Many people appear to attach great value to sad music. But why? One way to gain insight into this question is to turn away from music and look instead at why people value sad conversations. In the case of conversations, the answer seems to be that expressing sadness creates a sense of genuine connection. We propose that sad music can also have this type of value. Listening to a sad song can give one a sense of genuine connection. We then (...) explore the nature of this value in two experimental studies. The results suggest a striking relationship between music and conversation. People see something distinctively musical in works that express precisely those emotions that they think most create connection within conversation. (shrink)

Moral obligation, according to one influential conception, is distinct among other moral concepts in at least two respects. First, obligation is linked with demands. If I am obligated to you to do X, then you can demand that I do X. Second, obligation is linked with blame and the rest of our accountability practices. If I am obligated to you to do X, failure to do so is blameworthy and you may hold me accountable for it. The puzzle is the (...) following: when it comes to our attitudes, in particular to our emotional responses, these two components seem to come apart. We do not appear to demand that others feel a given emotion. And yet, we do blame others (and ourselves) for feeling them. The challenge I take on in this paper is to sort out the moral status of emotions given these facts. (shrink)

The paper attempts to bridge a gap between two prevalent conceptions of forgiveness that are widely thought to be in opposition. On one side of things, forgiveness is often characterized as a gift. The image is an ever-present one, enduring in popular culture no less than in the sober prose of analytic philosophy. But we also talk of forgiveness as a moral imperative, an important, even vital aspect of our moral life. I argue that, contrary to what may at first (...) appear, the two sides are not in tension, and each gets at something important about the nature of forgiveness. Forgiveness is indeed a gift but, much like actual gifts, it is one we are sometimes required to give. (shrink)

Contemporary accounts of luck, though differing in pretty much everything, all agree that the concept of luck is descriptive as opposed to normative. This widespread agreement forms part of the framework in which debates in ethics and epistemology, where the concept of luck plays a central role, are carried out. The hypothesis put forward in the present paper is that luck attributions are sensitive to normative considerations. I report five experiments suggesting that luck attributions are influenced by the normative features (...) of the case, and not merely by descriptive notions like agential control or modal fragility. I discuss the implications of this effect for theories of luck and debates in ethics and epistemology. (shrink)

A range of developing countries and international advocacy organizations have argued that wealthy countries, as a result of their greater historical contribution to human-induced climate change, owe a ?climate debt? to poor countries. Critics of this argument have claimed that it is incoherent or morally objectionable. In this essay we clarify the concept of climate debt and assess its value for conceptualizing responsibilities associated with global climate change and for guiding international climate negotiations. We conclude that the idea of a (...) climate debt can be coherently formulated, and that while some understandings of the idea of climate debt could lead to morally objectionable conclusions, other accounts would not. However, we argue that climate debt nevertheless provides an unhelpful frame for advancing global justice through international climate negotiations ? the only existing means of resolving political conflict over the collective action problems posed by human-induced climate change ? due to its retrospective and potentially adversarial emphasis, and to problems of measurement. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to reject what I call the entitlement model of directed obligation: the view that we can conclude from X is obligated to Y that therefore Y has an entitlement against X. I argue that rejecting the model clears up many otherwise puzzling aspects of ordinary moral interaction. The main goal is not to offer a new theory of obligation and entitlement. It is rather to show that, contrary to what most philosophers have assumed, directed (...) obligation and entitlement are not the same normative concept seen from two different perspectives. They are two very different concepts, and much is gained by keeping them distinct. (shrink)

The Appendix to the Transcendental Dialectic of Kant's first Critique is notorious for two reasons. First, it appears to contradict itself in saying that the idea of the systematic unity of nature is and is not transcendental. Second, in the passages in which Kant appears to espouse the former alternative, he appears to be making a significant amendment to his account of the conditions of the possibility of experience in the Transcendental Analytic. I propose a solution to both of these (...) difficulties. With regard to the first, I argue that Kant does not contradict himself. With regard to the second, I argue that Kant is not making any change to his view of the conditions of the possibility of experience espoused in the Transcendental Analytic. The underlying cause of these apparent problems is also their solution: the transcendental illusion that nature is necessarily systematic. (shrink)

