{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,6,13]],"date-time":"2026-06-13T04:25:30Z","timestamp":1781324730164,"version":"3.54.1"},"reference-count":18,"publisher":"Springer Science and Business Media LLC","issue":"4","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2024,10,29]],"date-time":"2024-10-29T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1730160000000},"content-version":"tdm","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0"},{"start":{"date-parts":[[2024,10,29]],"date-time":"2024-10-29T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1730160000000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0"}],"content-domain":{"domain":["link.springer.com"],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":["Minds &amp; Machines"],"abstract":"<jats:title>Abstract<\/jats:title>\n          <jats:p>Scientists increasingly approach the world through machine learning techniques, but philosophers of science often question their epistemic status. Some philosophers have argued that the use of unsupervised clustering algorithms is more justified than the use of supervised classification, because supervised classification is more biased, and because (parametric) simplicity plays a different and more interesting role in unsupervised clustering. I call these arguments the <jats:italic>No-Bias Argument<\/jats:italic> and the <jats:italic>Simplicity-Truth Argument<\/jats:italic>. I show how both arguments are fallacious and how, on the contrary, the use of supervised classification is <jats:italic>at least<\/jats:italic> as justified as the use of unsupervised clustering.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.1007\/s11023-024-09699-5","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2024,10,29]],"date-time":"2024-10-29T13:03:00Z","timestamp":1730206980000},"update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1007\/springer_crossmark_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":2,"title":["Is Unsupervised Clustering Somehow Truer?"],"prefix":"10.1007","volume":"34","author":[{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0001-5250-4276","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Anders","family":"S\u00f8gaard","sequence":"first","affiliation":[],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]}],"member":"297","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2024,10,29]]},"reference":[{"key":"9699_CR1","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"300","DOI":"10.1007\/978-3-319-23528-8_19","volume-title":"Machine learning and knowledge discovery in databases","author":"KT Abou-Moustafa","year":"2015","unstructured":"Abou-Moustafa, K. T., & Schuurmans, D. (2015). Generalization in unsupervised learning. In A. Appice, P. P. Rodrigues, V. Santos Costa, C. Soares, J. Gama, & A. Jorge (Eds.), Machine learning and knowledge discovery in databases (pp. 300\u2013317). Cham: Springer."},{"key":"9699_CR2","volume-title":"Advances in neural information processing systems","author":"P Awasthi","year":"2010","unstructured":"Awasthi, P., & Zadeh, R. (2010). Supervised clustering. In J. Lafferty, C. Williams, J. Shawe-Taylor, R. Zemel, & A. Culotta (Eds.), Advances in neural information processing systems.  (Vol. 23). London: Springer."},{"key":"9699_CR3","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1515\/9783112316009","volume-title":"Syntactic structures","author":"N Chomsky","year":"1957","unstructured":"Chomsky, N. (1957). Syntactic structures. London: Mouton."},{"key":"9699_CR4","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"1","DOI":"10.1111\/j.2517-6161.1977.tb01600.x","volume":"39","author":"AP Dempster","year":"1977","unstructured":"Dempster, A. P., Laird, N. M., & Rubin, D. B. (1977). Maximum likelihood from incomplete data via the EM algorithm. Journal of the Royal Statistical Society: Series B, 39, 1\u201338.","journal-title":"Journal of the Royal Statistical Society: Series B"},{"key":"9699_CR5","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Finley, T., & Joachims, T., (2005). Supervised clustering with support vector machines. In Proceedings of the 22nd international conference on machine learning, ICML\u201905 (pp. 217\u2013224). New York, NY, USA: Association for Computing Machinery.","DOI":"10.1145\/1102351.1102379"},{"key":"9699_CR6","volume-title":"Advances in neural information processing systems","author":"V Garg","year":"2018","unstructured":"Garg, V., & Kalai, A. T. (2018). Supervising unsupervised learning. In S. Bengio, H. Wallach, H. Larochelle, K. Grauman, N. Cesa-Bianchi, & R. Garnett (Eds.), Advances in neural information processing systems.  (Vol. 31). London: Springer."