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The Irreducible Complexity of Objectivity

Synthese 138 (3):453 - 473 (2004)

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  1. Bayesian Philosophy of Science.Jan Sprenger & Stephan Hartmann - 2019 - Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press.
    How should we reason in science? Jan Sprenger and Stephan Hartmann offer a refreshing take on classical topics in philosophy of science, using a single key concept to explain and to elucidate manifold aspects of scientific reasoning. They present good arguments and good inferences as being characterized by their effect on our rational degrees of belief. Refuting the view that there is no place for subjective attitudes in 'objective science', Sprenger and Hartmann explain the value of convincing evidence in terms (...)
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  • The new demarcation problem.Bennett Holman & Torsten Wilholt - 2022 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 91 (C):211-220.
    There is now a general consensus amongst philosophers in the values in science literature that values necessarily play a role in core areas of scientific inquiry. We argue that attention should now be turned from debating the value-free ideal to delineating legitimate from illegitimate influences of values in science, a project we dub “The New Demarcation Problem.” First, we review past attempts to demarcate the uses of values and propose a categorization of the strategies by where they seek to draw (...)
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  • Robustness, Reliability, and Overdetermination (1981).William C. Wimsatt - 2012 - In Lena Soler (ed.), Characterizing the robustness of science: after the practice turn in philosophy of science. New York: Springer Verlag. pp. 61-78.
    The use of multiple means of determination to “triangulate” on the existence and character of a common phenomenon, object, or result has had a long tradition in science but has seldom been a matter of primary focus. As with many traditions, it is traceable to Aristotle, who valued having multiple explanations of a phenomenon, and it may also be involved in his distinction between special objects of sense and common sensibles. It is implicit though not emphasized in the distinction between (...)
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  • Is meta-analysis the platinum standard of evidence?Jacob Stegenga - 2011 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 42 (4):497-507.
    An astonishing volume and diversity of evidence is available for many hypotheses in the biomedical and social sciences. Some of this evidence—usually from randomized controlled trials (RCTs)—is amalgamated by meta-analysis. Despite the ongoing debate regarding whether or not RCTs are the ‘gold-standard’ of evidence, it is usually meta-analysis which is considered the best source of evidence: meta-analysis is thought by many to be the platinum standard of evidence. However, I argue that meta-analysis falls far short of that standard. Different meta-analyses (...)
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  • Can the Science of Well-Being Be Objective?Anna Alexandrova - 2018 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 69 (2):421-445.
    Well–being, health and freedom are some of the many phenomena of interest to science whose definitions rely on a normative standard. Empirical generalizations about them thus present a special case of value-ladenness. I propose the notion of a ‘mixed claim’ to denote such generalizations. Against the prevailing wisdom, I argue that we should not seek to eliminate them from science. Rather, we need to develop principles for their legitimate use. Philosophers of science have already reconciled values with objectivity in several (...)
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  • A Taxonomy of Transparency in Science.Kevin C. Elliott - 2022 - Canadian Journal of Philosophy 52 (3):342-355.
    Both scientists and philosophers of science have recently emphasized the importance of promoting transparency in science. For scientists, transparency is a way to promote reproducibility, progress, and trust in research. For philosophers of science, transparency can help address the value-ladenness of scientific research in a responsible way. Nevertheless, the concept of transparency is a complex one. Scientists can be transparent about many different things, for many different reasons, on behalf of many different stakeholders. This paper proposes a taxonomy that clarifies (...)
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  • Objectivity, value-free science, and inductive risk.Paul Hoyningen-Huene - 2023 - European Journal for Philosophy of Science 13 (1):1-26.
    In this paper I shall defend the idea that there is an abstract and general core meaning of objectivity, and what is seen as a variety of concepts or conceptions of objectivity are in fact criteria of, or means to achieve, objectivity. I shall then discuss the ideal of value-free science and its relation to the objectivity of science; its status can be at best a criterion of, or means for, objectivity. Given this analysis, we can then turn to the (...)