The urgent need to address climate change poses a range of complex moral and practical concerns, not least because rising to the challenge will require cooperation among countries that differ greatly in their wealth, the extent of their contributions to the problem, and their vulnerability to environmental and economic shocks. This thesis by publication in the field of climate ethics aims to characterise a range of national responsibilities associated with acting on climate change (Part I), and to identify proposals for (...) fulfilling those responsibilities through fair and feasible institutional arrangements (Part II). I aim not only to address substantive gaps in scholarly understanding of those responsibilities, but also to strengthen the ability of climate ethics to engage meaningfully with climate policy. Chapter 2 addresses the question of whether wealthy countries owe a “climate debt” to poor countries. It finds that even if climate debt (suitably interpreted) may provide a coherent and morally plausible concept, its political value as a discursive frame that can provide a basis for cooperation is limited. Chapter 3 investigates the role that equity may play in negotiations on a long-term climate change agreement. It argues that developed and developing countries may reach a “principled bargain” if both converge on a way of differentiating their responsibilities that places less emphasis on a rigid dichotomy between the two groups and more emphasis on objective criteria relating to their contribution to the problem and capacity to address it. Chapter 4 explores a question largely overlooked in climate ethics, namely whether wealthy countries owe compensation to those who are adversely affected by the climate policies which they enact. I find that enacting countries have responsibilities to compensate both domestic and foreign citizens who would suffer disproportionate losses from the effects of policies. Chapter 5 assesses whether wealthy countries may legitimately adopt unilateral (or “fragmented”) rather than multilaterally coordinated approaches to raising climate finance for developing countries. It finds that coordinated target-setting, effort sharing and oversight arrangements are essential, but that a mix of unilateral and coordinated approaches to raising funds will be necessary for securing legitimacy. In Chapter 6, through addressing the broader question of what should count as official aid, I consider whether wealthy countries may draw on aid budgets to support developing countries’ efforts to address climate change. I find that the current definition of official aid should be retained but supplemented by specified exclusions from eligibility in order to preserve the aid regime’s integrity. Nevertheless, some climate finance may justifiably be counted as aid provided that concerns relating to the diversion of aid funding are addressed. In addressing these research questions, the thesis seeks not only to make original theoretical contributions to climate ethics but also to strengthen broader scholarly understanding of the ways in which ethics and international public policy may inform one another, particularly by highlighting the role of framing considerations (Chapter 2), feasibility considerations (Chapter 3), and the ways in which principles of fairness and legitimacy map onto institutional functions (Chapters 4, 5 and 6). (shrink)

At the United Nations climate change conference in 2011, parties decided to launch the “Durban Platform” to work towards a new long-term climate agreement. The decision was notable for the absence of any reference to “equity”, a prominent principle in all previous major climate agreements. Wealthy countries resisted the inclusion of equity on the grounds that the term had become too closely yoked to developing countries’ favored conception of equity. This conception, according to wealthy countries, exempts developing countries from making (...) commitments that are stringent enough for the collective effort needed to avoid dangerous climate change. In circumstances where even mentioning the term equity has become problematic, a critical question is whether scope for a fair agreement is being squeezed out of negotiations. To address this question we set out a conceptual framework for normative theorizing about fairness in international negotiations, accompanied by a set of minimal standards of fairness and plausible feasibility constraints for sharing the global climate change mitigation effort. We argue that a fair and feasible agreement may be reached by (i) reforming the current binary approach to differentiating developed and developing country groups, in tandem with (ii) introducing a more principled approach to differentiating the mitigation commitments of individual countries. These two priorities may provide the basis for a principled bargain between developed and developing countries that safeguards the opportunity to avoid dangerous climate change without sacrificing widely acceptable conceptions of equity. (shrink)

I argue that Kant’s commitment to the existence of things in themselves takes the form of a commitment short of knowledge that does not violate the limitations on knowledge which he lays down. I will argue that Kant’s commitment fits his description of what he calls “doctrinal belief”: acceptance of the existence of things in themselves which is subjectively sufficient but not objectively sufficient. I outline two ways in which we accept the existence of things in themselves which are subjectively (...) sufficient. First, we must accept the existence of appearances, which requires us to accept the existence of things in themselves. Second, we must accept the existence of an unconditioned ground of appearances. (shrink)

Recovering from its obsession with the computer in the 1990's psychology realised that minds come with bodies, something that Whitehead had pointed out in the 1920's. However, the problem of how the mind and body are linked remained. Bisemiotics solves it.