},{"key":"9699_CR7","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Haider, P., Brefeld, U., & Scheffer, T. (2007). Supervised clustering of streaming data for email batch detection. In Proceedings of the 24th international conference on machine learning, ICML\u201907 (pp. 345\u2013352). New York, NY, USA. Association for Computing Machinery.","DOI":"10.1145\/1273496.1273540"},{"key":"9699_CR8","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Hansen, L., & Larsen, J. (1996). Unsupervised learning and generalization. In Proceedings of international conference on neural networks (Vol. 1, pp. 25\u201330).","DOI":"10.1109\/ICNN.1996.548861"},{"key":"9699_CR9","first-page":"1","volume":"20","author":"V Kiselev","year":"2019","unstructured":"Kiselev, V., Andrews, T., & Hemberg, M. (2019). Challenges in unsupervised clustering of single-cell RNA-SEQ data. Nature Reviews Genetics, 20, 1.","journal-title":"Nature Reviews Genetics"},{"key":"9699_CR10","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"205395172211491","DOI":"10.1177\/20539517221149106","volume":"10","author":"A Miner","year":"2023","unstructured":"Miner, A., Stewart, S., Halley, M., Nelson, L., & Linos, E. (2023). Formally comparing topic models and human-generated qualitative coding of physician mothers\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 experiences of workplace discrimination. Big Data and Society, 10, 205395172211491.","journal-title":"Big Data and Society"},{"key":"9699_CR11","unstructured":"Mollema, W. J. T. (2024). Responding to the Watson\u2013Sterkenburg debate on clustering algorithms and natural kinds. Unpublished manuscript."},{"key":"9699_CR12","first-page":"1","volume":"57","author":"M Mostafa","year":"2022","unstructured":"Mostafa, M. (2022). A one-hundred-year structural topic modeling analysis of the knowledge structure of international management research. Quality and Quantity, 57, 1\u201331.","journal-title":"Quality and Quantity"},{"issue":"1","key":"9699_CR13","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"3","DOI":"10.1177\/0049124117729703","volume":"49","author":"LK Nelson","year":"2020","unstructured":"Nelson, L. K. (2020). Computational grounded theory: A methodological framework. Sociological Methods and Research, 49(1), 3\u201342.","journal-title":"Sociological Methods and Research"},{"issue":"5","key":"9699_CR14","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"2081","DOI":"10.1007\/s10670-020-00291-8","volume":"87","author":"G Rochefort-Maranda","year":"2020","unstructured":"Rochefort-Maranda, G., & Liu, M. (2020). Finding true clusters: On the importance of simplicity in science. Erkenntnis, 87(5), 2081\u20132096.","journal-title":"Erkenntnis"},{"issue":"2","key":"9699_CR15","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"227","DOI":"10.1016\/S0378-3758(00)00115-4","volume":"90","author":"H Shimodaira","year":"2000","unstructured":"Shimodaira, H. (2000). Improving predictive inference under covariate shift by weighting the log-likelihood function. Journal of Statistical Planning and Inference, 90(2), 227\u2013244.","journal-title":"Journal of Statistical Planning and Inference"},{"issue":"4","key":"9699_CR16","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"1","DOI":"10.1007\/s13347-023-00663-2","volume":"36","author":"TF Sterkenburg","year":"2023","unstructured":"Sterkenburg, T. F. (2023). Commentary on David Watson, \u201cOn the philosophy of unsupervised learning\u2019\u2019. Philosophy and Technology, 36(4), 1\u20135.","journal-title":"Philosophy and Technology"},{"issue":"2","key":"9699_CR17","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"1","DOI":"10.1007\/s13347-023-00635-6","volume":"36","author":"DS Watson","year":"2023","unstructured":"Watson, D. S. (2023a). On the philosophy of unsupervised learning. Philosophy and Technology, 36(2), 1\u201326.","journal-title":"Philosophy and Technology"},{"issue":"4","key":"9699_CR18","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"1","DOI":"10.1007\/s13347-023-00674-z","volume":"36","author":"DS Watson","year":"2023","unstructured":"Watson, D. S. (2023b). Reply to tom Sterkenburg\u2019s commentary. Philosophy and Technology, 36(4), 1\u20134.","journal-title":"Philosophy and Technology"}],"container-title":["Minds and Machines"],"original-title":[],"language":"en","link":[{"URL":"https:\/\/link.springer.com\/content\/pdf\/10.1007\/s11023-024-09699-5.pdf","content-type":"application\/pdf","content-version":"vor","intended-application":"text-mining"},{"URL":"https:\/\/link.springer.com\/article\/10.1007\/s11023-024-09699-5\/fulltext.html","content-type":"text\/html","content-version":"vor","intended-application":"text-mining"},{"URL":"https:\/\/link.springer.com\/content\/pdf\/10.1007\/s11023-024-09699-5.pdf","content-type":"application\/pdf","content-version":"vor","intended-application":"similarity-checking"}],"deposited":{"date-parts":[[2025,1,13]],"date-time":"2025-01-13T09:51:59Z","timestamp":1736761919000},"score":1,"resource":{"primary":{"URL":"https:\/\/link.springer.com\/10.1007\/s11023-024-09699-5"}},"subtitle":[],"short-title":[],"issued":{"date-parts":[[2024,10,29]]},"references-count":18,"journal-issue":{"issue":"4","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2024,12]]}},"alternative-id":["9699"],"URL":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1007\/s11023-024-09699-5","relation":{},"ISSN":["1572-8641"],"issn-type":[{"value":"1572-8641","type":"electronic"}],"subject":[],"published":{"date-parts":[[2024,10,29]]},"assertion":[{"value":"18 December 2023","order":1,"name":"received","label":"Received","group":{"name":"ArticleHistory","label":"Article History"}},{"value":"6 October 2024","order":2,"name":"accepted","label":"Accepted","group":{"name":"ArticleHistory","label":"Article History"}},{"value":"29 October 2024","order":3,"name":"first_online","label":"First Online","group":{"name":"ArticleHistory","label":"Article History"}},{"order":1,"name":"Ethics","group":{"name":"EthicsHeading","label":"Declarations"}},{"value":"This article does not rely on studies with human participants. No funding was received for this work.","order":2,"name":"Ethics","group":{"name":"EthicsHeading","label":"Ethical Approval"}}],"article-number":"43"}}