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This is a replication study of our study on the role of plausibility in acceptance of novel propositions (challenge to Gilbert's "Spinozan" theory of belief formation), which we had preregistered (https://osf.io/mkrvd).

IGITUR – Arguments philosophiques, Vol. 13 No 1 (2022): Les disputes de la raison

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International audience

La décision est devenue aujourd’hui un enjeu majeur : les décisions, individuelles ou collectives, ont des effets parfois énormes, le monde s’est étendu et complexifié, les participants et les instances sont toujours plus nombreux, les informations toujours plus abondantes et, grâce à la science, plus fiables, l’informatique fournit de puissants outils. Nous ne sommes pourtant pas sûrs de savoir ce qu’est une bonne décision ni comment y parvenir. Cet ouvrage examine la décision sous l’angle théorique et sous la forme qu’elle prend dans le contexte des sciences et du droit. Il constitue une contribution originale mais accessible à la théorie de la décision et à la philosophie des sciences.

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International audience; This paper proposes a critical assessment of the concept of "conspiracy theory" as a coherent object of investigation, and evaluates the prospects for an integration of various avenues of research—sociological, epistemological, psychological—that deal with it. Because of the threat posed by conspiracy theories to public health and political stability, academic efforts to understand the sociological and cognitive basis for the adoption of such views, as well as their epistemological flaws, are undoubtedly needed. But the preliminary question of the unity, and of the specificity of the class of things called "conspiracy theories" , is often overlooked. It is addressed in this paper. Starting from a tentative classification of the various ideations labelled "conspiracy theories" , we then focus on a particularly important subclass thereof, namely those promoting anti-scientific views. From this, we draw a first, sceptical conclusion as to the existence of a clear-cut boundary between conspiracy thinking and healthy rational critique of science (both sociological and philosophical). This leads us to evaluate the attempt of analysing conspiracy theories' epistemic flaws in the light of philosophical standards for scientific theories. Having shown that this route is a dead-end, we highlight what appears as a major divide among philosophical and psychological accounts of CTs, namely whether one should treat them as irrational, or as merely wrong (in the latter, rationalist approach, CTs would just be wrong statements resulting from rational operations). Focusing again on anti-science CTs, we finally argue in favour of a politically and socially contextualised approach to the growth and spread of conspiracy ideations, over a scheme considering CTs as abstract entities , independently from the socially situated agents who hold them.

International audience; Computer simulations are widely used in current scientific practice, as a tool to obtain information about various phenomena. Scientists accordingly rely on the outputs of computer simulations to make statements about the empirical world. In that sense, simulations seem to enable scientists to acquire empirical knowledge. The aim of this paper is to assess whether computer simulations actually allow for the production of empirical knowledge, and how. It provides an epistemological analysis of present- day empirical science, to which the traditional epistemological categories cannot apply in any simple way. Our strategy consists in acknowledging the complexity of scientific practice, and trying to assess its rationality. Hence, while we are careful not to abstract away from the details of scientific practice, our approach is not strictly descriptive: our goal is to state in what conditions empirical science can rely on computer simulations. In order to do so, we need to adopt a renewed epistemological framework, whose categories would enable us to give a finer-grained, and better-fitted analysis of the rationality of scientific practice.

During the last few decades, models have become the centre of attention in both cognitive science and philosophy of science. In cognitive science, the claim that humans reason with mental models, rather than mentally manipulate linguistic symbols, is the majority view. Similarly, philosophers of science almost unanimously acknowledge that models have to be taken as a central unit of analysis. Moreover, some philosophers of science and cognitive scientists have suggested that the cognitive hypothesis of mental models is a promising way of accounting for the use of models in science. However, once the importance of models in cognition as well as in science has been acknowledged, much more needs to be said about how models enable agents to make predictions, and to understand the world. In this paper, our goal (as a cognitive scientist, working on causal reasoning, and a philosopher of science, working on models and representations) is twofold. We would like to further develop the notion of mental models, and to explore the parallels between mental models as a concept in cognitive science, and models in science. While acknowledging that the parallel move towards models in cognitive science and in philosophy of science is in the right direction, we think that: i. the notion of mental models needs to be clarified in order to serve as a useful tool, ii. the relation between the hypothesis of mental models and the use of models in science is still to be clarified. First, we will briefly recall a few points about the mental model hypothesis, on the one hand, and the model-centred view of science, on the other hand. Then, we will present our parallel criticisms, and put forward our own proposals.