Examining the historical development of scientific concepts is important for understanding the structured routines within which these concepts are currently used as goal-directed tools in experiments. To illustrate this claim, I will outline how the concepts of mental imagery and hallucinations each draw on an older interdependent set of associations that, although nominally-discarded, continues to structure their current independent uses for pursuing discrete experimental goals. In doing so, I will highlight how three strands of literature offer mutually instructive insights for (...) understanding how the uses of our current scientific concepts contribute to experimental practices. The first strand of literature includes recent scholarship examining how the uses of scientific concepts can enable scientific practices (e.g., Boon 2012; Brigandt 2012; Feest 2010; Steinle 2012). In this context, scientific concepts have been described as tools that function in ways that contribute to empirical knowledge; contributions that extend beyond their traditionally recognized roles in mental and linguistic representation. The second strand of literature can be glimpsed within the technoscientific studies focus on non-human agency; a focus that supports an account of the disciplined routines within which concepts are used as acting in analogous ways to the routinized participation of machines in experiments (Pickering 1995). The third strand of the literature draws attention to how the functions of concepts are grounded by the set of historically-contingent experimental practices (e.g., Canguilhem 2008; Tiles 1984). Although maintaining valuable differences, the focus of these three strands of literature are mutually instructive. Together, they offer a view of the uses of concepts as taken-for-granted tools that function within networks of subterranean associations; associations that are grounded by historically contingent experimental practices that structure how they act (in concert with human and material participants) within the temporally dynamic processes of scientific practice. Through examples drawn from a comparison of the concepts of mental imagery and hallucinations, I aim to demonstrate the value that the converging insights of these three strands of literature offer for studying the role of scientific concepts in experimental practices. (shrink)

In “Harmful Choices, the Case of C, and Decision-Making Competence,” Pickering and colleagues advance an argument in favor of externalism, a view in which the competence of a decision maker is judged relative to factors external to their cognition. In advancing this argument, Pickering and colleagues focus on the external factor of harm: In their view, it is the harmfulness of a considered or chosen action that provides evidence against the competence of the decision maker. However, the proper identification of (...) harmful choices and outcomes remains a demanding task, largely because our understanding of what harm is remains deeply incomplete. Despite 50 years of tempestuous debate, the metaphysics of harm remains an unsettled question. The existence of such a debate does not, in and of itself, provide evidence against the externalist position; rather, it is the theories of harm themselves that pose meaningful challenges for the externalist. Our purpose, here, is to illuminate these challenges. (shrink)

In a recent article, Mario Attie-Picker maintains that a number of experimental studies provide evidence against Sextus Empiricus’s empirical claims about both the connection between belief and anxiety and the connection between suspension of judgement and undisturbedness. In this article, I argue that Sextus escapes unharmed from the challenge raised by the studies in question for the simple reason that he does not make the claims ascribed to him. In other words, I argue that Attie-Picker is attacking a (...) straw man. (shrink)

In 2016, this Journal published an article by Rob Lawlor1 on what we might call the acceptance-refusal asymmetry in competence requirements. This is the view that there can be cases in which a patient is sufficiently competent to accept a treatment ( viz., to give consent to it), but not sufficiently competent to refuse it ( viz., to withhold consent to it). Though the main purpose of Lawlor’s paper was to distinguish this asymmetry from various other asymmetries with which it (...) has sometimes been confused,1 Lawlor also presented a brief case in favour of it. Developing an earlier argument of Ian Wilks’,2 3 Lawlor argued that, when the risks associated with refusing a treatment are graver than those associated with accepting it, a higher level of competence may be required to refuse a treatment than to accept it. This claim could have important implications for the law, since determinations of competence often play a central role in determining the lawfulness of refusing or imposing a treatment (eg, in England and Wales under the Mental Capacity Act 2005). Indeed, the acceptance-refusal asymmetry in competence requirements, or something close to it, has played an important role in court judgments.2 However, Lawlor himself suggests that his conclusion will have practical implications only in a narrow range of cases.3 In this issue, Pickering, Giles Newton-Howes and Simon Walker (henceforth ‘the authors’) respond to Lawlor’s piece.4 They deny that competence requirements should depend on the level of risk associated with a decision, and thus that there is any basis for the acceptance-refusal asymmetry in competence requirements. Part of the authors’ argument involves contesting the way in which Lawlor uses cases to support his view. In one case cited by Lawlor—and drawn from Wilks—we are invited to consider a whether …. (shrink)

