List of Illustrations Introduction 1 The Didactic and the Elegant: Some Thoughts on Scientific and Technological Illustrations in the Middle Ages and Renaissance 3 2 Temples of the Body and Temples of the Cosmos: Vision and Visualization in the Vesalian and Copernican Revolutions 40 3 Descartes’s Scientific Illustrations and ’la grande mecanique de la nature’ 86 4 Illustrating Chemistry 135 5 Representations of the Natural System in the Nineteenth Century 164 6 Visual Representation in Archaeology: Depicting the Missing-Link in Human (...) Origins 184 7 Towards an Epistemology of Scientific Illustration 215 8 Illustration and Inference 250 9 Visual Models and Scientific Judgment 269 10 Are Pictures Really Necessary? The Case of Sewall Wright’s ’Adaptive Landscapes’ 303 Bibliography 339 Notes on Contributors 373 Index 377. (shrink)

This chapter contains section titled: Kepler's New Astronomy Kepler's New Science of Vision Galileo and the Telescope Galileo and the Creation of Mathematical Physics Mersenne and the New Science.

The new inter-disciplinary eclecticism championed by many philosophers of science has generated a heterogeneous family of science studies projects. Philosophers who favor an inter-disciplinary approach face many problems if they are to successfully forge a hybrid science studies that does not violate their integrity as philosophers in particular, they must isolate an intellectual space in which traditional agendas, such as the concern for the clarification of concepts, can hold court. In this paper, I outline what I regard as a new (...) brand of HPS, one that is deeply rooted in the history of the exact science. The virtue of this New HPS, I will submit, is that it furnishes philosophers of science with a fresh perspective from which to carry on philosophy's classic normative mission. (shrink)

In this article, we explicate evidence-based nursing (EBN), critically appraise its framework and respond to nurses’ concern that EBN sidelines the caring elements of nursing practice. We use resources from care ethics, especially Vrinda Dalmiya’s work that considers care as crucial for both epistemology and ethics, to show how EBN is compatible with, and indeed can be enhanced by, the caring aspects of nursing practice. We demonstrate that caring can act as a bridge between ‘external’ evidence and the other pillars (...) of the EBN framework: clinical expertise; patient preferences and values. Drawing on an influential EBN handbook, section 1 presents the aims and features of EBN, including the normative principle that EBN should take place within a ‘context of caring’. We aim to understand this context and whether it can be neatly detached from the EBN framework, as the handbook seems to suggest. In section 2, we highlight the grounds for resistance to EBN from the nursing community, before mounting the argument that nursing practices can be understood fruitfully through feminist care ethics and/or virtue ethics lenses. In section 3, we deepen that analysis using Dalmiya’s concepts of care-knowing and care as a hybrid ethico-epistemic virtue, which are ideally suited to the complex practices of nursing. In section 4, we bring this rich understanding of care into conversation with EBN, showing that its framework cannot be adequately theorised without paying proper attention to care. Caring can be neither an innocuous background assumption of nor an afterthought to the EBN framework. (shrink)

The evidence based medicine movement has championed the need for objective and transparent methods of clinical guideline development. The Grades of Recommendation, Assessment, Development, and Evaluation (GRADE) framework was developed for that purpose. Central to this framework is criteria for assessing the quality of evidence from clinical studies and the impact that body of evidence should have on our confidence in the clinical effectiveness of a therapy under examination. Grades of Recommendation, Assessment, Development, and Evaluation has been adopted by a (...) number of professional medical societies and organizations as a means for orienting the development of clinical guidelines. As a result, the method of GRADE has implications on how health care is delivered and patient outcomes. In this paper, we reveal several issues with the underlying logic of GRADE that warrant further discussion. First, the definitions of the “grades of evidence” provided by GRADE, while explicit, are functionally vague. Second, the “criteria for assigning grade of evidence” is seemingly arbitrary and arguably logically incoherent. Finally, the GRADE method is unclear on how to integrate evidence grades with other important factors, such as patient preferences, and trade‐offs between costs, benefits, and harms when proposing a clinical practice recommendation. Much of the GRADE method requires judgement on the part of the user, making it unclear as to how the framework reduces bias in recommendations or makes them more transparent—both goals of the programme. It is our view that the issues presented in this paper undermine GRADE's justificatory scheme, thereby limiting the usefulness of GRADE as a tool for developing clinical recommendations. (shrink)

