Inflationary cosmology won a large following on the basis of the claim that it solves various problems that beset the standard big bang model. We argue that these problems concern not the empirical adequacy of the standard model but rather the nature of the explanations it offers. Furthermore, inflationary cosmology has not been able to deliver on its proposed solutions without offering models which are increasingly complicated and contrived, which depart more and more from the standard model it was supposed (...) to improve upon, and which sever the connection between cosmology and particle physics that initially made the inflationary paradigm so attractive. Nevertheless, inflationary cosmology remains a promising research program, not least because it offers an explanation of the origin of the density perturbations that seeded the formation of galaxies and other cosmic structures. Tests of this explanation are underway and may settle the issue of whether inflation played an important role in the early universe. (shrink)

This essay considers the nature of conceptual frameworks in science, and suggests a reconsideration of the role played by philosophy in radical conceptual change. On Kuhn's view of conceptual conflict, the scientist's appeal to philosophical principles is an obvious symptom of incommensurability; philosophical preferences are merely “subjective factors” that play a part in the “necessarily circular” arguments that scientists offer for their own conceptual commitments. Recent work by Friedman has persuasively challenged this view, revealing the roles that philosophical concerns have (...) played in preparing the way for conceptual change, creating an enlarged conceptual space in which alternatives to the prevailing framework become intelligible and can be rationally discussed. If we shift our focus from philosophical themes or preferences to the process of philosophical analysis, however, we can see philosophy in a different and much more significant historic role: not merely as an external source of general heuristic principles and new conceptual possibilities, but, at least in the most important revolutionary developments, as an objective tool of scientific inquiry. I suggest that this approach offers some insight into the philosophical significance of Newton's and Einstein's revolutionary work in physics, and of the interpretation of their work by (respectively) Kant and the logical positivists. It also offers insight into the connections between modern philosophy of science and some traditional philosophical concerns about the nature of a priori knowledge. (shrink)

It is argued that rather than a well defined F-Twist, Milton Friedman’s “Methodology of positive economics” offers an F-Mix: a pool of ambiguous and inconsistent ingredients that can be used for putting together a number of different methodological positions. This concerns issues such as the very concept of being unrealistic, the goal of predictive tests, the as-if formulation of theories, explanatory unification, social construction, and more. Both friends and foes of Friedman’s essay have ignored its open-ended unclarities. Their removal may (...) help create new common ground for more focused debate in economics. Here I show how F53 can be reread/rewritten as a socially constructivist fallibilist, and realist statement – in contrast to the received instrumentalist interpretation. (shrink)

In spite of the widespread belief that there is (or at least there was) a clearcut and deep opposition between two forms of philosophizing vaguely characterized as 'continental' and 'analytic', it is not easy to find actual examples of debates between philosophers that clearly belong to the opposed camps. Perhaps the reason is that, on the assumption that the alleged 'divide' is so deep, each side feels that there is no point in arguing against the other, for argumentation would quickly (...) be replaced by invective. In this paper I analyse one of the few recent examples of an across-divide debate -the Searle -Derrida polemic. Using a threefold typology of debates, I try to show that, in spite of the violent and sarcastic tone employed by both contenders, there is enough common ground, questioning of not-argued-for assumptions, and serious argumentation (on both sides) to consider this debate more than just an irrational dispute. (shrink)

This paper analyzes the generation and function of hitherto ignored or misrepresented interfield theories , theories which bridge two fields of science. Interfield theories are likely to be generated when two fields share an interest in explaining different aspects of the same phenomenon and when background knowledge already exists relating the two fields. The interfield theory functions to provide a solution to a characteristic type of theoretical problem: how are the relations between fields to be explained? In solving this problem (...) the interfield theory may provide answers to questions which arise in one field but cannot be answered within it alone, may focus attention on domain items not previously considered important, and may predict new domain items for one or both fields. Implications of this analysis for the problems of reduction and the unity and progress of science are mentioned. (shrink)

It has been commonplace in epistemology since its inception to idealize away from computational resource constraints, i.e., from the constraints of time and memory. One thought is that a kind of ideal rationality can be specified that ignores the constraints imposed by limited time and memory, and that actual cognitive performance can be seen as an interaction between the norms of ideal rationality and the practicalities of time and memory limitations. But a cornerstone of naturalistic epistemology is that normative assessment (...) is constrained by capacities: you cannot require someone to do something they cannot or, as it is usually put, ought implies can. This much we take to be uncontroversial. We argue that differences in architectures, goals and resources imply substantial differences in capacity, and that some of these differences are ineliminable. It follows that some differences in goals and architectural and computational resources matter at the normative level: they constrain what principles of normative epistemology can be used to describe and prescribe their behavior. As a result, we can expect there to be important epistemic differences between the way brains, individuals, and science work. (shrink)

I respond to H. M. Collins's claim (1985, 1990, 1993) that experimental inquiry cannot be objective because the only criterium experimentalists have for determining whether a technique is "working" is the production of "correct" (i.e., the expected) data. Collins claims that the "experimenters' regress," the name he gives to this data-technique circle, cannot be broken using the resources of experiment alone. I argue that the data-technique circle, can be broken even though any interpretation of the raw data produced by techniques (...) is theory-dependent. However, it is possible to break this circle by eliminating dependence on even those theoretical presuppositions that are shared by an entire scientific community through the use of multiple independently theory-dependent techniques to produce robust bodies of data. Moreover, I argue, that it is the production of robust bodies of data that convinces experimentalists of the objectivity of their data interpretations. (shrink)

Investigations into inter-level relations in computer science, biology and psychology call for an *empirical* turn in the philosophy of mind. Rather than concentrate on *a priori* discussions of inter-level relations between 'completed' sciences, a case is made for the actual study of the way inter-level relations grow out of the developing sciences. Thus, philosophical inquiries will be made more relevant to the sciences, and, more importantly, philosophical accounts of inter-level relations will be testable by confronting them with what really happens (...) in science. Hence, close observation of the ever-changing reduction relations in the developing sciences, and revision of philosophical positions based on these empirical observations, may, in the long run, be more conducive to an adequate understanding of inter-level relations than a traditional *a priori* approach. (shrink)

I argue that scientific progress is precisely the accumulation of scientific knowledge.

In this paper I draw a connection between Kuhn and the empiricist legacy, specifically between his thesis of incommensurability, in particular in its later taxonomic form, and van Fraassen's constructive empiricism. I show that if it is the case the empirically equivalent but genuinely distinct theories do exist, then we can expect such theories to be taxonomically incommensurable. I link this to Hacking's claim that Kuhn was a nominalist. I also argue that Kuhn and van Fraassen do not differ as (...) much as might be thought as regards the claim that observation is theory laden. (shrink)

Although most of us know that human beings cannot and should not be replaced by computers, we have great difficulties saying why this is so. This paradox is largely the result of institutionalizing several fundamental misconceptions as to the nature of both trustworthy objective and moral knowledge. Unless we transcend this paradox, we run the increasing risks of becoming very good at counting without being able to say what is worth counting and why. The degree to which this is occurring (...) is the degree to which the computer revolution is already over — and the degree to which we human beings have lost. (shrink)

In this paper I ask how educational researchers can believe the subjective perceptions of qualitative participant-observers given the concern for objectivity and generalisability of experimental research in the behavioural and social sciences. I critique the most common answer to this question within the educational research community, which posits the existence of two (or more) equally legitimate epistemological paradigms—positivism and constructivism—and offer an alternative that places a priority in educational research on understanding the purposes and meanings humans attribute to educational practices. (...) Only within the context of what I call a transcendent view from somewhere—higher ideals that govern human activities—can we make sense of quantitative as well as qualitative research findings. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Rhetoric 34.3 (2001) 260-274 [Access article in PDF] Second Thoughts on the Critiques of Big Rhetoric Edward Schiappa This note is divided into three parts. First, I explore some answers to the question "How did Rhetoric get so Big?" Second, I review some of the more important criticisms of a "globalized" or "universalized" view of rhetorical studies. Finally, I contend that the critiques of Big Rhetoric do (...) not withstand scrutiny and ought to be dismissed for insufficient evidence. While there certainly are important issues for scholars of rhetorical studies to consider about how to enhance the quality and importance of our work, such issues should not include the concern that rhetoric has grown too "big."By "Big Rhetoric" I refer only to the theoretical position that everything, or virtually everything, can be described as "rhetorical." I refer to the growth of rhetorical scholarship in communication studies and other disciplines as the "popularization" of rhetorical studies. 1 Theories associated with Big Rhetoric are credited with popularizing or at least rationalizing what Herbert W. Simons (1990) calls the "rhetorical turn" in a variety of disciplines. Within the journals and conventions of members of the National Communication Association (NCA), popularization is often characterized by studies of the form "the rhetoric of X," where X could literally be anything. Outside of the NCA-defined parameters of communication studies, popularization is evidenced by the apparently ever-increasing ranks of scholars who use "rhetoric" as a relevant and important term of art within their scholarship. By either measure, it can be argued fairly convincingly that "rhetoric" has become a widely used construct in scholarship. What I wish to engage is the disputed desirability of broad definitions and the related popularization of rhetoric. [End Page 260] 1. Whence big rhetoric? There are a number of narratives on the rise of Big Rhetoric already in print in communication studies (Simons 1990; Gaonkar 1990), rhetoric and composition (Berlin 1987; Young and Goggin 1993), and interdisciplinary publications (Roberts and Good 1993; Mailloux 2000; Nelson, Megill, and McCloskey 1987). Many accounts identify the 1960s as a turning point. For better or for worse, there was a confluence of changing rhetorical practices, expanding rhetorical theories, and opportunities for rhetorical criticism. The cultural clashes of the 1960s were felt perhaps most acutely on college campuses. The sufficiency of deliberative argument and public address can be said to have been called into question, whether one was an antiwar activist who hated LBJ's war in Vietnam or a pro-establishment stalwart trying to make sense of the rhetoric of protest and demonstration. Years later, scholars would characterize war itself as rhetorical. What counted as rhetorical practice was up for grabs.At about the same time, our understanding of rhetorical theory was being expanded. Here we can identify two main strands of thought. For ease of reference I will call one the symbolic interactionist rationale and the other the epistemological rationale. The symbolic interactionist rationale can be boiled down to a syllogism: All persuasive actions are rhetorical. All symbol/language-use is persuasive. Therefore: All symbol/language-use is rhetorical. Perhaps the two most significant pronouncements of this approach--for my generation of rhetoric scholars, at any rate--are by Richard Weaver and Kenneth Burke. Weaver claims that "language is sermonic" in the sense that whenever we offer a description or label a phenomenon, we are "preaching" a particular way of making sense of it (1970, 201-25). Burke, of course, has two famous (or infamous) statements in Rhetoric of Motives: first, that rhetoric is "the use of language as a symbolic means of inducing cooperation in beings that by nature respond to symbols" (1950, 43); and second, that "something of the rhetorical motive comes to lurk in every 'meaning,' however purely 'scientific' its pretensions. Wherever there is persuasion, there is rhetoric. And wherever there is 'meaning,' there is 'persuasion'" (1950, 172). Obviously, such pronouncements serve as encouragement to [End Page 261] those who would define rhetoric broadly, and arguably fueled the popularization of rhetorical studies within the ranks of NCA.The epistemological rationale is fueled... (shrink)

What do appeals to case studies accomplish? Consider the dilemma: On the one hand, if the case is selected because it exemplifies the philosophical point, then it is not clear that the historical data hasn't been manipulated to fit the point. On the other hand, if one starts with a case study, it is not clear where to go from there—for it is unreasonable to generalize from one case or even two or three.

: This article attempts to reconcile Sandra Harding's postmodernist standpoint theory with process reliabilism in first-order epistemology and naturalism in metaepistemology. Postmodernist standpoint theory is best understood as consisting of an applied epistemological component and a metaepistemological component. Naturalist metaepistemology and the metaepistemological component of postmodernist standpoint theory have produced complementary views of knowledge as a socially and naturally located phenomenon and have converged on a common concept of objectivity. The applied epistemological claims of postmodernist standpoint theory usefully can be (...) construed as applications of process reliabilist first-order epistemology. Postmodernist standpoint theory, reliabilism, and naturalism thus form a coherent package of views in metaepistemology, first-order epistemology, and applied epistemology. (shrink)

Karl Marx and Sigmund Freud provided powerful accounts of systematic interested ignorance. Fifty years ago, Anglo-American philosophies of science stigmatized Marx's and Freud's analyses as models of irrationality. They remain disvalued today, at a time when virtually all other humanities and social science disciplines have returned to extract valuable insights from them. Here the argument is that there are reasons distinctive to philosophy why such theories were especially disvalued then and why they remain so today. However, there are even better (...) reasons today for philosophy to break from this history and find more fruitful ways to engage with systematic interested ignorance. (shrink)

: Feminist standpoint theory remains highly controversial: it is widely advocated, used to guide research and justify its results, and yet is also vigorously denounced. This essay argues that three such sites of controversy reveal the value of engaging with standpoint theory as a way of reflecting on and debating some of the most anxiety-producing issues in contemporary Western intellectual and political life. Engaging with standpoint theory enables a socially relevant philosophy of science.

