TY - JOUR
T1 - Technology-driven surrogates and the perils of epistemic misalignment: an analysis in contemporary microbiome science
AU - Suárez, Javier
AU - Boem, Federico
N1 - Funding Information:
A previous version of this paper was presented at the V Postgraduate Conference of the Society for Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science in Spain, at the University of Valladolid, and the Workshop “Research Practices in Multispecies Research”, at the Jagiellonian University in Krakow. The authors thank the participants for their feedback. Additionally, they thank Amedeo Amedei, Lisa Lloyd, Mariano Martín-Villuendas, Sophie Veigl, and two reviewers of Synthese for helpful comments on the different parts and drafts of the paper. Javier Suárez formally acknowledges Narodowe Centrum Nauki (Grant Opus No: 2019/35/B/HS1/01998) for financial support.
Funding Information:
A previous version of this paper was presented at the V Postgraduate Conference of the Society for Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science in Spain, at the University of Valladolid, and the Workshop “Research Practices in Multispecies Research”, at the Jagiellonian University in Krakow. The authors thank the participants for their feedback. Additionally, they thank Amedeo Amedei, Lisa Lloyd, Mariano Martín-Villuendas, Sophie Veigl, and two reviewers of Synthese for helpful comments on the different parts and drafts of the paper. Javier Suárez formally acknowledges Narodowe Centrum Nauki (Grant Opus No: 2019/35/B/HS1/01998) for financial support.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2022, The Author(s).
PY - 2022/10/22
Y1 - 2022/10/22
N2 - A general view in philosophy of science says that the appropriateness of an object to act as a surrogate depends on the user’s decision to utilize it as such. This paper challenges this claim by examining the role of surrogative reasoning in high-throughput sequencing technologies (technology-driven surrogates) as they are used in contemporary microbiome science. Drawing on this, we argue that, in technology-driven surrogates, knowledge about the type of inference practically permitted and epistemically justified by the surrogate constrains their use and thus puts a limit to the user’s intentions to use any object as a surrogate for what they please. Ignoring this leads to a serious epistemic misalignment, which ultimately prevents surrogative reasoning. Thus, we conclude that knowledge about the type of surrogate reasoning that the technologies being used allow is fundamental to avoid misinterpreting the consequences of the data obtained with them, the hypothesis this data supports, and what these technologies are surrogates of.
AB - A general view in philosophy of science says that the appropriateness of an object to act as a surrogate depends on the user’s decision to utilize it as such. This paper challenges this claim by examining the role of surrogative reasoning in high-throughput sequencing technologies (technology-driven surrogates) as they are used in contemporary microbiome science. Drawing on this, we argue that, in technology-driven surrogates, knowledge about the type of inference practically permitted and epistemically justified by the surrogate constrains their use and thus puts a limit to the user’s intentions to use any object as a surrogate for what they please. Ignoring this leads to a serious epistemic misalignment, which ultimately prevents surrogative reasoning. Thus, we conclude that knowledge about the type of surrogate reasoning that the technologies being used allow is fundamental to avoid misinterpreting the consequences of the data obtained with them, the hypothesis this data supports, and what these technologies are surrogates of.
U2 - 10.1007/s11229-022-03912-7
DO - 10.1007/s11229-022-03912-7
M3 - Article
VL - 200
JO - Synthese
JF - Synthese
SN - 0039-7857
M1 - 437
ER -