Translating risk estimates derived from epidemiologic study into evidence of causality for a particular patient is problematic. The difficulty of this process is not unique to the medical context; rather, courts are also challenged with the task of using risk estimates to infer evidence of cause in particular cases. Thus, an examination of how this is done in a legal context might provide insight into when and how it is appropriate to use risk information as evidence of cause in a (...) medical context. A careful study of the case of Goodman v. Viljoen, a medical malpractice suit litigated in the Ontario Superior Court of Justice in 2011, reveals different approaches to how risk information is used as or might be considered a substitute for evidence of causation, and the pitfalls associated with these approaches. Achieving statistical thresholds, specifically minimizing the probability of falsely rejecting the null hypothesis, and exceeding a relative risk of 2, plays a significant role in establishing causality of the particular in the legal setting. However, providing a reasonable explanation or establishing “biological plausibility” of the causal association also seems important, and (to some) may even take precedent over statistical thresholds for a given context. (shrink)

Rationale, Aims, and Objectives: Confidence (or belief) that a therapy is effective is essential to practicing clinical medicine. GRADE, a popular framework for developing clinical recommendations, provides a means for assigning how much confidence one should have in a therapy's effect estimate. One's level of confidence (or “degree of belief”) can also be modelled using Bayes theorem. In this paper, we look through both a GRADE and Bayesian lens to examine how one determines confidence in the effect estimate. Methods: Philosophical (...) examination. Results: The GRADE framework uses a criteria‐based method to assign a quality of evidence level. The criteria pertain mostly to considerations of methodological rigour, derived from a modified evidence‐based medicine evidence hierarchy. The four levels of quality relate to the level of confidence one should have in the effect estimate. The Bayesian framework is not bound by a predetermined set of criteria. Bayes theorem shows how a rational agent adjusts confidence (ie, degree of belief) in the effect estimate on the basis of the available evidence. Such adjustments relate to the principles of incremental confirmation and evidence proportionism. Use of the Bayesian framework reveals some potential pitfalls in GRADE's criteria‐based thinking on confidence that are out of step with our intuitions on evidence. Conclusions: A rational thinker uses all available evidence to formulate beliefs. The GRADE criteria seem to suggest that we discard some of that information when other, more favoured information (eg, derived from clinical trials) is available. The GRADE framework should strive to ensure that the whole evidence base is considered when determining confidence in the effect estimate. The incremental value of such evidence on determining confidence in the effect estimate should be assigned in a manner that is theoretically or empirically justified, such that confidence is proportional to the evidence, both for and against it. (shrink)

We provide a new interpretation of Zeno’s Paradox of Measure that begins by giving a substantive account, drawn from Aristotle’s text, of the fact that points lack magnitude. The main elements of this account are (1) the Axiom of Archimedes which states that there are no infinitesimal magnitudes, and (2) the principle that all assignments of magnitude, or lack thereof, must be grounded in the magnitude of line segments, the primary objects to which the notion of linear magnitude applies. Armed (...) with this account, we are ineluctably driven to introduce a highly constructive notion of (outer) measure based exclusively on the total magnitude of potentially infinite collections of line segments. The Paradox of Measure then consists in the proof that every finite or potentially infinite collection of points lacks magnitude with respect to this notion of measure. We observe that the Paradox of Measure, thus understood, troubled analysts into the 1880’s, despite their knowledge that the linear continuum is uncountable. The Paradox was ultimately resolved by Borel in his thesis of 1893, as a corollary to his celebrated result that every countable open cover of a closed line segment has a finite sub-cover, a result he later called the “First Fundamental Theorem of Measure Theory.” This achievement of Borel has not been sufficiently appreciated. We conclude with a metamathematical analysis of the resolution of the paradox made possible by recent results in reverse mathematics. (shrink)

Rationale, aims, and objectives: One of the sectors challenged by the COVID-19 pandemic is medical research. COVID-19 originates from a novel coronavirus (SARSCoV- 2) and the scientific community is faced with the daunting task of creating a novel model for this pandemic or, in other words, creating novel science. This paper is the first part of a series of two papers that explore the intricate relationship between the different challenges that have hindered biomedical research and the generation of scientific knowledge (...) during the COVID-19 pandemic. