Disputes about the causal structure of natural selection have implications for teleosemantics. Etiological, mainstream teleosemantics is based on a causalist view of natural selection. The core of its solution to Brentano’s Problem lies in the solution to Kant’s Puzzle provided by the Modern Synthesis concerning populational causation. In this paper, I suggest that if we adopt an alternative, statisticalist view on natural selection, the door is open for two reflections. First, it allows for setting different challenges to etiological teleosemantics that (...) arise if a statisticalist reading of natural selection is right. Second, by providing a different solution to Kant’s Puzzle based on individual causes of evolution, statisticalism promotes a different answer to Brentano’s Problem, what I label as Agential Teleosemantics. (shrink)

Abstract: This paper argues that a central explanatory role for the concept of Umwelt in theoretical biology is to be found in developmental biology, in particular in the effort to understand development as a goal-directed and adaptive process that is controlled by the organism itself. I will reach this conclusion in two (interrelated) ways. The first is purely theoretical and relates to the current scenario in the philosophy of biology. Challenging neo-Darwinism requires a new understanding of the various components involved (...) in natural selection processes. An important prerequisite for the explanation is the ability to understand development in a teleological way. Here, the concept of Umwelt plays a crucial role: if organisms are responsible for generating adaptive variation in specific environments, we need a theory that explains the context-dependent nature of adaptively oriented processes. The Umwelt is thus a central element in determining the goal that an adaptive process pursues. The second path in my analysis also has a historical dimension. I will present Karl Ernst von Baer’s reflections on teleological development and his influence on von Uexküll's thinking. I will present various ideas developed by von Baer, such as the distinction between Ziel and Zweck and the use of musical metaphors, which can help to understand development teleologically and give von Uexküll’s theory a central place in this framework. (shrink)

The field of the philosophy of biology is flourishing in its aim to evaluate and rethink the view inherited from the previous century ---the Modern Synthesis. Different research areas and theories have come to the fore in the last decades in order to account for different biological phenomena that, in the first instance, fall beyond the explanatory scope of the Modern Synthesis. This thesis is anchored and motivated by this revolt in the philosophy of biology. -/- The central target in (...) this context is the possibility of naturalizing teleology, a classical nightmare for the history of biology itself. This requires, principally, understanding the causes of teleological explanations without assuming an unfashioned backward causation of sorts. As the riddles of teleological explanations are about their temporal dimension, I analyze different temporal scales of biological processes: evolutionary, developmental, and physiological. -/- The first one is the one defended in the context of the Modern Synthesis. As expected, one of the aims of this thesis is to evaluate the adequacy of an evolutionary account of teleological explanation. The scrutiny is negative. Evolutionary explanations in the context of the Modern Synthesis lack the necessary causal roots to naturalize teleology. Concerning the physiological scale, a long tradition pushed up by Kant and the organicist movement in the 20th century allows us to better understand how teleological explanations can be naturalized in physiological process. The key notions in this temporal scale are self-organization and the recursive, looped character of physiological process. While the physiological scale may be suitably accounted by contemporaries views, such as Autonomous Systems Theory, different central teleological phenomena remain unexplained from a purely physiological perspective. In particular, different issues concerning the (adaptive) construction of organism ---such as plasticity, robustness, variation, novelty, inheritance--- deserve an ontogenetic analysis. -/- The principal aim of this thesis is to provide a theory of teleological development that falls beyond the Modern Synthesis' framework and is prompted by different insights from the history of biology. I call it Agential Teleosemantics. It rests on two central pillars. First, that developmental processes, beyond any gene-centered stance, can be understood in informational terms; i.e. developmental processes are about the interaction of developmental resources conveying biological information. The second ingredient is agentivity, namely the idea that development is regulated by an agentive system according to the adaptiveness of the phenotypic outcomes produced. The role of agency in Agential Teleosemantic is equivalent to the role of genes in the Modern Synthesis: it is responsible for explaining the order and the adaptive complexity in the living realm. -/- The second target of this thesis regards the possibility of naturalizing intentional explanations in cognitive science. The central project involved in such an aim is known as teleosemantics. Classical teleosemantics however is etiological: it explains the teleofunctions of representational systems in terms of evolutionary processes. The different disputes in the contemporary philosophy of biology provide two insights to analyze teleosemantics in cognitive science. First, the challenges against the Modern Synthesis must be extended to the evolutionary approach of etiological teleosemantics. Second, as Agential Teleosemantics suggests an alternative source for teleofunctions ---ontogeny, I offer an attempt to integrate Agential Teleosemantics into cognitive science in order to provide an alternative teleosemantic project to understand intentional explanations in cognitive science. (shrink)

