Publications and Research Presentations

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Software and Datasets

1. edhiphy and edhiphy.org

   edhiphy offers enriched data for the history of philosophy. I am developing the database and the web application edhiphy.org. While the database is aimed at researchers, the web application can also be used heuristically as a tool for education.

Dissertation

Founding Science on the Lifeworld: Promises and Problems of a Phenomenological Philosophy of Natural Science. Dec. 2022, King's College London (online)

This dissertation investigates whether an account of scientific knowledge from the phenomenological tradition can offer a reconciliation of scientific and manifest images. I pursue this question in three parts: I) a study of the concept “lifeworld”, II) an examination of Husserl’s connection between truth and evidence, and III) an account of the metaphysics for scientific discovery.

Part I motivates the problem and offers a historical and systematic reconstruction of Husserl’s notion of the lifeworld. Sellars spelled out a conflict between the conceptual schemes of everyday life and scientific theory and argued for the priority of the scientific image. Phenomenology investigates the manifest image, but one might worry that this requires a rejection of the scientific image. I focus on Husserl to develop an account that instead reconciles manifest and scientific images. Although the lifeworld is often associated with a late turn in Husserl’s philosophy, it grows naturally out of the notion of horizonal intentionality and builds on Avenarius’ natural concept of the world. I resolve ambiguities in Husserl’s account by distinguishing concrete (egocentric) lifeworld, shared lifeworld, and the eidos “lifeworld”.

Understanding phenomenology as the systematic study of the lifeworld ex- plains why philosophers who reject Husserl’s official methodology are nevertheless recognizable as phenomenologists. Part II discusses Husserl’s notorious correlation between truth and possible evidence. From this arise three challenges for a reconciliation with the scientific image: first, from an epistemic restriction of truth, second from a semantic restriction through verificationism, and third, from logical problems with truth as knowability. Chapter 4 traces Husserl’s notion of truth back to Brentano and Bolzano, from where I develop a new realist interpretation. Chapter 5 discusses Husserl’s semantic restriction of meaning and shows that he is more liberal than the logical empiricists. Chapter 6 turns to the logical challenge from the Church-Fitch or knowability paradox.

Part III returns to current debates in the philosophy of science. In the final chapter 7, I extend the account developed to a Phenomenological Structural Realism. Unlike existing forms of structural realism, the phenomenological version maintains a strict distinction between perceptual and mathematical structures and thereby avoids a collapse between mathematical and physical reality.

Research Articles

1. forthc., Verhaegh, S., E. Petrovich, and G. E. Bös: The American Reception of Logical Empiricism: A Mention-Based Bibliometric Analysis. in F. Stadler and G. Schiemer (eds) The Vienna Circle - History and Legacy in The Vienna Circle — History and Legacy (preprint).

   We use the edhiphy database to study the reception of Logical Empiricism in the United States.

2. 2024, Petrovich, E., S. Verhaegh, G. E. Bös, C. Cristalli, F. Dewulf, T. van Gemert and N. IJdens: Bibliometrics beyond citations: introducing mention extraction and analysis. Scientometrics (open access).

   We introduce mentions as the precursor to formal citations. We discuss additional challenges of working with mention data, in particular disambiguation of homonyms. After presenting four disambiguation strategies, we introduce edhiphy, a data base for the history of philosophy that enriches the extracted mentions with further metadata. It can be interactively explored on edhiphy.org.

3. 2024, Bös, G. E.: A Logical Challenge to Correlationism: The Church-Fitch Paradox in Husserl's Account of Fulfilment, Truth, and Meaning. Synthese (open access).

   This article argues that a logical paradox constrains how we can understand Husserl’s semantics and notion of truth.

   Abstract:
   Husserl’s theory of fulfilment conceives of empty acts, such as symbolic thought, and fulfilling acts, such as sensory perceptions, in a strict parallel. This parallelism is the basis for Husserl’s semantics, epistemology, and conception of truth. It also entails that any true proposition can be known in principle, which Church and Fitch have shown to explode into the claim that every proposition is actually known. I assess this logical challenge and discuss a recent response by James Kinkaid. While Kinkaid’s proposal saves one direction of the parallel for semantics, it gives up the parallelism for truth. I spell out a different response which meshes naturally with Husserl’s account of meaning. If the parallelism is restricted to a class of basic propositions, the truth of non-basic propositions can be defined inductively, without leading to the paradox. I then discuss objections that have been raised against a similar proposal by Dummett. The result is that exegetically plausible and popular interpretations of Husserl’s correlationism lead to logical paradoxes. But when taking into account the ‘logical adumbration’ of propositional blindspots, truth and possible fulfilment can be connected without paradox.

4. 2023, Groen-Xu, M., G. E. Bös, P. Teixeira, T. Voigt, and B. Knapp: Short-term Incentives of Research Evaluations: Evidence from the UK Research Excellence Framework. Research Policy (open access).

   Abstract:
   We document incentive effects of the evaluation deadlines in the UK’s performance-based research funding system. Studying 3,597,272 publications by UK researchers, we find that publications just before assessment deadlines obtain substantially fewer citations and are published in venues with lower impact factors. These trends reverse abruptly after the deadlines. We discuss different factors that contribute to this observation and provide evidence that evaluation deadlines are likely to set incentives against investment in research quality and long-term topics. We conclude that where such shifts in research incentives are not intended, they might require balancing by additional incentives for exploratory, long-term oriented research.