An essay review of Léna Soler, Emiliano Trizio, and Andrew Pickering (eds.), Science As It Could Have Been: Discussing the Contingency/Inevitability Problem (Pittsburgh: Pittsburgh University Press).

One of the most widely debated and influential implications of the "demise" of positivism was the realization, now a commonplace, that philosophy of science must be firmly grounded in an understanding of the history of science, and/or of contemporary scientific practice. While the nature of this alliance is still a matter of uneasy negotiation, the principle that philosophical analysis must engage "real" science has transformed philosophical practice in innumerable ways. This short paper is the introduction to a symposium presented at (...) the 1994 PSA Biennial meetings that focused attention on recent developments at the interface between various disciplinary science studies fields. It brought together two philosophers who explore the implications of sociological and historical contextualization for philosophical studies of science, Brian Baigrie and Joseph Rouse; and a sociologist and historian, Andy Pickering and Betty Smocovitis, whose work raises philosophical questions about the sciences and about science studies. Each argued for ways of reconceptualizing our subject domains, our purposes, and our conventional strategies of inquiry that promise much richer understanding of the sciences, but necessarily challenge discipline-specific traditions of science studies quite profoundly. If there is a common theme to be discerned in these discussions it is that, in the spirit of Rouse's recommendations, science studies should be understood to be an essentially open ended and dynamic enterprise, like the sciences they study. (shrink)

The host of SUSY(supersymmetry) based string theories is considered. Superstrings are comprehended as possible candidates on Quantum Gravity basic objects. It is argued that superstring theories constitute mainly mathematical progress and can reconcile general relativity with quantum field theory at best. Yet they cannot provide the genuine synthesis. Superstring unification of all the four forces at hand is a formal one . It is contended that genesis and proliferation of superstrings can better be described not by philosophy of science models (...) but in terms of modern sociology of science. The formal character of gravity and quantum fields fusion and the lack of experimental verification make the transition to superstring theories ad hoc in Lakatosian standards. Possible way of explanation is proposed based on social interests conception of Andrew Pickering. -/- Key words: superstrings, unification, Kaluza-Klein, sociology of science . (shrink)