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  • (2 other versions)Defending a Risk Account of Scientific Objectivity.Inkeri Koskinen - 2018 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 71 (4):1187-1207.
    When discussing scientific objectivity, many philosophers of science have recently focused on accounts that can be applied in practice when assessing the objectivity of something. It has become clear that in different contexts, objectivity is realized in different ways, and the many senses of objectivity recognized in the recent literature seem to be conceptually distinct. I argue that these diverse ‘applicable’ senses of scientific objectivity have more in common than has thus far been recognized. I combine arguments from philosophical discussions (...)
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  • An Ethical Framework for Presenting Scientific Results to Policy-Makers.S. Andrew Schroeder - 2022 - Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal 32 (1):33-67.
    Scientists have the ability to influence policy in important ways through how they present their results. Surprisingly, existing codes of scientific ethics have little to say about such choices. I propose that we can arrive at a set of ethical guidelines to govern scientists’ presentation of information to policymakers by looking to bioethics: roughly, just as a clinician should aim to promote informed decision-making by patients, a scientist should aim to promote informed decision-making by policymakers. Though this may sound like (...)
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  • Realism and the Epistemic Objectivity of Science.Howard Sankey - 2021 - Kriterion - Journal of Philosophy 35 (1):5-20.
    The paper presents a realist account of the epistemic objectivity of science. Epistemic objectivity is distinguished from ontological objectivity and the objectivity of truth. As background, T.S. Kuhn’s idea that scientific theory-choice is based on shared scientific values with a role for both objective and subjective factors is discussed. Kuhn’s values are epistemologically ungrounded, hence provide a minimal sense of objectivity. A robust account of epistemic objectivity on which methodological norms are reliable means of arriving at the truth is presented. (...)
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  • Public Trust in Science: Exploring the Idiosyncrasy-Free Ideal.Marion Boulicault & S. Andrew Schroeder - 2021 - In Kevin Vallier & Michael Weber (eds.), Social Trust: Foundational and Philosophical Issues. Routledge.
    What makes science trustworthy to the public? This chapter examines one proposed answer: the trustworthiness of science is based at least in part on its independence from the idiosyncratic values, interests, and ideas of individual scientists. That is, science is trustworthy to the extent that following the scientific process would result in the same conclusions, regardless of the particular scientists involved. We analyze this "idiosyncrasy-free ideal" for science by looking at philosophical debates about inductive risk, focusing on two recent proposals (...)
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  • Epistemic interests and the objectivity of inquiry.Torsten Wilholt - 2022 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 91 (C):86-93.
    This paper advocates for making epistemic interests a central object of philosophical analysis in epistemology and philosophy of science. It is argued that the importance of epistemic interests derives from their fundamental importance for the notion of objectivity. Epistemic interests are defined as individuated by a set of objectives, each of which represents a dimension of the search for truth. Among these dimensions, specificity, sensitivity, and productivity are discussed in detail. It is argued that the relevance of productivity is often (...)
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  • The objectivity of Subjective Bayesianism.Jan Sprenger - 2018 - European Journal for Philosophy of Science 8 (3):539-558.
    Subjective Bayesianism is a major school of uncertain reasoning and statistical inference. It is often criticized for a lack of objectivity: it opens the door to the influence of values and biases, evidence judgments can vary substantially between scientists, it is not suited for informing policy decisions. My paper rebuts these concerns by connecting the debates on scientific objectivity and statistical method. First, I show that the above concerns arise equally for standard frequentist inference with null hypothesis significance tests. Second, (...)
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  • Emotions and Distrust in Science.Katherine Furman - 2020 - International Journal of Philosophical Studies 28 (5):713-730.
    In our interactions with science, we are often vulnerable; we do not have complete control of the situation and there is a risk that we, or those we love, might be harmed. This is not an emotionall...
