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The number of papers I have been called upon to review that are putatively about the FEP and yet which describe something that has nothing to do with the FEP is frustrating. But I choose to view this as a marketting problem on our side, not as a problem with philosophy. https://twitter.com/mjdramstead/status/1337744475624525824
When we describe the FEP as a “theory of cognition” or a “theory of consciousness,” I think that we invite philosophers of mind and cog sci, who might lack the mathematical acumen to understand the FEP, to weigh-in on it.
By making it abundantly clear from the outset that the FEP is merely a formal tool that aids in the construction or analysis of theories of, e.g., mind or cognition, we can better direct critical engagement with the framework.
And I think the healthy development of the framework rests on informed, appropriately-directed critical engagement, like, e.g., @JBruineberg, @manuelbaltieri, @joe_dewhurst, and @krysdolega’s recent paper.
Worth a note that this group has worked on essentially nothing but this framework for five years. A lot of the really unfortunate, naïve criticism that we’re seeing is from outsiders to the framework who have just heard of it and want to toss in their
two-cents after casually reading a couple of papers. @ineshipolito and @ThomasvanEs9 also have a great new piece just preprinted http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/18497/ .
I have a major reservation with one background assumption in this latter piece, which is not developed here but in an earlier 2020 piece by @ThomasvanEs9: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1059712320918678. That is on the relation between scientific modelling and the FEP.
This is, namely, that representational status is definitional of the class of scientific models, and that scientific models represent not in virtue of any inherent feature of the model but in virtue of a human interpreter, embedded in cultural context.
This takes directly after a position developed in Gui Sanches de Oliveira’s dissertation, the defense of which I was very lucky to be able to attend. However, SDO is very careful in limiting the scope of his claims about modelling practice to the novel and atypical view he
develops and endorses. Van Es extrapolates SDO’s position as characteristic of all scientific modelling and represents a false consensus within the modelling literature. I think van Es (2020) and Hipolito and van Es (2020) arrive at the correct understanding
of the FEP and, in the latter, of the relationship between the FEP and computationalism and representationalism, and that this is a critical development. However, there is a serious problem with this one moving piece of the argument.
I am excited to see the FEP literature take up an interest in the modelling literature because there are many still live debates within the modelling literature that the FEP touches upon, and other latent debates which the FEP brings to the fore.
In fact, I think that there is a very powerful message about conceptual reification that is highlighted by bringing the modelling literature into contact with the FEP, one that the modelling literature ought to accomodate and feature more prominently in its own right.
And ultimately—ultimately—I think we’re going to have to circle back around and ask, to what extent is our discussion of models in philosophy of science a natural class of scientific approaches, and to what extent is it merely a useful heuristic?
There are multiple varieties of first-order instrumentalism on the table here and multiple varieties of second-order instrumentalism as well. Looking forward to continuing to find both convergences of thought and fruitful sources of disagreement with @mjdramstead and @exilefaker
and the whole lot of you.
@threader_app compile
