Citation from the Editors-in-Chief

In ‘The Conceptual Format Debate and the Challenge from (Global) Supramodality’, Fabrizio Calzavarini rejects one of cognitive neuroscience’s most entrenched commitments and argues that such rejection reshapes high-profile debates in philosophy of cognitive science and empirically oriented philosophy of mind. For well over a century, a fundamental distinction has lain at heart of neuroscientists’ understanding of functionally relevant architecture of the brain: the distinction between modally specific cortex, on the one hand, and amodal or non-modal cortex, on the other. In his prize-winning paper, Calzavarini reviews a robust range of neuroscientific data suggesting that extensive portions of what are traditionally considered modality-specific cortices are in fact ‘supramodal’; they process information independently of perceptual modality. On the most radical (though not necessarily implausible) interpretation of these data, so-called sensory cortices should be treated as task-specific contributors, not individuated by their role in processing distinctive channels of sensory input. This fascinating and potentially ground-breaking contribution to our understanding of neural architecture has striking implications regarding cognitive ontology. For instance, proponents of embodied perspectives on cognition often emphasize what they take to be the distinctively sensory grounding of human concepts and the effects of modality-specific grounding on cognitive processing. Yet, if Calzavarini’s view is correct, the entire debate over embodied concepts would seem to rest on a misconception of the kind of material available for conceptual grounding.

For its impressive contribution to debates of central importance in the philosophy of cognitive science, the BJPS Co-Editors-in-Chief and the BSPS Committee judge ‘The Conceptual Format Debate and the Challenge from (Global) Supramodality’ to be worthy of the 2025 BJPS Popper Prize.

—Prof. Tim Lewens & Prof. Robert Rupert

Citation from the Editors-in-Chief

In ‘The Problem of Molecular Structure Just Is the Measurement Problem’, Franklin and Seifert argue that three foundational problems arising within quantum-mechanical explanations of chemical structure—chirality, the existence of isomers, and symmetry breaking—can be treated as aspects of the measurement problem in quantum mechanics. The authors contend that these results reduce the support these problems provide for anti-reductionist and emergentist positions. Although the measurement problem is unsolved, Franklin and Seifert explore how leading proposed solutions can address the foundational problems at issue.

This piece represents a ground-breaking unification of work in the foundations of physics and in the foundations of chemistry, thereby carving out new territory where these areas of enquiry overlap. It is a superb contribution to the philosophy of science, both in its detailed treatment of problems to do with molecular structure and in the way this treatment is brought to bear on the long-running debate over the emergent status of chemical phenomena. The editors applaud Franklin and Seifert’s careful, insightful, and agenda-setting research, enthusiastically awarding them the 2024 Popper Prize.

—Prof. Tim Lewens & Prof. Robert Rupert

Citation from the Editors-in-Chief

The concept of homology—concerning the sameness of characters across groups of organisms—has long played a central role in biological reasoning. In recent decades, it has been argued that a new theory of homology is needed, which goes beyond phylogeny to take account of organismal development, especially developmental mechanisms. Such a theory is needed, it is claimed, in order to identify and individuate homologues and to explain the phenomenon of homology. In ‘Toward a Theory of Homology: Development and the De-coupling of Morphological and Molecular Evolution’, James DiFrisco addresses a significant challenge to the construction of a successful developmental theory of homology: the fact that developmental mechanisms and phenotypic characters can be de-coupled in evolution to a significant degree. The occurrence of this de-coupling via evolutionary change in the genes and/or network underlying the same character in related taxa is known as developmental system drift (DSD). Synthesizing a wide range of empirical and theoretical findings, DiFrisco offers a qualitative model of the factors and causal processes at work in DSD and argues that DSD is a widespread phenomenon that might well be (probabilistically) predictable. Far from undermining the possibility of a successful theory of homology, this points to the need for a broader, integrative theory that encompasses multiple explanatory models—a theory that can provide developmental–genetic explanations when they apply but, guided by models of DSD, can seek other explanations, such as stabilizing selection, when necessary. DiFrisco goes on to argue that this integrative approach will be most successful if the different explanatory models and perspectives share the same definition and criteria of homology. In other words, alongside a pluralism regarding explanatory models, there should be monism regarding definitions and criteria of homology.