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  • Objectivity and a comparison of methodological scenario approaches for climate change research.Elisabeth A. Lloyd & Vanessa J. Schweizer - 2014 - Synthese 191 (10):2049-2088.
    Climate change assessments rely upon scenarios of socioeconomic developments to conceptualize alternative outcomes for global greenhouse gas emissions. These are used in conjunction with climate models to make projections of future climate. Specifically, the estimations of greenhouse gas emissions based on socioeconomic scenarios constrain climate models in their outcomes of temperatures, precipitation, etc. Traditionally, the fundamental logic of the socioeconomic scenarios—that is, the logic that makes them plausible—is developed and prioritized using methods that are very subjective. This introduces a fundamental (...)
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  • The emergence of objectivity: Fleck, Foucault, Kuhn and Hacking.Luca Sciortino - 2021 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 88 (1):128-137.
    The analytical notions of ‘thought style’, ‘paradigm’, ‘episteme’ and ‘style of reasoning’ are some of the most popular frameworks in the history and philosophy of science. Although their proponents, Ludwik Fleck, Thomas Kuhn, Michel Foucault, and Ian Hacking, are all part of the same philosophical tradition that closely connects history and philosophy, the extent to which they share similar assumptions and objectives is still under debate. In the first part of the paper, I shall argue that, despite the fact that (...)
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  • Different motivations, similar proposals: objectivity in scientific community and democratic science policy.Jaana Eigi - 2017 - Synthese 194 (12):4657-4669.
    The aim of the paper is to discuss some possible connections between philosophical proposals about the social organisation of science and developments towards a greater democratisation of science policy. I suggest that there are important similarities between one approach to objectivity in philosophy of science—Helen Longino’s account of objectivity as freedom from individual biases achieved through interaction of a variety of perspectives—and some ideas about the epistemic benefits of wider representation of various groups’ perspectives in science policy, as analysed by (...)
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  • Epistemic Identities in Interdisciplinary Science.Lisa M. Osbeck & Nancy J. Nersessian - 2017 - Perspectives on Science 25 (2):226-260.
    Confronting any science studies or learning sciences researcher in the 21st century is the reality of interdisciplinary science. New hybrid fields1 collaboratively build new concepts, combine models from two or more disciplines and forge inter-reliant relationships among specialists with different skill sets to solve new problems. This paper emerges from our recognition that inescapable psychological factors, including identity dynamics, must be described and analyzed in order to better understand the social and cognitive practices specific to interdisciplinary science. In analysis of (...)
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  • Overcoming the underdetermination of specimens.Caitlin Donahue Wylie - 2019 - Biology and Philosophy 34 (2):24.
    Philosophers of science are well aware that theories are underdetermined by data. But what about the data? Scientific data are selected and processed representations or pieces of nature. What is useless context and what is valuable specimen, as well as how specimens are processed for study, are not obvious or predetermined givens. Instead, they are decisions made by scientists and other research workers, such as technicians, that produce different outcomes for the data. Vertebrate fossils provide a revealing case of this (...)
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  • Objectivity as Independence.Alexander Reutlinger - 2024 - Episteme 21 (1):119-126.
    Building on Nozick's invariantism about objectivity, I propose to define scientific objectivity in terms of counterfactual independence. I will argue that such a counterfactual independence account is (a) able to overcome the decisive shortcomings of Nozick's original invariantism and (b) applicable to three paradigmatic kinds of scientific objectivity (that is, objectivity as replication, objectivity as robustness, and objectivity as Mertonian universalism).
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  • Scientific Pluralism.Ludwig David & Ruphy Stéphanie - 2021 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
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  • Citizen Science and Scientific Objectivity: Mapping Out Epistemic Risks and Benefits.Baptiste Bedessem & Stéphanie Ruphy - 2020 - Perspectives on Science 28 (5):630-654.