In this paper, I analyze the significance of Ernest Nagel's introduction of the notion of model in his reconstruction of scientific theories. Nagel's account is generally considered as a version of the "received view" of theories, whose main advocate is Carnap. However, I will show that Nagel's considerations on models imply a renunciation to the logical empiricists' project of the formalization of scientific theories. I will argue that Nagel implicitly acknowledges that, in order to study the content of theories, one cannot abstract away from the agents' understanding of theories, and from the reasoning processes they perform when using them.

Je me propose d'examiner dans le détail la manière dont Ernest Nagel (1961), considéré comme l'un des derniers représentants de l'empirisme logique, introduit la notion de modèle dans la reconstruction qu'il propose des théories scientifiques. Je m'efforcerai de montrer que, présentée comme un infléchissement mineur de la conception " orthodoxe " des théories formulée par Carnap (1956, 1966), l'introduction de la notion de modèle implique en fait un renoncement au projet formalisateur de l'empirisme logique. Elle marque en effet la reconnaissance du fait qu'on ne peut faire abstraction, dans l'étude du contenu des théories, de la compréhension qu'en ont leurs utilisateurs. J'espère par là contribuer à la fois à éclairer un épisode important de l'histoire de la philosophie analytique des sciences, et apporter un éclairage utile sur les débats actuels autour de la notion de modèle et, plus largement, des représentations théoriques. La plupart des sens de la notion de modèle telle qu'elle est utilisée aujourd'hui, et des problèmes soulevés par cette polysémie, sont en effet déjà présents dans le texte de Nagel.

International audience; Linkage (or genetic) maps are graphs, which are intended to represent the linear ordering of genes on the chromosomes. They are constructed on the basis of statistical data concerning the transmission of genes. The invention of this technique in 1913 was driven by Morgan’s group’s adoption of a set of hypotheses concerning the physical mechanism of heredity. These hypotheses were themselves grounded in Morgan’s defense of the chromosome theory of heredity, according to which chro- mosomes are the physical basis of genes. In this paper, I analyze the 1919 debate between William Castle and Morgan’s group, about the construction of genetic maps. The official issue of the debate concerns the arrangement of genes on chromosomes. However, the disputants tend to carry out the discussions about how one should model the data in order to draw predictions concerning the transmission of genes; the debate does not bear on the data themselves, nor does it focus on the hypotheses explaining these data. The main criteria that are appealed to by the protagonists are simplicity and predictive efficacy. However, I show that both parties’ assessments of the simplicity and predictive efficacy of different ways of modeling the data themselves depend on background theoretical positions. I aim at clarifying how preference for a given model and theoretical commitments articulate.

N° de la revue Synthèse

In this paper, I propose a study of the invention and development of the technique of genetic mapping in the 1920's. I show that what is usually taken as one and the same theory (Classical Genetics) is in fact the result of the articulation of various levels of explanations corresponding to two different disciplines, with different methods and representational practices -- namely Mendelian theory and cytology. The merging of these two disciplinary frameworks is embodied in the very rules underlying the construction and interpretation of genetic maps. Moreover, the debates between the geneticists around how to display data within these maps reveal that they have different understanding of the articulation of these disciplines (and different theoretical commitments).

Ouvrage de référence sur la notion de théorie scientifique et sur la philosophie des sciences anglo-saxonne contemporaine, qui demeure encore aujourd'hui peu connue en France. La notion de théorie est centrale pour la philosophie des sciences. La définition de cette notion a fait l'objet d'importantes discussions chez les philosophes des sciences du XXe siècle, héritiers et critiques de l'empirisme logique. Par-delà leurs dissensions, ces philosophes ont en commun le projet de distinguer le contenu des théories de leurs formulations, au moyen d'outils formels empruntés à la logique et aux mathématiques.

La première partie porte sur le problème de la continuité du changement scientifique (" Le changement scientifique est-il continu? "). Elle traite 1° de l'approche des positivistes logiques héritiers du Cercle de Vienne ; 2° des critiques qui leur sont adressées par les historiens des sciences, dénonçant leur approche anhistorique du problème à travers l'examen des crises et des révolutions scientifiques (Kuhn), dans la mesure où ces crises et révolutions impliquent des changements de paradigmes incommensurables (Feyerabend) ; enfin 3° des critiques qui peuvent être adressées aux thèses de Kuhn et Feyerabend. La seconde partie analyse le problème du progrès scientifique, essentiellement dans son approche normative (" Comment définir le progrès scientifique? "). La troisième présente les schémas explicatifs proposés par Popper et Kuhn pour comprendre la dynamique par laquelle une période scientifique succède à une autre (" Quel est le moteur du changement scientifique? "). Enfin la dernière partie aborde la question de la rationalité et de la nécessité du changement scientifique à travers l'examen des positions réalistes et anti-réalistes.