Neurodiversity, the advocacy position that autism and related conditions are natural variants of human neurological outcomes that should be neither cured nor normalized, is based on the assertion that autistic people have unique neurological differences. Membership in this community as an autistic person largely results from clinical identification, or biocertification. However, there are many autistic individuals who diagnose themselves. This practice is contentious among autistic communities. Using data gathered from Wrong Planet, an online autism community forum, this article describes the (...) debate about self-diagnosis amongst autistic self-advocates and argues for the acceptance of the practice in light of the difficulties in verifying autism as a ‘natural kind.’ This practice can counteract discriminatory practices towards and within the autistic community and also work to verfiy autistic self-knowledge and self-expertise. This discussion also has important implications for other neurocommunities, neuroethical issues such as identity and privacy, and the emerging field of critical autism studies. (shrink)

In this essay, I begin with an overview of a traditional account of natural kinds, and then consider David Hull's critique of species as natural kinds and the associated notion of human nature. Second, I explore recent "liberal" accounts of human nature provided by Edouard Machery and Grant Ramsey and criticized by Tim Lewens. They attempt to avoid the criticisms of- fered by Hull. After examining those views, I turn to Richard Boyd's Homeostatic Property Cluster account of natural kinds which (...) is flexible but detailed enough to avoid Hull's criticisms but also those affecting the more recent views. We then consider what I call the "problem of variation." Fourth, I consider two case studies -- the basic emotions and facial expressions and inbreeding avoidance and incest taboos. I argue that the former is a component of a Boydian human nature but the latter is not. The conclusion is that if there is a human nature, it must be argued for on a case-by-case basis. And, one of most discussed cases thought to be part of our nature is simply not. (shrink)

Studies of how scientists select research problems suggest the process involves weighing a number of factors, including funding availability, likelihood of success versus failure, and perceived publishability of likely results, among others. In some fields, a strong personal interest in conducting science to bring about particular social and environmental outcomes plays an important role. Conservation biologists are frequently motivated by a desire that their research will contribute to improved conservation outcomes, which introduces a pair of challenging questions for managers of (...) science and scholars of policies governing science: 1) How do scientists integrate that goal into their processes of research priority evaluation, and 2) How can managers and funders of science utilize that knowledge in designing and administering funding programs? I use Q method to uncover four distinct schools of thought amongst researchers and knowledge-users about the merits of possible research priorities for coral reefs; one of the axes along which these schools of thought differ is in their interpretation of how science can and should interact with policy. The results reveal that perceived severity of reef stressors plays a role for some participants. Disciplinary training does not appear to be a major influence on research priority evaluation, but individual participants indicated professional expediency does prevent some researchers from pursuing or advocating that others pursue topics outside of that disciplinary specialty. Influences on and processes in research prioritization uncovered in this study have the potential to lead to counter-productive disciplinary path dependencies. From these results and building on outside literature, I conclude that better coordination and communication about research priorities across disciplines and with broader stakeholders – including knowledge users – could improve the research enterprise’s ability to contribute to meaningful societal and conservation goals. These findings are relevant to researchers and research administrators across disciplines that seek to conduct or fund science that is useful in addressing specific goals. (shrink)

How can social institutions complicate and worsen vulnerabilities of particular individuals or groups? We begin by explicating how certain diagnoses within mental health and medicine operate as interactive kinds of labels and how such labels can create institutional barriers that hinder one's capacity to achieve wellbeing. Interactive-kind modeling is a conceptual tool that elucidates the ways in which labeling can signal to others how the labeled person ought to be treated, how such labeling comes about and is perceived, and how (...) it compounds vulnerabilities. We argue that this shift in standpoint helps us recognize and mitigate compounded vulnerabilities. (shrink)

In this essay, I respond to Tim Lewens's proposal that realists and Strong Programme theorists can find common ground in reliabilism. I agree with Lewens, but point to difficulties in his argument. Chief among these is his assumption that reliabilism is incompatible with the Strong Programme's principle of symmetry. I argue that the two are, in fact, compatible, and that Lewens misses this fact because he wrongly supposes that reliabilism entails naturalism. The Strong Programme can fully accommodate a reliabilism which (...) has been freed from its inessential ties to naturalism. Unlike naturalistic epistemologists, the Strong Programme's sociologistic reliabilist insists that all scientific facts are the product of both natural and social causal phenomena. Anticipating objections, I draw on Wittgenstein's rule-following considerations to explain how the sociologistic reliabilist can account for standard intuitions about the objective elements of knowledge. I also explain how the Strong Programme theorist can distinguish between a belief's seeming reliable and its being reliable. (shrink)