In this book I show that science suffers from a damaging but rarely noticed methodological disease, which I call rationalistic neurosis. It is not just the natural sciences which suffer from this condition. The contagion has spread to the social sciences, to philosophy, to the humanities more generally, and to education. The whole academic enterprise, indeed, suffers from versions of the disease. It has extraordinarily damaging long-term consequences. For it has the effect of preventing us from developing traditions and institutions (...) of learning rationally devoted to helping us learn how to make progress towards a wiser, more civilized world. On our fragile earth, overcrowded, fraught with injustice, inequality and conflict, menaced by unprecedented and terrifying technological and industrial means for change and destruction, we urgently need to acquire a little more wisdom and civilization if we are to avoid repeating horrors of the kind suffered by so many during the 20th century (and already suffered by many in the first few years of the 21st century). We can ill afford to have in our hands instruments of learning botched and bungled from the standpoint of helping us learn how to live more wisely. It may seem scarcely credible that something as important as our institutions of learning can suffer from wholesale, structural defects. Why has this not been noticed before? Why have not armies of scientists and scholars appreciated the point and, long ago, put the matter right? The answer will emerge as my argument unfolds. I will show that one of the most damaging features of rationalistic neurosis is that it has built-in methodological and institutional mechanisms which effectively conceal that anything is wrong. But there is also an immediately obvious reason: specialization, and the resulting fragmentation of academia, has resulted in a situation in which hardly anyone takes responsibility for the overall ideals, the overall aims and methods, of academic inquiry. Academics, these days, are specialists, furiously trying to keep abreast of developments in their own specialist fields. They have no time, and no inducement, to lift their eyes from their particular disciplines, and look at the whole endeavour. Science has long been under attack, at least since the Romantic movement. Blake objected to “Single vision & Newton’s sleep” and declared that “Art is the Tree of Life... Science is the Tree of Death”. Keats lamented that science will “clip an Angel’s wings” and “unweave a rainbow”. Whereas the Enlightenment had valued science and reason as tools for the liberation of humanity, Romanticism found science and reason oppressive and destructive, and instead valued art, imagination, inspiration, individual genius, emotional and motivational honesty rather than careful attention to objective fact. Much subsequent opposition to science stems from, or echoes, the Romantic opposition of Blake, Wordsworth, Keats and many others. There is the movement Isaiah Berlin has described as the “Counter-Enlightenment” (Berlin, 1979, ch. 1). There is existentialism, with its denunciation of the tyranny of reason, its passionate affirmation of the value and centrality of irrationality in human life, from Dostoevsky, Kierkegaard and Nietzsche to Heidegger and Sartre (see, for example, Barrett, 1962). There is the attack on Enlightenment ideals concerning science and reason undertaken by the Frankfurt school, by postmodernists and others, from Horkheimer and Adorno to Lyotard, Foucault, Habermas, Derrida, MacIntyre and Rorty (see Gascardi, 1999). The soul-destroying consequences of valuing science and reason too highly is a persistent theme in literature: it is to be found in the works of writers such as D.H. Lawrence, Doris Lessing, Max Frisch, Y. Zamyatin. There is persistent opposition to modern science and technology, and to scientific rationality, often associated with the Romantic wing of the green movement, and given expression in such popular books as Marcuse’s One Dimensional Man, Roszak’s Where the Wasteland Ends, Berman’s The Reenchantment of the World and Appleyard’s Understanding the Present. There is the feminist critique of science and conceptions of science: see, for example, Fox Keller (1984) and Harding (1986). And there are the corrosive implications of the so-called “strong programme” in the sociology of knowledge, and of the work of social constructivist historians of science, which depict scientific knowledge as a belief system alongside many other such conflicting systems, having no more right to claim to constitute knowledge of the truth than these rivals, the scientific view of the world being no more than an elaborate myth, a social construct (see Barnes and Bloor, 1981; Bloor, 1991; Barnes, Bloor and Henry, 1996; Shapin and Schaffer, 1985; Shapin, 1994; Pickering, 1984; Latour, 1987). This latter literature has provoked a counter-attack by scientists, historians and philosophers of science seeking to defend science and traditional conceptions of scientific rationality: see Gross and Levitt (1994), Gross, Levitt and Lewis (1996), and Koertge (1998). This debate between critics and defenders of science came abruptly to public attention with the publication of Alan Sokal’s brilliant hoax article ‘Transgressing the boundaries’ in a special issue of the cultural studies journal Social Text in 1996 entitled Science Wars: see Sokal and Bricmont (1998). What does this book have to contribute, given the above avalanche of criticism of science? The criticisms of science developed in this book are diametrically opposed to the above, in so far as the above criticisms oppose scientific rationality, seek to diminish or restrict its influence, or hold that it is unattainable. My central point is that we suffer, not from too much scientific rationality, but from not enough. What is generally taken to constitute scientific rationality is actually nothing of the kind. It is rationalistic neurosis, a characteristic, influential and damaging kind of irrationality masquerading as rationality. Science is damaged by being trapped within a widely upheld but severely defective philosophy of science; free science from this