The foundations of biology have been a topic of debate for the past few decades. The traditional perspective of the Modern Synthesis, which portrays organisms as passive entities with limited role in evolutionary theory, is giving way to a new paradigm where organisms are recognized as active agents, actively shaping their own phenotypic traits for adaptive purposes. Within this context, this article raises the question of whether contemporary biological theory is undergoing a cognitive revolution. This inquiry can be approached in (...) two ways: from a theoretical standpoint, exploring the centrality of the cognitive sciences in current theoretical biology; and from a historical perspective, examining the resemblance between the current state of theoretical biology and the Cognitive Revolution of the mid-20th century. Both inquiries yield affirmative answers, though important nuances will be emphasized. The cognitive sciences' explanatory framework is employed to elucidate the agentic characteristics of organisms, establishing a clear parallelism between the Cognitive Revolution and the present state of theoretical biology. (shrink)

In this paper, I will conduct three interrelated analyses. First, I will develop an analysis of various concepts in the history of biology that used to refer to individual-level phenomena but were then reinterpreted by the Modern Synthesis in terms of populations. Second, I argue that a similar situation can be found in contemporary biological theory. While different approaches reflect on the causal role of developing organisms in evolution, proponents of the Modern Synthesis avoid any substantial change by reinterpreting and (...) explaining individual-level phenomena from a population perspective. Finally, I will approach this debate by advocating the statistical reading of natural selection, which holds that explanations by natural selection are statistical. I will argue that the above historical conceptual reinterpretations belong to a new explanatory strategy developed by the Modern Synthesis based on population thinking. The reinterpretation of concepts at the individual level is part of the explanatory framework of the Modern Synthesis and the empty role of development within this framework. Moreover, the statistical perspective adopted here allows for the integration of two explanatory models: population-statistical and individual-causal. Finally, I will argue that this pluralistic framework can help to define the explanatory scope of the different biological approaches in order to achieve a coherent integration of development into evolution without rejecting population thinking. (shrink)

In De partibus animalium A1, Aristotle presents —in a darker than usual way— decisive details of the methodology he devised for his science of nature. His indications seem to point the path along which Aristotelian biology should travel. However, numerous textual and systematic difficulties have given rise to a number of conflicting interpretations, in the context of a vigorous stream of philosophical research and debate since the last third of the last century. In this stream of studies, Michael of (...) Ephesus’s commentary on PA and his views on the subject remain relatively ignored. A complex multiplicity of factors seems to support the lack of sufficient consensus among leading contemporary specialists to explicitly consider those contributions. The purpose of this paper is to examine several of these factors and, based on the evidence provided by little explored aspects of Michael’s texts, to offer arguments in favor of that consensus against a number of alternatives. I shall argue that the contributions of this late commentator deserve to be considered —mutatis mutandis— as seriously as it is done with the main ancient Greek commentaries; in particular, in the philosophical studies of those who are currently interested in that methodology or are engaged in Aristotelian biology. (shrink)

Explanatory Externalism states that the only adaptive force in evolution is natural selection. Explanatory Externalism is a central thesis of the Modern Evolutionary Synthesis. The etiological theory of natural selected-effect functions also advocates Explanatory Externalism. According to this theory, natural selection is the process responsible for determining the proper natural functions of traits. However, I will point out several challenges to Explanatory Externalism that are proposed primarily by developmental biology and its various subfields. Based on these challenges, this paper will (...) argue why biological functions cannot be fully explained by the selected-effect theory, i.e., that a theory of biological functions must adopt some kind of Explanatory Internalism. At the end of this paper, I will discuss whether or not Explanatory Internalism entails a pluralistic view of biological functions, and how this discussion is related to the different explanations of fit and diversity found in evolutionary biology. (shrink)

The use of evolutionary explanations to explain phenomena at the individual level has been described by various authors as an explanatory error, the so-called Phylogeny Fallacy. In this paper, this fallacy will be analyzed in the context of teleosemantics, a central project of the philosophy of mind whose main aim is to naturalize intentional systems by appealing to their biological teleofunctions. I will argue that those teleosemantics projects that invoke evolutionary functions generally commit the fallacy. First, I will point to (...) various arguments in the literature that point to this fallacy. However, a more general argument will also be made. To illustrate this puzzling scenario, I will present two desiderata that any teleosemantic project must fulfill. I will argue that naturalizing intentionality based on natural selection creates an explanatory gap between types and tokens. This gap prohibits an adequate explanation of the desiderata. To close the gap, teleosemantics invokes replicator biology, a view of inheritance that has already been identified to commit the fallacy. This leads teleosemantics into a complex situation: to close the gap, it must commit the fallacy. (shrink)

El objetivo de este ensayo es analizar cómo confluyen en una misma base teórica tres discursos de diferentes áreas. Uno de ellos es la ciencia, mediante el genocentrismo defendido en la síntesis moderna en Biología. Otro es el de la religión, mediante la perspectiva finalista del alma y del diseño divino, que comparten las religiones abrahámicas. Y finalmente, en la esfera político-social, donde diferentes movimientos conservadores se oponen a replantear la agenda de derechos. La confluencia teórica que nuclea a las (...) tres áreas mencionadas es un preformismo sobre los organismos. Por lo tanto, primero, veremos cómo el preformismo se encuentra presente en biología. Segundo, señalaremos dos ideas relacionadas al preformismo que subyacen tanto en la biología como en la religión. Finalmente, analizaremos cómo ambos discursos, el científico y el religioso, se encuentran presentes y empleando un rol argumentativo en debates actuales sobre derechos humanos, específicamente, relacionados al aborto ya los derechos de la población lgtbiq+. La principal conclusión es que la síntesis moderna promueve erróneamente una defensa de un preformismo genético, con connotaciones religiosas, que es usado por movimientos conservadores en el ámbito político-social. (shrink)

This study focuses in testing the power of reciprocity and leadership as collective action incentive structures and cooperation economic benefits in explaining collective action initiation in the context of a post-communist transition economy. The paper is based on a structured survey targeting Albanian export-oriented farmers. Different from most previous studies, this paper uses both regression analysis and machine learning procedure which is better suited for analysing non-linear relationships. The empirical findings are at odds with common sense that non-cooperation is the (...) dominant strategy, because the presence of tolerant reciprocators and leadership resources provide promising incentive structures for collective action development. KEYWORDS: Albania, collective action, collective action benefits, incentive structures, leadership, power, reciprocity. (shrink)

Abstract: The main objective is to design a line follower robot is to carry products in the manufacturing process in industries. In this paper, we mainly focused on the design to work the line follower efficiently with lighter weight. The line follower robot designed with 5 sensors to make the robot move in even complex paths. This paper discussed the mechanical and technical issues with the line follower robot and applications in various fields. In the working model, we used black (...) detector infrared sensors So that speed of response of the robot is high. This paper gives an brief idea about all the components used to prepare a line follower robot. (shrink)

This paper challenges the first Gettier counterexample to the tripartite account of knowledge. Noting that 'the man who will get the job' is a description and invoking Donnellan's distinction between their 'referential' and 'attributive' uses, I argue that Smith does not actually believe that the man who will get the job has ten coins in his pocket. Smith's ignorance about who will get the job shows that the belief cannot be understood referentially, his ignorance of the coins in his pocket (...) shows that it cannot be understood attributively. An explanation for why Smith appeared to have justified true belief is given by distinguishing between 'belief' and 'belief in truth'. Smith believes the sentence 'the man who will get the job has ten coins in his pocket' to be true (he mistakenly believes that Jones will get the job, of whom he knows that he has ten coins in his pocket) (hence his 'belief'), the sentence is true (hence 'truth'), and he has sufficient reason to assent to it (hence his 'justification'). But he does not believe the proposition expressed. Hence he does not know it either. (shrink)

Artificial intelligence has arrived. In the online world it is already a part of everyday life, sitting invisibly behind a wide range of search engines and online commerce sites. It offers huge potential to enable more efficient and effective business and government but the use of artificial intelligence brings with it important questions about governance, accountability and ethics. Realising the full potential of artificial intelligence and avoiding possible adverse consequences requires societies to find satisfactory answers to these questions. This report (...) sets out some possible approaches, and describes some of the ways government is already engaging with these issues. (shrink)

Generalisation, universal knowledge claims, and recommendations within disaster studies are problematic because they lead to miscommunication and the misapplication of actionable knowledge. The consequences and impacts thereof are not often considered by experts; forgone as irrelevant to the academic division of labour. There is a disconnect between expert assertions for disaster risk reduction (DRR) and their practical suitability for laypersons. Experts currently assert independently of the context within which protective action measures (PAMs) are to be used, measures unconnected to the (...) people for whom they are developed. This has knock-on effects for DRR: much expert-generated science and policy remains unused, unimplemented, and sometimes misapplied. I use philosophical accounts of assertion and epistemic blame to highlight the epistemic relationship between experts and laypersons. This relationship includes responsibilities and agreements between epistemic agents. Since multilevel DRR knowledge still transfers top-down from experts to laypersons, if experts impair the epistemic relationship, they can be held epistemically blameworthy. To address the pervasiveness of top-down systems, I analyse the epistemic framings and narratives currently shaping DRR, and more specifically PAMs and campaigns. I deconstruct universal perspectives that dominate the epistemic processes of generating, disseminating, and implementing DRR knowledge and specifically for co-seismic landslide PAMs for Nepal. I argue for more inclusive, contextual, and epistemically responsible DRR. Co-production of knowledge should begin from the standpoints of marginalised persons who may have an epistemic advantage due to their socio-politically marginalised positions. Often these epistemic contributions are left out of DRR efforts because marginalised persons are rarely afforded equal, if any, epistemic agency, which results in epistemic gaps and a large pool of relevant knowledge remaining unincorporated and unused in DRR research and policy. (shrink)

Herman Gorter (1864-1927) became famous as the author of May (1889) and Poems (1890). His opus magnum Pan, published in 1916, hardly acquired any readership at all, which is remarkable, given the monumental size and scope of this unique achievement, celebrating the imminent proletarian revolution and the advent of the communist era: a visionary work of global proportions. Gorter’s Pan will be assessed as thinking poetry, more precisely: as dialectical materialist poetry, as a work of art which articulates a dialectical (...) materialist worldview, not only concerning political economy and society, but also concerning nature and the universe as such, from the stars and galaxies of modern astrophysics down to the atoms and molecules of modern chemistry and quantum physics. Gorter’s monumental work is ‘thinking poetry’ in the Heideggerian sense of the term, sensitive to an imminent upheaval of Being as such, as well as a dialectical materialist artwork (albeit with a tinge of Spinozism) contributing (via the ‘school of poetry’) to a dialectical understanding of space, time, life and matter. In this article, I will focus on two crucial recurring motives: the motif of the shining crystal and the motif of the beaming galaxy. Via these motifs, so I suggest, Gorter aspires to bridge the gap between his epic-lyrical poetry and twentieth-century science. (shrink)

Margaret Macdonald was at the institutional heart of analytic philosophy in Britain in the mid-twentieth century. Yet, her views on the nature of philosophical theories diverge quite considerably from those of many of her contemporaries. In this paper, I focus on her 1953 article ‘Linguistic Philosophy and Perception’, a provocative paper in which Macdonald argues that the value of philosophical theories is more akin to that of poetry or art than science or mathematics. I do so for two reasons. (...) First, because it reveals just how far Macdonald’s meta- philosophical views diverged from those of many of her contemporaries. Second, because the discussion in LPP pre-empts recent literature on the nature of philosophical inquiry and the efficacy of philosophical arguments. Indeed, Macdonald’s paper is just as likely to provoke discussion today as it was in the 1950s. (shrink)

From 1900 onwards, scientists and novelists have explored the contours of a future society based on the use of “anthropotechnologies” (techniques applicable to human beings for the purpose of performance enhancement ranging from training and education to genome-based biotechnologies). Gradually but steadily, the technologies involved migrated from (science) fiction into scholarly publications, and from “utopia” (or “dystopia”) into science. Building on seminal ideas borrowed from Nietzsche, Peter Sloterdijk has outlined the challenges inherent in this development. Since time immemorial, (...) and at least since the days of Plato’s Academy, human beings have been interested in possibilities for (physical or mental) performance enhancement. We are constantly trying to improve ourselves, both collectively and individually, for better or for worse. At present, however, new genomics-based technologies are opening up new avenues for self-amelioration. Developments in research facilities using animal models may to a certain extent be seen as expeditions into our own future. Are we able to address the bioethical and biopolitical issues awaiting us? After analyzing and assessing Sloterdijk’s views, attention will shift to a concrete domain of application, namely sport genomics. For various reasons, top athletes are likely to play the role of genomics pioneers by using personalized genomics information to adjust diet, life-style, training schedules and doping intake to the strengths and weaknesses of their personalized genome information. Thus, sport genomics may be regarded as a test bed where the contours of genomics-based self-management are tried out. (shrink)

Life sciences and emerging technologies raise a plethora of issues. Besides practical, bioethical and policy issues, they have broader, cultural implications as well, affecting and reflecting our zeitgeist and world-view, challenging our understanding of life, nature and ourselves as human beings, and reframing the human condition on a planetary scale. In accordance with the aims and scope of the journal, LSSP aims to foster engaged scholarship into the societal dimensions of emerging life sciences (Chadwick and Zwart 2013) and via this (...) thematic series, the journal provides a podium for authors who intend to address concrete issues from a ‘continental philosophical’ perspective, which may in- clude (post)phenomenology, hermeneutics, dialectics, (post)structuralism, psychoanalysis, critical theory and similar approaches. The series aims to contribute to a diagnostics of the present and a prognostics of the future, focusing on critical normative challenges (such as embodiment, intimate technologies, social justice, biopower, nanomedicine, human enhancement and the anthropocene) and building on the work of key authors such as Hegel (1830), Heidegger (1953, 1953/1954), Bachelard (1938), Canguilhem (1975), Lacan (1966, 1969-1970/1991), Habermas (1968), Serres (1972), Foucault (1969), Žižek (2006/2009), Stiegler (2010), Sloterdijk (2001, 2009) and others, but targeting con- crete up-to-date events and case studies against the backdrop of broader developments within the techno-scientific culture. (shrink)

The local opposes the global or the macro opposes the micro and vice versa, respectively. This dialectical relationship further exposes that scales are socially and politically constructed, representative of a phenomena that is relational, and is thus of important consideration in analysis beyond simple labeling. That is, scale represents more than ‘size’ and ‘complexity’, but also reveals the relational. It is the relational—the relationship between the ‘global’ and its contents or the ‘local’—which provides for or is wont for analytic complexity (...) and theorizing. (shrink)

Logic has pride of place in mathematics and its 20th century offshoot, computer science. Modern symbolic logic was developed, in part, as a way to provide a formal framework for mathematics: Frege, Peano, Whitehead and Russell, as well as Hilbert developed systems of logic to formalize mathematics. These systems were meant to serve either as themselves foundational, or at least as formal analogs of mathematical reasoning amenable to mathematical study, e.g., in Hilbert’s consistency program. Similar efforts continue, but have (...) been expanded by the development of sophisticated methods to study the properties of such systems using proof and model theory. In parallel with this evolution of logical formalisms as tools for articulating mathematical theories (broadly speaking), much progress has been made in the quest for a mechanization of logical inference and the investigation of its theoretical limits, culminating recently in the development of new foundational frameworks for mathematics with sophisticated computer-assisted proof systems. In addition, logical formalisms developed by logicians in mathematical and philosophical contexts have proved immensely useful in describing theories and systems of interest to computer scientists, and to some degree, vice versa. Three examples of the influence of logic in computer science are automated reasoning, computer verification, and type systems for programming languages. (shrink)

Recent years have seen a surge in online collaboration between experts and amateurs on scientific research. In this article, we analyse the epistemological implications of these crowdsourced projects, with a focus on Zooniverse, the world’s largest citizen science web portal. We use quantitative methods to evaluate the platform’s success in producing large volumes of observation statements and high impact scientific discoveries relative to more conventional means of data processing. Through empirical evidence, Bayesian reasoning, and conceptual analysis, we show how (...) information and communication technologies enhance the reliability, scalability, and connectivity of crowdsourced e-research, giving online citizen science projects powerful epistemic advantages over more traditional modes of scientific investigation. These results highlight the essential role played by technologically mediated social interaction in contemporary knowledge production. We conclude by calling for an explicitly sociotechnical turn in the philosophy of science that combines insights from statistics and logic to analyse the latest developments in scientific research. (shrink)

This paper presents a preliminary analysis of homeopathy from the perspective of the demarcation problem in the philosophy of science. In this context, Popper, Kuhn and Feyerabend’s solution to the problem will be given respectively and their criteria will be applied to homeopathy, aiming to shed some light on the controversy over its scientific status. It then examines homeopathy under the lens of demarcation criteria to conclude that homeopathy is regarded as science by Feyerabend and is considered as (...) pseudoscience by Popper and Kuhn. By offering adequate tools for the analysis of the foundations, structure and implications of homeopathy, demarcation issue can help to clarify this medical controversy. The main argument of this article is that a final decision on homeopathy, whose scientific status changes depending on the criteria of the philosophers mentioned, cannot be given. (shrink)

Throughout the 20th century, philosophers have criticized the scientific understanding of the human body. Instead of presenting the body as a meaningful unity or Gestalt, it is regarded as a complex mechanism and described in quasi-mechanistic terms. In a phenomenological approach, a more intimate experience of the body is presented. This approach, however, is questioned by Jacques Lacan. According to Lacan, three basic possibilities of experiencing the body are to be distinguished: the symbolical (or scientific) body, the imaginary (or ideal) (...) body and the real body. Whereas the symbolical body is increasingly objectified (and even digitalized) by medical science, the phenomenological perception amounts to an idealization of the body. The real body cannot be perceived immediately. Rather, it emerges in the folds and margins of our efforts to symbolize or idealize the body, which are bound to remain incomplete and fragile. In the first part of the article (1-3), Lacan's conceptual distinction between the symbolical, the imaginary and the real body will be explained. In the second part (4-5), this distinction will be further clarified by relying on crucial chapters in the history of anatomy (notably Mundinus, Vesalius, Da Vinci and Descartes). (shrink)

