Fernández Pinto, 2017;Frey & Šešelja, 2018;Thicke, 2020;Šešelja et al 2020;Šešelja, 2021; for a somewhat different viewpoint see Mayo-Wilson & Zollman, 2021).…”

Section: Searchsupporting

confidence: 58%

Rethinking the history of peptic ulcer disease and its relevance for network epistemology

Radomski

Šešelja

Naumann

2021

HPLS

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The history of the research on peptic ulcer disease (PUD) is characterized by a premature abandonment of the bacterial hypothesis, which subsequently had its comeback, leading to the discovery of Helicobacter pylori—the major cause of the disease. In this paper we examine the received view on this case, according to which the primary reason for the abandonment of the bacterial hypothesis in the mid-twentieth century was a large-scale study by a prominent gastroenterologist Palmer, which suggested no bacteria could be found in the human stomach. To this end, we employ the method of digital textual analysis and study the literature on the etiology of PUD published in the decade prior to Palmer’s article. Our findings suggest that the bacterial hypothesis had already been abandoned before the publication of Palmer’s paper, which challenges the widely held view that his study played a crucial role in the development of this episode. In view of this result, we argue that the PUD case does not illustrate harmful effects of a high degree of information flow, as it has frequently been claimed in the literature on network epistemology. Moreover, we argue that alternative examples of harmful effects of a high degree of information flow may be hard to find in the history of science.

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Section: Searchsupporting

confidence: 58%

Rethinking the history of peptic ulcer disease and its relevance for network epistemology

Radomski

Šešelja

Naumann

2021

HPLS

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“…A quick gloss on the purpose of thought experiments is that they serve primarily as intuition pumps (Dennett, 1980(Dennett, , 1991(Dennett, , 2013. They may be used, for example, to elicit normative intuitions, to justify counterfactual claims (also relying on intuitions), to explore logical relationships among philosophical theses, among others (Mayo-Wilson and Zollman, 2020). As Dennett (1980) describes intuition pumps, they are typically used for provoking 'a family of intuitions by producing variations on a basic thought experiment' (429).…”

Section: Philosophical Thought Experimentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Moral dilemmas for moral machines

LaCroix

2022

AI Ethics

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Autonomous systems are being developed and deployed in situations that may require some degree of ethical decision-making ability. As a result, research in machine ethics has proliferated in recent years. This work has included using moral dilemmas as validation mechanisms for implementing decision-making algorithms in ethically-loaded situations. Using trolley-style problems in the context of autonomous vehicles as a case study, I argue (1) that this is a misapplication of philosophical thought experiments because (2) it fails to appreciate the purpose of moral dilemmas, and (3) this has potentially catastrophic consequences; however, (4) there are uses of moral dilemmas in machine ethics that are appropriate and the novel situations that arise in a machine-learning context can shed some light on philosophical work in ethics.

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“…7). This is beautiful work, and a great example of computational philosophy in action (Mayo-Wilson and Zollman, 2021). But in what sense does this give us an explanation of the success of induction?…”

Section: The Simulations Douven (2021 2) Writesmentioning

confidence: 96%

On Explaining the Success of Induction

Sterkenburg¹

2021

The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science

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Douven (2021) observes that Schurz's meta-inductive justification of induction cannot explain the great empirical success of induction, and offers an explanation based on computer simulations of the social and evolutionary development of our inductive practices. In this paper, I argue that Douven's account does not address the explanatory question that Schurz's argument leaves open, and that the assumption of the environment's induction-friendliness that is inherent to Douven's simulations is not justified by Schurz's argument.

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The computational philosophy: simulation as a core philosophical method

Cited by 14 publications

References 84 publications

Rethinking the history of peptic ulcer disease and its relevance for network epistemology

Rethinking the history of peptic ulcer disease and its relevance for network epistemology

Moral dilemmas for moral machines

On Explaining the Success of Induction

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