    . Given the importance of the issue of scientific objectivity in our democratic societies and the significant development of citizen science, it is crucial to investigate how citizen science may either undermine or foster scientific objectivity. This paper identifies a variety of epistemic risks and benefits that participation of lay citizens in scientific inquiries may bring. It also discusses concrete actions and pending issues that should be addressed in order to foster objectivity in citizen science programs.
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  • Objectivity for the research worker.Noah van Dongen & Michał Sikorski - 2021 - European Journal for Philosophy of Science 11 (3):1-25.
    In the last decade, many problematic cases of scientific conduct have been diagnosed; some of which involve outright fraud others are more subtle. These and similar problems can be interpreted as caused by lack of scientific objectivity. The current philosophical theories of objectivity do not provide scientists with conceptualizations that can be effectively put into practice in remedying these issues. We propose a novel way of thinking about objectivity for individual scientists; a negative and dynamic approach.We provide a philosophical conceptualization (...)
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  • Towards a socially constructed and objective concept of mental disorder.Anne-Marie Gagné-Julien - 2020 - Synthese 198 (10):9401-9426.
    In this paper, I argue for a new way to understand the integration of facts and values in the concept of mental disorder that has the potential to avoid the flaws of previous hybrid approaches. I import conceptual tools from the account of procedural objectivity defended by Helen Longino to resolve the controversy over the definition of mental disorder. My argument is threefold: I first sketch the history of the debate opposing objectivists and constructivists and focus on the criticisms that (...)
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  • New Directions in Philosophy of Medicine.Jacob Stegenga, Ashley Kennedy, Serife Tekin, Saana Jukola & Robyn Bluhm - 2016 - In James A. Marcum (ed.), Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Philosophy of Medicine. New York: Bloomsbury. pp. 343-367.
    The purpose of this chapter is to describe what we see as several important new directions for philosophy of medicine. This recent work (i) takes existing discussions in important and promising new directions, (ii) identifies areas that have not received sufficient and deserved attention to date, and/or (iii) brings together philosophy of medicine with other areas of philosophy (including bioethics, philosophy of psychiatry, and social epistemology). To this end, the next part focuses on what we call the “epistemological turn” in (...)
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  • Rescuing Objectivity: A Contextualist Proposal.Jack Wright - 2018 - Philosophy of the Social Sciences 48 (4):385-406.
    Ascriptions of objectivity carry significant weight. But they can also cause confusion because wildly different ideas of what it means to be objective are common. Faced with this, some philosophers have argued that objectivity should be eliminated. I will argue, against one such position, that objectivity can be useful even though it is plural. I will then propose a contextualist approach for dealing with objectivity as a way of rescuing what is useful about objectivity while acknowledging its plurality.
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  • Humanistic interpretation and machine learning.Juho Pääkkönen & Petri Ylikoski - 2021 - Synthese 199:1461–1497.
    This paper investigates how unsupervised machine learning methods might make hermeneutic interpretive text analysis more objective in the social sciences. Through a close examination of the uses of topic modeling—a popular unsupervised approach in the social sciences—it argues that the primary way in which unsupervised learning supports interpretation is by allowing interpreters to discover unanticipated information in larger and more diverse corpora and by improving the transparency of the interpretive process. This view highlights that unsupervised modeling does not eliminate the (...)
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  • The Commercialization of Research and the Quest for the Objectivity of Science.S. Jukola - 2016 - Foundations of Science 21 (1):89-103.
    In this paper, I discuss the objectivity of science in the context of commercialized research. Objectivity has traditionally been associated with the behavior of individual scientists and their willingness and ability to base their reasoning on data and logic. By introducing some examples of problematic practices in current research, I show that this view is insufficient. A view that I call the Social View on objectivity succeeds better in accommodating the way in which commercialization affects research.
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  • Objectivity, Scientificity, and the Dualist Epistemology of Medicine.Thomas V. Cunningham - 2015 - In Philippe Huneman, Gérard Lambert & Marc Silberstein (eds.), Classification, Disease and Evidence: New Essays in the Philosophy of Medicine. Dordrecht: Imprint: Springer. pp. 01-17.
