BJPS

08/10/2025

Just accepted: Jørn Kløvfjell Mjelva, 'Entanglement Swapping for Entanglement Realists'
Read it here: https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/738874

ABSTRACT. Delayed-choice entanglement swapping experiments have been argued to undermine realism about entanglement. One response has been to argue that the correlations displayed in delayed-choice entanglement swapping experiments have a different physical interpretation than the correlations in the non-delayed case. This strategy runs into problems when applied to cases of spacelike entanglement swapping, as it would appear to require one to either posit a privileged foliation of spacetime or otherwise accept that whether entanglement obtains is frame dependent. In this article, I present a realist-friendly account of entanglement swapping that circumvents this dilemma, in which entanglement is explicated via the notion of a common ground. The issue of frame dependence is resolved by adopting the past light-cone criterion for property attribution, and the correlations displayed in the spacelike entanglement swapping experiments are attributed to a joint common ground.

01/10/2025

Just accepted: Jeffrey Barrett & Eddy Keming Chen, 'Algorithmic Randomness and Probabilistic Laws'
Read it here:
https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/738573

ABSTRACT. We apply recent ideas about complexity and randomness to the philosophy of laws and chances. We develop two ways to use algorithmic randomness to characterize probabilistic laws of nature. The first, a generative chance law, employs a non-standard notion of chance. The second, a probabilistic constraining law, impose relative frequency and randomness constraints that every physically possible world must satisfy. The constraining notion removes a major obstacle to a unified governing account of non-Humean laws, on which laws govern by constraining physical possibilities; it also provides independently motivated solutions to familiar problems for the Humean best-system account (the big bad bug and the zero-fit problem). On either approach, probabilistic laws are tied more tightly to corresponding sets of possible worlds: some histories permitted by traditional probabilistic laws are now ruled out as physically impossible. Consequently, the framework avoids one variety of empirical underdetermination while bringing to light others that are typically overlooked.

29/09/2025

Just accepted: Caspar Jacobs & Eleanor March, 'Kinematical Equivalence and Cosmic Conspiracies'
Read it here:
https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/738831

ABSTRACT. Discussions of theoretical equivalence typically only concern a theory's dynamically possible models. Recently, however, March has shown that a theory's kinematically possible models are also relevant to questions of theoretical equivalence. We apply March's notion of kinematic equivalence to the difference between reduced and sophisticated theories introduced by Dewar. Although Dewar claims that these are equivalent, Jacobs has argued that only sophisticated theories can explain what are otherwise `cosmic conspiracies'. We show that this is a consequence of the kinematical inequivalence of reduced and sophisticated theories. Furthermore, we use Caulton's `downwards Hume's dictum' to show that kinematically inequivalent theories are also ontologically inequivalent.

22/09/2025

Just accepted: Dominik Ehrenfels, 'Reviving Reduction'
Read it here: https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/738571

ABSTRACT. A theory’s possessing symmetries often indicates that its models exhibit surplus structure. This in turn suggests that the theory is in need of reformulation. Two approaches to reformulation found in the literature are reduction and sophistication. With reduction, the aim is to eliminate the theory’s symmetries, usually by formulating a new theory in terms of symmetry-invariant quantities of the old theory. Sophistication on the other hand preserves the original theory’s symmetries, but renders symmetry-related models isomorphic. Recently, sophistication has become more popular than reduction. Defenders of sophistication allege that reductions are difficult to find and frequently not as attractive as rival sophistications. This article argues, however, that this impression arises from an overly restrictive way of thinking about reductions. It is commonly held that a reduction of a theory must be formulated explicitly in terms of symmetry-invariant quantities of that theory, and that it must be empirically equivalent to the original. On the basis of a success case of reformulation, namely, the reformulation of Newtonian gravitation theory due to Barbour and Bertotti, this article argues that reductions need not meet these criteria. This leads to a more inclusive and fruitful way of thinking about reduction. The article illustrates the strengths of this wider conception by demonstrating that it allows one to reduce Newtonian gravitation theory with respect to its scale symmetry. While it is possible to sophisticate Newtonian gravitation theory with respect to this symmetry, it poses a particular challenge for the reduction strategy. Prima facie, this underscores the impression that sophistication is superior to reduction. The way of thinking about reduction advocate in this article, however, is versatile enough to handle this case. The resulting theory is arguably superior to its sophisticated rival. The article concludes that a blanket dismissal of reduction in favour of sophistication is unwarranted.

19/09/2025

Just accepted: Matthias Ackermann, 'Climate Sensitivity through the Lens of Measurement Practice'

Read it here:
https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/738572

ABSTRACT. In its Sixth Assessment Report, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) moved from a climate model-based to a climate model-supported assessment of equilibrium climate sensitivity. Unlike all previous reports, climate model information is no longer used directly for estimates of equilibrium climate sensitivity. This article offers a measurement view on the equilibrium climate sensitivity assessment that allows us to evaluate this shift in practice in terms of its practical and epistemic consequences. In particular, I argue for two main conclusions involved in this move to a climate model-supported assessment. First, the change in using climate models as direct sources of evidence to a supporting role involves a kind of repurposing of climate models as epistemic tools. This change should be evaluated relative to the researchers' aims, which include more accurately assessing equilibrium climate sensitivity. Second, and more generally, I suggest that this shift in practice shares a kinship to calibration activities aimed at increasing the reliability of a measurement procedure.