   I wrote the software to match databases and aggregate observables, helped to interpret the findings and contributed to the writing of the article.

Critical Notices and Book Reviews

1. 2024, Bös, Gregor E., Clavel Vázquez M. J., Cohen M., Colombo M.: Review of Cameron J. Buckner: From Deep Learning to Rational Machine: What the History of Philosophy Can Teach Us about the Future of Artificial Intelligence, Endeavour , open access. (invited book review)
2. 2023, Bös, Gregor E.: Review of Jörg Noller: Digitalität. Zur Philosophie der digitalen Lebenswelt, Phenomenological Reviews , open access. (invited book review)
3. 2022, Bös, Gregor E.: Rare Encounters: Wiltsche and Berghofer’s Phenomenological Approaches to Physics, Husserl Studies , doi. (peer reviewed book-review, 5,000 words)
4. 2022, Bös, Gregor E.: Review of Emiliano Trizio: Philosophy’s Nature. Husserl’s Phenomenology, Natural Science, and Metaphysics, Phenomenological Reviews , open access. (invited book review, 5,000 words)

Presentations

1. 2024-10-25: Real Possibilities for Husserl's Correlation between Truth and Evidence

   Departmental Seminar, Boston University (invited)

2. 2024-10-19: edhiphy.org: studying the history of 20th century philosophy through mention relations

   Philosophy of Science: Past Present & Future, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis

3. 2024-09-26: edhiphy.org: studying the history of 20th century philosophy through mention relations

   XXVI. German Congress for Philosophy, University of Münster, Germany

4. 2024-09-03: edhiphy: A new digital tool to study philosophy and its history

   with Sander Verhaegh

   Semester Kick-Off Presentation, Tilburg University, the Netherlands (invited)

5. 2024-08-21: A web interface for the edhiphy database

   Quantitative Studies of Philosophy, Tilburg University, the Netherlands (invited)

6. 2024-07-12: What happened to 'Rigorous Science' in Phenomenology? A Quantitative Study

   HOPOS 2024 Conference, University of Vienna, Austria

7. 2024-05-23: Real Possibilities for Husserl's Correlation between Truth and Evidence

   Husserl Circle Meeting at Creighton University in Omaha, Nebraska

8. 2023-07-04: Moore's Paradox in Husserlian Semantics

   97th Joint Session of the Aristotelian Society and the Mind Association, Birkbeck and the Institute of Philosophy, University of London, UK

9. 2023-06-06: The Knowability Thesis in Husserlian Phenomenology

   Workshop on the Concept and Scope of Knowability, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven

10. 2023-01-27: Husserl on the Scope of Symbolic Representation

    Phenomenology and Symbolic Cognition Workshop, Rijksuniversiteit Groningen, Netherlands

11. 2022-09-15: Cutting Diamonds: The Modal Shift in Husserl's Correlationism

    GAP11 Triannual Conference of the German Society for Analytic Philosophy, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Germany

12. 2022-01-15: Le germe de transcendentalisme dans les Recherches Logiques : La connaissabilité des faits

    [The origin of transcendentalism in the Logical Investigations: the knowability of facts], Young Researchers seminar, University of Paris 1, Panthéon-Sorbonne, France

13. 2021-09-22: Husserls Wahrheitsbegriff und verifikationistische Theorien der Bedeutung

    [Husserl’s notion of truth and verificationist theories of meaning], German Phenomenological Society (DGPF) Doctoral Colloquium, Jena, Germany

14. 2021-09-11: Can Husserl's Notion of Truth Sustain Metaphysical Realism?

    SoPhiA Conference for Young Analytic Philosophy, Salzburg, Austria (online)

15. 2021-09-08: Ideal Verificationism and Realism

    First Austrian Summer School in Phenomenology, Graz, Austria (online)

16. 2021-09-08: Comparative Functional Analysis as a Cultivation of the Attitude of Wonder

    with Kurt Rachlitz and Benjamin Großmann-Hensel

    PHILOS Colloquium on Philosophy and Organization Studies, Rhodes, Greece (online)

17. 2020-09-24: Phenomenological Verificationism

    Start of Year Departmental Conference, King’s College London, UK

18. 2019-09-27: Lifeworld Foundation and the Scientific Image

    Presented at the 2nd Phenomenological Approaches to Physics Conference, Stony Brook University, NY, USA

19. 2019-08-15: Husserl's Lifeworld and the Priority of the Manifest Image

    Presented at the 2019 Summer School in Phenomenology and Philosophy of Mind, Centre for Subjectivity Research, Copenhagen

20. 2018-06-14: Hermann Weyl on Causality in Physics

    Presented at the International Conference: Phenomenological Approaches to Physics, University of Graz, Austria

21. 2016-09-22: The Vivisection of Experience

    Presented at the 2nd International Conference in Philosophy of Mind, University of Minho, Braga, Portugal

22. 2016-07-02: Husserl and Carnap: Constitutional Systems and Theories of Meaning

    International Undergraduate Conference in Analytic Philosophy at Bayreuth University