• An adequate conceptual framework is still needed to account for phenomena that (i) have a first-person, subjective-experiential or phenomenal character; (ii) are (usually) reportable and describable (in humans); and (iii) are neurobiologically realized.2 • The conscious subject plays an unavoidable epistemological role in characterizing the explanadum of consciousness through first-person descriptive reports. The experimentalist is then able to link first-person data and third-person data. Yet the generation of first-person data raises difficult epistemological issues about the relation of second-order awareness (...) or meta-awareness to first-order experience (e.g. (shrink)

A number of researchers today make an appeal to quantum physics when trying to develop a satisfactory account of the mind, an appeal still felt to be controversial by many. Often these "quantum approaches" try to explain some well-known features of conscious experience (or mental processes more generally), thus using quantum physics to enrich the explanatory framework or explanans used in consciousness studies and cognitive science. This paper considers the less studied question of whether quantum physical intuitions could help us (...) to draw attention to new or neglected aspects of the mind in introspection, and in this way change our view about what needs explanation in the first place. Although prima facie implausible, it is suggested that this could happen, for example, if there were analogies between quantum processes and mental processes (e.g., the process of thinking). The naive idea is that such analogies would help us to see mental processes and conscious experience in a new way. It has indeed been proposed long ago that such analogies exist, and this paper first focuses at some length on David Bohm's formulation of them from 1951. It then briefly considers these analogies in relation to Smolensky's more recent analogies between cognitive science and physics, and Pylkko's aconceptual view of the mind. Finally, Bohm's early analogies will be briefly considered in relation to the analogies between quantum processes and the mind he proposed in his later work. -/- [This article is a modified version of an article that was first published in the anthology Being and Brain: At the Boundary between Science, Philosophy, Language and Arts, ed. by G. Globus, K. Pribram and G. Vitiello, Advances in Consciousness Research 58, John Benjamins, Amsterdam 2004, pp. 165-195.]. (shrink)

Cognitivism in psychology and philosophy is roughly the position that intelligent behavior can (only) be explained by appeal to internal that is, rational thought in a very broad sense. Sections 1 to 5 attempt to explicate in detail the nature of the scientific enterprise that this intuition has inspired. That enterprise is distinctive in at least three ways: It relies on a style of explanation which is different from that of mathematical physics, in such a way that it is not (...) basically concerned with quantitative equational laws; the states and processes with which it deals are in the sense that they are regarded as meaningful or representational; and it is not committed to reductionism, but is open to reduction in a form different from that encountered in other sciences. Spelling these points out makes it clear that the Cognitivist study of the mind can be rigorous and empirical, despite its unprecedented theoretical form. The philosophical explication has another advantage as well: It provides a much needed framework for articulating questions about whether the Cognitivist approach is right or wrong. The last three sections take that advantage of the account, and address several such questions, pro and con. (shrink)

Until recently, the notions of function and multiple realization were supposed to save the autonomy of psychological explanations. Furthermore, the concept of supervenience presumably allows both dependence of mind on brain and non-reducibility of mind to brain, reconciling materialism with an independent explanatory role for mental and functional concepts and explanations. Eliminativism is often seen as the main or only alternative to such autonomy. It gladly accepts abandoning or thoroughly reconstructing the psychological level, and considers reduction if successful as equivalent (...) with elimination. In comparison with the philosophy of mind, the philosophy of biology has developed more subtle and complex ideas about functions, laws, and reductive explanation than the stark dichotomy of autonomy or elimination. It has been argued that biology is a patchwork of local laws, each with different explanatory interests and more or less limited scope. This points to a pluralistic, domain-specific and multi-level view of explanations in biology. Explanatory pluralism has been proposed as an alternative to eliminativism on the one hand and methodological dualism on the other hand. It holds that theories at different levels of description, like psychology and neuroscience, can co-evolve, and mutually influence each other, without the higher-level theory being replaced by, or reduced to, the lower-level one. Such ideas seem to tally with the pluralistic character of biological explanation. In biological psychology, explanatory pluralism would lead us to expect many local and non-reductive interactions between biological, neurophysiological, psychological and evolutionary explanations of mind and behavior. This idea is illustrated by an example from behavioral genetics, where genetics, physiology and psychology constitute distinct but interrelated levels of explanation. Accounting for such a complex patchwork of related explanations seems to require a more sophisticated and precise way of looking at levels than the existing ideas on (reductive and non-reductive) explanation in the philosophy of mind. (shrink)

In the course of defending both a unified model of intertheoretic relations in science and scientific realism, Paul Churchland has attempted to reinvigorate eliminative materialism. Churchland's eliminativism operates on three claims: (1) that some intertheoretic contexts involve incommensurable theories, (2) that such contexts invariably require the elimination of one theory or the other, and (3) that the relation of psychology and neuroscience is just such a context. I argue that a more detailed account of intertheoretic relations, which distinguishes between the (...) relations that hold between successive theories at a particular level of analysis over time and those that hold between theories at different levels of analysis at the same time, offers grounds for denying Churchland's second and third claims and, therefore, undermines his eliminativism. The paper concludes by suggesting why it is, nonetheless, not unreasonable, given this more detailed model of intertheoretic relations, to expect the eventual elimination of common sense psychology. (shrink)

