This paper reflects on the relationship between theory and practice in bioethics, by using various concepts drawn from debates on innovation in healthcare research—in particular debates around how best to connect up blue skies ‘basic’ research with practical innovations that can improve human lives. It argues that it is a mistake to assume that the most difficult and important questions in bioethics are the most abstract ones, and also a mistake to assume that getting clear about abstract cases will automatically (...) be of much help in getting clear about more complex cases. It replaces this implicitly linear model with a more complex one that draws on the idea of translational research in healthcare. On the translational model, there is a continuum of cases from the most simple and abstract to the most concrete and complex. Insights need to travel in both directions along this continuum—from the more abstract to the more concrete and from the more concrete to the more abstract. The paper maps out some difficulties in moving from simpler to more complex cases, and in doing so makes recommendations about the future of bioethics. (shrink)

This article lies at the intersection of two problems: the one concerning the potential of fictional works to inform us about our social reality and foster our understanding of its various aspects, and the one concerning their potential to engage with philosophical issues. I bring these two together by analyzing the hit television series Law and Order: Special Victims Unit. According to my interpretation, the series is informative about our social world, and it raises philosophical concerns about it. This makes (...) it well-equipped to fulfill the educative function attributed to mass art by Noël Carroll, and to stand out as an example of what he calls popular philosophy. To support this interpretation, I rely on contemporary views regarding the nature of our engagements with fictional narratives. I then explore how philosophical concerns are generated and I elaborate on the role they have in deepening one’s understanding of one’s social circumstances. I further show how the series provides innovative and independent philosophical knowledge by means specific to the medium of generic serialized fiction. The central part of my argument is an analysis of the narrative strategies which enable the informative and philosophical aspects of the series to generate the series’ educative function. (shrink)

Big philosophical questions—about the mind, the idea of the good, justice, beauty, knowledge—have been the prime interest of philosophers ever since Plato first raised them in his dialogues. However, regardless of how hard philosophers have been trying to find answers to them, it seems that all they have ever managed to do was to find reasons for disagreements, and, on the whole, to have failed to reach a consensus on pretty much anything. Some philosophers now claim that there hasn’t been (...) much progress in philosophy, especially when compared to the sciences. I take up this verdict and try to refute it, first by offering an alternative view on what counts as progress, and then by analyzing big philosophical questions and their relevance for our intellectual and practical pursuits. I argue that, due to the distinctive nature of philosophical curiosity, coming up with answers to the big philosophical questions is an ideal that can hardly be met, but that philosophy nevertheless delivers various benefits, intellectual and practical, which the proponents of the No-Progress View tend to ignore. (shrink)

Este artículo presenta lo que denomino la “paradoja topológica de la filosofía”. La filosofía reclama un lugar en el conjunto de los saberes enseñables y, por ende, en la universidad; pero deviene u-tópica en su idea del ejercicio libre de su actividad. La filosofía no puede encontrar un lugar en la universidad y no puede dejar de reclamarlo. La paradoja tiene varias dimensiones, pero es irresoluble. Por eso, su futuro en la universidad exigirá una renuncia a situarse en un lugar (...) disciplinar. Podrá quizá hacerse un hueco entre los saberes si finalmente acepta responder no ante sí misma sino ante las exigencias de lo prefilosófico. (shrink)

This article discusses Sven Ove Hansson’s corpus model for the influence of values (in particular, non-epistemic ones) in the hypothesis acceptance/rejection phase of scientific inquiry. This corpus model is based on Hansson’s concepts of scientific corpus and science ‘in the large sense’. I first present Hansson’s corpus model of value influence with some introductory comments about its origins, a detailed presentation of the model with a new terminology, an analysis of its limits, and an appreciation of its handling of controversial (...) non-epistemic values. I conclude that it is a very good candidate for managing value influence, because contrary to other models in the literature it is fairly simple, it provides a universal and systematic procedure for dealing with values, and it syste- matically preserves the epistemic integrity of science. I then study some difficulties associated with the model’s central feature of taking the maximum level of evidence required by the applications of a claim in order for the latter to enter the scientific corpus: the difficulty to identify this maximum requirement; the non-optimality of this requirement with respect to other less demanding requirements; the potentially detrimental consequences of the preference for false negatives over false positives on which it relies; and the issue of whether there can nevertheless be requirements higher than this maximum. I show that these issues may potentially challenge the corpus model. Finally, I call for empirical work (in particular, an investigation of scientists’ and engineers’ own normative views) in order to better assess these issues. (shrink)