    This paper considers the view that medicine is both “science” and “art.” It is argued that on this view certain clinical knowledge – of patients’ histories, values, and preferences, and how to integrate them in decision-making – cannot be scientific knowledge. However, by drawing on recent work in philosophy of science it is argued that progress in gaining such knowledge has been achieved by the accumulation of what should be understood as “scientific” knowledge. I claim there are varying degrees of (...)
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  • Towards Democratic Models of Science: Exploring the Case of Scientific Pluralism.Jeroen Van Bouwel - 2015 - Perspectives on Science 23 (2):149-172.
    Scientific pluralism, a normative endorsement of the plurality or multiplicity of research approaches in science, has recently been advocated by several philosophers (e.g., Kellert et al. 2006, Kitcher 2001, Longino 2013, Mitchell 2009, and Chang 2010). Comparing these accounts of scientific pluralism, one will encounter quite some variation. We want to clarify the different interpretations of scientific pluralism by showing how they incarnate different models of democracy, stipulating the desired interaction among the plurality of research approaches in different ways. Furthermore, (...)
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  • Epistemic Objectivity and the Virtues.Howard Sankey - 2020 - Filozofia Nauki 28 (3):5-23.
    The aim of this paper is to bring the resources of virtue epistemology to bear on the issue of the epistemic objectivity of science. A distinction is made between theoretical virtues that may be possessed by scientific theories and epistemic virtues that may be exercised by individual scientists. A distinction is then made between ontological objectivity, objectivity of truth and epistemic objectivity, the latter being the principal focus of the paper. It is then noted that a role must be played (...)
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  • An infrastructural account of scientific objectivity for legal contexts and bloodstain pattern analysis.W. John Koolage, Lauren M. Williams & Morgen L. Barroso - 2021 - Science in Context 34 (1):101-119.
    ArgumentIn the United States, scientific knowledge is brought before the courts by way of testimony – the testimony of scientific experts. We argue that this expertise is best understoodfirstas related to the quality of the underlying scienceand thenin terms of who delivers it. Bloodstain pattern analysis (BPA), a contemporary forensic science, serves as the vaulting point for our exploration of objectivity as a metric for the quality of a science in judicial contexts. We argue that BPA fails to meet the (...)
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  • Diversity and the Fate of Objectivity.Karyn L. Freedman - 2009 - Social Epistemology 23 (1):45-56.
    Helen Longino argues that the way to ensure scientific knowledge is objective is to have a diversity of scientific investigators. This is the best example of recent feminist arguments which hold that the real value of diversity is epistemic, and not political, but it only partly succeeds. In the end, Longino's objectivity amounts to intersubjective agreement about contextually based standards, and while her account gives us a good reason for wanting diversity in our scientific communities, this reason turns out to (...)
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  • Strictly Human: Limitations of Autonomous Systems.Sadjad Soltanzadeh - 2022 - Minds and Machines 32 (2):269-288.
    Can autonomous systems replace humans in the performance of their activities? How does the answer to this question inform the design of autonomous systems? The study of technical systems and their features should be preceded by the study of the activities in which they play roles. Each activity can be described by its overall goals, governing norms and the intermediate steps which are taken to achieve the goals and to follow the norms. This paper uses the activity realist approach to (...)
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  • A General Theory of Objectivity: Contributions from the Reformational Philosophy Tradition.Richard M. Gunton, Marinus D. Stafleu & Michael J. Reiss - 2022 - Foundations of Science 27 (3):941-955.
    Objectivity in the sciences is a much-touted yet problematic concept. It is sometimes held up as characterising scientific knowledge, yet operational definitions are diverse and call for such paradoxical genius as the ability to see without a perspective, to predict repeatability, to elicit nature’s own self-revelation, or to discern the structure of reality with inerrancy. Here we propose a positive and general definition of objectivity based on work in the Reformational philosophy tradition. We recognise a suite of relation-frames–ways in which (...)