For its impressive contribution to the theory of homology, informed by a masterful synthesis of wide-ranging work on this important topic, the BJPS Co-Editors-in-Chief and the BSPS Committee finds ‘Toward a Theory of Homology’ to be worthy of the 2023 Popper Prize.

—Prof. Wendy Parker & Prof. Robert Rupert

Citation from the Editors-in-Chief

In ‘Registration Pluralism and the Cartographic Approach to Data Aggregation across Brains’, Zina B. Ward tackles a methodological issue of central importance in cognitive neuroscience: how to register data from multiple subjects in a common spatial framework despite significant variation in human brain structure, that is, how to map activity in different subjects’ neural structures onto a single template or into a common representational space. In a typical fMRI-based investigation, experimenters run a series of subjects through a scanner and, if the experiment is fruitful, draw conclusions, from the data collected, about the functional contributions of certain areas of the brain—that, for instance, the ACC regulates emotional responses to pain. Such work presupposes normalization of the images from various subjects, so as to allow experimenters to claim that, across subjects, the same area of the brain exhibited elevated activity during scanning. The requirements of normalization might seem to pose a mere technical problem; perhaps with hard work and ingenuity, neuroscientists can identify the single, correct method for pairing brain areas or regions across subjects. Ward argues against this kind of monism. For principled reasons to do with the extent and nature of variation in neural structure—for example, variation in the location of sulci relative to cytoarchitectonic boundaries—Ward argues that the choice of spatial framework and method of registration must vary, depending on the purpose of a given study. No single method will simultaneously effect all of the correct pairings of relevance to cognitive neuroscience. From a practical standpoint, such methodological pluralism may seem daunting, and it might also seem excessively theory-laden. In response to such concerns, Ward offers and defends a series of constructive proposals concerning how to implement registration pluralism.

For its impressive theoretical and practical contributions to an issue of central importance in cognitive neuroscience, the BJPS Co-Editors-in-Chief and the BSPS Committee judge ‘Registration Pluralism and the Cartographic Approach to Data Aggregation across Brains’ to be worthy of the 2022 BJPS Popper Prize.

—Prof. Wendy Parker & Prof. Robert Rupert

Citation from the Editors-in-Chief

In ‘Quantum Mechanics in a Time-Asymmetric Universe: On the Nature of the Initial Quantum State’, Eddy Keming Chen offers a unified solution to two difficult problems in the foundations of physics: what gives rise to the arrow of time and how to characterize quantum ontology. While it is often assumed that the real quantum state of the universe must be pure, Chen argues that density matrix realism, which permits mixed quantum states represented by density matrices, has significant and unexpected advantages, if we also adopt a new version of the past hypothesis. In particular, he proposes the initial projection hypothesis, according to which the density matrix representing the initial quantum state of the universe is not just compatible with a low-entropy boundary condition, but uniquely specified: it is the normalized projection onto the past-hypothesis subspace. From the perspective of Chen’s framework, the initial quantum state becomes a good candidate for a simple law; there is no need for a probability distribution over initial quantum states; and the foundations of quantum mechanics and foundations of statistical mechanics are found to be intimately connected.

As an ambitious, novel contribution to major issues in the foundations of physics, the BJPS Co-Editors-in-Chief and the BSPS Committee consider Chen’s paper to be a very worthy recipient of the 2021 Popper Prize.

—Prof. Wendy Parker & Prof. Robert Rupert

Citation from the Editors-in-Chief

‘Capricious Kinds’ asks whether so-called human kinds—such as gender kinds and kinds of psychological disorder—are amenable to the sort of investigation successfully used to study kinds in the natural sciences. Laimann frames the discussion as a consideration of Ian Hacking’s sceptical views, according to which human kinds are interactive, thus unstable, and thus not natural, which leads Hacking ultimately to the view that the human sciences require a methodology deeply different from that of the natural sciences. Laimann argues against both Hacking’s view and influential responses to it, convincingly demonstrating that many participants in the debate have fixated on the wrong feature of human kinds: their instability. Laimann sees this instability as a red herring. Instead, what’s distinctive of human kinds is their hybrid nature: they have both a biological, or otherwise analytically crisp, component, as well as a social, normative dimension; they have a dual nature comprising both a ‘base kind’ and a ‘status kind’, the latter a function of the significance humans give the kind and of how that influences the treatment of instances of the kind.