Pragmatism has resurged explicitly in neopragmatism and implicitly in neurophilosophy. Neopragmatists have focused primarily on ideals, like human freedom, but at the expense of science. Neurophilosophers have focused primarily on scientific facts, but with an eye toward dismissing aspects of our self-conception like free will as illusory. In both cases, these resurgences are impoverished as each neglects what Dewey referred to as the method of intelligence. Neurophilosophical pragmatism - neuropragmatism - aims to overcome the deficiencies of neopragmatism and neurophilosophy by (...) carrying forth the project of reconstruction by taking both the methods and results of experimental inquiry as the means for attaining ends-in-view such as human freedom. (shrink)

Experimental philosophy is often presented as a new movement that avoids many of the difficulties that face traditional philosophy. This article distinguishes two views of experimental philosophy: a narrow view in which philosophers conduct empirical investigations of intuitions, and a broad view which says that experimental philosophy is just the colocation in the same body of (i) philosophical naturalism and (ii) the actual practice of cognitive science. These two positions are rarely clearly distinguished in the literature about experimental philosophy, both (...) pro and con. The article argues, first, that the broader view is the only plausible one; discussions of experimental philosophy should recognize that the narrow view is a caricature of experimental philosophy as it is currently done. It then shows both how objections to experimental philosophy are transformed and how positive recommendations can be provided by adopting a broad conception of experimental philosophy. (shrink)

Philosophy has been a public endeavor since its origins in ancient Greece, India, and China. However, recent years have seen the development of a new type of public philosophy conducted by both academics and non- professionals. The new public philosophy manifests itself in a range of modalities, from the publication of magazines and books for the general public to a variety of initiatives that exploit the power and flexibility of social networks and new media. In this paper we examine the (...) phenomenon of public philosophy in its several facets, and investigate whether and in what sense it is itself a mix of philosophical practice and teaching. We conclude with a number of suggestions to academic colleagues on why and how to foster further growth of public philosophy for the benefit of society at large and of the discipline itself. (shrink)

Widespread and lasting consensus has not been philosophy's fate. Indeed, one of philosophy's most striking features is its ability to accommodate “not only different answers to philosophical questions” but also “total disagreement on what questions are philosophical” (Rorty 1995, 58). It is therefore hardly surprising that philosophers' responses to this metaphilosophical predicament have been similarly varied. This article considers two recent diagnoses of philosophical diversity: Kornblith and Rescher (respectively) claim that taking philosophical disagreement seriously does not lead to metaphilosophical scepticism. (...) The article argues that their confidence is misplaced in so far as both wrongly assume that ordinary, first-order philosophical practice and second-order metaphilosophical reflection are separate enterprises. We can say that the universe consists of a substance, and this substance we will call “atoms,” or else we will call it “monads.” Democritus called it atoms. Leibniz called it monads. Fortunately, the two men never met, or there would have been a very dull argument. (Allen 1997, 171) When will philosophers learn to be less pretentious and arrogant in their claims? One would imagine that the philosophic experiences of twenty-five centuries would have taught them the fallacy of self-esteem! (Schilpp 1935, 233). (shrink)

This article argues for four interrelated claims: Metaphilosophy is not one sub-discipline of philosophy, nor is it restricted to questions of methodology. Rather, metaphilosophical inquiry encompasses the general background conditions of philosophical practice. These background conditions are of various sorts, not only those routinely considered “philosophical” but also those considered biographical, historical, and sociological. Accordingly, we should be wary of the customary distinction between what is proper and merely contingent to philosophy. “What is philosophy?” is best understood as a practical (...) question concerning how members of different philosophical sub-communities identify what is pertinent to their respective activities and self-conceptions. Given –, understanding what philosophy is requires us to take more seriously the social-institutional dimension of contemporary philosophical practice. (shrink)

Today’s critical state of philosophy is examined by considering two of its aspects: the way in which philosophy presently is ever more typically practised and the new challenges it has to face to keep up with the changed scientific, and more generally cultural and social context. The essay outlines some prospects of progress in the light of those which still now can be considered the proper tasks of philosophical inquiry. Such tasks are singled out through an historical survey of the (...) original characters of philosophy and an appraisal of its theoretical motivations. The importance of the history of philosophy and the necessity of achieving a virtuous relation among the various philosophical disciplines are stressed to contrast the dangers of excess specialisation and professionalism. (shrink)