The paper compares Pierre Bourdieu?s sociological approach with the one developed by Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann. The aim of the paper is to identify the complementarities and incongruences of these approaches. The main similarity consists in the intention to?dialectically? overcome/bridge the gap between?objectivism? and?subjectivism? in social theory. Another parallel includes a negative attitude towards the relativistic tendencies of postmodernism. These authors share the thematization of: the body as a locus of social influences, the centrality of language in social life, (...) the social functions of knowledge, and the importance of power in social relations. Differences in theorizing are attributed to the different intellectual, theoretical, and socio-cultural contexts in which these scientists operated. The divergences of these theoretical approaches become evident when one examines the different meaning and significance attached to the concepts of individuation, structure, action, habitus and habitualization, structure of relevance and relation of common-sense and scientific knowledge. Finally, there is a visible difference in political views: Bourdieu was a critic?from the left,? while Berger and Luckmann were self-proclaimed liberal conservatives. (shrink)

We examine the philosophical and empirical issues related to the question whether psychopathy can be considered a psychiatric natural kind. Natural kinds refer to categories that are privileged because they the capture certain real divisions in nature. Generally, in philosophical debates regarding psychiatry, there is much scepticism about the possibility that psychiatric categories track natural kinds. We outline the main positions in the debate about natural kinds in psychiatry and examine whether psychopathy can be considered as a natural kind on (...) any of the proposed accounts. By examining the scientific literature on psychopathy, we draw two main conclusions: (1) the empirical data currently do not support the view that this condition is unified enough to be considered a natural kind; (2) the construct of psychopathy plays useful roles both in the context of scientific research and in forensic and clinical settings. These considerations bring us to our tentative conclusion about psychopathy as a kind in the making, a sort of “under construction” category with potential for improvement and refinement with further research. (shrink)

This monograph discusses the question of what it is to be a reason – mainly in practical ethics – and proposes an original contribution to metaethics.It critically examines theories of metaethical realism, constructivism and error theory and identifies several misunderstandings or unclarities in contemporary debates. Based on this examination, the book suggests a distinction between a conceptual question, that can be answered by pure first-personal thinking, and a material question, that targets responses to reasons as a natural phenomenon in space (...) and time and that can be answered by help of the sciences. While this book defends a sharp distinction between these approaches, it also argues that the insights gained by the distinct approaches can be fruitfully integrated into a comprehensive picture.The comprehensive picture promoted in this book, based on both philosophical analysis and resources from psychology and cognitive science, is a picture of reasons as items in a collective archive of mind – reconfiguring the “domain of reasons” as a collectively established and socially cultivated fund of considerations with normative weight. The developed Collective Archive View combines Reasons Fundamentalism as an answer to the conceptual question, with a social ontological proposal, similar to Haslanger’s critical realism, as an answer to the material question.Thereby, it introduces central ideas from the field of social metaphysics into metaethics. At the same time, it offers a way of settling some controversies within metaethics, going on between proponents of Reasons Fundamentalism and Constitutivism, realism and constructivism, as well as proponents of mind-dependence and mind-independence of normative facts. Finally, the proposal enables us to envision and conceptualize genuine normative change within a metaethical theory. (shrink)

In this article, I examine the state of knowledge construction within the South African academe. This, I do by looking at how issues of epistemology and ontology are prioritised or negated in the social construction of knowledge. Focusing on what I have called ‘the problem of perspectives’, I show how ‘epistemological narcissism’ has often limited the scope of methodological and theoretical innovativeness. I argue that by relying on a set of certain theories that scholars have known and used over the (...) years, and dismissing those that are considered ‘foreign’, the exercise of knowledge construction has become largely polemical. (shrink)

Although others have focused on Catharine MacKinnon's claim that pornography subordinates and silences women, I here focus on her claim that pornography constructs women's nature and that this construction is, in some sense, false. Since it is unclear how pornography, as speech, can construct facts and how constructed facts can nevertheless be false, MacKinnon's claim requires elucidation. Appealing to speech act theory, I introduce an analysis of the erroneous verdictive and use it to make sense of MacKinnon's constructionist claims. I (...) also show that the erroneous verdictive is of more general interest. (shrink)

