Research profile

The staff at the Chair of Philosophy of Science engage with topics in the areas of (i) general philosophy of science, (ii) specific philosophy of science (especially that of physics), and (iii) formal and computer-aided epistemology and philosophy of science.

Key research areas

General philosophy of science involves philosophical questions which concern all, or at least many, of the sciences, or science as a whole. Our interests in this area include questions such as the following: What does it mean to say that a scientific theory is confirmed by evidence? What is a scientific explanation? How can analogical inference and inference to the best explanation be justified? How can idealizations be interpreted and made plausible? What kind of knowledge is gained through computer simulations? How can causation be defined? How can algorithms for the selection of causal hypotheses on the basis of probability distributions be evaluated? Is understanding a goal of science? And how do causation, explanation and understanding relate to one another? What are scientific models and theories? And what different roles do these play in the individual scientific disciplines? How should the mathematical structure of scientific theories be described? Which role do aesthetic values play in science? Do concepts such as "reduction" and "emergence" contribute to a better understanding of the relationship between different theories? What are the roles of mathematics, statistics, and probability in science? What does "scientific objectivity" mean? Must science be free of non-epistemic virtues and interests? What is objectionable about some forms of science criticism or science scepticism? Which social aspects are characteristic of science?

The philosophy of the special sciences is concerned with philosophical questions which arise in the various individual sciences. Our interests here lie above all in physics, psychology, the social sciences, statistics, and artificial intelligence research. Here we are interested in questions such as the following.

In philosophy of physics, we are interested primarily in quantum theory and theories of space and time. What is the status of gauge symmetries? What are the consequences of the practice of effective field theories for the discussions around emergence and reduction? Is the thermodynamics of black holes more than a formal analogy? Is the universe an open system? What is the epistemic value of discretization methods in physics? Are space and time fundamental or are they emergent in a certain sense? How do physicists use mathematics to explain the world? What role do symmetries play in these explanations? Are quantum-mechanical probabilities subjective probabilities?

In the philosophy of the social sciences, we are interested in the emergence of social norms, the role of biases, and how groups make decisions. What are the advantages and disadvantages of group deliberations which ultimately lead to a consensus? And how can certain biases (such as the anchoring effect) be corrected? In the philosophy of statistics and artificial intelligence, we work on alternative representations of uncertainty (such as the theory of imprecise probability) and conduct research in the foundations of the mathematical theory of machine learning. In the philosophy of psychology and neuroscience, we ask whether one can deduce from the success of the predictive processing theory of the human mind that the brain is a Bayesian machine. And: what implications does a naturalistic theory of memory have for questions of personal identity and ethics? In the philosophy of medicine, we examine how different kinds of evidence can be combined with one another. Finally, in the philosophy of climate science, we pursue the question of how the IPCC committee evaluates the degree of understanding of certain aspects of climate change and how progress in climate science can be measured.

Formal and computer-aided methods are now finding applications in many areas of philosophy. Here we are primarily interested in applications in general philosophy of science and epistemology (both individual and social). Not least, we are interested in finding out to what extent scientific reasoning and argumentation can be reconstructed in the framework of Bayesianism. In this connection, one of our current goals is to develop a coherentist epistemology and philosophy of science. Moreover, we use elements of network theory and the method of agent-based modelling in order to examine effects such as polarization and other biases in group deliberations, and to determine how these can be corrected (if necessary). This area also includes our investigations of foundational questions in artificial intelligence and the possibilities and limits of inductive inference. Finally, we use philosophical and mathematical tools to grapple with questions of consciousness. This involves the formal structure of theories of consciousness, measurement models in consciousness research and the question of whether artificial intelligence is capable of conscious experience.