Ever since Kant, moral philosophers have been more or less animated by the mission of discovering inescapable law-like rules that would provide a binding justification for morality. Recently, however, many have started to question whether this is possible and what, after all, this project could achieve. An alternative vision of the task of moral philosophy starts from the pragmatist idea that philosophizing begins and ends in human experiencing. It leads to a view where morality is seen as a “social technology” (...) that aims to make living together possible, and strengthens people's capability to live a good life within a society. The role of moral philosophy is, accordingly, to develop our moral tools further. Moral philosophers become ethical engineers who use their expertise in ethical topics to criticize existing “moral technology” and construct new concepts, tools, and theories that better answer the current challenges for living a good life. (shrink)

Empirical evidence indicates that women philosophers tend to submit their work to journals substantially less often than their male colleagues. This paper points out that this difference in submission behavior comes with other specific aspects of women philosophers’ behavior, such as a tendency to be reluctant to participate in discussions, to be willing to do work low in prestige, and to specialize in certain research topics, and it argues that these differences can be understood as indirect effects of social biases: (...) namely, effects on the working behavior of members of targeted social groups. Recent findings from philosophy journals’ book review sections and from other academic disciplines known to suffer from gender problems, especially from STEM disciplines, lend additional weight to this hypothesis. (shrink)

This article focuses on public philosophy, the main approaches to interpreting it, current ways for philosophy to reach the public, and obstacles to this. A major hindrance is that philosophy is an area of professional expertise. This circumstance has both conduced to the development of a large close-knit academic community and enfeebled its already weak communication ties with society and other fields of scientific knowledge. It is argued that, on the one hand, publicness has been immanent in philosophy from the (...) very beginning, and, on the other, philosophy needs a public upgrade and a new experience of a constructive dialogue with society. This new publicness of philosophy may be the way to recovery it. It is also shown that tendency towards greater publicness, which is distinctive of modern academic sciences, is a response to the new economic situation. Sciences are becoming engaged in an info-struggle for the attention of the state and society. This is affecting philosophy as well, although the value and importance of philosophical knowledge have been traditionally recognised and emphasised in culture and by the education system. It is stressed that the idea of recovering philosophy is closely linked to what function the philosopher has in the life of society. The contribution considers various possible types of public philosophers. It is concluded that, contrary to the common belief, society needs not an expert philosopher or a mediator in the field of science but a professional consultant capable of calibrating the thinking routines of people and helping them adopt a rational attitude towards themselves, that is, acquire an ability to think critically, form a conscious judgement of their life, and take responsibility for their decisions. (shrink)

Recent attention given to the upstart movement of experimental philosophy is much deserved. But now that experimental philosophy is beginning to enter a stage of maturity, it is time to consider its relation to other philosophical traditions that have issued similar assaults against ingrained and potentially misguided philosophical habits. Experimental philosophy is widely known for rejecting a philosophical reliance on intuitions as evidence in philosophical argument. In this it shares much with another branch of empiricist philosophy, namely, pragmatism. Taking Kwame (...) Anthony Appiah's forthright and cautious endorsement of experimental philosophy as my model, I show that experimental philosophy and pragmatist philosophy share more than adherents of either philosophical method have yet to allow. I then use this comparison to show how the new experimentalisms could benefit from a rereading of century-old pragmatist insights about philosophical methodology. (shrink)

To whom, if anyone, are the writings of philosophers of science relevant? There are three potential groups of people: Philosophers, Scientists, and Interested Citizens, within and beyond the academy. I argue that our discipline is potentially relevant to all three, but I particularly press the claims of the Interested Citizens. My essay is in dialogue with a characteristically insightful lecture given thirty years ago by Arthur Fine. Addressing the Philosophy of Science Association as its president, Fine argued that general philosophy (...) of science was dead, and that all the action lay in the philosophy of the special sciences. I try to identify what was correct about Fine’s diagnosis, while supplementing his message by describing fruitful projects that have since emerged. I also hope to share his subversive spirit. (shrink)

