The division of theoretical and practical philosophy was codified by Kant, who set aside the kingdom of natural necessity and the kingdom of moral ends. The last centuries saw gradual erosion of this ...

Abstract. Ethical statements can sometimes serve as legitimate evidence for purely descriptive hypotheses. This role for ethical statements need involve ne

Among much else, Peirce was concerned with understanding the nature of experimentation. And while Peirce scholarship frequently appeals to the role of experimentation in his philosophy, no one has yet...

Cambridge Core - Philosophy: General Interest - <i>What Is Life?</i> Revisited

CamPoS (Cambridge Philosophy of Science) is a network of academics and students working in the philosophy of science in various parts of the University of Cambridge, including the Department of Histor...

Submit work that examines how Hacking’s historical and pragmatic approach to philosophy has reshaped inquiries into psychiatry.

This paper contends with the notion that the methods of machine learning (ML) are unique among the tools of science in enabling a form of theory-free inductive inference. I challenge these assertions of epistemic distinctness, attributing the prevalence of these views to an untenable conception of scientific objectivity: what I term a theory-free ideal, in homage to its normative counterpart. ML, as a formal method of induction, must rely on conceptual or theoretical resources to get inference off the ground. By means of two case studies, I argue that this theory-free ideal has a deleterious effect on the epistemic standing of ML-involving science.

Mary Hesse’s work on the role of analogical reasoning in science has set the disciplinary standard. Her classic Models and Analogies in Science (1966) spearheaded the emergence of the philosophy...