Dr. Ioannis Votsis

I'm a Philosopher of Science at the University of Düsseldorf. My main area of expertise is Structural Realism. This website primarily contains information about my work.

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Conferences:
'The Theory-Ladenness of Experience' (March 10-11 2011) - I co-organised this conference with Gerhard Schurz and Michela Tacca. The aim of the conference was to bring together philosophers, psychologists and cognitive scientists whose work contributes to our understanding of the scope and limits of theory-ladenness phenomena, where these are broadly construed to include the domains of perception, scientific evidence and language. We hope that the resulting synergy helped to provide novel and fruitful answers to questions like the following: Is perception cognitively penetrable and, if so, how? Does the choice of scientific theory affect how we select, interpret and assess the evidential worth of data from experiments? Under what circumstances can we doubt the veridicality of scientific instruments? Can we draw a sharp distinction between terms that are theoretical and those that are observational? The talks thus dealt with one or more of the following topics: the modularity of mind, nonconceptual content, the epistemology of evidence and the semantics of observational terms.

'Novel Predictions' (February 25-26 2011) - I co-organised this conference with Gerhard Schurz and Ludwig Fahrbach. The aim of the conference was to explore new and fruitful answers to three central questions: What are novel predictions? Ought novel predictions have more epistemic weight than mere accommodations? Can novel predictions help us make headway in the scientific realism debate? Related topics discussed: simplicity, unification, curve fitting, approximate truth, inference to the best explanation, no-miracles argument and scientific theory change.

Talks:
'Simplicity as a Guide to Falsity?' - Participants in the debate about whether simplicity is a guide to truth or merely pragmatically useful typically wrangle over two problems: (1) how to weigh simplicity against other virtues like strength and fitness and (2) whether there is a unique measure for simplicity that straps it to truth. I would like to put forth a third problem: (3) Even if problems (1) and (2) were solved, it is far from clear whether the simplest theory out of an available class of competitors would always be the one closest to the truth. (To be presented at the 14th Congress of Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science, Nancy, July 19-26 2011).

'Structural Realism and Causation: An Unhappy Marriage?' - It has recently been objected that structural realism, in its various guises, is unable to adequately account for causal phenomena (see, for example, Psillos 2006). In this talk, I consider whether structural realism has the resources to address this objection. (To be presented at the British Society for the Philosophy of Science Annual Conference, University of Sussex, July 7-8 2011).

'Runaway Models' - Among the main aims of science are to predict and explain the world. In order to pursue those aims, scientists employ theories, models, equations and the like to represent features of the world. How are we to understand this representation relation? Supporters of the semantic view of theories typically construe the representation relation in one of two ways: (i) in terms of some notion of morphism or (ii) in terms of some notion of similarity. In this talk, I take a closer look at a number of objections mounted against (i) and (ii). I argue that on the whole such objections are misguided for they demand representation in science to meet loose standards that the critics conceive of as appertaining to representation in art. Indeed, I argue that if we were to take such a demand seriously it would lead to runaway models of scientific representation that are of no clear benefit to the debate over what makes a scientific theory, model or equation represent its target domain informatively and adequately. (Invited talk presented at the Seminario di Logica e Filosofia della Scienza, Università di Firenze, May 5 2011).

'Endorsing the Methods of Science' - In this talk, I examine when and why we should trust scientific theories. I start off by considering a number of methods for deciding when to trust beliefs in the context of everyday life. I then compare these methods to those utilised in the context of science. It turns out that despite some differences there are plenty of common practices towards good believing in the two contexts. Indeed in various cases it can be argued that the practices of science are more stringent versions of those we employ in everyday life. At least with respect to these cases then one cannot endorse (either explicitly or implicitly) the validity of everyday life practices but reject the analogous ones in science. (Invited talk presented at the Dipartimento di Filosofia, Università di Pisa, May 4 2011).

'Structural Realism meets the Social Sciences' - Structural realism is arguably one of the most influential movements to have emerged in philosophy of science in the last decade or so. Advocates of this movement attempt to answer epistemological and/or ontological questions concerning science by arguing that the key to all such questions is the mathematical formalism of a theory. This is so, according to structural realists, because the mathematical formalism encodes all and only what is important about a theory’s target domain, namely its structure. Almost without exception, discussions of structural realism centre on the natural sciences and in particular on modern physics. Given that a number of other sciences are less – indeed in some cases much less – mathematised than modern physics, does structural realism have anything informative to say about them? In this talk, I take up the task of articulating what structural realists ought to say about the social sciences if they are to consider themselves as offering a coherent philosophy for the whole of science. (Invited talk presented at the , Economics and Institutional Change Research Seminar, Institute for Advanced Studies (IMT) Lucca, May 3 2011).

