Joseph Agassi's distinction and characterization of science, applied science, and technology—with invention connecting applied science and technology—has been a signal contribution. His theory of science, though, is flawed by his rejection of any role for corroboration, when corroboration in fact has guided researchers in various ways. His later, more extensive discussions of these issues, unfortunately have not advanced on his important early work.

A sequel to Shapin’s earlier work, The Scientific Life: A Moral History of a Late Modern Vocation again solves the problem of induction by observing that researchers are decent. Shapin dismisses most of the literature on both the philosophy of science and (more so) on the sociology of science as ideologically biased and as irrelevant. Approaches to the book as light reading and as serious scholarly reading are considered before a critical summary is offered as a conclusion.

Stephen Turner defends the sociopolitical role that experts—mainly but not only of the scientific kind—play in modern democratic society and explores means for increasing the rationality of their employment. Laudable though this is, at times Turner goes into more detail than democratic principles require; in his enthusiasm for rationality, he aims at levels of adequacy that are not always within the grasp of democracy.

This Companion to the philosophy of science reflects fairly well the gloomy state of affairs in this subfield at its best—concerns, problems, prejudices, and all. The field is still stuck with the problem of justification of science, refusing to admit that there is neither need nor possibility to justify science and forbid dissent from it.

1. Lies, Error and Confusion 2. Lies 3. The Demarcation of Science: Historical 4. The Demarcation of Science: Recent 5. Observed Regularities and Laws of Nature.

Popper's theory of demarcation has set the standard of falsifiability for all sciences. But not all falsifiable theories are part of science and some tests of scientific theories are better than others. Popper's theory has led to the banning of metaphysical and/or philosophical anthropological theories from science. But Joseph Agassi has supplemented Popper's theory to explain how such theories are useful as research programs within science. This theory can also be used to explain how interesting tests may be found. Theories (...) of rationality may be used to illustrate this point by showing how they fail or succeed in producing interesting and testable hypotheses in the social sciences. (shrink)

This analysis examines fundamental questions at the intersection of social science and social technology as well as problems of disciplinary divisions and the challenge of cross-disciplinary cooperation. Its theoretical-empirical context is provided by post-communist transformations, a set of profound societal changes in which institutional design plays a central role. The article critically reappraises the contribution of Karl Popper's philosophy to this problem context, examines neoliberalism as social science and social technology, and examines the role of experts and disciplinary divisions in (...) the reform process. Building on Mario Bunge's social philosophy, it sketches basic elements of a cross-disciplinary approach to "social change by design." Key Words: post-communist transformation • social change • institutional design • Karl Popper • Mario Bunge. (shrink)

According to the Value-Neutrality Thesis, technology is morally and politically neutral, neither good nor bad. A knife may be put to bad use to murder an innocent person or to good use to peel an apple for a starving person, but the knife itself is a mere instrument, not a proper subject for moral or political evaluation. While contemporary philosophers of technology widely reject the VNT, it remains unclear whether claims about values in technology are just a figure of speech (...) or nontrivial empirical claims with genuine factual content and real-world implications. This paper provides the missing argument. I argue that by virtue of their material properties, technological artifacts are part of the normative order rather than external to it. I illustrate how values can be empirically identified in technology. The reason why value-talk is not trivial or metaphorical is that due to the endurance and longevity of technological artifacts, values embedded in them have long-term implications that surpass their designers and builders. I further argue that taking sides in this debate has real-world implications in the form of moral constraints on the development of technology. (shrink)

The distinction between sociology of science on the one hand and methodology and systematics on the other, is an established historical fact. Thus, even in modern methodologically orientated philosophy, epistemological analyses still tend to disregard the pragmatic contexts within which scientific knowledge is produced, processed and applied. This situation also reflects the well-known fact that philosophy of science has largely ignored the conceptual and methodological foundations of technology, that is, those disciplines directly and explicitly linked to the practical implications and (...) intended applications of scientific research. The following considerations suggest that the methodology of technology provides useful and generally applicable criteria of the evaluation and acceptance of the hypotheses and theories of empirical science. (shrink)

This paper deals with the question: What are the criteria that an adequate theory of computation has to meet? 1. Smith's answer: it has to meet the empirical criterion (i.e. doing justice to computational practice), the conceptual criterion (i.e. explaining all the underlying concepts) and the cognitive criterion (i.e. providing solid grounds for computationalism). 2. Piccinini's answer: it has to meet the objectivity criterion (i.e. identifying computation as a matter of fact), the explanation criterion (i.e. explaining the computer's behaviour), the (...) right things compute criterion, the miscomputation criterion (i.e. accounting for malfunctions), the taxonomy criterion (i.e. distinguishing between different classes of computers) and the empirical criterion. 3. Von Neumann's answer: it has to meet the precision and reliability of computers criterion, the single error criterion (i.e. addressing the impacts of errors) and the distinction between analogue and digital computers criterion. 4. “Everything” computes answer: it has to meet the implementation theory criterion by properly explaining the notion of implementation. -/- According to computationalists, minds are computational. Before we can judge the plausibility of any particular computationalist theory, we need to understand what notion of computation this theory employs. Although there are extant accounts of computation, any of which may, in principle, serve as a basis for computationalism, it isn’t clear that they’re all equivalent or even adequate as accounts of computation proper. By examining plausible alternatives to Smith’s adequacy criteria, our goal here is to resist his claim that no adequate account of computation proper is possible. (shrink)

Papers from the Pacific islands, India, Bangladesh and elsewhere illustrate the ethical dilemma of environmental policy, sustainable development and the needs of communities to make a living.

Se intenta en este trabajo identificar y describir de algún modo, en caso de que exista, la contracultura digital de nuestro tiempo. Con tal propósito en mente, en primer lugar, el autor esboza sus presuposiciones con respecto la cultura, la tecnología digital, la cultura digital y la contracultura, bajo las ópticas que imponen la naturaleza de este artículo. Digital Culture and Counter-Culture: an Essay It is attempted in this work to identify and to describe somehow, in case it exists, the (...) digital counterculture of our time. With such a purpose in mind, first of all, the author sketches his presuppositions regarding culture, digital technology, digital culture and counterculture, under the optics that imposes the nature of this article. (shrink)