Evidence based-policy (EBP) is a popular research paradigm in the applied social sciences and within government agencies. Informally, EBP represents an explicit commitment to applying scientific methods to public affairs, in contrast to ideologically-driven or merely intuitive “common-sense” approaches to public policy. More specifically, the EBP paradigm places great weight on the results of experimental research designs, especially randomised controlled trials (RCTs), and systematic literature reviews that place evidential weight on experimental results. One hope is that such research designs and (...) approaches to analysing the scientific literature are sufficiently robust that they can settle what really ‘works’ in public policy. Can EBP succeed in displacing reliance on domain-specific expertise? On our account, this is seldom, if ever, the case. The key reason for this is that underlying this approach is generally an appeal to argument by induction, which always requires further assumptions to underwrite its validity, and if not induction, some other argument form that also requires assumptions that are very often not validated for the case at hand. (shrink)

We call for a new philosophical conception of models in physics. Some standard conceptions take models to be useful approximations to theorems, that are the chief means to test theories. Hence the heuristics of model building is dictated by the requirements and practice of theory-testing. In this paper we argue that a theory-driven view of models can not account for common procedures used by scientists to model phenomena. We illustrate this thesis with a case study: the construction of one of (...) the first comprehensive model of superconductivity by London brothers in 1934. Instead of theory-driven view of models, we suggest a phenomenologically-driven one. (shrink)

WE AIM HERE to outline a theory of evidence for use. More specifically we lay foundations for a guide for the use of evidence in predicting policy effectiveness in situ, a more comprehensive guide than current standard offerings, such as the Maryland rules in criminology, the weight of evidence scheme of the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), or the US ‘What Works Clearinghouse’. The guide itself is meant to be well-grounded but at the same time to give practicable (...) advice, that is, advice that can be used by policy-makers not expert in the natural and social sciences, assuming they are well-intentioned and have a reasonable but limited amount of time and resources available for searching out evidence and deliberating. (shrink)

ABSTRACT“Evidence-based” methods, which most prominently include randomized controlled trials, have gained increasing purchase as the “gold standard” for assessing the effect of public policies. But the enthusiasm for evidence-based research overlooks questions about the reliability and applicability of experimental findings to diverse real-world settings. Perhaps surprisingly, a qualitative study of British educators suggests that they are aware of these limitations and therefore take evidence-based findings with a much larger grain of salt than do policy makers. Their experience suggests that the (...) real world is more heterogeneous than the world imagined by evidence-based policy enthusiasts. (shrink)

Este trabajo consiste en un análisis de la tesis expuesta en el artículo de 1980 “Do the laws of physics state the facts?” de Nancy Cartwright, según la cual las leyes fundamentales de la física no “describen los hechos” porque, respecto de ellas, verdad y explicatividad se excluyen mutuamente. El texto fue luego republicado como tercer ensayo de su libro How the Laws of Physics Lie (1981), del que Mauricio Suárez afirma que el “trade-off” entre verdad y explicación (...) es su “tesis central”. El problema abordado es propio de la filosofía de la ciencia: cómo deben interpretarse o entenderse las leyes teóricas. Específicamente, si deben considerarse descripciones de hechos (es decir, literalmente, en el sentido de que existe una realidad con independencia de las leyes mismas y que las características de la realidad pueden ser representadas mediante el lenguaje: que tienen valor de verdad) o cumplen otra función dentro del conocimiento científico. El artículo de Cartwright estudia el caso del papel que cumplen las leyes fundamentales de la física cuando forman parte de las explicaciones por cobertura legal del tipo denominado por John Stuart Mill “por composición de causas”. Analiza la explicación de la atracción gravitatoria que hay entre dos objetos en un sistema físico en el que están presentes, además de las fuerzas gravitatorias, fuerzas eléctricas. Afirma que en ella la ley de la teoría de Newton tomada individualmente no describe lo que ocurre, no es verdadera. Pero no porque sea falsa sino porque su función o “rol” no consiste en “describir hechos” sino en ser parte de explicaciones científicas. Pero este argumento de la filósofa de la escuela de Stanford presenta dificultades semánticas, como el uso con dos sentidos diferentes del término teórico “fuerza”. Asimismo, es problemático que asuma que los hechos físicos son observables. Y no es correcta la afirmación de que una ley científica “se hace verdadera”, ni que “explica” hechos singulares, ni que “describe” en una explicación. (shrink)

N. Cartwright’s results on invariance under intervention and causality (2003) are reconsidered. Procedural approach to causality elicited in this paper and contrasted with Cartwright’s apparently philosophical one unravels certain ramifications of her results. The procedural approach seems to license only a constrained notion of intervention and in consequence the “correctness to invariance” part of Cartwright’s first theorem fails for a class of cases. The converse “invariance to correctness” part of the theorem relies heavily on modeling assumptions which (...) prove to be difficult to validate in practice and are often buttressed by independently acquired evidence. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that Theodor W. Adorno 's philosophy of freedom needs an ontological picture of the world. Adorno does not make his view of natural order explicit, but I suggest it could be neither the chaotic nor the strictly determined ontological images common to idealism and positivism, and that it would have to make intelligible the possibility both of human freedom and of critical social science. I consider two possible candidates, Nancy Cartwright 's ‘patchwork of (...) laws’, and Roy Bhaskar 's critical realism. Arguing that Cartwright 's position conflicts with the spirit of Adorno 's philosophy, I suggest that Bhaskar 's realism is compatible with and to a significant extent implicit in Adorno 's position. Whilst Adorno is clearly not a critical realist, Bhaskar 's position does provide the best overall account of the ontological commitments of Adorno 's critical theory. It becomes possible in turn to locate Bhaskar 's arguments in a broader critical tradition and give fuller expression to the concerns that structure his work, in particular by locating the epistemic fallacy in the narrative account of the natural history of subjective reason and its tendency towards ‘identity thinking ’. The discussion goes on to consider the interdependence of reason, nature and freedom in the idea of emancipatory critique, confirming the deeper affinities between critical realism and critical theory. (shrink)

This paper examines the relation between Cartwright's concept of 'capacities' and Mill's concept of 'tendencies' and argues that they are not equivalent. Cartwright's concept of 'capacities' and her motivation to adopt it as a central notion in her philosophy of science are described. It is argued that the Millian concept of 'tendencies' is distinct because Mill restricts its use to a set of special cases. These are the cases in which causes combine 'mechanically'. Hence for Mill 'tendencies' do (...) not merely describe the operation of causes, but also and perhaps even primarily how they combine. This does not hold of Cartwrightian capacities which are meant to have unlimited applicability. Mill also explicitly denies the realism of 'capacities' in a sense which overlaps with Cartwright's. Her attempt to derive empirist credentials for her notion of capacity from Mill is therefore unsuccessful. (shrink)

A cognitive ethnography of how bioengineering scientists create innovative modeling methods. In this first full-scale, long-term cognitive ethnography by a philosopher of science, Nancy J. Nersessian offers an account of how scientists at the interdisciplinary frontiers of bioengineering create novel problem-solving methods. Bioengineering scientists model complex dynamical biological systems using concepts, methods, materials, and other resources drawn primarily from engineering. They aim to understand these systems sufficiently to control or intervene in them. What Nersessian examines here is how cutting-edge (...) bioengineering scientists integrate the cognitive, social, material, and cultural dimensions of practice. Her findings and conclusions have broad implications for researchers in philosophy, science studies, cognitive science, and interdisciplinary studies, as well as scientists, educators, policy makers, and funding agencies. In studying the epistemic practices of scientists, Nersessian pushes the boundaries of the philosophy of science and cognitive science into areas not ventured before. She recounts a decades-long, wide-ranging, and richly detailed investigation of the innovative interdisciplinary modeling practices of bioengineering researchers in four university laboratories. She argues and demonstrates that the methods of cognitive ethnography and qualitative data analysis, placed in the framework of distributed cognition, provide the tools for a philosophical analysis of how scientific discoveries arise from complex systems in which the cognitive, social, material, and cultural dimensions of problem-solving are integrated into the epistemic practices of scientists. Specifically, she looks at how interdisciplinary environments shape problem-solving. Although Nersessian’s case material is drawn from the bioengineering sciences, her analytic framework and methodological approach are directly applicable to scientific research in a broader, more general sense, as well. (shrink)