Classical symbolic computational models of cognition are at variance with the empirical findings in the cognitive psychology of memory and inference. Standard symbolic computers are well suited to remembering arbitrary lists of symbols and performing logical inferences. In contrast, human performance on such tasks is extremely limited. Standard models donot easily capture content addressable memory or context sensitive defeasible inference, which are natural and effortless for people. We argue that Connectionism provides a more natural framework in which to model this (...) behaviour. In addition to capturing the gross human performance profile, Connectionist systems seem well suited to accounting for the systematic patterns of errors observed in the human data. We take these arguments to counter Fodor and Pylyshyn's (1988) recent claim that Connectionism is, in principle, irrelevant to psychology. (shrink)

The reemergence of connectionism² has profoundly altered the philosophy of mind. Paul Churchland has argued that it should equally transform the philosophy of science. He proposes that connectionism offers radical and useful new ways of understanding theories and explanations.

1. A Historical Look at Unity 2. Field Guide to Modern Concepts of Reduction and Unity 3. Kitcher's Revisionist Account of Unification 4. Critics of Unity 5. Integration Instead of Unity 6. Reduction via Mechanisms 7. Case Studies in Reduction and Unification across the Disciplines.

Clearly we can perceive both objects, and various aspects or appearances of those objects. But how should that complexity of perceptual content be explained or analyzed? I argue that perceptual representations normally have a double or two level nested structure of content, so as to adequately incorporate information both about contextual aspects Y(X) of an object X, and about the object X itself. On this double content (DC) view, perceptual processing starts with aspectual data Y?(X?) as a higher level of (...) content, which data does not itself provide lower level X-related content, but only an aspectually encoded form of such data. Hence the relevant perceptual data Y?(X?) must be. (shrink)

We discuss at some length evidence from the cognitive science suggesting that the representations of objects based on spatiotemporal information and featural information retrieved bottomup from a visual scene precede representations of objects that include conceptual information. We argue that a distinction can be drawn between representations with conceptual and nonconceptual content. The distinction is based on perceptual mechanisms that retrieve information in conceptually unmediated ways. The representational contents of the states induced by these mechanisms that are available to a (...) type of awareness called phenomenal awareness constitute the phenomenal content of experience. The phenomenal content of perception contains the existence of objects as separate things that persist in time and time, spatiotemporal information, and information regarding relative spatial relations, motion, surface properties, shape, size, orientation, color, and their functional properties. (shrink)

Many psychologists think that concepts should be understood on analogy with the terms of scientific theories, yet the significance of this claim has always been obscure. In this paper, I clarify the psychological content of the theory analogy, focusing on influential pieces by Susan Carey. Once plainly put, the analogy amounts to the view that a mental representation has its semantic properties by virtue of its role in a restricted knowledge structure. One of the commendable things about Carey's work is (...) that, unlike many other psychologists who appeal to the theory analogy, she takes seriously the need to specify how these structures are constrained. At the same time, the constraints she offers are insufficient. Her account also faces challenges from work in the semantics of natural kind terms. (shrink)

Eliminativism was targeted by transcendental arguments from the first. Three responses to these arguments have emerged from the eliminativist literature, the heart of which is that such arguments are question-begging. These responses are shown to be incompatible with the position, eliminativism, they are meant to defend. Out of these failed responses is developed a general transcendental argument against eliminativism (the "Paradox of Abandonment"). Eliminativists have anticipated this argument, but their six different attempts to counter it are shown to be separately (...) inadequate, mutually incompatible, and, again, incompatible with the position that they are seeking to defend. (shrink)

Traditionally, the field of science and technology studies (STS) considered the scientific laboratory as the central site of knowledge production and technological development. While providing rich analyses of the social construction of scientific knowledge and the role of non-human actors, STS scholars have often neglected the university – the very context in which laboratories themselves are embedded – as a relevant object of research. In this paper, we argue for re-introducing the university as a relevant category and object of analysis (...) by using the notion of epistemic virtues to link epistemic culture – traditionally the focus of STS – and epistemic structure – traditionally the focus of higher education studies. Advancing this line of argumentation, we make three analytical moves. First, we explore academic freedom as a specific version of negative liberty that extends beyond disciplinary boundaries. We suggest that academics continuously negotiate academic freedom considering culturally and socially situated epistemic virtues such as objectivity and neutrality. Second, we introduce the notion of humility to revisit scientific knowledge production more generally and academic freedom in particular. Finally, we argue that practicing humility leads to enacting the university as an infrastructure of becoming otherwise, thereby enriching our understanding of universities as distinct and highly complex social spaces with a logic of their own. (shrink)

Representations of science and technology, embodied as imaginaries, visions, and expectations, have become a growing focus of analysis. These representations are of interest to normative approaches to science and technology, such as Hermeneutic Technology Assessment and Responsible Innovation, because of their ability to modulate understandings of science and technology and to influence scientific and technological development. This article analyses the culture of participation underlying the NanoKOMIK project and the representations and meanings of (nano)science and (nano)technology communicated in the two nano-fiction (...) comic books created as part of the project: _Dayanne and Murillo. The power of nanoscience_ (2016) and _NanoKOMIK #2_ (2017). The article argues that despite NanoKOMIK’s efforts to engage the public with (nano)science and (nano)technology, it reproduces non-binding modes of public participation and transmits socio-technical meanings that are instrumental in the social legitimisation of (nano)technology. More specifically, the analysis shows that NanoKOMIK’s comic books, in addition to not problematising the risks and conveying an eminently positive view of nanotechnology, also communicate certain ‘myth-conceptions’ of scientific activity and its products. For example, they convey an individualistic and linear vision of research and innovation and an instrumentalist and neutral (or ‘value-free’) view of technology. These findings highlight the importance of critically analysing the ‘cultures of participation’ that characterise and reproduce ‘participatory’ or ‘collaborative’ projects and the representations of (nano)science and (nano)technology that they perpetuate. (shrink)

Lincoln and Guba provided some principles and four evaluative criteria called “trustworthiness” to guide social science research naturalistically. However, drawing on Science and Technology Studies (STS) literature, a field engaged with methods and practices of science for several decades, one can argue that this approach is not still fully naturalistic. In this paper, we review Lincoln and Guba’s four criteria of trustworthiness from an STS perspective. We argue that the STS literature can challenge these criteria, but at the same time (...) they have the potential to be reconstructed with the help of the materials STS provides. (shrink)

In this paper, we reconsider the notion of epistemic trespassing and attempt to explore possible scenarios in which it could lead to positive outcomes in scientific research and information dissemination. As we will point out, some of the significant discoveries in the history of science would not have been possible were it not for the epistemic trespassers, whose shift in paradigm changed the approach to specific issues for the better. Furthermore, we will present instances where individuals, often labeled as ‘trespassers’ (...) – those who venture into fields outside their expertise – can be considered trustworthy and reliable sources of testimony. Consequently, epistemic trespassing turned out to be essential for the advancement of science. Epistemic trespassing in our age is virtually inevitable – whether it be from a political perspective (to preserve democratic values) or due to purely practical reasons (i.e. searching for information online). There are interdisciplinary fields where a strictly negative characterization of epistemic trespassing would question their methodology since these disciplines rely on experts from various fields. For these reasons, we advocate for a more charitable approach to epistemic trespassing and greater public education to help them distinguish between correct and false information. (shrink)

This paper presents and argues for a contemporary version of skepticism: neo-Pyrrhonism. Interest in the history of skepticism engendered a new, more complex and attractive conception of skepticism. Accordingly, many philosophers now claim they are skeptics. In line with what they say, I develop neo-Pyrrhonism as I see it. It has a negative part, in which dogmas are criticized, and a positive one: first, the neo-Pyrrhonist lives his life according to his skeptical principles and following everyday life, and, second, he (...) is able to describe philosophically his skeptical view of the world, thereby offering possible solutions to philosophical problems empirically conceived. (shrink)

Thomas Kuhn described the progress of science as comprising occasional paradigm shifts separated by interludes of ‘normal science’. The paradigm that has held sway since the inception of molecular biology is that genes (mainly) encode proteins. In parallel, theoreticians posited that mutation is random, inferred that most of the genome in complex organisms is non‐functional, and asserted that somatic information is not communicated to the germline. However, many anomalies appeared, particularly in plants and animals: the strange genetic phenomena of paramutation (...) and transvection; introns; repetitive sequences; a complex epigenome; lack of scaling of (protein‐coding) genes and increase in ‘noncoding’ sequences with developmental complexity; genetic loci termed ‘enhancers’ that control spatiotemporal gene expression patterns during development; and a plethora of ‘intergenic’, overlapping, antisense and intronic transcripts. These observations suggest that the original conception of genetic information was deficient and that most genes in complex organisms specify regulatory RNAs, some of which convey intergenerational information. Also see the video abstract here: https://youtu.be/qxeGwahBANw. (shrink)