This paper is an attempt to provide an adequate theoretical framework to understand the biological basis of human rights. We argue that the skepticism about human rights is increasing especially among the most rational, innovative and productive community of intellectuals belonging to the applied sciences. By using examples of embryonic stem cell research, a clash between applied scientists and legal scientists cum human rights activists has been highlighted. After an extensive literature review, this paper concludes that the advances in applied (...) sciences proven by empirical evidence should not be restricted by normative theories and philosophies of the social sciences. If we agree on these premises that Human Rights are biological, then biology can provide a framework of cooperation for social and applied scientists. (shrink)

Dr Stockmann, the principal character in Henrik Ibsen's A Public Enemy, is a classic example of a whistle-blower who, upon detecting and disclosing a serious case of environmental pollution, quickly finds himself transformed from a public benefactor into a political outcast by those in power. If we submit the play to a 'second reading', however, it becomes clear that the ethical intricacies of whistle-blowing are interwoven with epistemological issues. Basically, the play is about the complex task of communicating scientific (notably (...) microbiological) data to lay audiences. This becomes even more apparent when we realise that Stockmann was a contemporary of real 'microbe hunters' such as Pasteur and Koch. The play's basic message is that epoch-making scientists (such as Pasteur and Koch) not only produced convincing and reliable data from a scientific point of view, but also acquired the skills and insights needed to enter into a dialogue with their cultural and societal environment. (shrink)

The shape of the Earth's surface, its topography, is a fundamental dimension of the environment, shaping or mediating many other environmental flows or functions. But there is a major divergence in the way that topography is conceptualized in different domains. Topographic cartographers, information scientists, geomorphologists and environmental modelers typically conceptualize topographic variability as a continuous field of elevations or as some discrete approximation to such a field. Pilots, explorers, anthropologists, ecologists, hikers, and archeologists, on the other hand, typically conceptualize this (...) same variability in terms of hills and valleys, mountains and plains, barrows and trenches, that is, as (special sorts of) objects, with locations, shapes, and often names of their own. In this chapter, we sketch an approach to bridging this fundamental gap in geographic information infrastructure. (shrink)

When scientists or science reporters communicate research results to the public, this often involves ethical and epistemic risks. One such risk arises when scientific claims cause cognitive or behavioural changes in the audience that contribute to the self-fulfilment of these claims. I argue that the ethical and epistemic problems that such self-fulfilment effects may pose are much broader and more common than hitherto appreciated. Moreover, these problems are often due to a specific psychological phenomenon that has been neglected in (...) the research on science communication: many people tend to conform to ‘descriptive norms’, that is, norms capturing (perceptions of) what others commonly do, think, or feel. Because of this tendency, science communication may frequently produce significant social harm. I contend that scientists have a responsibility to assess the risk of this potential harm and consider adopting strategies to mitigate it. I introduce one such strategy and argue that its implementation is independently well motivated by the fact that it helps improve scientific accuracy. (shrink)

A map is not its territory. Taking a map too seriously may lead to pernicious reification: map and world are conflated. As one family of cases of such reification, I focus on maps exuding the omphalos syndrome, whereby a centred location on the map is taken to be the world navel of, for instance, an empire. I build on themes from my book _When Maps Become the World_, in which I analogize scientific theories to maps, and develop the tools of (...) assumption archaeology and integration platforms. Here I argue that excavating assumptions helps fill cartographic silences, showing the limitations of perspectives often at war. Furthermore, integrating perspectives permits resisting imperial central or master images. A worthwhile future project would be a repository of world-navel maps, critically annotated with cultural context and imperial information. Mutual understanding may result from such an integration platform, perhaps implemented online or in a museum. (shrink)

Weber's 'science as a vocation' has often been viewed as a therapeutic concept with no functional significance in the fully bureaucratized and professionalized modern science. However, development in the philosophy of science in the last century, especially the Kuhn thesis of the discontinuity of scientific progress and the Duhem-Quine thesis of underdetermination, shows that Weber's distinction between science as a vocation and science as a profession (career) can potentially answer one of the oldest questions in (...) science studies: What makes scientific breakthroughs possible? (shrink)