A topic of special importance when it comes to responsibility and implicit bias is responsibility for knowledge. Are there strategies for becoming more responsible and respectful knowers? How might we work together, not just as individuals but members of collectives, to reduce the negative effects of bias on what we see and believe, as well as the wrongs associated with epistemic injustice? To explore these questions, Chapter 9 introduces the concept of epistemic responsibility, a set of practices developed through the (...) cultivation of basic epistemic virtues, such as open-mindedness, epistemic humility, and diligence that help knowers seek information about themselves, others, and the world. (shrink)

Nancy Cartwright’s arguments in favor of the phenomenological laws and against the fundamental ones are discussed. I support and strengthen her criticism of the standard covering-law account but I am skeptical in respect to her radical conclusion that the laws of physics lie. Arguments in favor of the opposite stance are based on V.S. Stepin’s analysis of mature theory structure. A mature theory-change model presented here demonstrates how the fundamental laws of physics can be confronted with experience. Its (...) case studies include the Lorentz-Einstein-Bohr transition and modern General Relativity and Quantum Field Theory unification. (shrink)

This chapter sets forth an interpretation of public reason that appeals to our central capabilities as human beings. I argue that appealing to central human capabilities and to the related idea of respect for threshold capabilities is the best way to understand public reason. My defense of this position advances stepwise: first, I consider a central alternative to a capability account, which regards public reason as a matter of contracting; next, I describe central concerns with contract views and show how (...) a capability view can avoid them; lastly, I consider extending public reason beyond national borders and test the two views in this context. (shrink)

We are living at the dawn of the first truly scientific picture of the universe-as-a-whole, yet people are still dragging along prescientific ideas about God that cannot be true and are even meaningless in the universe we now know we live in. This makes it impossible to have a coherent big picture of the modern world that includes God. But we don't have to accept an impossible God or else no God. We can have a real God if we redefine (...) God in light of knowledge no one ever had before. The key question is, “Could anything actually exist in the scientific universe that is worthy of the name, God?” My answer is yes: God is an “emergent phenomenon,” as real as the global economy or the government or the worldwide web, which are all emergent phenomena. But God arose from something deeper: the complex interactions of all humanity's aspirations. An emerging God has enormous implications. (shrink)

Concerns about the risks of unmitigated greenhouse gas emissions are growing. At the same time, confidence that international policy agreements will succeed in considerably lowering anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions is declining. Perhaps as a result, various geoengineering solutions are gaining attention and credibility as a way to manage climate change. Serious consideration is currently being given to proposals to cool the planet through solar-radiation management. Here we analyze how the unique and nontrivial risks of geoengineering strategies pose fundamental questions at (...) the interface between science and ethics. To illustrate the importance of integrated ethical and scientific analysis, we define key open questions and outline a coupled scientific-ethical research agenda to analyze solar-radiation management geoengineering proposals. We identify nine key fields of coupled research including whether solar-radiation management can be tested, how quickly learning could occur, normative decisions embedded in how different climate trajectories are valued, and justice issues regarding distribution of the harms and benefits of geoengineering. To ensure that ethical analyses are coupled with scientific analyses of this form of geoengineering, we advocate that funding agencies recognize the essential nature of this coupled research by establishing an Ethical, Legal, and Social Implications program for solar-radiation management. (shrink)