defective philosophy, provide it with a more intellectually rigorous philosophy, and it will flourish in both intellectual and humanitarian terms. And more generally, as we shall see, academic inquiry as a whole is damaged by being trapped within an intellectually defective philosophy of inquiry; free it from this defective philosophy, from its rationalistic neurosis, and it will flourish in intellectual and human terms. It is not reason that is damaging, but defective pretensions to reason — rationalistic neurosis —masquerading as reason. Thus what I seek to do here is the exact opposite of what all those who oppose science and scientific rationality do. I shall argue that Reason, the authentic article, arrived at by generalizing the progress-achieving methods of science, can have profoundly liberating and enriching consequences for all worthwhile, problematic aspects of life, and thus deserves to enter into every aspect of life. The bare bones of the argument of this book can be stated quite simply like this. Science cannot proceed without making the substantial metaphysical assumption that the universe is physically comprehensible (to some extent at least). But this conflicts with the orthodox view that in science everything is assessed impartially with respect to evidence, nothing being permanently assumed independently of evidence. So the metaphysical assumption of comprehensibility is repressed. Science pretends that no such assumption is made. But this damages science. For the assumption is substantial, influential and highly problematic. It needs to be made explicit within science so that it can be critically scrutinized, so that alternatives can be developed and considered. Pretending the assumption is not being made undermines the intellectual rigour of science, its intellectual value and success. And it does not stop there. For science also makes value assumptions. Quite properly, science is concerned to discover that which is of value. New factual knowledge devoid of all value (whether intellectual or practical) does not contribute to science. But the orthodox view of science holds that values have no place within science. As in the case of metaphysics, here too, science pretends that values have no role to play within the intellectual domain of science. And this damages science. For values are, if anything, even more influential and problematic than metaphysics (in influencing the direction of research). Here too, values need to be made explicit within science so that they can be scrutinized, so that alternatives can be developed and assessed. Pretending that values play no role within the intellectual domain damages science; both the intellectual and the practical aspects of science are adversely affected. Science fails to pursue those avenues of research that lie in the best interests of humanity. And it goes further. Science is pursued in a social, cultural, economic and political context. It is a part of various social, economic and political projects which seek to achieve diverse human objectives. But the idea that science is an integral part of humanitarian or political enterprises with political ends clashes, once again, with the official view of science that the aim of science is to improve factual knowledge. The political objectives of science are repressed. And, once again, this damages science. For, of course, the political objectives of science, like all our political objectives, are profoundly problematic. These need to be made explicit so that they can be scrutinized, so that alternatives can be developed and considered. The pretence that science does not have this political dimension once again undermines the intellectual rigour of science, and its human value. It lays science open to becoming a part of economic, corporate and political enterprises that are not in the best interests of humanity. The upshot of the line of argument just indicated is that we need to bring about a revolution in the aims and methods of science, and of academic inquiry more generally. Natural science needs to change; its relationship with the rest of academic inquiry, with social inquiry and the humanities, needs to change; and most importantly and dramatically, academic inquiry as a whole needs to change. The basic task of the academic enterprise needs to become to help humanity learn how to tackle its problems of living in more cooperatively rational ways than at present. We need to put the intellectual tasks of articulating our problems of living, and proposing and critically assessing possible solutions, possible and actual actions, at the heart of academic inquiry. The basic task needs to be to help humanity learn a bit more wisdom – wisdom being the capacity to realize what is of value in life, for oneself and others, wisdom including knowledge and technological know-how, but much else besides. Natural science, despite its flaws, has massively increased our knowledge and technological know-how. This in turn has led to a massive and sometimes terrifying increase in our power to act. Often this unprecedented power to act is used for human good, as in medicine or agriculture. But it is also used to cause harm, whether unintentionally (initially at least) as when industrialization and modern agriculture lead to global warming, destruction of natural habitats and rapid extinction of species, or intentionally, as when the technology of war is used by governments and terrorists to maim and kill. Before the advent of modern science, when we lacked the means to do too much damage to ourselves and the planet, lack of wisdom did not matter too much. Now, with our unprecedented powers to act, bequeathed to us by science, lack of wisdom has become a menace. This is the crisis behind all the other current global crises: science without wisdom. In these circumstances, to continue to pursue knowledge and technological know-how dissociated from a more fundamental quest for wisdom can only deepen the crisis. As a matter of urgency, we need to free science and academia of their neuroses; we need to bring about a revolution in the academic enterprise so that the basic aim becomes to promote wisdom by intellectual and educational