ABSTRACTColin Hay's constructivist institutionalism and Vivien A. Schmidt's discursive institutionalism are two recent attempts to theorize ideas as potential explanations of institutional change. This new attention to the causal role of ideas is welcome, but Hay and Schmidt do not take into consideration the constitutive and structural aspects of ideas. Instead they reduce ideas to properties of individual conscious minds, scanting the respects in which ideas are intersubjectively baked into the practices shared by individuals. This aspect of ideas—arguably, the institutional (...) side of ideas—is developed in post-structuralist thought, which therefore demands a place in ideational research. (shrink)

Social constructionist explanations of human thought and behavior hold that our representations produce and regulate the categories, thoughts, and behaviors of those they represent. Performative versions of constructionist accounts explain these thoughts and behaviors as part of an intentional, strategic performance that is elicited and regulated by our representations of ourselves. This paper has four aims. First, I sketch a causal model of performative social constructionist claims. Second, I articulate a puzzling feature of performative claims that makes them seem especially (...) implausible: the puzzle of intention and ignorance. Like other constructionists, performative constructionists are especially interested in explaining thoughts and behaviors that are widely but mistakenly believed to be the unintentional consequences of membership in a natural kind. But why doesn’t the intentional performance of a category undermine this ignorance? My third aim is to resolve this puzzle. I suggest that a plausible understanding can be found in the failure to locate one’s mental states in a causal explanation of one’s thoughts and actions. Finally, I argue that this model implies that the sorts of theories we offer of particular behaviors can create or destroy agency and responsibility with regard to those behaviors. (shrink)

In this article, we extend the concept of technology beyond the conventional understanding of systems and artifacts as embodiments of particular functionalities that are variously enacted in local settings. Technological artifacts or systems epitomize operational couplings that extend beyond the human-technology interface. Such couplings entail multiple, unobtrusive, back-staged links that evade human interpretation yet are critically involved in the reproduction and control of social relations. Cast in this light, technologies emerge as complex rationalized embodiments for structuring social relationships and, in (...) this quality, complement and occasionally compete with institutional modes of governance. We explore these ideas in the empirical context of cultural memory organizations (e.g., libraries, archives, museums). As the outcome of the technological developments that have marked the field over the last two decades, the operations of memory institutions increasingly mingle with those of information aggregators and search engines. These developments reframe longstanding professional practices of memory organizations and, in this process, challenge their institutional mandate. (shrink)

Increased attention paid to inter-group genetic variability following completion of the Human Genome Project has provoked debate about race as a category of classification in biomedicine and as a biological phenomenon at the level of the genome. Philosophers of science favor a metaphysical approach relying on natural kind theorizing, the underlying assumptions of which structure the questions asked. Limitations arise the more metaphysically invested and less attuned to scientific practice these questions are. Other questions—arguably, those that matter most socially and (...) politically—remain unasked, not merely overlooked but systematically ignored and even foreclosed. Race fails as a postulated natural kind because it fails to meet expectations that as a category of classification it furnish an authoritative taxonomy that by depicting fundamental divisions in nature is conducive to fulfilling far-ranging explanatory aims. Racial, ethnic, and other group designations may nonetheless be projectible insofar as they support inductive inferences in biomedicine, but this does not render them any less social. Indeed, the statistical, contingent, accidental, localized, and interest-relative bases of such inferences serve to undercut the dichotomizing of race as either biological reality or social construct and favor the adoption of a pragmatic approach. (shrink)

This paper critiques the rise of scientific approaches to central questions in the humanities, specifically questions about human nature, ethics, identity, and experience. In particular, I look at how an increasing number of philosophers are turning to evolutionary psychology and neuroscience as sources of answers to philosophical problems. This approach constitutes what I term a biological turn in the humanities. I argue that the biological turn, especially its reliance on evolutionary psychology, is best understood as an epistemology of ignorance that (...) contributes to a climate of hostility and intolerance regarding feminist insights about gender, identity, and the body. (shrink)

Seeing, Doing, and Knowing: A Philosophical Theory of Sense Perception MOHAN MATTHEN New York, Oxford University Press, 2007384 pages, ISBN: 0199204284 (pbk); $35.00Mohan Matthen's Seeing, Doing an...

