What is lost if we don’t have a diagnosis? This article examines the aims of clinical medicine and the role of understanding in these aims. Starting from a case prompt with a patient suffering from persistent physical symptoms, I argue that understanding is at the clinical core and that the target of such understanding is the patient’s body with symptoms. Synthesizing accounts of medical understanding and phenomenology of illness, I suggest that the understanding sought in the clinic extends beyond mechanistic explanation to include a sense of bodily intelligibility and that diagnoses are useful but not necessary tools to this end.

We report new findings from an empirical study of scientists from seven disciplines and scholars working in history and philosophy of science regarding their views about scientific realism. We found that researchers’ general disposition to endorse or reject realism was better predicted by their views regarding scientific progress than their views about the mind-independence of scientific phenomena or other common theses in the realism debate. Age and gender also significantly predicted endorsement of scientific realism. Implications of these findings for philosophical debates about scientific realism and scientific progress are considered.

In this article, I present the immunological account of physiological individuality courtesy of Thomas Pradeu and the evolutionary account of biological individuality from Ellen Clarke. I argue that in combination, the logic of these two accounts implies that all physiological individuals are capable of undergoing evolution by natural selection. The main objection to this view is the case of holobionts. Here I argue that this objection is unjustified and that holobionts meet basic criteria for evolutionary individuality. As such, this supports the view that physiological individuals are also evolutionary individuals.

The range of putatively medical animal practices varies widely both functionally and mechanistically. In this article, we argue that the definitions of medicine available in the empirical literature are inadequate for distinguishing genuinely medical practices from other adaptive behaviors. We aim to improve this conceptual landscape by proposing a definition that incorporates both cognitive and functional requirements, enabling finer-grained distinctions across species and behaviors. We apply our definition to the evidence and determine which animal behaviors show a mere difference of degree with paradigmatic medical practices—and should be seen as medicine—and which should be excluded from this nomenclature.

I use Swampman to illuminate the role of thought experiments in philosophy of science. Against Millikan and others, I argue that even outlandish thought experiments can shed light on science and scientific kinds, so long as we understand them as illustrations of scientific reasoning, not as examples of scientific kinds. The logic of thought experiments, understood as illustrations, is analogous to the logic of common experimental paradigms in science. So, in reviving Swampman and showing how he survives teleosemantic objections, I also provide a framework for understanding how, why, and when thought experiments are informative about science and scientific kinds.

As technology fosters connections among like-minded individuals, concerns about the effects of homogeneous clusters—often criticized as ideological bubbles and echo chambers—have intensified. While these clusters are commonly seen as obstacles to independent thought and progress, this paper argues that they can, under certain conditions, drive significant advancements. By revising computational models of collective problem-solving and examining historical cases, I demonstrate that clusters, particularly among minority groups with superior ideas, can overcome dominant resistance and promote progress. However, this clustering introduces trade-offs, including slower consensus formation.

Vitamins are important scientific categories in different contexts. This article argues that vitamins are investigative kinds in middle-range ontologies: Categories subject to open-ended investigation and that track features of the world. Section 2 presents the history of vitamin discovery to illustrate how the introduction of the “vitamin” category and subsequent research led to the identification of many different vitamins. Section 3 explores whether vitamins can be considered natural or conventional kinds. Section 4 argues that vitamins are investigative kinds. Section 5 considers the ontology of vitamins as investigative kinds in a middle-range ontology.

Numerous phenomena prompt inquiries into their origins, spanning from the cosmos and life, to species, civilizations, and pandemics. Answering these questions entails offering origin explanations. Here, I explore the distinctive characteristics of origin explanations that distinguish them from other types of explanations. I explicate the concept of an origin phenomenon and suggest conceptualizing an origin explanation as a specific form of causal explanation—one that reveals a bottleneck in the causal network leading to an origin phenomenon. The resulting framework highlights the specificity of origin explanations across disciplines, pinpointing distinctive topological features within the causal structure of the world.

The literature on theoretical equivalence in the philosophy of physics is replete with physical theories that look quite different but are purportedly equivalent. Plausibly, there might exist a pair of equivalent theories that look different insofar as they existentially quantify over different entities. However, given the preeminence of the quantificational theory of ontological commitment, which tells us to look to quantified entities to inform ontology, such a pair of theories seems to be a problem. In this article, I argue that there is no good way out of the problem, and I reject the quantificational theory of ontological commitment.

Human computers and micro-observers were scientific workers who performed calculations or reduced and analysed data before the advent of electronic computers. They were a staple of big science during the nineteenth and early to mid twentieth century. Despite their prevalence within big science, their epistemic roles remain unexamined by philosophy of science. This paper investigates the epistemic roles of the human computers at the Harvard College Observatory 1880–1920 and of micro-observers at the Bristol Nuclear Research Group 1935–1955; it argues that the instrumentalisation of human computers and micro-observers has negative epistemic consequences for the methodology of science.