Representative publications

  1. Baccini, E., Christoff, Z., Hartmann, S., Verbrugge, R.: The Wisdom of the Small Crowd: Myside Bias and Group Discussion. Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation 26 (4): 7 (2023).
  2. Cuffaro, M., Hartmann, S.: The Open Systems View and the Everett Interpretation. Quantum Reports 5: 418–425 (2023).
  3. Dougherty, J.: The Non-Ideal Theory of the Aharonov–Bohm Effect. Synthese, 198(12): 12195–12221 (2021).
  4. Ojea Quintana, I., Rosenstock, S., Klein, C.: The Coordination Dilemma for Epidemiological Modelers, Biology and Philosophy 36: 54 (2021).
  5. Reutlinger, A., Hangleiter, D., Hartmann, S.: Understanding (with) Toy Models. The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 69(4): 1069–1099 (2018).
  6. Reutlinger, A.: Is there a Monist Theory of Causal and Noncausal Explanations? The Counterfactual Theory of Scientific Explanation. Philosophy of Science 83 (5): 733-745 (2016).
  7. Reutlinger, A.: What is Epistemically Wrong with Research Affected by Sponsorship Bias? The Evidential Account. European Journal for Philosophy of Science 10 (2): 1-26 (2020).
  8. Rivat, S.: Effective Theories and Infinite Idealizations: A Challenge for Scientific Realism. Synthese 198 (12): 12107-12136 (2021).
  9. Sprenger, J., Hartmann, S.: Bayesian Philosophy of Science. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019.
  10. Sterkenburg, T., Grünwald, P.: The No-Free-Lunch Theorems of Supervised Learning. Synthese 199 (3): 9979-10015 (2021).

Laufende Drittmittelprojekte

Project titlePeopleFunded byDuration
Argumentation in a Social ContextStephan HartmannDFG2024 - 2027
The Scaling Revolution in Physics: Historical and Philosophical PerspectivesSébastien RivatERC Starting Grant2025 - 2030
The Scale Revolution in PhysicsSébastien RivatInitiative: Pioniervorhaben Exploration der VolkswagenStiftung2024 - 2027
From Bias to Knowledge: The Epistemology of Machine LearningTom SterkenburgDFG, Emmy Noether Programme2023 - 2029
Amalgamating Evidence About Causes: Medicine, the Medical Sciences, and BeyondStephan Hartmann (LMU)
Jacob Stegenga (Cambridge)
Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC, UK)
DFG (“UK-German Collaborative Research Project in the Arts and Humanities”)
2023 - 2026
The Universe as an Open SystemStephan Hartmann
James Ladyman
Karim Thebault
David Sloan
Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC, UK)
DFG (“UK-German Collaborative Research Project in the Arts and Humanities”)
2021 - 2024
Der Bayes'sche Ansatz für robuste ArgumentationsmaschinenStephan Hartmann
Ulrike Hahn (Mercator Fellow)
DFG Priority Programme “Robust Argumentation Machines”2021 - 2024
Aesthetic Testimony in ScienceAlice MurphyBavarian Gender Equality Grant (BGF)2023 - 2024
Three Methodological Problems in Memory ScienceDavid ColacoDFG2023 - 2025
Ampliative Analysis, Grounds and ConsequencesIdit ChikurelMinerva Stiftung2022 - 2024
Causal Extrapolation in Theory and PracticeNaftali WeinbergerDFG2023 - 2026
Deep Learning in der Teilchenphysik: Eine philosophische AnalyseMartin KingDFG2022 - 2025
Climate Models and Climate Scientific UnderstandingGabriel TarziuHORIZON TMA MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowship2022 - 2024
Fundamental Indeterminacy of SpacetimeLaurie LetertreHORIZON TMA MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowship2023 - 2025
Black Holes and Quantum Field Theory on Curved SpacetimeJohn Dougherty (LMU)
Aron Wall (Cambridge)
Cambridge-LMU Strategic Partnership2022 - 2024
Decision Theory and the Future of Artificial IntelligenceStephan Hartmann (LMU)
Jacob Stegenga (Cambridge)
Cambridge-LMU Strategic Partnership2020 - 2024