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  1. Reflexive predictions.Roger C. Buck - 1963 - Philosophy of Science 30 (4):359-369.
    Certain predictions are such that their accuracy can be affected by their dissemination, by their being believed and acted upon. Examples of such reflexive predictions are presented. Various approaches to the precise delineation of this category of predictions are explored, and a definition is proposed and defended. Next it is asked whether the possible reflexivity of predictions creates a serious methodological problem for the social sciences. A distinction between causal and logical reflexivity helps support a negative answer. Finally, we consider (...)
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  • Science and Policy in Extremis: The UK’s Initial Response to COVID-19.Jonathan Birch - 2021 - European Journal for Philosophy of Science 11 (3):90.
    Drawing on the SAGE minutes and other documents, I consider the wider lessons for norms of scientific advising that can be learned from the UK’s initial response to coronavirus in the period January-March 2020, when an initial strategy that planned to avoid total suppression of transmission was abruptly replaced by an aggressive suppression strategy. I introduce a distinction between “normatively light advice”, in which no specific policy option is recommended, and “normatively heavy advice” that does make an explicit recommendation. I (...)
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  • How Government Leaders Violated Their Epistemic Duties During the SARS-CoV-2 Crisis.Eric Winsberg, Jason Brennan & Chris W. Surprenant - 2020 - Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal 30 (3):215-242.
    Sovereign is he who provides the exception.…The exception is more interesting than the rule. The rule proves nothing; the exception proves everything. In the exception the power of real life breaks through the crust of a mechanism that has become torpid by repetition.In spring 2020, in response to the COVID-19 crisis, world leaders imposed severe restrictions on citizens’ civil, political, and economic liberties. These restrictions went beyond less controversial and less demanding social distancing measures seen in past epidemics. Many states (...)
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  • Were Lockdowns Justified? A Return to the Facts and Evidence.Philippe van Basshuysen & Lucie White - 2021 - Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal 31 (4):405-428.
    Were governments justified in imposing lockdowns to contain the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic? We argue that a convincing answer to this question is to date wanting, by critically analyzing the factual basis of a recent paper, “How Government Leaders Violated Their Epistemic Duties During the SARS-CoV-2 Crisis” (Winsberg et al. 2020). In their paper, Winsberg et al. argue that government leaders did not, at the beginning of the pandemic, meet the epistemic requirements necessitated to impose lockdowns. We focus on (...)
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  • Software engineering standards for epidemiological models.Jack K. Horner & John F. Symons - 2020 - History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences 42 (4):1-24.
    There are many tangled normative and technical questions involved in evaluating the quality of software used in epidemiological simulations. In this paper we answer some of these questions and offer practical guidance to practitioners, funders, scientific journals, and consumers of epidemiological research. The heart of our paper is a case study of the Imperial College London covid-19 simulator, set in the context of recent work in epistemology of simulation and philosophy of epidemiology.
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  • Science in a democratic society.Philip Kitcher - 2011 - Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus Books.
    Claims that science should be more democratic than it is frequently arouse opposition. In this essay, I distinguish my own views about the democratization of science from the more ambitious theses defended by Paul Feyerabend. I argue that it is unlikely that the complexity of some scientific debates will allow for resolution according to the methodological principles of any formal confirmation theory, suggesting instead that major revolutions rest on conflicts of values. Yet these conflicts should not be dismissed as irresoluble.
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  • The social construction of what?Ian Hacking - 1999 - Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press.
    Especially troublesome in this dispute is the status of the natural sciences, and this is where Hacking finds some of his most telling cases, from the conflict ...
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  • Performativity: Saving Austin from Mackenzie.Uskali Mäki - 2013 - In Vassilios Karakostas & Dennis Dieks (eds.), EPSA11 Perspectives and Foundational Problems in Philosophy of Science. Springer. pp. 443-453.
    The new economic sociology claims to have adopted the notion of performativity from J.L Austin, has put it in new uses, and has given it new meanings. This is now spreading and has created another vogue term in the social and human sciences. The term is taken to cover all sorts of aspects in the ways in which the use of social scientific theories have consequences for the social world. The paper argues that the expansive use of 'performativity' obscures the (...)
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  • Science in a Democratic Society.Philip Kitcher - 2011 - Poznan Studies in the Philosophy of the Sciences and the Humanities 101:95-112.
    Claims that science should be more democratic than it is frequently arouse opposition. In this essay, I distinguish my own views about the democratization of science from the more ambitious theses defended by Paul Feyerabend. I argue that it is unlikely that the complexity of some scientific debates will allow for resolution according to the methodological principles of any formal confirmation theory, suggesting instead that major revolutions rest on conflicts of values. Yet these conflicts should not be dismissed as irresoluble.
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