It is plausible that a witness’s credibility is lowered if he testifies to an outcome that has low probability, but this is not always true. If the outcome has a low prior due only to its specificity (as in a fair lottery), witness credibility is not lowered by attesting to it. Even when witness credibility does drop as a result of the testimony, it can substantially confirm its contents, and agreement between independent witnesses can “give back” credibility that one witness lost. Formal modeling and analysis shed light on when each of these situations obtains.

Some philosophers argue that pragmatist accounts of causation require accepting perspectivalism—the view that causation depends on an agent’s perspective. This paper critically evaluates this inference by examining Price’s arguments for perspectivalism and against Woodward’s view. I demonstrate that Price’s positive argument rests on an unacceptable premise, and drawing on Woodward’s work, I propose a pragmatist realist view of causation that survives Price’s criticisms. This pragmatist realism identifies causes through human concerns and practices, but treats the causal relation as objective and independent of agential perspectives. The paper concludes by showing Ismael’s perspectivalist view is consistent with pragmatist realism.

I present a heretofore untheorized form of lay science, called extitutional science, whereby lay scientists, by virtue of their collective experience, are able to detect errors committed by institutional scientists and attempt to have them corrected. I argue that the epistemic success of institutional science is enhanced to the extent that it takes up this extitutional criticism. Because this uptake does not occur spontaneously, extitutional interference in the conduct of institutional science is required. I make a proposal for how to secure this epistemically beneficial form of lay interference.

Philosophers have claimed that: (a) Born–Oppenheimer approximation methods for solving molecular Schrödinger equations violate the Heisenberg uncertainty relations; therefore, (b) ‘quantum chemistry’ is not fully quantum; and (c) therefore chemistry does not reduce to physics. This paper analyses the reasoning behind Born–Oppenheimer methods and shows that they are internally consistent and fully quantum mechanical, contrary to (a)–(c). Our analysis addresses important issues of mathematical rigour, physical idealization, reduction, and classicality in the quantum theory of molecules, and we propose an agenda for the philosophy of quantum chemistry more grounded in scientific practice.

This article examines whether characteristic modeling practices in economics lead to progress, that is, improved explanations and predictions. We question the widespread assumption that progress in modeling occurs solely through successive vertical refinements toward a single “best” model. Instead, we propose that progress can occur through multiple pathways. Specifically, we identify five distinct horizontal paths to progress: increased isolation of causal factors, differentiation of targets and purposes, derivation of robust theorems, multiplication of inconsistent perspectival models, and exploration of novel possibilities. We argue that these pathways, when properly constrained, increase explanatory and predictive power and therefore lead to scientific progress.

Evidence synthesis has recently seen an enormous increase across many different scientific disciplines. Despite its popularity, it has also been the subject of significant criticism. One of the main critiques of evidence synthesis is the existence and treatment of heterogeneity between primary studies. The aim of this article is to reexamine heterogeneity in evidence synthesis, including perspectives from evolutionary biology, ecology, and conservation. I argue that while some of the critiques of heterogeneity remain valid, there are contexts where it is much less problematic. Furthermore, I propose that heterogeneity can be useful because analyzing it can provide valuable information.

I give an account of ecology’s subject matter and generalizations in terms of functional roles. Functional roles are functionally defined kinds which include multiple species or general abiotic factors as members and occur in generalizations which hold across different ecological systems. Functional roles include central objects of study in ecology, like predator, parasite, and producer. I use functional roles to interpret and reorient major controversies in philosophy of ecology, including the metaphysics of ecological systems and the concept of “function.”

Philosophers have spilled much ink over the discovery of ideas in the classical “context of discovery.” However, there has been little engagement with the question of what constitutes a discovery of “things in the world.” A much-overlooked answer to this question is provided by T. S. Kuhn. In this article, I show that discoveries awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics over the past 53 years accord with a basic premise of Kuhn’s account and his distinction between two types of natural kind discoveries. I also draw normative conclusions for credit attribution in science.

Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is diagnosed more often in males than females. Recently, this gap has narrowed, a development often framed as overcoming gender bias. This framing rests on two problematic assumptions: (1) more equal diagnostic rates approximate truth and (2) there is such a truth in the first place. Assumption (1) is questionable because male populations are set as standard but potentially reflect overdiagnosis. Assumption (2) presumes ADHD to be a stable, discrete disease entity, which is epistemically and ontologically problematic. I argue that understanding (gender) bias here should focus on deviations from best practices and deliberative norms rather than a relation to truth.

Theories of bounded rationality join process reliabilists in holding that rationality is ecological, or environment-relative. Most theories of ecological rationality, like most versions of reliabilism, have been externalist. In this paper, I develop a de-externalized account of ecological rationality. I show how the account retains many advantages of externalist accounts while avoiding key challenges. I conclude with an application to the psychology of poverty, focusing on the rationality of agents caught in poverty traps.