On the hybrid view, a human kind can be either stable or unstable, depending on how its two components interact. Both cases carry epistemic costs and can present advantages as well. Somewhat unexpectedly, instability can make it easier to recognize the distinct contributions of a hybrid kind’s components, while stability can obscure their relative contributions. In the case of gender kinds, for example, the association between social roles and biological base kinds can be reinforced by social mechanisms, leading to a high degree of local stability, which results in failed predictions concerning how members of the base kinds will behave beyond the local environment. Moreover, ignorance of the relative contributions of the hybrid kind’s components can lead to misguided research programmes, for instance, the attempt to find biological determinants of behaviour associated with gender roles.

Laimann concludes on a cautiously optimistic note. While the investigation of human kinds does face distinctive challenges, perhaps to such an extent that it is misleading to classify them as natural kinds, the fruitful investigation of human kinds does not call for a wholly different methodology.

—Prof. Steven French & Prof. Wendy Parker

Citation from the Editors-in-Chief

Are we at the dawn of a new geological epoch? Many have answered ‘yes’, coining the term ‘Anthropocene’ to designate the impact of humanity on the geological record. In this ground breaking paper, Carlos Santana notes that answering that question requires a radical shift in perspective for a historical science such as geology: whereas previously the identification of formal units of geological time was based on the groupings already present in the stratographic record, establishing such a distinction in the case of the Anthropocene requires the geologist to project herself into the future and imagine what that record will be, looking back to the current time. Santana argues that from such a future geologist’s perspective, we should refrain from adopting the Anthropocene as a new geological epoch, because of the fragility of such a projective move and because even granting the impact of human activity, the geological changes involved aren’t sufficient to warrant defining a new epoch. Alternatively, it might be argued that the term should be adopted for reasons that take us beyond geological matters and into the political. But in this case, Santana suggests, it is doubtful that the desired consequences would ensue. In either case, he concludes, we should ‘hesitate to fully endorse the Anthropocene’.

In reaching this conclusion, Santana not only takes the reader through relevant scientific evidence—including that related to climate change, the fossil record, and the human fossil record—and presents a careful examination of the potential geological markers of the Anthropocene in general, but also considers the role of political considerations in the delineation of scientific kinds, touching upon issues of distinguishing the epistemic from the political and the ‘scientization’ of value judgments. His paper is both timely and provocative, suggesting that by not taking the Anthropocene to be set in stone, we may retain the motivation to fight the very markers of it, such as climate-related extinction.

It is the opinion of the Editors of the BJPS and the Committee of the BSPS that by integrating the relevant science, as well as value considerations, in this nuanced and sophisticated manner, ‘Waiting for the Anthropocene’ represents the best of what the journal has published this year.

—Prof. Steven French & Prof. Wendy Parker

Citation from the Editors-in-Chief

The robustness of scientific results is a significant feature of scientific practice that has recently come into sharp focus within the philosophy of science. Typically, a result—whether an observation, a prediction, or, more generally, a theoretical outcome—is said to be ‘robust’ if it has been obtained in a variety of ways. Characterizing this variety is then a major issue, one to which Jonah Schupbach offers a novel and thought-provoking approach in his article ‘Robustness Analysis as Explanatory Reasoning’. Here, after criticizing current accounts by drawing on paradigmatic cases of robustness such as Brownian motion and predator–prey models, he proposes an approach that has, at its heart, the notion of explanatory discrimination: additional means of detection of the result in question have the power to discriminate between the target explanation of that result and competing potential explanations. These means can be regarded as ‘diverse’ to the extent that the relevant discriminating pieces of evidence can be put into a sequence that successfully eliminates more and more of the target explanation’s competitors. This offers a unitary framework that, Schupbach argues, better accommodates the range of cases covered in recent discussions. Importantly, when allied with considerations drawn from formal work on the logic of explanatory power, the framework illuminates the epistemic virtues of robustness analysis by demonstrating how it allows hypotheses to be incrementally confirmed. By bringing together case studies and formal considerations in a way that constitutes a novel and significant advance in this debate, Schupbach’s article is, in the opinion of the Co-Editors-in-Chief and the BSPS Committee, a very worthy recipient of the BJPS Popper Prize for 2018.