In recent years a general consensus has been developing in the philosophy of science to the effect that strong social constructivist accounts are unable to adequately account for scientific practice. Recently, however, a number of commentators have formulated an attenuated version of constructivism that purports to avoid the difficulties that plague the stronger claims of its predecessors. Interestingly this attenuated form of constructivism finds philosophical support from a relatively recent turn in the literature concerning scientific realism. Arthur Fine and a (...) number of other commentators have argued that the realism debate ought to be abandoned. The rationale for this argument is that the debate is sterile for it has, it is claimed, no consequence for actual scientific practice, and therefore does not advance our understanding of science or its practice. Recent “softer” accounts of social constructivism also hold a similar agnostic stance to the realism question. I provide a survey of these various agnostic stances and show how they form a general position that I shall refer to as “the anti-philosophical stance”. I then demonstrate that the anti-philosophical stance fails by identifying difficulties that attend its proposal to ban philosophical interpretation. I also provide examples of instances where philosophical stances to the realism question affect scientific practice. (shrink)

Traditionally, nature has often been thought to be structured by essential forms providing the generic features of natural things and thus the foundations for scientific explanations. In contrast, human history and the social domain have been thought to be the realm of ever-changing appearances, where contingency prevails. The paper argues that the existence of essential forms is compatible with the contingent, mind-dependent and historical character of the social world, and that essential forms can also be found in the social domain. (...) Two categories of entities are discussed that suggest themselves to be identified as social forms, namely social kinds and social identities. To this end, it is shown that standard arguments for the existence of essential forms also apply to the social domain, and objections to the existence of social forms are rebutted. Particular attention is paid to the explanatory appeal of social forms. The paper concludes by suggesting that, far from being oppressive, essential social forms are presupposed by liberating social practices. (shrink)

The present thesis is based on a scientifically-informed, contextualized and historicized reading of Ludwik Fleck. In addition to his monograph, the material studied includes his additional philosophical writings, his internationally-published scientific articles and two, thus-far-unstudied postwar Polish papers related to his Buchenwald experiences. The sources provided by Fleck have been traced back to the time of their origin. Based on the above material, it is argued that, rather than relativizing science and deeply influencing Kuhn, Fleck, attempting to participate in the (...) current debates, is an ardent proponent of science, offering an internal account of its pursuit that accords with his oft-contested epistemic concepts, e.g., Denkzwang, Sinnsehen and Kopplungen. The exposure of his description of the Wassermann reaction discloses a highly selective reading of the sources available at the time, but also reveals its relation to the current debate on Einzelwissenschaften, or the standing of new emerging disciplines versus age-old ones, all occasioned by the remarkable progress of science that has also affected philosophy. The divide between philosophers and scientists on the philosophical implications of modern physics is exposed, as is Fleck’s heuristic use of the latter topic in his epistemology. A more realistic account of his often-valued scientific accomplishments is provided. It is argued that the modern interpretation or received humanist view of Fleck is based on the opposition, at the time Fleck’s monograph was rediscovered, of STS writers to a scientifically-informed reading of his texts. An additional corrective to the received view of Fleck is found in some of his postwar Polish papers related his Buchenwald experiences. The latter might also provide an answer to some of the contradictions inherent in the modern mythology surrounding Fleck. In amply exposing the precarious situation of the time, and the complexity of the ethical issues at stake, Fleck’s papers in fact generate age-old philosophical questions still worth contemplating. (shrink)

The thesis proposes an account of the means of scientific representation focused on similarity, or more specifically, on the notion of “creative similarity”. I first distinguish between two different questions regarding the problem of representation: the question about the constituents and the question about the means of representation (following Suárez 2003; van Fraassen 2008). I argue that, although similarity is not a good candidate for constituent of representation, it can satisfactorily answer the question about the means of representation if adequately (...) characterized. To motivate this position, I dispute the main arguments offered against similarity as means of representation, namely the arguments from variety, vagueness, and misrepresentation, and contend that similarity plays a central epistemic role in practices of representing in science. The study of the role of similarity in scientific practice, I argue, requires the analysis of the uses of judgments of similarity in the construction of scientific models. I examine the cases of the Mississippi Basin Model and the San Francisco Bay Model to illustrate how judgments of similarity are directly involved in the production of epistemically fruitful models. Informed by the practical investigation developed throughout the thesis, I finally outline what I call the creative similarity account of the means of representation. The notion of “creative similarity” helps to capture the way in which similarity, as means of representation, intervenes in actual practices of representing, namely, in the form of a productive interplay of judgments of similarity and distortions (i.e. idealizations, abstractions, simplifications), which is employed by resourceful agents with the aim of understanding aspects of the natural world. (shrink)