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  • La médecine et ses humanismes.Juliette Ferry-Danini & Élodie Giroux - 2020 - Archives de Philosophie 83 (4):5-12.
    Plusieurs aspects du modèle biopsychosocial promeuvent une approche humaniste en médecine. Cependant, Engel a explicitement rejeté un humanisme médical qui s’opposerait à la science. En adoptant une approche fondée sur la science des systèmes pour étudier les êtres humains, la santé et la maladie, Engel défend une approche scientifique pour améliorer la qualité des soins cliniques, ou autrement dit, une approche qui se prête à un examen scientifique de cette question.
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  • Coherence objectivity and measurement: the example of democracy.Sharon Crasnow - 2020 - Synthese 199 (1-2):1207-1229.
    Empirical research on democracy depends upon data. The need for such data has led to the development of measures of democracy. Measurement models are evaluated in terms of their reliability and validity, both of which may be thought of as related to the objectivity of the measure. Using the Varieties of Democracy Project as an example, I consider how assessing reliability and validity of measurement models is challenging and argue that democracy might be understood as measured objectively when it is (...)
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  • Values in Psychometrics.Lisa D. Wijsen, Denny Borsboom & Anna Alexandrova - forthcoming - Perspectives on Psychological Science.
    When it originated in the late 19th century, psychometrics was a field with both a scientific and a social mission: psychometrics provided new methods for research into individual differences, and at the same time, these psychometric instruments were considered a means to create a new social order. In contrast, contemporary psychometrics - due to its highly technical nature and its limited involvement in substantive psychological research - has created the impression of being a value-free discipline. In this article, we develop (...)
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  • Objective data sets in qualitative research.Julie Zahle - 2020 - Synthese 199 (1-2):101-117.
    Qualitative researchers sometimes talk about objectivity in relation to qualitative data sets. In this paper, I defend a reconstructed notion of objective qualitative data sets that may serve as a useful and reachable guiding ideal in qualitative data generation. In the first part of the paper, I develop the ideal. According to it, a qualitative data set is objective to the extent that it, in conjunction with true assumptions, possesses a combination of good-making features in virtue of which the data (...)
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  • A Social Epistemological Inquiry into Biases in Journal Peer Review.Saana Jukola - 2017 - Perspectives on Science 25 (1):124-148.
    Journal peer review is an essential part of academic practices.1 But how well does it serve its purpose and which factors have an influence on how close it comes to achieving its aims? Peer review has been widely discussed in empirical literature: it has been studied both qualitatively and quantitatively (e.g., by Cole, who in his 1992 book uses data on how grant applications submitted to National Science Foundation were...
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  • Addressing Industry-Funded Research with Criteria for Objectivity.Kevin C. Elliott - 2018 - Philosophy of Science 85 (5):857-868.
    In recent years, industry-funded research has come under fire because of concerns that it can be biased in favor of the funders. This article suggests that efforts by philosophers of science to analyze the concept of objectivity can provide important lessons for those seeking to evaluate and improve industry-funded research. It identifies three particularly relevant criteria for objectivity: transparency, reproducibility, and effective criticism. On closer examination, the criteria of transparency and reproducibility turn out to have significant limitations in this context, (...)
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  • On the Suppression of Medical Evidence.Alexander Christian - 2017 - Journal for General Philosophy of Science / Zeitschrift für Allgemeine Wissenschaftstheorie 48 (3):395-418.
    Financial conflicts of interest in medical research foster deviations from research standards and evidentially lead to the suppression of research findings that are at odds with commercial interests of pharmaceutical companies. Questionable research practices prevent data from being created, made available, or given suitable recognition. They run counter to codified principles of responsible conduct of research, such as honesty, openness or respect for the law. Resulting in ignorance, misrepresentation and suspension of scientific self-correction, suppression of medical evidence in its various (...)