To whom, if anyone, are the writings of philosophers of science relevant? There are three potential groups of people: Philosophers, Scientists, and Interested Citizens, within and beyond the academy. I argue that our discipline is potentially relevant to all three, but I particularly press the claims of the Interested Citizens. My essay is in dialogue with a characteristically insightful lecture given thirty years ago by Arthur Fine. Addressing the Philosophy of Science Association as its president, Fine argued that general philosophy (...) of science was dead, and that all the action lay in the philosophy of the special sciences. I try to identify what was correct about Fine’s diagnosis, while supplementing his message by describing fruitful projects that have since emerged. I also hope to share his subversive spirit. (shrink)

In the spirit of James and Dewey, I ask what one might want from a theory of knowledge. Much Anglophone epistemology is centered on questions that were once highly pertinent, but are no longer central to broader human and scientific concerns. The first sense in which epistemology without history is blind lies in the tendency of philosophers to ignore the history of philosophical problems. A second sense consists in the perennial attraction of approaches to knowledge that divorce knowing subjects from (...) their societies and from the tradition of socially assembling a body of transmitted knowledge. When epistemology fails to use the history of inquiry as a laboratory in which methodological claims can be tested, there is a third way in which it becomes blind. Finally, lack of attention to the growth of knowledge in various domains leaves us with puzzles about the character of the knowledge we have. I illustrate this last theme by showing how reflections on the history of mathematics can expand our options for understanding mathematical knowledge. (shrink)

Does conceptual engineering as a philosophical method deserve all the attention that it has been getting recently? The important philosophical questions, one might say, are about the world, not about what our concepts are or should be like. This paper fleshes out one way in which conceptual engineering can contribute to philosophical progress. The suspicion that conceptual engineering is getting too much attention presupposes that it is important to distribute our philosophical attention well (for example, conceptual engineering should not get (...) more than its fair share). The paper’s defense of conceptual engineering builds on that assumption. Conceptual engineering, it argues, is a way of configuring philosophers’ patterns of attention for the better: it serves attentional progress in philosophy. (shrink)

Philip Kitcher has recently proposed a form of which he suggests could enable the members of a future secular society to continue to access and benefit from the moral and existential resources of the world's religions. I criticize this proposal by appeal to contemporary work on the role of emotion and practice in religious commitment. Using the work of John Cottingham and Mark Wynn, two objections are offered to the cosmopolitan secularists' claim that the moral resources of a religion could (...) be both preserved by and employed within a secular society whose members lack emotional commitment to and practical engagement with the religions in question. I conclude that, pace Kitcher, cosmopolitan secularism cannot fulfil its promise to preserve the moral resources of religion in the absence of genuine religious traditions and communities. (shrink)

We describe a simple, flexible exercise that can be implemented in the philosophy of science classroom: students are asked to determine the contents of a closed container without opening it. This exercise has revealed itself as a useful platform from which to examine a wide range of issues in the philosophy of science and may, we suggest, even help us think about improving the public understanding of science.

This essay offers a critique of disciplinary philosophy, the dominant form of academic philosophy in the United States and elsewhere across the twentieth century. It argues that disciplinary philosophy represents an aberration compared to the main tradition of two thousand years of Western philosophy. It describes the characteristics of a dedisciplined philosophy, and emphasizes that dedisciplining philosophy requires attention to be paid to the linked institutional and theoretical elements of philosophy. The essay bases its argument in part on the results (...) of a survey sent to more than 500 philosophy departments across North America in the summer of 2010. (shrink)

This essay argues that political, economic, and cultural developments have made the twentieth century disciplinary approach to philosophy unsustainable. It (a) discusses the reasons behind this unsustainability, which also affect the academy at large, (b) describes applied philosophy as an inadequate theoretical reaction to contemporary societal pressures, and (c) proposes a dedisciplined and interstitial approach??field philosophy??as a better response to the challenges facing the twenty-first century philosophy.

This article is in three parts. The first discusses trends in philosophy. The second defends reliance on intuitions in philosophy from some doubts that have recently been raised. The third discusses Philip Kitcher's contention that contemporary analytic philosophy does not have its priorities straight. While the three parts are independent, there is a common theme. Each part defends what is regarded as orthodoxy from attacks. Of course there are other reasonable challenges to philosophical methodology. The article's aim is just to (...) respond to some charges that have been made. (shrink)

This paper addresses the responsibilities of philosophers. It distinguishes philosophers by profession, philosophers as a type of person playing a social role by doing philosophy, and philosophers without any professional or social role as a philosopher. It criticizes and rejects the internal goods view of philosophers’ responsibilities, according to which a philosopher’s only responsibility as a philosopher is to do ‘good’ philosophy. It examines the responsibilities of philosophy professors and the role of philosophy teaching in liberal education, criticizing the implications (...) of the internal goods view for university missions and commenting on related deficiencies of the Code of Conduct of the American Philosophical Association. The central conclusions are that philosophers should accept responsibilities to do philosophy in the public interest and to adopt a cross-disciplinary and collaborative stance toward their role in educating students in the forms of understanding and judgment that will best equip them for life and citizenship. (shrink)

Various authors have recently expressed doubts about the public relevance of philosophy. These doubts target both academic philosophy in general and particular subfields of philosophy. This paper investigates whether these doubts are justified through two tests in which the lack of public relevance of a philosophical paper is operationalized as the degree to which that paper is isolated. Both tests suggest that academic philosophy in general is more isolated from the broader public than it should be, and confirm the hypothesis (...) that some subfields of philosophy are more isolated than others. We argue that this lack of public relevance is caused by the incentive structure of academic philosophy and discuss a range of individual-level and incentive-level solutions. (shrink)

It has been suggested that philosophers should adopt a methodology largely inspired by mathematics and that the “mathematical” virtues of rigor, clarity, and precision are also fundamental philosophical virtues. In reply, this paper argues that some excellent philosophy lacks these virtues and that too much emphasis on the mathematical virtues excludes potentially valuable forms of philosophical discourse and makes the profession less diverse than it should be. Unduly restrictive conceptions of philosophical argumentation should be avoided. On a contributory conception, philosophy (...) should try to make a positive contribution to human emancipation where possible. The paper argues that it is possible and desirable for epistemology to contribute in this way and that the mathematical virtues are less significant in this context than the emancipatory virtues of what one might call “liberation philosophy.” These include irony, reflectiveness, imagination, contrarianism, and worldliness. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:James and Waismann on Temperament in PhilosophyJohn Cappsfor william james, philosophyis inextricably linked to what he calls temperament. In the first of his Pragmatismlectures, he claims that "the history of philosophy is to a great extent that of a certain clash of human temperaments" ( Pragmatism11), while conceding that this will strike many philosophers as "undignified." In a similar vein, he elsewhere writes that philosophy seeks "by hard reasoning (...) for results emotionally valuable" ( Some Problems of Philosophy11). It's not hard to see a connection between these two claims: whether a philosophical conclusion is "emotionally valuable" will presumably depend, at least in part, on the reader's temperament. A philosophical work will leave some readers cold while resonating with others; some philosophy will engage one's interest and energy, while other philosophy will seem not so much mistaken as alien, remote from what one might ever find useful, interesting, or enlightening.James's meta-philosophical claim—his philosophy of philosophy—has received surprisingly little attention. Much of the literature has focused instead on what he meant by "temperament" in the context of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century theories of psychology and brain science. Much less attention has been paid to whether he is right and what the consequences would be if he is right. 1I aim to address this gap by first raising some fundamental issues with James's position. To see better what he should have said, I will then turn to some later but surprisingly similar remarks by the Anglo-Austrian philosopher and mathematician Friedrich Waismann, before turning to a more recent account of philosophical methodology defended by Timothy Williamson.1. James on Philosophy and TemperamentHilary and Ruth Anna Putnam have written that "perhaps the most shocking claim that James makes—the claim that is the centerpiece of the very first of the Lectures on Pragmatism—is that the decision we make on any metaphysical [End Page 46]question … is and ought to be a matter of 'temperament'" (227). While the Putnams do not explain what makes this his "most shocking" claim, it is likely because James accuses philosophers of being either systematically dishonest or self-deluded. Here is what James writes:Of whatever temperament a professional philosopher is, he tries when philosophizing to sink the fact of his temperament. Temperament is no conventionally recognized reason, so he urges impersonal reasons only for his conclusions. Yet his temperament really gives him a stronger bias than any of his more strictly objective premises. It loads the evidence for him one way or the other, making for a more sentimental or a more hard-hearted view of the universe, just as this fact or that principle would. He trustshis temperament…. Yet in the forum he can make no claim, on the bare ground of his temperament, to superior discernment or authority. There arises thus a certain insincerity in our philosophic discussions: the potentest of all our premises is never mentioned.( Pragmatism11)According to James, then, one's "temperament" plays an important role in determining the sorts of philosophical positions one finds congenial—and yet professional philosophers are either in denial that temperament plays this role or are actively committed to concealing this fact. Nor does James limit his claim, as the Putnams suggest, to only metaphysical questions: while he tends to focus on more large-scale alternatives (empiricism vs. rationalism, atheism vs. theism—perhaps because the lectures were delivered before a popular audience), the same point should hold across the board. So whether it is the choice between consequentialism vs. deontological ethical theories, or procedural vs. substantive accounts of justice, or functionalist vs. behaviorist philosophies of mind, James would argue that temperament plays a crucial role. 2I will refer to this as his "temperament thesis" (TT): TT: One's philosophical commitments are, in part, a function of one's temperament. A few points of clarification are in order. First, while James describes temperament as providing the "potentest" support for philosophical claims, he does not claim that it is decisive or that it swamps all other considerations. Temperament "loads the evidence" but can apparently be overridden when sufficient evidence or compelling... (shrink)

