Samuli Reijula looking at the ceiling

Samuli Reijula

I am a philosopher and cognitive scientist interested in how science works, how it could, and how it should work.

The aim of my current research project is to better understand scientific problem-solving: Science is the humanity’s most successful problem-solving system, and the primary source of epistemic authority in modern societies. In my research, I view & model science as a distributed cognitive system, “problem-solving writ large.” How does that system function at different levels of analysis ranging from individual scientists to research groups and scientific communities? And how should it function - what are the social, cognitive, and institutional preconditions of well-functioning scientific research?



Posts

  • Perspective on diversity in Mustread

    My short perspective piece on the value of diversity and DEI policies was just published in Mustread. This one is in Finnish.

    A manuscript version here

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  • Opinion on inheritance tax (Helsingin Sanomat)

    A short opinion piece on inheritance tax, with Säde Hormio

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  • Unpopular ideas on AI and epistemic humility

    In this preprint Renne Pesonen and I argue that often arguments against machine intelligence are actually motivated by intuitions against machine agency.

    In our view, the striking thing about LLMs is that they are an existence proof of structurally simple (but large!) systems that can perform many of the tasks we think require intelligence. The fact that they might do those things in a “wrong”, non-human, way is beside the point: Something we thought could only be brought about by the (yet( unexplained powers of the human mind is now done by a shallow system. This should give us pause, some epistemic humility and antidote to human cognitive exceptionalism.

    Preprint available here and here

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  • Fediverse reading list

    I’ve become increasingly interested in the fediverse. Thinking in terms of protocols instead of privately owned platforms could give us ways to address some of the epistemic challenges associated with the new AI-structured information landscape. My plan is to write something on this later on, but I’ll start by gradually compiling a reading list on both technical and more conceptual thinking on the fediverse. I’ve been asking people for recommendations on what to read.

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  • Interview in Paatos (w/ Kristina Rolin and Jaakko Kuorikoski)

    The philosophical magazine Paatos published an interview with three philosophers of science, Kristina Rolin, Jaakko Kuorikoski and me. The format is interesting - Jere Hallikainen, the author, added some links and references but otherwise the transcript follows the discussion very closely. Thanks Jere!

    Turns out that surprisingly many philosophers started out as engineers. Or aspiring professional musicians!

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  • Visiting CMU in October-November 2024

    In October-November 2024 I will be visiting the Center for Formal Epistemology and the Institute for Complex Social Dynamics at Carnegie Mellon University (hosted by Kevin Zollman). Really looking forward to this!

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  • On the idea of Bildung university

    This week I gave a short presentation on the idea of Bildung university (‘sivistysyliopisto’ in Finnish). The notion of Bildung doesn’t quite translate to English but we have a word for it in Finnish, ‘sivistys’. Here Bildung university refers to the modern concept of research university from early 19th century, first embodied by the University of Berlin (founded in 1810).

    It’s a lofty ideal and many of the ideas behind it come from German enlightenment and neohumanism: Kant, Fichte, Schelling, Schleiermacher - and Humboldt. Although it seems like a politically implausible picture of autonomous universities and academic freedom, incompatible with current managerialist trends in higher education, the Bildung university model has been remarkably resilient, and successful. Despite various pressures and mutations along the way, it still lies at the heart of our best research universities, not only in continental Europe but also in the US, where the German model was exported during the 19th century.

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  • Interview - Science, uncertainty and trust

    Amanda Häkkinen (TSV) interviewed me about my research for a series on open science. We talked about scientific problem solving, Heidegger, uncertainty and trust. And other things. Here, (in Finnish).

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  • AI as a mirror for human intelligence

    Inspired by dinner debates around New Year’s (2023), Renne Pesonen and I wrote an essay (in Finnish) on large language models.

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  • Encyclopedia entry on the philosophy of science

    Tomi Kokkonen and I wrote a (long!) entry on the philosophy of science for the Logos encyclopedia. It’s in Finnish, but who cares in this age of chatGPT.

    Tweets here.

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  • Workshop materials - Agent-based models in social epistemology

    Materials from the computational methods workshop at the 2022 Summer school of the Vienna doctoral school of philosophy, finally on github.

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  • On positionality statements (In Finnish)

    I talked to a journalist from Helsingin Sanomat about positionality statements in science. My email response turned into a micro essay, so I’ll post it here.

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  • Interview on basic research (in Finnish)

    I, among several other researchers, was recently interviewed by the magazine Tekniikan Maailma about the importance of basic research. Here

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  • reijulab

    Ok ok I know it’s silly. One man research lab. But my personal research section is called Reijulab from now on. Why? Why not!

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  • Diversity-ability-trade-off (@Philosophy of Science)

    We (myself and Jaakko Kuorikoski) have a new paper coming out in the Philosophy of Science (PSA2020/2021 proceedings). The paper examines the diversity-beats-ability theorem originally put forward by Lu Hong and Scott Page, 2004. Long story short, (1) we don’t think the original model provides reliable evidence of diversity beating ability in group problem solving, but (2) we have an improved version of the model that can tell us something of interest about the trade-off between diversity and ability!

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  • Institutional Epistemology

    Here’s a link to a paper I wrote with Petri Ylikoski, where we outline the idea of institutional epistemology. (in Finnish!)

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  • New project - modeling the republic of science

    I’m on research leave 2020-2025, working on my personal research project funded by the Academy of Finland. The project is called “Modeling the republic of science: Collaborative problem solving and collective rationality in scientific inquiry”

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  • Self-nudging in media

    Our self-nudging article is getting some attention in media: Behavioral scientist, Yliopisto-lehti, The Decision Lab, NBC Today (9/2020)

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  • Mallit ja päätöksenteko @Alusta

    Jaakko Kuorikoski and me wrote a small contribution to the debate on the use of evidence and computational models at the times of pandemic (in Finnish). In Alusta!

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  • Models as argumentative devices (@Synthese)

    How can philosophers make use of (simulation) models? Together with Emrah Aydinonat and Petri Ylikoski (Synthese, forthcoming 2020), I argue that e.g. in social epistemology (of science), models should be understood as argumentative devices, and their epistemic status be evaluated accordingly.

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