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  • Objectivity as Independence.Alexander Reutlinger - 2021 - Episteme:1-8.
    Building on Nozick's invariantism about objectivity, I propose to define scientific objectivity in terms of counterfactual independence. I will argue that such a counterfactual independence account is (a) able to overcome the decisive shortcomings of Nozick's original invariantism and (b) applicable to three paradigmatic kinds of scientific objectivity (that is, objectivity as replication, objectivity as robustness, and objectivity as Mertonian universalism).
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  • Information, Cognition, and Objectivity.Nir Fresco - 2021 - American Philosophical Quarterly 58 (3):251-268.
    The idea that the brain is an information processing system raises some challenging questions about whether information exists independently of brains. Answering these questions is relevant for clarifying the theoretical foundations of the sciences of mind and brain, but also for appropriately interpreting and evaluating the evidence about how brains—and other biological systems—work. This article claims that (1) informational descriptions in the sciences of mind and brain can be genuinely explanatory, despite assuming a mind-dependent notion of information; and (2) that (...)
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  • A plea for minimally biased naturalistic philosophy.Andrea Polonioli - 2019 - Synthese 196 (9):3841-3867.
    Naturalistic philosophers rely on literature search and review in a number of ways and for different purposes. Yet this article shows how processes of literature search and review are likely to be affected by widespread and systematic biases. A solution to this problem is offered here. Whilst the tradition of systematic reviews of literature from scientific disciplines has been neglected in philosophy, systematic reviews are important tools that minimize bias in literature search and review and allow for greater reproducibility and (...)
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  • The Hows and whys of philosophy of science teaching: a comparative analysis.Henk W. de Regt & Edwin Koster - 2021 - European Journal for Philosophy of Science 11 (4):1-16.
    What makes teaching philosophy of science to non-philosophy students different from teaching it to philosophy students, and how should lecturers in philosophy adapt to an audience of practitioners of a field of study that they are reflecting on? In this paper we address this question by analyzing the differences between these student groups, and based on this analysis we make suggestions as to how philosophy of science can be taught to non-philosophy students in an effective and attractive way. Starting-point is (...)
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  • Objectivity in contexts: withholding epistemic judgement as a strategy for mitigating collective bias.Inkeri Koskinen - 2020 - Synthese 199 (1-2):211-225.
    In this paper I discuss and develop the risk account of scientific objectivity, which I have recently introduced, contrasting it to some alternatives. I then use the account in order to analyse a practice that is relatively common in anthropology, in the history of science, and in the sociology of scientific knowledge: withholding epistemic judgement. I argue that withholding epistemic judgement on the beliefs one is studying can be a relatively efficient strategy against collective bias in these fields. However, taking (...)
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  • Evidential holism.Joe Morrison - 2017 - Philosophy Compass 12 (6):e12417.
    Evidential holism begins with something like the claim that “it is only jointly as a theory that scientific statements imply their observable consequences.” This is the holistic claim that Elliott Sober tells us is an “unexceptional observation”. But variations on this “unexceptional” claim feature as a premise in a series of controversial arguments for radical conclusions, such as that there is no analytic or synthetic distinction that the meaning of a sentence cannot be understood without understanding the whole language of (...)
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  • 'Explicating ways of consensus-making: Distinguishing the academic, the interface and the meta-consensus.Laszlo Kosolosky & Jeroen Van Bouwel - 2014 - In Martini Carlo (ed.), Experts and Consensus in Social Science. Springer. pp. 71-92.
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  • La médecine personnalisée est-elle humaniste?Élodie Giroux - 2020 - Archives de Philosophie 83 (4):59-82.
    Adoptant une perspective populationnelle inspirée des « sciences de la santé de la population », cet article développe une critique de la manière dont la médecine personnalisée envisage l’individu et la population et défend l’idée qu’une approche conjointe de la santé de l’individu et de la santé de la population est une condition pour une médecine humaniste.
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