The “problem of intentionality” from the vantage point of a representational understanding of mind is explaining what thoughts and beliefs are and how they guide behaviour. From an anti-representationalist perspective, on the other hand, on which cognition itself is taken to be a kind of action, intentionality is a capacity to engage in behaviour that is meaningfully directed toward or about some situation. That these are not in fact competing insights is obscured by the representational/anti-representational framing of the debate. This (...) paper begins the work of shifting the conversation in two ways: (1) by arguing that it is the commitment to internal representations, not the acknowledgement of a role for representation per se, that is problematic; and, (2) by describing an alternative, externalist, representational approach that draws on extended, embodied, enactive insights. (shrink)

Who, over the age of 20, hasn’t experienced a serendipitous event: unexpected information that yields some unintended but potential value later on? Sitting next to a stranger on a plane who becomes a business partner? Stumbling onto an article in a journal or newspaper that helps tackle a nagging problem? Creating a new drug by accident?

Societies of the East are often contrasted with those of the West in their stances toward technology. This paper explores these perceived differences in the context of international ethics guidance for artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics. Japan serves as an example of the East, while Europe and North America serve as examples of the West. The paper’s principal aim is to demonstrate that Western values predominate in international ethics guidance and that Japanese values serve as a much-needed corrective. We recommend (...) a hybrid approach that is more inclusive and truly ‘international’. Following an introduction, the paper examines distinct stances toward robots that emerged in the West and Japan, respectively, during the aftermath of the Second World War, reflecting history and popular culture, socio-economic conditions, and religious worldviews. It shows how international ethics guidelines reflect these disparate stances, drawing on a 2019 scoping review that examined 84 international AI ethics documents. These documents are heavily skewed toward precautionary values associated with the West and cite the optimistic values associated with Japan less frequently. Drawing insights from Japan’s so-called ‘moonshot goals’, the paper fleshes out Japanese values in greater detail and shows how to incorporate them more effectively in international ethics guidelines for AI and robotics. (shrink)

This paper replies to a commentary by John-Stewart Gordon on our paper, “The Moral Standing of Social Robots: Untapped Insights from Africa.” In the original paper, we set forth an African relational view of personhood and show its implica- tions for the moral standing of social robots. This reply clarifies our position and answers three objections. The objections concern (1) the ethical significance of intelligence, (2) the meaning of ‘pro-social,’ and (3) the justification for prioritizing humans over pro-social robots.

The paper develops a positive account of the representational capacity of cognitive systems: simple, associationist learning mechanisms and an architecture that supports bootstrapping are sufficient conditions for symbol tool use. In terms of the debates within the philosophy of mind, this paper offers a plausibility account of representation externalism, an alternative to the reductive, computational/representational models of intentionality that still play a leading role in the field. Although the central theme here is representation, methodologically this view complements embodied, enactivist approaches (...) to studying cognition. (shrink)

Hubert Dreyfus has argued recently that the frame problem, discussion of which has fallen out of favour in the AI community, is still a deal breaker for the majority of AI projects, despite the fact that the logical version of it has been solved. (Shanahan 1997, Thielscher 1998). Dreyfus thinks that the frame problem will disappear only once we abandon the Cartesian foundations from which it stems and adopt, instead, a thoroughly Heideggerian model of cognition, in particular one that does (...) not appeal to representations. I argue that Dreyfus is too hasty in his condemnation of all representational views; the argument he provides licenses only a rejection of disembodied models of cognition. In casting his net too broadly, Dreyfus circumscribes the cognitive playing field so closely that one is left wondering how his Heideggerian alternative could ever provide a foundation explanatorily robust enough for a theory of cognition. As a consequence, he dilutes the force of his legitimate conclusion, that disembodied cognitive models will not work, and this conclusion needs to be heard. By disentangling the ideas of embodiment and representation, at least with respect to Dreyfus‘ frame problem argument, the real locus of the general polemic between traditional computational/representational cognitive science and the more recent embodied approaches is revealed. From this, I hope that productive debate will ensue. (shrink)

Effective ethics teaching and training must cultivate both the critical thinking skills and the character traits needed to deliberate effectively about ethical issues in personal and professional life. After highlighting some cognitive and motivational obstacles that stand in the way of this task, the article draws on educational research and the author's experience to demonstrate how cooperative learning techniques can be used to overcome them.