—Prof. Steven French & Prof. Wendy Parker

Citation from the Editors-in-Chief

Grant Ramsey and Andreas de Block’s paper, ‘Is Cultural Fitness Hopelessly Confused?’, addresses a hotly debated topic: can evolutionary theory be extended to human culture? Those who answer ‘no’ typically point to certain well-entrenched critiques of extending biological fitness to the cultural domain. However, as Ramsey and de Block point out, there is considerable uncertainty as to how biological fitness itself should be ‘modelled and measured’ and, while granting that great caution must be exercised in exporting this concept, they argue that the pursuit of a coherent and useful notion of cultural fitness is by no means a hopeless task. In particular, they note that certain problems that arise for this notion must also be faced by its biological counterpart. Having defended its tenability, they then map out a more positive conception of cultural fitness by carefully considering how the core elements of biological evolution align with those of cultural evolution, while acknowledging the relevant differences between the two domains. In particular, by shifting the focus of individuation from memes to organisms, and tying cultural fitness to the latter rather than the former, they show how it ‘can do similar work in the study of cultural evolution as biological fitness does in the study of biological evolution’ (p. 324). Overall, this yields a sophisticated and nuanced account that sheds new light on and further advances a major contemporary debate. As such, this paper is, in the opinion of the Co-Chief Editors and the BSPS Committee, a worthy recipient of the BJPS Popper Prize for 2017.

—Prof. Steven French & Prof. Wendy Parker

Citation from the Editors-in-Chief

How we understand natural kind phenomena is one of the central issues in the philosophy of science. It has been brought into particular focus within the so-called special sciences, where traditional accounts of natural kinds typically run aground. Boyd’s ‘homeostatic property cluster’ approach is widely regarded as having broad applicability, but in this paper, which casts new light on this issue, Slater argues that we should drop this approach’s reliance on causal homeostatic mechanisms and instead focus on the underlying cohesiveness in general that such mechanisms offer. This yields a more flexible account that, Slater suggests, can accommodate the diversity of kinds actually found in the world.

Here he articulates and defends his ‘stable property cluster’ account and, in particular, notes that under this conception, kinds are domain- and context-relative. This introduces, as he puts it, a ‘hefty dose’ of pragmatism but, Slater insists, his approach can still accommodate core realist intuitions. Nevertheless, ‘natural kindness’ should be thought of as a status conferred on pluralities of things, albeit one that is objective in a certain sense.

This is a work that builds on but goes beyond extant conceptions of natural kinds and opens up potentially fruitful new avenues of philosophical exploration, while also remaining grounded in scientific practice. Hence, we feel, Slater is a well-deserved winner of this year’s Popper Prize in the philosophy of science.

—Prof. Steven French & Prof. Michela Massimi

Citation from the Editors-in-Chief

The concept of evolvability has attracted increasing interest within the philosophy of biology, yet it remains conceptually muddled. By focusing on the theoretical roles played by ‘evolvability’ in ‘evo-devo’ and evolutionary biology more generally, Brown aims to both clarify the notion and offer a unified account of it. Her analysis is driven by a case study on the evolution of primate limbs and within that context she picks out a role for ‘evolvability-based’ explanations that complements other explanatory approaches in evolutionary biology. This allows her to identify the core (categorical) properties that evolvability (as a dispositional property of populations) must supervene on and in terms of which she constructs a probabilistic account of the notion. Within that formal framework, various hypotheses concerning evolvability can then be represented and the factors relevant to assessing their truth illuminated.

Thus, Brown’s paper represents an important contribution to the foundations of evolutionary biology. It relates its central explication of evolvability to an accessible and engaging case study in particular, and to a range of issues in the philosophy of science more generally, thus illustrating the power of an integrated approach to the topic. In all these respects, and especially by bringing the technical, scientific, and philosophical features of the issue together in such a deft and thought-provoking manner, it stands as a worthy winner of this year’s BSPS Popper Prize in the philosophy of science.

—Prof. Steven French & Prof. Michela Massimi