Vision is an important metaphor in ethical and political questions of knowledge. The feminist philosopher Donna Haraway points out the “perverse” nature of an intrusive, alienating, all-seeing vision (to which we might cry out “stop looking at me!”), but also encourages us to embrace the embodied nature of sight and its promises for genuinely situated knowledge. Current technologies of machine vision – surveillance cameras, drones (for war or recreation), iPhone cameras – are usually construed as instances of the former rather (...) than the latter, and for good reasons. However, although in no way attempting to diminish the real suffering these technologies have brought about in the world, I make the case for understanding technologies of computer vision as material instances of embodied seeing and situated knowing. Furthermore, borrowing from Iris Murdoch’s concept of moral vision, I suggest that these technologies direct our labor towards self-reflection in ethically significant ways. My approach draws upon paradigms in computer vision research, phenomenology, and feminist epistemology. Ultimately, this essay is an argument for directing more philosophical attention from merely criticizing technologies of vision as ethically deficient towards embracing them as complex, methodologically and epistemologically important objects. (shrink)

Parmenides plays an important role in the first section of Hegel’s Science of Logic due to his definition of being as a pure thought-determination. This article investigates, first, how Hegel conceives the Parmenidean being. Secondly, by discussing Hegel's logical analysis of pure being and pure nothing, it aims to show why and how such conception of being, according to Hegel, provides a crucial insight into the function of the understanding.

In the context of discovery-oriented hypothesis testing research, behavioral scientists widely accept a convention for false positive (α) and false negative error rates (β) proposed by Jacob Cohen, who deemed the general relative seriousness of the antecedently accepted α = 0.05 to be matched by β = 0.20. Cohen’s convention not only ignores contexts of hypothesis testing where the more serious error is the β-error. Cohen’s convention also implies for discovery-oriented hypothesis testing research that a statistically significant observed effect is (...) four times more probable to be a mistaken discovery than for a statistically significant true observed effect to be independently replicable. In the long run, Cohen’s convention thus is epistemically harmful to the development of a progressive science of human behavior, making its acceptance crucial in explaining the replication crisis in behavioral science. The balance between α- and β-errors generally ought to be struck using both epistemic and practical considerations. Yet epistemic considerations alone imply that making a genuine contribution to the body of knowledge in behavioral science requires error rates that are not only small but also symmetrical. (shrink)

In the book "Experiential Philosophy- Body-based Wisdom and Challenges to Western Thought', Professors Lakoff and Johnson divided cognitive science into the first generation of cognitive science (based on British-American analytical philosophy and a Priori philosophy) and the second generation of cognitive science (based on experiential philosophy, emphasizing: the experiential nature of the mind, the unconscious nature of cognition, and the metaphorical nature of thinking), expounded the characteristics of the two generations of cognitive science and the differences (...) between the two, and firmly believed that cognitive linguistics is based on the second generation of cognitive science theory, which is a reaction to structuralism and generative schools, thereby clarifying cognitive linguistics. Some basic points of view. (shrink)

The value-free ideal in science has been criticised as both unattainable and undesirable. We argue that it can be defended as a practical principle guiding scientific research even if the unattainability and undesirability of a value-free end-state are granted. If a goal is unattainable, then one can separate the desirability of accomplishing the goal from the desirability of pursuing it. We articulate a novel value-free ideal, which holds that scientists should act as if science should be value-free, and (...) we argue that even if a purely value-free science is undesirable, this value-free ideal is desirable to pursue. (shrink)

Two great problems of learning confront humanity: learning about the nature of the universe and about ourselves and other living things as a part of the universe, and learning how to become civilized or enlightened. The first problem was solved, in essence, in the 17th century, with the creation of modern science. But the second problem has not yet been solved. Solving the first problem without also solving the second puts us in a situation of great danger. All our (...) current global problems have arisen as a result. What we need to do, in response to this unprecedented crisis, is learn from our solution to the first problem how to solve the second one. This was the basic idea of the 18th century Enlightenment. Unfortunately, in carrying out this programme, the Enlightenment made three blunders, and it is this defective version of the Enlightenment programme, inherited from the past, that is still built into the institutional/intellectual structure of academic inquiry in the 21st century. In order to solve the second great problem of learning we need to correct the three blunders of the traditional Enlightenment. This involves changing the nature of social inquiry, so that social science becomes social methodology or social philosophy, concerned to help us build into social life the progress-achieving methods of aim-oriented rationality, arrived at by generalizing the progress-achieving methods of science. It also involves, more generally, bringing about a revolution in the nature of academic inquiry as a whole, so that it takes up its proper task of helping humanity learn how to become wiser by increasingly cooperatively rational means. The scientific task of improving knowledge and understanding of nature becomes a part of the broader task of improving global wisdom. The outcome would be what we so urgently need: a kind of inquiry rationally designed and devoted to helping us make progress towards a genuinely civilized world. We would succeed in doing what the Enlightenment tried but failed to do: learn from scientific progress how to go about making social progress towards as good a world as possible. (shrink)