This paper argues that philosophical practice in the Western world, in particular analytic philosophy, suffers from problems that contribute to its lack of diversity in two senses: the exclusion of women and minorities, and a narrow choice of subjects and methods. This is not fruitful for philosophical exchange and the flourishing of philosophical thought. Three contributing factors are covered: a flawed execution when instilling intellectual humility; the gaslighting of women in philosophy; and an overemphasis on a narrow conception of intelligence. (...) The conclusion calls for a more humane and socially aware practice of philosophy. (shrink)

Philip Kitcher recently argued for a reconstruction in philosophy. According to him, the contemporary mainstream of philosophy has deteriorated into something that is of relevance only to a few specialists who communicate with each other in a language nobody else understands. Kitcher proposes to reconstruct philosophy along two axes: a knowledge axis and a value axis. The present article discusses Kitcher's diagnosis as well as his proposal of a therapy. It argues that there are problems with both, and it ends (...) with an alternative view of what some core problems of the profession currently are. (shrink)

Convincing disputes about explanatory reductionism in the philosophy of biology require a clear and precise understanding of what a reductive explanation in biology is. The central aim of this book is to provide such an account by revealing the features that determine the reductive character of a biological explanation. Chapters I-IV provide the ground, on which I can then, in Chapter V, develop my own account of explanatory reduction in biology: Chapter I reveals the meta-philosophical assumptions that underlie my analysis (...) of reduction, Chapter II introduces the previous debate about reduction in the philosophy of biology by pointing out the most crucial lessons one should learn from this debate, Chapter III critically discusses the two perspectives on explanatory reduction that have been proposed in the philosophy of biology so far, and Chapter IV clarifies in what ways the issue of reduction is entangled with the issue of explanation. In Chapter V I present my own account of explanatory reduction. My main claim is that reductive explanations in the biological sciences possess three main characteristics: they explain the behavior of a biological system S, first, exclusively in terms of factors that are located on a lower level of organization than S, second, by focusing on factors that are internal to S , and third, by describing the genuine parts of S only as “parts in isolation”. This account is ontic because it traces the reductivity of an explanation back to certain relations that exist in the world. (shrink)

This paper answers a call made by Anita Allen to genuinely assess whether the field of philosophy has the capacity to sustain the work of diverse peoples. By identifying a pervasive culture of justification within professional philosophy, I gesture to the ways professional philosophy is not an attractive working environment for many diverse practitioners. As a result of the downsides of the culture of justification that pervades professional philosophy, I advocate that the discipline of professional philosophy be cast according to (...) a culture of praxis. Finally, I provide a comparative exercise using Graham Priest’s definition of philosophy and Audre Lorde’s observations of the limitations of philosophical theorizing to show how these two disparate accounts can be understood as philosophical engagement with a shift to a culture of praxis perspective. (shrink)