Machine learning systems (MLS) that model low-level processes are the cornerstones of current AI systems. These ‘indirect’ learners are good at classifying kinds that are distinguished solely by their manifest physical properties. But the more a kind is a function of spatio-temporally extended properties — words, situation-types, social norms — the less likely an MLS will be able to track it. Systems that can interact with objects at the individual level, on the other hand, and that can sustain this interaction, (...) can learn responses to increasingly abstract properties, including representational ones. This representational capacity, arguably the mark of intelligence, then, is not available to current MLS’s. (shrink)

In the recent twenty-year retrospective issue of Animal Behavior and Cognition, Povinelli and Henley (2020) argue that a host of comparative studies into “complex cognition” suffer, fatally, from a theoretical confusion. To rectify the problem, they issue the following challenge: alongside specifications of the higher-order capacity to be tested, provide hypotheses of the mechanism(s) necessary to implement it. They spearhead this effort with a discussion of how the Relational Reinterpretation Hypothesis (RRH) provides just such an account. In the first part (...) of the paper, I argue that RRH is neither necessary nor sufficient to explain the second-order behavior in question. In part two, I describe an alternative hypothesis, externalism, that does sufficiently account for it. Further, it opens new avenues of comparative research. (shrink)

We present a simple example that disproves the universality principle. Unlike previous counter-examples to computational universality, it does not rely on extraneous phenomena, such as the availability of input variables that are time varying, computational complexity that changes with time or order of execution, physical variables that interact with each other, uncertain deadlines, or mathematical conditions among the variables that must be obeyed throughout the computation. In the most basic case of the new example, all that is used is a (...) single pre-existing global variable whose value is modified by the computation itself. In addition, our example offers a new dimension for separating the computable from the uncomputable, while illustrating the power of parallelism in computation. (shrink)

The current orthodoxy in cognitive science, what I describe as a commitment to deep representationalism, faces intractable problems. If we take these objections seriously, and I will argue that we should, there are two possible responses: 1. We are mistaken that representation is the locus of our cognitive capacities — we manage to be the successful cognitive agents in some other, non-representational, way; or, 2. Our representational capacities do give us critical cognitive advantages, but they are not fundamental to us (...) qua human beings. As Andy Clark has convincingly argued, antirepresentationalism, option one, is explanatorily weak. Consequently, I will argue, we need to take the second option seriously. In the first half of the paper I rehearse the problems with the current representational view and in the second half of the paper I defend and give a positive sketch of a two-systems view of cognition – a non-representational perceptual system coupled with a representational language-dependent one – and look at some consequences of the view. (shrink)

The computational metaphor for mind is still the central guiding idea in cognitive science despite many insightful and well-founded rejections of it. There is good reason for its staying power: when we are at our cognitive best, we reason about our world with our concepts. But the challengers are right, I argue, in insisting that no reductive account of that capacity is forthcoming. Here I describe an externalist account that grounds representations in organism-level engagement with its environment, not in its (...) neural activity. (shrink)

Moral conflicts are real, and while a deontic logic containing a modified "agglomeration rule" may be able to accommodate this fact, even the most sophisticated logic will still overlook much of what everyday normative reasoning involves.