means. At present science and the humanities betray both reason and humanity. The argument of this book, which I have just summarized, begins with a discussion of the philosophical and methodological problems that beset theoretical physics. At once, many of those who are concerned about moral, political and environmental issues that plague our world today, will feel impatient. What have the methodological problems of theoretical physics to do with third world poverty, war and the threat of war, pollution, extinction of species, the menace of conventional, chemical, biological and nuclear armaments? I can only plead with such a reader: patience. The root cause of the sickness of our times does indeed lie, I claim, with a methodological sickness of natural science or, even more specifically, of physical science. What makes the modern world so utterly different from all previous ages is our possession of modern science and technology. This is the instrument that has changed the conditions of human life almost beyond all recognition, and put unprecedented, and sometimes terrifying, powers into our hands. One should not dismiss out of hand the suggestion that a part of our problem may lie with this instrument, this engine, of rapid change. We see, here, too, the way in which intellectual specialization, referred to above, has effectively concealed from view the nature and extent of the problem that confronts us. The argument that I shall develop in what follows begins with physics, with problems concerning the aims and methods of physics. But it then leaps to social science, to philosophy, to the humanities, to education, to psychotherapy, and to politics: in the end there is scarcely an aspect of modern life that is not touched and, potentially, affected by the argument. How many academic experts are prepared to follow, to take seriously, an argument that ranges so recklessly across such a wide range of academic disciplines? How many non-academic non-experts? But just this is what the argument and message of this book requires. I hope that the reader will endure with patience the somewhat esoteric discussion concerning the aims and methods of physics pursued in chapter one. This may not seem to have anything much to do with the urgent problems of our times, but it does. This is in part how the intellectual disaster I seek to expose in this book conceals itself from view: it buries itself in the obscure, recondite field of the philosophy of physics. Those who devote their lives to the philosophy of physics are, by and large, too myopic to see how their specialized field of study has anything to do with the great and dreadful humanitarian problems and disasters of our age; and those who are above all concerned with these humanitarian disasters have no time at all for abstruse issues concerning the aims and methods of physics. And so the connection is never made. As it happens, the methodological neurosis of physics, with which we begin in chapter one, is actually a quite simple matter to grasp. It does not require any real knowledge of physics to understand. Indeed, physicists and philosophers of physics are much more likely to find the argument difficult to follow than are non-experts. We non-scientists can stand back and see the whole wood; scientists, trained to think in terms of the current orthodox conception of science, trapped in the thickets of research, will find this much harder to do. In an attempt to take this peculiar circumstance into account, I have arranged the exposition as follows. In chapter one I give a simple exposition of the case for declaring natural science to suffer from what I call "rationalistic neurosis"; this avoids all technicalities, and goes straight to the heart of the matter. In the appendix I tackle a host of more technical objections that may be made to the elementary argument of chapter one. So, those experts in the fields of the philosophy of physics and philosophy of science who find the argument of chapter one naïve and unconvincing, should consult the appendix before tossing the book away in disgust. I write in the hope that there will be a few who will not dismiss out of hand the suggestion that the question of how we are to go about learning how to live in wiser and more civilized ways might have something to learn from scientific learning, and will take the trouble to pursue the line of argument traced out in this book. I write in the hope that these few will grasp just how desperate our situation is, how urgent the need to change the status quo, and will do everything in their power to alert others to the need to heal the methodological sickness from which our institutions and traditions of learning at present suffer. To begin with, we need a campaigning organization, modelled perhaps on "Friends of the Earth", which might be called something like "Friends of Wisdom". (shrink)

I begin by “deconstructing” the title and explaining that Feyerabend does not really use the word “ontology”, though he does call his position sometimes (and the “sometimes” is important) ontological realism. I explain that he talks about his position as indifferently a “general methodology” or a “general cosmology”, and that he seems to be be hostile to the very enterprise of ontology, conceived of as “school philosophy”. I then go on to say that there is perhaps a concept of a (...) different type of ontology, that I call a “diachronic ontology” that perhaps he would have accepted,and that is very different from ontology as ordinarily thought, which I claim to be synchronic ontology (having no room for the dialogue with Being, but just supposing that Being is already and always there without our contribution). I discuss Althusser and Graham Harman as exemplifying synchronic ontology, giving a reading of Harman’s recent book THE THIRD TABLE. I then discuss Feyerabend’s ideas as showing a different way, that of a diachronic ontology, in which there is no stable framework or fixed path. I end with Andrew Pickering whose essay NEW ONTOLOGIES makes a similar distinction to mine, expressing it in the imagistic terms of a De Kooningian (diachronic) versus a Mondrianesque (synchronic) approach. (shrink)