Can statistical inference shed any worthwhile light on theory change? For many years I have believed that the answer is “Yes.” Let me try to explain why I think so. On my first reading of Thomas S. Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962) I was so deeply shocked at his repudiation of the distinction between the context of discovery and the context of justification that I put the book down without finishing it. By 1969, when a conference was held (...) at the Minnesota Center for Philosophy of Science on the relations between the history of science and the philosophy of science, I had returned to Structure and formed the view that Kuhn’s rejection of this fundamental distinction resulted from his adoption of an inadequate conception of scientific justification. It appeared that he saw scientific confirmation in terms of the traditional hypothetico-deductive (H-D) schema, according to which a scientific hypothesis (or theory) is confirmed by observing the truth of its logical consequences. (shrink)

Can arguments change minds? Philosophers like to think that they can. However, a wealth of empirical evidence suggests that arguments are not very efficient tools to change minds. What to make of the different assessments of the mind-changing potential of arguments? To address this issue, we must take into account the broader contexts in which arguments occur, in particular the propagation of messages across networks of attention, and the choices that epistemic agents must make between alternative potential sources of content (...) and information, which are very much influenced by perceptions of reliability and trustworthiness. Arguments can change minds, but only under conducive, favourable socio-epistemic conditions. (shrink)

Practice-based philosophy of science has gradually arisen in the sociology of scientific knowledge (SSK) and science and technology studies (STS) during the past decades. It studies science as an ensemble of practices and theorising as one of these practices. A recent study has shown how the practice-based approach can be methodologically justified with reference to Peirce and Dewey. In this article, I will explore one consequence of that notion: science, as practice, is necessarily social. I will disambiguate five different senses (...) in which science is social. First, science presupposes language, which is essentially social. Second, practices, including science, are adaptations of the behaviour of an organism to an environment, of which other organisms are a part. Third, practices, including science, are public and hence shareable. Fourth, scientific knowledge can serve as a vehicle of social and moral reform. Fifth, scientific knowledge can be applied to improve the human condition. This fivefold result bears on the problem of realism. (shrink)

This article investigates the relationship between political revolutions and the evolution of politics. It discusses the circularity within the concept of revolution through Jacques Derrida’s theory of sovereignty as particularly per Rogues – Two Essays on Reason and The Beast and the Sovereign. Derrida’s notions of wheel and ipseity display ontological prerogatives and evolutionary limits of political revolutions possibly coinciding with reversals hard to turn into linear evolutions, excluding rather than reaffirming circularity. Political revolutions show such incapacity to become evolutionary (...) for politics when lacking ontological substance and resting upon formal contingencies such as new techniques. An ‘alturnative’ notion of sovereignty is proposed as a heuristic criterion to gauge political events’ ‘revolutionary’ quality. This undermines the (r)evolutionary nature of political turns, like those associated with the contemporary digitalisation of politics. The Italian Five Stars Movement’s parable is a case in point of digital political turns whose effect is non-evolutionary for politics. (shrink)

In Mills’ sociological analysis, a central notion is the ‘social milieu’ which encapsulates ‘the social setting of a person that is directly open to his personal experience’. For Mills, sociology should entail an investigation of the set of relations and practices that are a feature of human experience. Understanding the significance of Mills’ approach, we argue, requires grasping the way the notion of ‘milieu’ or ‘setting’ itself draws upon spatial and topological notions – notions that have become prominent in much (...) contemporary sociological thinking. From this perspective, Mills’ work turns out to be relevant as a corrective, both to the undue emphasis on empirical particularity that is evident in some contemporary sociology and to what Mills viewed as ‘abstract’ theorisation. A large part of the relevance of Mills’ work for contemporary sociological problems and challenges is thus to be found in the way his emphasis on situation (or ‘place’), as given through the idea of ‘milieu’, allows a more complex and encompassing approach. (shrink)

This paper contributes to the ongoing reassessment of the controversy between William Bateson and Karl Pearson by characterising what we call “Batesonian Mendelism” and “Pearsonian biometry” as coherent and competing scientific outlooks. Contrary to the thesis that such a controversy stemmed from diverging theoretical commitments on the nature of heredity and evolution, we argue that Pearson’s and Bateson’s alternative views on those processes ultimately relied on different appraisals of the methodological value of the statistical apparatus developed by Francis Galton. Accordingly, (...) we contend that Bateson’s belief in the primacy of cross-breeding experiments over statistical analysis constituted a minimal methodological unifying condition ensuring the internal coherence of Batesonian Mendelism. Moreover, this same belief implied a view of the study of heredity and evolution as an experimental endeavour and a conception of heredity and evolution as fundamentally discontinuous processes. Similarly, we identify a minimal methodological unifying condition for Pearsonian biometry, which we characterise as the view that experimental methods had to be subordinate to statistical analysis, according to methodological standards set by biometrical research. This other methodological commitment entailed conceiving the study of heredity and evolution as subsumable under biometry and primed Pearson to regard discontinuous hereditary and evolutionary processes as exceptions to a statistical norm. Finally, we conclude that Batesonian Mendelism and Pearsonian biometry represented two potential versions of a single genetics-based evolutionary synthesis since the methodological principles and the phenomena that played a central role in the former were also acknowledged by the latter—albeit as fringe cases—and conversely. (shrink)