As we were writing this chapter, the 2020 election campaign in the US was entering its last week before the elections. There are probably few more news-intensive events in the world than the American presidential elections. The smallest and, in other settings, seemingly irrelevant details of a candidate’s behaviour and appearance (a slip of the tongue, the way that they laugh or their temporary memory losses) are immediately picked up by cameras and microphones and publicized across news networks and commented (...) on and shared throughout social media networks in a matter of seconds and minutes, possibly affecting people’s attitudes towards particular politicians and parties (directly or indirectly). (shrink)

The notion of indivisibles and atoms arose in ancient Greece. The continuum—that is, the collection of points in a straight line segment, appeared to have paradoxical properties, arising from the ‘indivisibles’ that remain after a process of division has been carried out throughout the continuum. In the seventeenth century, Italian mathematicians were using new methods involving the notion of indivisibles, and the paradoxes of the continuum appeared in a new context. This cast doubt on the validity of the methods and (...) the reliability of mathematical knowledge which had been regarded as established by the axiomatic method in geometry expounded by Aristotle’s younger contemporary Euclid. The teaching of indivisibles was banned within the Society of Jesus, the Jesuits. In England, indivisibles were used by the mathematician John Wallis, and there was an acrimonious and extended feud between Wallis and the philosopher Thomas Hobbes over legitimate methods of argument in mathematics. Notions of the infinitesimal were used by Isaac Newton and Gottfried Leibniz, and were attacked by Bishop Berkeley for the vagueness of the concept and the illegitimate reasoning applied to it. This article discusses aspects of these events with reference to the book Infinitesimal by Amir Alexander and to other sources. Also discussed are wider issues arising from Alexander’s book including: the changes in cultural sensibility associated with the growth of new mathematical and scientific knowledge in the seventeenth century, the changes in language concomitant with these changes, what constitutes valid methods of enquiry in various contexts, and the question of authoritarianism in knowledge. More general aims of this article are to widen the immediate mathematical and historical contexts in Alexander’s book, to bridge a gap in conversations between mathematics and the humanities, and to relate mathematical ideas to wider human and contemporary issues. (shrink)

The ontological turn in anthropological methodology, at least in its conceptualization-oriented formulation, aims to turn away from the concepts and objects found within one’s own social setting in order to turn to indigenous conceptualization processes and take a look at “the things themselves.” This article aims to unpack what such constant reconceptualization amounts to, arguing that when modified to meet certain objections, the ontological turn could provide important ingredients for an alternative version of interpretive social science—one that wishes to understand (...) social phenomena as human kinds in the vein of Ian Hacking, Sally Haslanger and Ron Mallon. (shrink)

The relationship between socio-constructionism and Christian theology has not been sufficiently explored. This paper critically analyses some of the main insights of socio-constructionist theories and suggests that a reinterpretation of the idea of social construction from a theistic perspective can avoid the unresolved problems of its radical versions. The paper argues that an order of meaning, whose origin cannot be reduced to human action, has to be presupposed for practices of social construction to work. This resonates with the belief in (...) God´s action in human reality. (shrink)

The authors' commentary on Bruno Latour's "Technology is society made durable" provides the reader with an opportunity to become acquainted with actor-network theory.

