BJPS

20/08/2026

Just accepted:

Memory as a Generative Source of Understanding
– Jocelyn Yuxing Wang

Read it here:
https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/743554

ABSTRACT. What is the epistemic role of memory? In this article, I depart from two kinds of views in the literature. The first type of view that I reject is the traditional ‘storehouse’ view that memory merely functions to preserve previously acquired information, such as information acquired through perception. Memory, I argue, plays a more active role. The second type of view argues that memory generates new epistemic values in addition to preserving information, but it narrowly focuses on memory’s epistemic generativity with respect to justification. In the view I propose here, in addition to generating justification, memory also improves our understanding of previously encoded contents. I provide this argument using empirical evidence about the role of memory consolidation, a process that has been overlooked by most of the philosophy literature. I argue that through several different mechanisms, including pattern extraction and integration of piecemeal information, the consolidation process enhances some of the important cognitive abilities that constitute understanding.

18/08/2026

Just accepted: Feraz Azhar, A Problem of ‘Relevance'
Read the paper here: https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/743555

ABSTRACT. In assessing support for a hypothesis, we must decide what evidence to include. The requirement of total evidence (RTE) demands we include our total relevant evidence. But what fixes relevance? Existing work on RTE does not explicitly address this, nor develop it in a way that is sensitive and readily applicable to the practice of modern-day science. I address these challenges. In particular, I introduce and critically analyse a version of RTE that makes precise two conditions for evidence to count as 'relevant' ('admissibility' and 'non-redundancy') in a way that renders RTE readily applicable to scientific models understood from a practical, modern viewpoint. I dub this the 'effective turn': scientific models are analysed in light of their limited regimes of applicability. I also provide a contrast with implementations of RTE in more general settings, where model-relative guardrails may be absent and the problem of what fixes relevance is correspondingly thornier.

30/07/2026

Have we got a bunch of numbers for you! That's right, it's a pile of stats concerning submissions, authors, referees, and the journal itself. And, for the dedicated reader, there's our annual report to get your teeth into. (TL;DR: the numbers are good again this year.)

Acceptance rates, time to decisions, and more

21/07/2026

It's happening

16/07/2026

If you are at the BSPS conference next week, join us for our ask the editors’ session, and learn the one weird trick to getting published*

*write good

(Pictured: Behind the scenes at BJPS Towers with Matilda from marketing and our newest intern, Archie)

09/07/2026

The BSPS Annual Conference is taking place in Leeds this year, and in our unbiased opinion, it's the best conference around. But if you can't join us, you can at least watch the keynotes, which will be both livestreamed and later posted on our YouTube channel.

First up, our fearless leader Robin Hendry delivers his Presidential Address, 'Metaphysics and Science: A Call for History', on Tuesday 21 July at 4pm (UK time).

Abstract below and link to livestream here:
https://teams.microsoft.com/l/meetup-join/19%3ameeting_Y2NlMjQ4YjgtZmUzYS00MjdlLThlNDgtNzUyODkzODY0ZWM1%40thread.v2/0?context=%7b%22Tid%22%3a%22bdeaeda8-c81d-45ce-863e-5232a535b7cb%22%2c%22Oid%22%3a%22ed455b3d-7334-4ddf-938a-4901e8055421%22%7d

ABSTRACT. Scientists and philosophers down the ages have argued that there should be no overlap between science and metaphysics. Others have claimed, to the contrary, that science needs a foundation that only metaphysics can provide. I would challenge both these lines of thought, but the first is the main target of this talk.

Consider the following claims, which are widely accepted:

(1) The Universe was created in a great explosion whose effects remain visible;

(2) Biological species are the product of a chancy process involving mutation and natural selection;

(3) What happens in our minds is the outcome of neural processes.

Not only are these all metaphysical (in a broad sense): scientific research is also relevant to them, even if they aren’t simple to decide.

If we understand metaphysics broadly to be concerned with general and abstract questions of existence and reality, science is clearly concerned with metaphysics. But how good is science at answering metaphysical questions like these, and under what conditions? I address that question historically, by looking at two well-known failures (causal determinism and Newtonian mechanics; a claimed refutation of vitalism); and some important but neglected successes (the achievements of 19th-century chemistry).

I conclude by arguing that metaphysical claims can be supported by science if they have had an active, intimate and indispensable heuristic and conceptual role in the development of science. Otherwise, it’s too soon to tell.

09/07/2026

From the new issue: Lance Balthazar, 'Distal Content in Informational Teleosemantics: Challenges from Colour Constancy and Colour Chemistry'
Read it here: https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/725655

ABSTRACT. In general, visual experiences represent determinately. And visual experiences, generally, represent properties of distal objects like their colour, shape, and size, but they do not, generally, represent properties of proximal states like that of incoming light or the retina. By making perceptual constancies central to perceptual representation, Schulte extends Neander’s causal–informational teleosemantic theory in order to accommodate these facts. However, by appealing to the psychophysics and chemistry of how light-related properties interact to produce stimulation to the visual system and how the visual system processes such input to produce experiences, I argue that Schulte’s theory fails to accommodate the facts of distality and determinacy.

08/07/2026

New from the BJPS Review of Books: Cathal O’Madagain reviews When Minds Converse, by Philip Pettit
Read it here:

Cathal O’Madagain reviews When Minds Converse, by Philip Pettit

07/07/2026

From the new issue: Kevin J Lande, 'Contours of Vision: Towards a Compositional Semantics of Perception'
Read it here:
https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/725094

ABSTRACT. Mental capacities for perceiving, remembering, thinking, and planning involve the processing of structured mental representations. A compositional semantics of such representations would explain how the content of any given representation is determined by the contents of its constituents and their mode of combination. While many have argued that semantic theories of mental representations would have broad value for understanding the mind, there have been few attempts to develop such theories in a systematic and empirically constrained way. This article contributes to that end by developing a semantics for a ‘fragment’ of our mental representational system: the visual system’s representations of the bounding contours of objects. At least three distinct kinds of composition are involved in such representations: ‘concatenation’, ‘feature composition’, and ‘contour composition’. I sketch the constraints on and semantics of each of these. This account has three principal payoffs. First, it models a working framework for compositionally ascribing structure and content to perceptual representations, while highlighting core kinds of evidence that bear on such ascriptions. Second, it shows how a compositional semantics of perception can be compatible with holistic, or Gestalt, phenomena, which are often taken to show that the whole percept is other than the sum of its parts. Finally, the account illuminates the format of a key type of perceptual representation, bringing out the ways in which contour representations exhibit domain-specific form of the sort that is typical of structured icons such as diagrams and maps, in contrast to typical discursive representations of logic and language.

27/06/2026

Want an intro to the big ideas in this issue’s Editors’ Choice article? We have a short read for that!

When are interventions evidence for their non-effects?