Scholars are increasingly examining how formal leaders of organizations _change_ moral norms. The prominent accounts over-emphasize the role of rational persuasion. We focus, instead, on how formal leaders successfully break and thereby create moral norms. We draw on Dreyfus’s ontology of cultural paradigms and Williams’s moral luck to develop our framework for viewing leader-driven radical norm the change. We argue that formal leaders, embedded in their practices’ grounding, clarifying, and organizing norms, get captivated by anomalies and respond to them by (...) taking moral risks, which, if practically successful, create a new normative order. We illustrate the framework with Churchill’s actions in 1940 and Anita Roddick’s Body Shop. Last, we discuss normative orders, when ordinary leaders change norms, evil, and further research. (shrink)

The paper develops the claim that in The Sickness unto Death, Kierkegaard conceptualizes a demoralized understanding of sin. Rather than interpreting sin as moral guilt, he proposes a concept of sin that takes the form of alienation. The claim is unfolded in a three-step argumentation: First, we identify crucial hermeneutical issues and stress the role of the pseudonyms within Kierkegaard’s writings. Second, we offer a detailed analysis of the theory of self-consciousness developed by Anti-Climacus. Finally, using the romantic interpretation of (...) Kierkegaard as a foundation, we demonstrate how Anti-Climacus conceptualizes sin as alienation. (shrink)

In the last few decades, several philosophers have written on the topic of moral revolutions, distinguishing them from other kinds of society-level moral change. This article surveys recent accounts of moral revolutions in moral philosophy. Different authors use quite different criteria to pick out moral revolutions. Features treated as relevant include radicality, depth or fundamentality, pervasiveness, novelty and particular causes. We also characterize the factors that have been proposed to cause moral revolutions, including anomalies in existing moral codes, changing honour (...) codes, art, economic conditions and individuals or groups. Finally, we discuss what accounts of moral revolutions have in common, how they differ and how moral revolutions are distinguished from other kinds of moral change, such as drift and reform. (shrink)

Merker et al.'s critique calls for a deeper analysis of panpsychism. In principle, the concept of integrated information can be applied to photodiodes and subatomic particles, but I suggest the main obstacle is the lack of any evidence to confirm the presence of consciousness. Also MRW's perspectivalist theory illustrates the difficulties in synthesizing a full-fledged theory of consciousness.

Is it possible to maintain classical logic, stay close to classical semantics, and yet accept that language might be semantically indeterminate? The article gives an affirmative answer by Ramsifying classical semantics, which yields a new semantic theory that remains much closer to classical semantics than supervaluationism but which at the same time avoids the problematic classical presupposition of semantic determinacy. The resulting Ramsey semantics is developed in detail, it is shown to supply a classical concept of truth and to fully (...) support the rules and metarules of classical logic, and it is applied to vague terms as well as to theoretical or open-ended terms from mathematics and science. The theory also demonstrates how diachronic or synchronic interpretational continuity across languages is compatible with semantic indeterminacy. (shrink)

In this paper I give an overview of a perspectival realist ontology. I discuss the role of situated knowledge and multiculturalism in perspectival ontology and offer a working definition of ‘phenomena’ as the minimal unit of such ontological commitment. I clarify how the view differs from Kuhn’s view, and highlight some of its implications for how to think of scientific knowledge as a multicultural and cosmopolitan inquiry.

Within analytic philosophy, the existence of collective knowledge has been motivated by means of two apparently distinct, and in direct competition with one another, theoretical approaches: (i) the commitment model and (ii) the distributed model. This paper agues, however, that to fully account for collaborative knowledge—i.e., a special kind of collective knowledge—both models are required. In other words, there is at least one kind of collective knowledge, the account of which requires treating the two models not as competitors but as (...) complementary to each other. If that’s correct, not only can we gain a deeper understanding of the specifics surrounding collaborative knowledge but also a clearer picture of the broader debate surrounding collective knowledge. (shrink)