Moral distress is a well-documented phenomenon in the nursing profession, and increasingly thought to be implicated in a nation-wide nursing shortage in the US. First identified by the philosopher Andrew Jameton in 1984, moral distress has also proven resistant to various attempts to prevent its occurrence or at least mitigate its effects. While this would seem to be bad news for nurses and their patients, it is potentially good news for philosophical counselors, for whom there is both socially important and (...) philosophically interesting work to be done. In an effort to encourage such work, this paper explicates the philosophical (as opposed to more purely psychological or institutional) contours of the problem. A subsequent paper, titled 'A Philosophical Counseling Approach to Moral Distress,' will highlight ways in which such a response would differ from the strategies so far deployed within the nursing profession. (shrink)

In "The Virtues of Sharing" I defend two central theses: that sharing is our most overarching ethical ideal, and that virtue ethics is able to serve as a comprehensive and free-standing approach to moral theory. My arguments for these theses are intertwined, because they are also designed to show how a virtue-ethical theory that treats the "Will to Share" as the basis of moral agency helps to resolve the contemporary Justice/Care Debate.

The link is to an expanded, English version of this essay.

In this essay, we share our experience and learning about the value of, and the difficulty associated with, conducting and presenting scientific studies in ways that are both simple (understandable) and beautiful (appealing to the reader). We describe some “aha moments” of insight that led to changes in the way we approach and present research, some of the actions we took, and lessons we learned.

Purpose ‐ The purpose of this paper is to explore the "resource curse" problem as a counter-example of creative performance and innovation by examining reliance on capital and physical resources, showing the gap between expectations and ex-post actual performance that became clearer under conditions of economic turmoil. Design/methodology/approach ‐ The analysis uses logistic regressions with dichotomous response and predictor variables on structured tables of count data, representing firm performance as an outcome of capital resources, physical resources and innovation where appropriate. (...) Findings ‐ Key findings relevant to economic and business practice follow. First, a typical characteristic of successful Vietnamese firms in the transition period is their reliance on either capital resources or physical asset endowments. Second, poor performers exhibit evidence of over-reliance on both capital and physical assets. Third, firms that relied on both types of resources tended to downplay creative performance. Some evidence suggests that firms face more acute problem caused by the law of diminishing returns in troubled times. Fourth, the "innovation factor" has not been tapped as a source of economic growth. Research limitations/implications ‐ This study has some limitations. The size of the survey sample is approximately 150 firms, while the potential sample of > 300 should be possible in the future. When the size increases, the research could be expanded to include further variables that will help investigate more deeply into the related issues and business implications. With regard to the implications of the study, the absence of innovations has made the notion of "resource curse" identical to "destructive creation" implemented by ex-ante resource-rich firms, and worsened the problem of resource misallocation in transition turmoil. The Vietnamese corporate sector's addiction to resources may contribute to economic deterioration, through a downward spiral of lower efficiency leading to consumption of more resources. Practical implications ‐ Insights obtained from this study could save transition economies' resources which have almost always been considered sine qua non before any critical major policymaking, while this is not necessarily true, and in many cases, even counterproductive. Originality/value ‐ Original data set on Vietnam stock market are collected, processed, prepared and used by the authors. Original design by the authors for regression equations with dichotomous predictor variables: dependence on endowed physical assets, reliance on capital resources and significant signs of creative performance/innovations. Original idea of viewing "resource curse" as absence of innovation and due to uncreative "destructive creation" of poor-performing commercial operations by resource-rich firms is used in the paper. We have searched the literature in business research and found that the empirical results have not been previously reported. (shrink)

In this lyrical meditation on listening, Jean-Luc Nancy examines sound in relation to the human body. How is listening different from hearing? What does listening entail? How does what is heard differ from what is seen? Can philosophy even address listening, écouter, as opposed to entendre, which means both hearing and understanding? Unlike the visual arts, sound produces effects that persist long after it has stopped. The body, Nancy says, is itself like an echo chamber, responding to music (...) by inner vibrations as well as outer attentiveness. Since “the ear has no eyelid” (Quignard), sound cannot be blocked out or ignored: our whole being is involved in listening, just as it is involved in interpreting what it hears. The mystery of music and of its effects on the listener is subtly examined. Nancy’s skill as a philosopher is to bring the reader companionably along with him as he examines these fresh and vital questions; by the end of the book the reader feels as if listening very carefully to a person talking quietly, close to the ear. (shrink)

