BJPS

03/06/2026

New from the BJPS Review of Books: Jason DeWitt reviews Rules to Infinity, by Mark Povich

Jason DeWitt reviews Rules to Infinity, by Mark Povich

28/05/2026

Just accepted: Alvaro Mozota Frauca, 'The Limitations of the Notion of "Observable" in Diffeomorphism-Invariant Models'

Read it here:
https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/741910

ABSTRACT. The application of the notion of `observable' from gauge theory to diffeomorphism-invariant theories—and, most relevantly, to general relativity—has led to numerous conceptual and technical issues for interpreting classical theories and building quantum versions of them. I distinguish between two senses of gauge transformation, local and global, and argue that the notion of `observable' appears more naturally in the local sense of gauge transformation. Then I argue that diffeomorphism invariance can be understood as a gauge symmetry only from a global point of view and hence that the concept of `observable' applies only in a restricted manner. This has the consequence that some popular claims in the literature, such as that the physical content of diffeomorphism-invariant models is encoded in correlations, are unfounded.

27/05/2026

Just accepted: Lorenzo Sartori, 'Smugglers of Reference: Expressivist-Inferentialism and the Inevitability of Model Denotation'

Read it here:
https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/742351

ABSTRACT. Khalifa, Millson, and Risjord have proposed a ‘thoroughgoing’ inferentialist account of scientific representation. They claim this account overcomes the ‘smuggling’ objection: the fact that inferentialist accounts always require implicitly relying on some more fundamental relation between the model and the target, such as similarity, isomorphism, or denotation. Their proposal attempts to avoid the smuggling objection by exporting Brandom’s expressivist theory of reference from the philosophy of language to the case of scientific representation. I set aside similarity and isomorphism to focus on denotation. Using the DEKI account of scientific representation, which assumes denotation to be a crucial element of representation, as a point of reference, I critically analyse Khalifa et al.’s proposal. I argue that their proposal does not successfully address the smuggling objection and that it is also open to further objections. I conclude that denotation is a required element for a working account of scientific representation and that thoroughgoing inferentialism remains unsatisfactory.

14/05/2026

From the latest issue: Tomasz Wysocki, 'The Underdeterministic Framework'
Read it here: https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/724450

ABSTRACT. Philosophy and statistics have studied two causal species, deterministic and probabilistic. There’s a third species, however, hitherto unanalysed: underdeterministic causal phenomena, which are non-deterministic yet non-probabilistic. Here, I formulate a framework for modelling them. Consider a simple case. If I go out, I may stumble into you but also may miss you. If I don’t go out, we won’t meet. I go out. We meet. My going out is a cause of our encounter even if there was no determinate probability of us meeting conditional on my going out. The cause is neither deterministic (it didn’t necessitate the effect) nor probabilistic (the relevant conditional probabilities are undefined). Rather, it’s underdeterministic: it raises the modal status of the effect from causally impossible to possible. Here, I won’t offer a theory of such token causes but develop the prerequisite for any such theory: the underdeterministic framework. The framework is like the deterministic structural-equations framework but with one consequential difference—an equation can return multiple values. This change allows me to define causal possibility and necessity and corresponding notions of interventionist might- and would-counterfactuals. I also define conditional independence, which obeys the graphoid axioms, and prove that underdeterministic models satisfy the causal Markov condition. The framework can causally model situations that other frameworks cannot: decision-making under bounded uncertainty, games with multiple equilibria, infinite fair lotteries, and any other non-deterministic situation where indeterminacies are essentially non-probabilistic, or where we have a reason not to use probabilities.

13/05/2026

From the new issue: 'Biological Mistakes: What They Are and What They Mean for the Experimental Biologist'
– David Oderberg, Jonathan Hill, Christopher Austin, Ingo Bojak, François Cinotti & Jonathan M Gibbins
Read it here (open access): https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/724444

ABSTRACT. Organisms and other biological entities are mistake-prone: they get things wrong. The entities of pure physics, such as atoms and inorganic molecules, do not make mistakes: they do what they do according to physical law, with no room for error except on the part of the physicist or their theory. We set out a novel framework for understanding biology and its demarcation from physics—that of mistake-making. We distinguish biological mistakes from mere failures. We then propose a rigorous definition of mistakes that although invoking the concept of function, is compatible with various views about what functions are. The definition of mistake-making is agential, since mistakes do not just happen—at least in the sense analysed here—but are made. This requires, then, a notion of biological agency that we set out as a definition of the minimal biological agent. The article then considers a series of objections to the theory presented here, along with our replies. Two key features of our theory of mistakes are, first, that it is a supplement to, not a replacement for, existing general frameworks within which biology is understood and practised. Second, it is designed to be experimentally productive. Hence we end with a series of case studies where mistake theory can be shown to be useful in the potential generation of research questions and novel hypotheses of interest to the working biologist.

