Introduction

The East European Network for Philosophy of Science (EENPS) is a network of philosophers of science and researchers from related disciplines educated, affiliated, or working at the academic institutions in the broadly understood region of Eastern Europe. The 3^rd Conference of the EENPS that took place in Belgrade, Serbia in 2021 was a well-attended event with contributions from scholars from diverse backgrounds. Trpin’s (2021) report on the conference noted that the conference had many sections, including general philosophy of science, philosophy of medicine, philosophy of cognitive science, philosophy of biology, history of logic, philosophy of economics, philosophy of social sciences, philosophy of physics, psychology and philosophy of science and formal philosophy of science.

The diversity of topics presented at the conference is also reflected in the four papers included in the Topical Collection for this year's EENPS conference. These papers address a range of issues related to science and philosophy, including social knowledge, the nature of truth and understanding, consciousness and selfhood, and the hard problem of consciousness.

Lilia Gurova's paper, ‘The Uses of Truth: Is There Room for Reconciliation of Factivist and Non-Factivist Accounts of Scientific Understanding?’ is an important contribution to the ongoing debate on scientific understanding. The argument between those who subscribe to factivism and those who do not revolves around the relationship between understanding and truth. According to Gurova, the line between factivism and non-factivism is not as straightforward as it appears, and there is a coming together of viewpoints between the two sides. Specifically, Gurova highlights how both factivists and non-factivists utilise the concept of ‘effectiveness’ as a replacement for truth, indicating a deeper similarity between the two positions.

In his paper, ‘Scientific Practices as Social Knowledge’, Juho Lindholm explores the idea that science is inherently a social practice. Lindholm outlines five distinct ways in which science is social, including the fact that language, which is fundamentally social, underpins science. Other ways in which scientific practice is socially informed are related to the fact of being shaped by the presence of other organisms in the environment; of being public and publicly shared. Furthermore, scientific knowledge can be used to effect social and ethical change and can be employed to enhance human welfare. Lindholm's work is a valuable addition to the expanding field of practice-based philosophy of science, and highlights important intersections with sociology of science and ecology.

In ‘Towards a Neutral-Structuralist Theory of Consciousness and Selfhood’, Janko Nešić examines the notion of consciousness and selfhood through an information-theoretic structuralist viewpoint. Nešić challenges the idea that Majid D. Beni's information-theoretic structuralist theory of consciousness and self (SRS) is a type of panpsychism, and suggests a distinction between extrinsic and intrinsic structure and dynamics, as used in the Integrated Information Theory of consciousness, in view of improving Beni's structuralist theory's ability to tackle the hard problem of consciousness.

Majid D. Beni’s reply ‘The Curious Incident of Indistinguishable Selves: A Reply to Nešić’, offers a rebuttal to Janko Nešić's criticism. Beni refutes Nešić's objections since, according to him, SRS does not make any commitment to the intrinsic vs. the extrinsic dichotomy, and is therefore in line with the neutral monist tendency of Nešić’s proposal. However, SRS denies strong discernibility of the selves and only leaves room for weak discernibility, meaning that while it acknowledges that in everyday life selves have some minimal (perhaps conventional) individuality, there is no precise scientific way to draw rigid boundaries between different selves, or between selves and their respective environments. According to Beni, this non-committal attitude stems from the naturalistic reluctance to embrace the ontological implications of habituated intuitions, for instance, about scientifically inexplicable subjective phenomenal experiences. Beni’s reply to Nešić’ contribution highlights the importance of the EENPS conferences as genuine occasions for fruitful scientific debates, in that Beni responded to Nešić’s paper, although he did not present at the conference.

This topical collection features four timely and focused papers addressing a range of issues related to philosophy of science and adjacent domains on diverse topics ranging from social knowledge to the nature of truth and understanding to consciousness and selfhood. These papers are just a small sample of the variety of topics presented at the EENPS conference, but they nevertheless showcase both the excellence of the research presented at the conference, and the importance of such regional conferences in providing a platform for scholars from around the world to engage in a lively discussion of important topics related to philosophy of science.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).