18/09/2025

Just accepted: David Wallace, 'What Gibbsian Statistical Mechanics Says: In Defence of Bare Probabilism'
Read it here: https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/738448

ABSTRACT. I expound and defend the `bare probabilism' reading of Gibbsian (that is, mainstream) statistical mechanics, responding to F***g and Werndl's recent plea: `can somebody please say what Gibbsian statistical mechanics says?'.

17/09/2025

Travis Holmes & André Ariew, 'Statistical Autonomous Explanations and the Patterns of Nature'

Read the full paper here: https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/720804

ABSTRACT. This article provides a fuller account of purely statistical pattern-level explanations—that is, those that explain macro-level events by invoking limit theorems. The statistical autonomous explanation account is modified via integration with the maximum entropy approach for generating limit distributions. This achieves two important results: (1) the range of statistical autonomous explanations is vastly extended and shown to range over many different kinds of limit distributions; (2) the modified account permits answers to questions about why these limit distribution patterns are so common in nature; why these patterns are robust; and also why these patterns are insensitive to most lower-level details pertaining to the characters or events that comprise the statistical ensemble. The modified account can be understood as a corrective for many extant accounts of statistical pattern-level explanations that fail to answer these crucial questions.

15/09/2025

Daniel Herrmann & Jacob VanDrunen, 'Sifting the Signal from the Noise'

Read the full paper here: https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/720805

ABSTRACT. Signalling games are useful for understanding how language emerges. In the standard models, the dynamics in some sense already know what the signals are, even if they do not yet have meaning. In this article, we relax this assumption and develop a simple model we call an ‘attention game’, in which agents have to learn which feature of their environment is the signal. We demonstrate that simple reinforcement learning agents can still learn to coordinate in contexts where the agents do not already know what the signal is, and the other features in the agents’ environment are uncorrelated with the signal. Furthermore, we show that in cases where other features are correlated with the signal, there is a surprising trade-off between learning what the signal is and success in action. We show that the mutual information between a signal and a feature plays a key role in governing the accuracy and attention of the agent.

12/09/2025

James Fraser & Peter Vickers, 'Knowledge of the Quantum Domain: An Overlap Strategy'

Read the paper here: https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/721635

ABSTRACT. The existence of multiple interpretations of quantum mechanics appears to pose a serious challenge for knowledge claims about the quantum domain. Hoefer argues that a scientific realist epistemology must be abandoned in this context, while Callender argues that the realist’s only option is to break the underdetermination between rival interpretations by appealing to extra-empirical virtues. We develop a different response to the quantum underdetermination problem based on identifying statements about the unobservable that all the major ontic interpretations of quantum mechanics agree on. It is commonly believed that Everettian, Bohmian, and GRW (Ghirardi–Rimini–Weber) quantum mechanics share nothing but empirical content. We argue that while they say very different things about the fundamental nature of quantum systems, they can be understood as agreeing on a plethora of more abstract theoretical claims. In our view, focusing on this descriptive overlap represents the most promising strategy for defending knowledge claims in the quantum domain. We close by considering how this overlap strategy relates to working posits formulations of scientific realism.

11/09/2025

Thomas Blanchard, 'Host Specificity in Biological Control'

Read it here: https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/721088

ABSTRACT. In recent years, the notion of biological specificity has attracted significant philosophical attention. This article focuses on host specificity, a kind of biological specificity that has not yet been discussed by philosophers, and which concerns the extent to which a species is selective in the range of other species it exploits for feeding and/or reproduction. Host specificity is an important notion in ecology, where it plays a variety of theoretical roles. Here, I focus on the role of host specificity in biological control, a field of applied ecology that deals with the suppression of pests through the use of living organisms. Examining host specificity and its role in biological control yields several valuable contributions to our understanding of biological specificity. In particular, I argue that host specificity cannot be fully understood in terms of Woodward’s well-known account of causal specificity. To adequately account for host specificity, we need a notion of causal specificity that takes into consideration the extent to which a variable’s effects are similar to one another—a dimension not captured in Woodward’s account. In addition, the literature on host specificity in biological control highlights certain aspects in which causally specific relationships can be practically valuable—aspects that have not yet been addressed in philosophical discussions of specificity. The literature also reveals that, in certain contexts, specificity can hinder rather than foster effective control, thus leading to a nuanced assessment of the practical value of specific causes.

10/09/2025

Cecily Whiteley, 'Depression as a Disorder of Consciousness'.

Read it here:
https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/716838

ABSTRACT. First-person reports of major depressive disorder reveal that when an individual becomes depressed a profound change or ‘shift’ to one’s conscious experience occurs. The depressed person reports that something fundamental to their experience has been disturbed or shifted, a change associated with the common but elusive claim that when depressed one finds oneself in a ‘different world’ detached from reality and other people. Existing attempts to utilize these phenomenological observations in a psychiatric context are challenged by the fact that this experiential ‘shift’ characteristic of depression appears mysterious and resists analysis in scientific terms. This article offers a way out of this predicament. The hypothesis proposed is that when an individual becomes depressed, the individual departs from a state of ordinary wakeful consciousness and enters a distinctive global state of consciousness akin to dreaming and the psychedelic state. After unpacking and motivating this hypothesis in the context of research in consciousness science, I outline two of its important implications for the neurobiology of depression and psychedelic psychiatry. The upshot is a promising and conceptually well-motivated hypothesis about depression that is apt for empirical uptake and development.

09/09/2025

New letter to the Editors: Caspar Jacobs, Against Presentist Velocities: Response to Gijsbers

Correspondence from Caspar Jacobs