'Philosophy and Science: Past, Present and Future' - Philosophy and science have a rather intricate relationship. In this talk I will make some tentative steps towards answering a number of questions that are pertinent to this relationship in the hope of throwing some further light on it. The questions are as follows: (1) In what respects, if any, are the subject matter, aims, methods and achievements of the two endeavours similar? (2) How, if at all, has the development of the one influenced that of the other? (3) To what extent are they currently interacting? (4) What does the future hold for science and philosophy? (Invited talk presented at the Metaphysical Society's Annual Symposium, Trinity College Dublin, April 13 2011).

'Epistemic and Ontic Commitments: In Perfect Alignment?' - The epistemic form of structural realism asserts that our knowledge of the world is restricted to its structural features. Several proponents of this view assume that the world possesses non-structural features; features which, according to their view, cannot be known. In other words, they assume that there is, or, there ought to be (on the basis of normative arguments in epistemology), always a gap between our epistemological and ontological commitments. The ontic form of structural realism denies that this is, or ought to be, the case. Proponents of this view argue that the perfect alignment of epistemological and ontological commitments is a highly desirable meta- theoretical feature. They argue this on the basis of the prima facie sensible principle that our ontological commitments ought never to overreach our epistemic ones. Naturally the issue of alignment transcends the debate between the epistemic and the ontic structural realists. Is it in principle impossible for there to be circumstances under which we ought to subscribe to the misalignment of epistemological and ontological commitments? What do the different answers to this question entail for ontic structural realism? (Invited talk presented at the Structuralism Workshop, John J. Reilly Center for Science, Technology, and Values, University of Notre Dame, November 17-20 2010).

'The Prospective Stance in Realism' - Scientific realists endeavour to secure inferences from empirical success to approximate truth by arguing that despite the demise of empirically successful theories the parts of those theories responsible for their success do in fact survive theory change. If, as some anti-realists have recently suggested, those parts of theories that are responsible for their success are only identifiable in retrospect, namely as those that have survived, then the realist approach is trivialised for now success and survival are guaranteed to coincide. The aim of this paper is to counter this argument by identifying successful theory parts independently from their survival. (Presented at the Philosophy of Science Association 2010 Biennial Conference, Montreal, November 4-6 2010).

'The Logic of Crucial Experiments' - Although Duhem’s thesis that in physics crucial experiments are impossible contains some grains of truth in it, its effects have been greatly exaggerated. In this talk I argue against this and other associated theses by pointing out the various ways in which these theses can be curtailed. In the process of doing so, I examine a few recent attempts to overcome the problems posed by these theses and identify their strengths and weaknesses. (Presented at the Philosophy of Scientific Experimentation: A Challenge to Philosophy of Science, University of Pittsburgh, October 15-17 2010).

'Structural Realism: From an Epistemological Point of View' - Structural realism is a rather popular view in philosophy of science. As with many popular views, sprouting is never far behind. No sprout has had as much grip on the view’s image as ontic structural realism. Indeed its supporters have such a stranglehold that ‘structural realism’ has almost become a byword for their views. In this talk, I want to redress this imbalance by returning to structural realism’s humble epistemic beginnings to examine exactly what made the view so attractive in the first place. To this effect, I will reconstruct several arguments – some of which little known – proposed in the early part of the twentieth century in support of the epistemic version of structural realism. Not wanting to dwell too much on the past, I will then switch to more recent arguments both for and against the position. A careful evaluation of these arguments will hopefully provide useful information as to what form, if any, epistemic structural realism must take in order to be a viable alternative to its direct competitors, namely standard scientific realism and constructive empiricism. (Invited talk at the Lunchtime Colloquium, Center for Philosophy of Science, University of Pittsburgh, September 28 2010).

'Heat in Inter-Theory Relations' - If the realists are right, not only did certain theoretical parts of the caloric theory survive into our modern conception of heat but these parts are in fact solely responsible for the success the caloric theory enjoyed. I test this claim against two of the caloric theory’s successes, namely the explanations (i) that matter expands by heating and contracts by cooling and (ii) that a special kind of heat (i.e. latent heat) is involved in changes of state. Take (i) as an illustration. The caloric explanation of this phenomenon has the same structure as the kinetic one. As the quantity of heat – caloric in the one case, kinetic energy in the other – is increased/decreased the force generated – repulsive in the caloric case, pressure in the kinetic case – increases/decreases and that in turn leads to an increase/decrease in the volume needed. Thus the caloric explanation was successful because it had managed to get the structure of such processes right, even though the specifics of the ontology were wrong, i.e. the existence of caloric and its repulsive force. This result tallies well with a special kind of realism, namely structural realism. (Presented at the British Society for the Philosophy of Science Annual Conference, University College Dublin , July 8-9 2010).