I compare two different arguments for the importance of bringing new voices into science: arguments for increasing the representation of women, and arguments for the inclusion of the public, or for “citizen science”. I suggest that in each case, diversifying science can improve the quality of scientific results in three distinct ways: epistemically, ethically, and politically. In the first two respects, the mechanisms are essentially the same. In the third respect, the mechanisms are importantly different. Though this (...) might appear to suggest a broad similarity between the cases, I show that the analysis reveals an important respect in which efforts to include the public are more complex. With citizen science programs, unlike with efforts to bring more women into science, the three types of improvement are often in conflict with one another: improvements along one dimension may come at a cost on another dimension, suggesting difficult trade-offs may need to be made. (shrink)

The cultural transmission of theological concepts remains an underexplored topic in the cognitive science of religion (CSR). In this paper, I examine whether approaches from CSR, especially the study of content biases in the transmission of beliefs, can help explain the cultural success of some theological concepts. This approach reveals that there is more continuity between theological beliefs and ordinary religious beliefs than CSR authors have hitherto recognized: the cultural transmission of theological concepts is influenced by content biases that (...) also underlie the reception of ordinary religious concepts. (shrink)

Philosophers have recently argued, against a prevailing orthodoxy, that standards of knowledge partly depend on a subject’s interests; the more is at stake for the subject, the less she is in a position to know. This view, which is dubbed “Pragmatic Encroachment” has historical and conceptual connections to arguments in philosophy of science against the received model of science as value free. I bring the two debates together. I argue that Pragmatic Encroachment and the model of value-laden (...) class='Hi'>science reinforce each other. Drawing on Douglas’ argument about the indispensability of value judgments in science, and psychological evidence about people’s inability to objectively reason about what they care about, I introduce a novel argument for Pragmatic Encroachment. (shrink)

This paper explains and defends the idea that metaphysical necessity is the strongest kind of objective necessity. Plausible closure conditions on the family of objective modalities are shown to entail that the logic of metaphysical necessity is S5. Evidence is provided that some objective modalities are studied in the natural sciences. In particular, the modal assumptions implicit in physical applications of dynamical systems theory are made explicit by using such systems to define models of a modal temporal logic. Those assumptions (...) arguably include some necessitist principles. -/- Too often, philosophers have discussed ‘metaphysical’ modality — possibility, contingency, necessity — in isolation. Yet metaphysical modality is just a special case of a broad range of modalities, which we may call ‘objective’ by contrast with epistemic and doxastic modalities, and indeed deontic and teleological ones (compare the distinction between objective probabilities and epistemic or subjective probabilities). Thus metaphysical possibility, physical possibility and immediate practical possibility are all types of objective possibility. We should study the metaphysics and epistemology of metaphysical modality as part of a broader study of the metaphysics and epistemology of the objective modalities, on pain of radical misunderstanding. Since objective modalities are in general open to, and receive, natural scientific investigation, we should not treat the metaphysics and epistemology of metaphysical modality in isolation from the metaphysics and epistemology of the natural sciences. -/- In what follows, Section 1 gives a preliminary sketch of metaphysical modality and its place in the general category of objective modality. Section 2 reviews some familiar forms of scepticism about metaphysical modality in that light. Later sections explore a few of the many ways in which natural science deals with questions of objective modality, including questions of quantified modal logic. (shrink)

Some prominent scientists and philosophers have stated openly that moral and political considerations should influence whether we accept or promulgate scientific theories. This widespread view has significantly influenced the development, and public perception, of intelligence research. Theories related to group differences in intelligence are often rejected a priori on explicitly moral grounds. Thus the idea, frequently expressed by commentators on science, that science is “self-correcting”—that hypotheses are simply abandoned when they are undermined by empirical evidence—may not be correct (...) in all contexts. In this paper, documentation spanning from the early 1970s to the present is collected, which reveals the influence of scientists’ moral and political commitments on the study of intelligence. It is suggested that misrepresenting findings in science to achieve desirable social goals will ultimately harm both science and society. (shrink)

In What Science Knows, the Australian philosopher and mathematician James Franklin explains in captivating and straightforward prose how science works its magic. It offers a semipopular introduction to an objective Bayesian/logical probabilist account of scientific reasoning, arguing that inductive reasoning is logically justified (though actually existing science sometimes falls short). Its account of mathematics is Aristotelian realist.

A recent study showed that 78% of global climate science funding flows to European and North American institutions. Dr. Quan-Hoang Vuong gives his perspective on why this is a problem for the planet.