12/05/2026

New from the BJPS Review of Books: Luke Kersten reviews The Physical Signature of Computation, by Neal G Anderson & Gualtiero Piccinini

Luke Kersten reviews The Physical Signature of Computation, by Neal G. Anderson & Gualtiero Piccinini

11/05/2026

From the new issue: John Dougherty, 'Effective and Selective Realisms'
Read it here:
https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/724978

ABSTRACT. Scientific realists argue that empirically successful theories latch on to unobservable features of reality. But it is often thought that conventional theories of particle physics do not deserve realist commitment, despite their outstanding empirical success. Recently, a number of ‘effective’ realisms have argued that we should distinguish between the low- and high-energy claims of particle theory and that we can and should be realist about the former but not the latter. I present a reductio ad absurdum against the most naive extension of this proposal to the most empirically successful theories of particle physics, such as quantum electrodynamics. By considering two replies to this argument, I distinguish two forms of effective realism. A conservative form hews closely to traditional forms of realism, and the resources of this tradition allow conservative effective realism to avoid the reductio; however, this form of effective realism is left without a positive account of quantum electrodynamics. A more radical form of effective realism can account for quantum electrodynamics, but it requires substantial development, along with a revision of the terms of the realist debate.

08/05/2026

From the new issue: Lauren N Ross, 'Cascade Versus Mechanism: The Diversity of Causal Structure in Science'
Read it here (open access):
https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/723623

ABSTRACT. According to mainstream philosophical views causal explanation in biology and neuroscience is mechanistic. As the term ‘mechanism’ gets regular use in these fields it is unsurprising that philosophers consider it important to scientific explanation. What is surprising is that they consider it the only causal term of importance. This article provides an analysis of a new causal concept—it examines the cascade concept in science and the causal structure it refers to. I argue that this concept is importantly different from the notion of mechanism and that this difference matters for our understanding of causation and explanation in science.

06/05/2026

From the new issue: Katie Robertson & Alastair Wilson, 'Theoretical Relicts: Progress, Reduction, and Autonomy'
Read it here (open access): https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/724445

ABSTRACT. When once-successful physical theories are abandoned, common wisdom has it that their characteristic theoretical entities are abandoned with them: examples include phlogiston, light rays, Newtonian forces, Euclidean space. But sometimes a theory sees ongoing use, despite being superseded. What should scientific realists say about the characteristic entities of the theories in such cases? The standard answer is that these ‘theoretical relicts’ are merely useful fictions. In this article we offer a different answer. We start by distinguishing horizontal reduction (in which a superseded theory approximates the successor theory) from vertical reduction (in which a higher-level theory abstracts away from the lower-level theory, but nonetheless can be constructed from it); these are usually regarded as having different ontological consequences. We describe a ‘verticalization’ procedure that transforms horizontal reductions into vertical reductions. The resulting verticalized theories are abstractions rather than approximations, with restricted domains. We identify a sense in which the higher-level theory describes distinct subject matters from the lower-level theory, enabling in certain cases the higher-level theory to retain distinctive explanatory power even in the presence of reduction. We suggest that theoretical entities from superseded theories should be retained in a scientific realist worldview just when, reinterpreted as higher-level abstractions, those theories and their characteristic entities continue to perform distinctive explanatory work in providing the best explanation for less fundamental phenomena of interest. In slogan form: a good relict is an emergent relict.

05/05/2026

New from the BJPS Review of Books: Playing Possum: How Animals Understand Death, by Susana Monsó. Reviewed by Tiffani Thomason & Colin Allen

Tiffani Thomason & Colin Allen review Playing Possum, by Susana Monsó