In the general understanding, and also in scientific practice, technology and society are viewed as two distinct entities. Related to this view is the assumption that technology and human experience are quite different and unconnected and also the idea that modernity has uprooted, de-contextualized and disembodied technical rationality. Taking a contrary approach, this study represents a theoretical exploration aimed at showing that in the domain of technological development, there are significant margins for maneuver in which to recuperate and valorize human (...) and social action. As a work of theoretical sociology or social epistemology, this thesis approaches its subject from the theoretical background of the philosophy and sociology of technique. The historical and conventional assumptions of this theoretical background, it is argued, have been and continue to be characterized by a hegemonically defined essentialist paradigm. This paradigm has been fiercely counteracted by two opposed approaches, critical theory and pragmatism. The present work combines these approaches, usually considered mutually incompatible, for the development of a new theoretical gaze or perspective. The aim has been to engage in a theoretical research oriented to a new philosophy of praxis in order to instigate a critical and constructivist approach to technology. The main result expected of this work is the provision of a problematized and multifaceted semantic map leading to a multidimensional conceptual re-integration of skilled experience in human technical action. (shrink)

When Tooby and Cosmides published their famous article “Psychological foundation of culture”, most readers could read it as just another paper addressing evolutionary psychology. Its aspirations were, however, much far-reaching. Tooby and Cosmides attacked the so-called constructivists. In this way, the paper ushered in another turn in the controversy over the method of social sciences. In my paper I claim that Tooby and Cosmides are right when they criticize constructivists and relativists. On the other hand, I claim that they do (...) not live up to their aspirations, i.e. they do not provide for a rapprochement of the standards of social sciences and those of natural sciences. (shrink)

The research on which the present paper makes a point in aimed at designing a cognitive model of Albert Einstein's discovery that is based on fundamental Einstein's publications and placed, ideally, at a meso-level, between macro-historical and micro-cognitive reconstructions (e.g. protocol analysis). As in a cognitive-historical analysis, we will trace some discovery heuristics in the construction of representations, that are on a continuum with those we employ in ordinary problem solving. Firstly, some theory-specific, reflexive heuristics—named orientative heuristics—are traced: inner perfection, (...) explain-or-assume, explanatory correspondence, and covariance/invariance. Then, other well-known abstractive heuristics as analogical and imagistic reasoning, thought experiment, limiting case analysis (e.g. Nersessian 1992) are shown occurring in Einstein's key-publications. A sketch of a socio-cognitive model for his discovery is then presented following two suggestions: (a) an idea of Van Fraassen about discovery phases, and (b) the Humean distinction between beliefs and ideas. (shrink)

Wang (_Philosophy & Technology_ 35, 2022) introduces a Foucauldian power account of algorithmic transparency. This short commentary explores when this power account is appropriate. It is first observed that the power account is a constructionist one, and that such accounts often come with both factual and evaluative claims. In an instance of Hume’s law, the evaluative claims do not follow from the factual claims, leaving open the question of how much constructionist commitment (Hacking, 1999) one should have. The concept of (...) acts in equilibrium (Nozick, 1981) is then used to explain how different individuals reading Wang can end up with different evaluative attitudes towards algorithmic transparency, despite factual agreement. The commentary concludes by situating constructionist commitment inside a larger question of how much to think of our actions, identifying conflicting arguments. (shrink)

This special issue of Science, Technology, & Human Values critically explores a new stage in which the life sciences and biomedical practices have entered. This new stage is marked by postgenomic developments and an increased interest of life sciences in the everyday lives of people outside laboratories and clinical settings. Furthermore, particular attention is given to many chronic and degenerative disorders such as cardiovascular disease, Alzheimer’s disease, or developmental disorders. These developments coincide—or have become entangled—with a new set of interests (...) that an anthropologically inclined science and technology studies is bringing to the analyses of biomedical practices. An increased interest is observed in the anthropologically inclined STS in studying phenomena on different scales and in exploring fields that are not readily dominated by technoscientific rationality in practice. The introduction to the special issue examines briefly these developments and situates them in a broader genealogy of different movements that have taken place in the anthropologically inclined subfield of STS since the late 1970s and early 1980s. (shrink)

Laboratory experimentation was once considered impossible or irrelevant in economics. Recently, however, economic science has gone through a real ‘laboratory revolution’, and experimental economics is now a most lively subfield of the discipline. The methodological advantages and disadvantages of controlled experimentation constitute the main subject of this thesis. After a survey of the literature on experiments in philosophy and economics, the problem of testing normative theories of rationality is tackled. This philosophical issue was at the centre of a famous controversy (...) in decision theory, during which a methodology of normative falsification was first articulated and used to assess experimental results. In the third chapter, the methodological advantages of controlled experimentation are illustrated and discussed with examples taken from the experiments on the so-called ‘preference reversal’ phenomenon. Laboratory testing allows to establish with a high degree of certainty that certain phenomena lie behind the experimental data, by means of independent testing, elimination of alternative hypotheses, and the use of different instruments of observation. The fourth chapter is devoted to a conceptual analysis of the problem of ‘parallelism’. This is the problem of inferring from the occurrence of a phenomenon in the laboratory, to its instantiation also in non-laboratory environments. Experimental economists have discussed parallelism at length, and their views are presented and criticised. Eventually, it is argued that parallelism is a factual matter and as such can only be established on empirical grounds. The fifth chapter provides an example of how one can argue for parallelism, focusing on the case of experimentation on the ‘winner’s curse’ phenomenon. The role of experiments as ‘mediators’ between theoretical models and their target domain of application is illustrated, and the structure of parallelism arguments analysed in detail. Finally, in the last chapter, economic experiments are compared to simulations, in order to highlight their specific characteristics. (shrink)

This paper explores recent vigilance attending pedophilia in the UK context. It examines governmental and popular responses to the perceived threat posed by child sex offenders, exhibited respectively in provisions for sex offender orders within the Crime and Disorder Act 1998, and in press and public campaigns for the “naming and shaming” of paedophiles. These two responses cohabit in current contexts of concern about childhood as innocence and vulnerability, and are worked out against the figure of the paedophile as a (...) “dangerous individual”; nevertheless, they invoke different visions of political community. Developing Foucault's observation that contemporary political rationalities combine two distinct models of political community, that of the juridically constituted polity and that of the society rendered calculable and organized through normalizing models of risk, the paper argues that both of these models are evident in governmental and popular responses to paedophilia. However, where the former, a technical and administrative response to a problem of social order, aims to achieve public safety through the professional prediction and management of risk, the latter is premised on the elimination of danger,demanding the public outing of paedophiles and their exorcism from the community. While these responses contest whether danger can be turned into risk through professional management, they are mutually enhancing in fostering governmental and popular concern with public and community safety. (shrink)

This paper aims to contribute to the attempts to clarify and classify the vague notion of “technosciences” from a historical perspective. A key question that is raised is as follows: Does Francis Bacon, one of the founding fathers of the modern age, provide a hitherto largely undiscovered programmatic position, which might facilitate a more profound understanding of technosciences ? The paper argues that nearly everything we need today for an ontologically well-informed epistemology of technoscience can be found in the works (...) of Bacon—this position will be called epistemological real - constructivism. Rather than realist or constructivist, empiricist or rationalist, Bacon’s position can best be understood as real-constructivist since it challenges modern dichotomies. Reflection upon the contemporary relevance of Bacon could contribute to the expanding and critical discussion on technoscience. In the following I will reconstruct the term “technoscience”. My finding is that at least four different understandings or types of the term “technoscience” co-exist. In a second step, I will analyze and elaborate on Bacon’s epistemological position. I will identify central elements of the four different understandings in Bacon’s work. Finally, I will conclude that the epistemology of technoscience is, indeed, very old—it is the epistemological position put forward by Bacon. (shrink)

Wem wird geglaubt und wem nicht? Wessen Wissen wird weitergegeben und wessen nicht? Wer hat eine Stimme und wer nicht? Theorien der epistemischen Ungerechtigkeit befassen sich mit dem breiten Feld der ungerechten oder unfairen Behandlung, die mit Fragen des Wissens, Verstehens und Kommunizierens zusammenhängen, wie z.B. die Möglichkeit, vom Wissen oder von kommunikativen Praktiken ausgeschlossen zu werden oder zum Schweigen gebracht zu werden, aber auch Kontexte, in denen die Bedeutungen mancher systematisch verzerrt oder falsch gehört und falsch dargestellt werden, in (...) denen manchen misstraut wird oder es an epistemischer Handlungsfähigkeit mangelt. In diesem Buch wird eine Übersicht über die breite Debatte epistemischer Ungerechtigkeit, epistemischer Unterdrückung und epistemischer Gewalt gegeben, in dem unterschiedliche Theorien, die sich auf der Schnittstelle von Gerechtigkeitstheorie und epistemischen Fragen befinden, systematisch und kritisch diskutiert sowie theoretische Vorgänger dieser Theorien beleuchtet werden. (shrink)