Scientific research is a highly complex and creative domain of human activity. In addition to its intrinsic value, understanding scientific thinking provides insight into the creative potential of human psychological capacities, as they are imbedded in rich social, material, and cultural environments. I discuss findings from my own investigations using two forms of qualitative research suited to studying scientific thinking as situated in context: cognitive-historical and cognitive-ethnographic.

Monetary incentives to increase COVID-19 vaccinations are widely used. Even if they work, whether such payments are ethical is contested. This paper reviews ethical arguments for and against using monetary incentives that appeal to utility, liberty, civic responsibility, equity, exploitation, and autonomy. It concludes that in low-income nations and nations with meagre safety nets and income inequality, policy-makers should proceed with caution.

This chapter discusses three types of sociable robots for older adults: robotic caregivers ; robotic friends ; and sex robots. The central argument holds that society ought to make reasonable efforts to provide these types of robots and that under certain conditions, omitting such support not only harms older adults but poses threats to their dignity. The argument proceeds stepwise. First, the chapter establishes that assisting care-dependent older adults to perform activities of daily living is integral to respecting dignity. Here, (...) the argument establishes the vital role that carebots-of-the-future might play in aged societies as the supply of working age adults falls shy of demand. Next, the chapter extends this analysis to designing friendbots for socially isolated older adults. The argument holds that reasonable efforts to provide access to friendbots for socially isolated adults is also a future societal responsibility. Finally, the chapter applies similar reasoning to show that societies ought to make reasonable efforts to support sexual capabilities for older adults who want to be sexual but are bereft of sex partners. The argument draws on capability accounts of justice to show that when central human capacities, such as bodily integrity; intimate relationships; and the use of senses, imagination and thought, are at risk of falling below a threshold level, society should intercede. (shrink)

This chapter focuses on a novel class of models used in frontier research in the bioengineering sciences – in vitro simulation models – that provide the basis for biological experimentation. These bioengineered models are hybrid constructions, composed of living tissues or cells and engineered materials. Specifically, it discusses the processes through which in vitro models were built, experimented with, and justified in a tissue engineering lab. It examines processes of design, construction, experimentation, evaluation, and redesign of in vitro simulation models, (...) in general, as instances of building the source analogy (as distinguished from retrieving an analogy), which figures prominently in creative frontier scientific research. Building the analogical source is a bootstrapping process, which furthers the articulation, as well as the solution of the problem. -/- . (shrink)

A society is said to age when its number of older members increases in relation to its number of younger members. The societies in most of the world’s industrialized nations have been aging since at least 1800. In 1800 the demographic makeup of developed countries was similar to that of many Third World countries in the early 1990s with roughly half the population under the age of 16 and very few people living beyond age of 60. Since that time, increases (...) in life expectancy, combined with declines in fertility rates, have dramatically increased the proportion of older persons in developed nations. The rapid increase in the number of older persons relative to younger ones carries important societal implications. In the domain of healthcare, societal aging will increase costs and exert greater pressure to ration services. It will, thus, bring to the fore questions, regarding a just distribution of healthcare between young and old age groups. This paper considers some of the most influential arguments to date for age-based rationing of health care. I show that these arguments fall short, and that the theoretical assumptions underlying them do not withstand careful scrutiny. (shrink)

Computational systems biologists create and manipulate computational models of biological systems, but they do not always have straightforward epistemic access to the content and behavioural profile of such models because of their length, coding idiosyncrasies, and formal complexity. This creates difficulties both for modellers in their research groups and for their bioscience collaborators who rely on these models. In this paper we introduce a new kind of visualization that was developed to address just this sort of epistemic opacity. The visualization (...) is unusual in that it depicts the dynamics and structure of a computer model instead of that model’s target system, and because it is generated algorithmically. Using considerations from epistemology and aesthetics, we explore how this new kind of visualization increases scientific understanding of the content and function of computer models in systems biology to reduce epistemic opacity. (shrink)