The purpose of this thesis is to provide a robust epistemological justification for Evidence Based Medicine (EMB), and thereby to demonstrate the epistemological short comings of Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM). CAM has received support from both philosophers, such as Rorty and Feyerband, and the Sociology and Anthropology of Medicine. The thesis will thus review both the internal coherence and the application of non-realist arguments, and counter non-realism with the realist epistemology and philosophy of science that is represented by C.S. (...) Peirce’s pragmatism. Rorty and Feyerabend and others have developed radical forms of scientific antirealism in the latter 20th century. Subsequently, sociologists developed even more intractable forms of anti-realism, which they applied to the social study of science. This approach served to challenge the legitimacy of orthodox scientific practice (including EMB). A practical expression of this controversy was immediately identified in the question of the role of scientific authority in a democratic society. That question was immediately applied to the status of alternative medical systems and their legitimacy vis-a-vis EBM in terms of the controversy over what has come to be termed "medical pluralism": If scientific medicine has no particular authority, should other, medical systems, epistemically incompatible with EBM, be made available as well? The thesis will suggest that non-realism is in fact a marginal position within the philosophy of science. Scientists, medical researchers and medical practitioners may thus appeal to the philosophy of science in order to justify their authority in the face of challenges from CAM. However, it will be suggested that they are frequently ill-served by a reliance on a simplistic understanding of the philosophy of Karl Popper. An alternative will be proposed in the philosophy of C. S. Peirce. His pragmatism offers to medical research and medical practice a way of understanding and justifying the scientific process, a justification of realism in the face of non-realism, and a resource for the criticism of CAM and medical pluralism, as at once epistemologically ill grounded and potentially dangerous to patients and the general public. (shrink)

Recently, mainstream philosophy journals have tended to implement more and more stringent forms of peer review, probably in an attempt to prevent editorial decisions that are based on factors other than quality. Against this trend, we propose that journals should relax their standards of acceptance, as well as be less restrictive about whom is to decide what is admitted into the debate. We start by arguing, partly on the basis of the history of peer review in the journal Mind, that (...) past and current peer review practices attest to partisanship with respect to philosophical approach. Then, we explain that such partisanship conflicts with the standard aims of peer review, and that it is both epistemically and morally problematic. This assessment suggests that, if feasible, journals should treat all available and proposed standards of acceptance in philosophy as epistemically equal, and that philosophical work should be evaluated in terms of the novelty and significance of its contribution to developing thought in ways that are of value. Finally, we show, in a programmatic way, that improving the current situation is feasible, and can be done fairly easily. (shrink)

This thesis concerns our moral and epistemic responsibilities regarding our concepts. I argue that certain concepts can be morally, epistemically, or socially problematic. This is particularly concerning with regard to our concepts of social kinds, which may have both descriptive and evaluative aspects. Being ignorant of certain concepts, or possessing mistaken conceptions, can be problematic for similar reasons, and contributes to various forms of epistemic injustice. I defend an expanded view of a type of epistemic injustice known as ‘hermeneutical injustice’, (...) where widespread conceptual ignorance puts members of marginalized groups at risk of their distinctive and important experiences lacking intelligible interpretations. Together, I call the use of problematic concepts or the ignorance of appropriate concepts ‘conceptual incapacities’. I discuss the conditions under which we may be responsible for our conceptual incapacities on several major theories of responsibility, developing my own account of responsibility in the process, according to which we are responsible for something just in case it was caused by one of our reasons-responsive constitutive psychological traits. However, I argue that regardless of whether we are responsible for something, we may still be required to take responsibility for it. Whether or not we are responsible for our conceptual incapacities, we are required to reflect critically upon them in a variety of scenarios that throw our use of those concepts into question. I consider the method of conceptual engineering — the philosophical critique and revision of concepts — as one way we might take responsibility for our concepts, or at least, defer that duty to experts. But, this top-down model of conceptual revision is insufficient. Using a pragmatist model of the social epistemology of morality, I argue that conceptual inquiry is a social endeavour in which we are all required to participate, to some degree. (shrink)

Elijah Millgram’s book The Great Endarkenment takes philosophy to task for failing to note the kinds of creatures we are (serial hyperspecializers) and what that means for philosophy. In this commentary, I will complicate the picture he draws, while suggesting a more hopeful path forward. First, I argue that we are not actually serial hyperspecializers. Nevertheless, we are hyperspecializers, and this is the main source of the looming endarkenment. I will suggest that a proper understanding of expertise, particularly the requirement (...) that experts (at least experts whose success is not readily assessable) be required to explicate their judgments helps to mitigate the threat of siloed expertise and endarkenment. Further, I argue that grappling directly with the institutional structures that encourage narrow and isolated hyperspecialists in academia can be a way to avoid endarkenment problems. The current landscape of academia, with its valorization of narrow disciplinary expertise, is neither necessary nor sustainable. In order to change this landscape, we need to understand how current incentives construct epistemic niches, and what we might change in order to reshape the ecology of academia. (shrink)