Le traité Du Régime se démarque des autres traités du corpus hippocratique à bien des égards. Aucun autre texte de ce corpus n’a poussé aussi loin le lien entre le corps humain en tant que microcosme et le cosmos, son macrocosme. Ce lien se manifeste notamment dans de multiples analogies, dans des expressions communes utilisées pour les décrire, ainsi que dans des explications identiques des phénomènes qui les caractérisent. Le présent article enquêtera sur une expression spécifique liant l’homme et le (...) cosmos : le terme περίοδος. Dans la continuité des travaux de Luc Brisson et Jacques Jouanna qui ont signalé plusieurs traits communs au Timée de Platon et au traité Du Régime, il s’agira de mettre en lumière l’importance du terme περίοδος, du concept de rotation/révolution, dans l’association microcosme-macrocosme, autant d’un point de vue structurel que fonctionnel. (shrink)

[penultimate draft; prepared for publication in Aristotle’s Parts of Animals: A Critical Guide, ed. Sophia Connell – please cite final version] -/- Parts of Animals II.10 makes a new beginning in Aristotle’s study of animals. In it, Aristotle proposes to “now speak as if we are once more at an origin, beginning first with those things that are primary” (655b28-9). This is the start of his account of the non-uniform parts of blooded animals: parts such as eyes, noses, mouths, etc., (...) as opposed to uniform parts like blood and flesh. PA II.10 proposes a new strategy for studying these parts: “one ought to speak about the human kind first” (656a10). Beginning “first” with the “primary” things thus amounts to beginning with humans (655b28-9). -/- Why does Aristotle think this strategy is appropriate for his project? One answer is that it reflects a fundamental anthropocentrism. Lloyd, for instance, has raised the possibility that the basic assumptions that guide Aristotle’s biology may to some extent reflect the anthropocentrism of his culture, where the relation of humans to animals was “a preoccupation of popular beliefs”. In this paper, I develop an interpretation that both builds on and challenges this suggestion. I do so by investigating how Aristotle thinks this strategy works in theory and in practice: his justifications for adopting it and its interaction with his scientific commitments. I argue that Aristotle adopts it in part because he thinks that humans are such that his scientific concepts apply to them in a particularly clear way. (This too is a form of anthropocentrism: one that might be resisted by arguing that humans are not the best illustrations of these concepts—that Aristotle ought to look elsewhere for models with the features he desires.) -/- More specifically, Aristotle holds that starting with humans helps establish the causal explanations of the parts of other animals, particularly when they are recalcitrant. What makes humans suitable for this role is a special teleological relation between their parts and the ends they serve: in humans, he supposes, this connection is particularly tight (in a way I explain below). Consequently, Aristotle thinks he can use humans to illuminate which sorts of features tend to be for the sake of which ends, and then extend the results of this inquiry to the parts of the other animals. (shrink)

Human behavior is frequently described both in abstract, general terms and in concrete, specific terms. We asked whether these two ways of framing equivalent behaviors shift the inferences people make about the biological and psychological bases of those behaviors. In five experiments, we manipulated whether behaviors are presented concretely (i.e. with reference to a specific person, instantiated in the particular context of that person’s life) or abstractly (i.e. with reference to a category of people or behaviors across generalized contexts). People (...) judged concretely framed behaviors to be less biologically based and, on some dimensions, more psychologically based than the same behaviors framed in the abstract. These findings held true for both mental disorders (Experiments 1 and 2) and everyday behaviors (Experiments 4 and 5) and yielded downstream consequences for the perceived efficacy of disorder treatments (Experiment 3). Implications for science educators, students of science, and members of the lay public are discussed. (shrink)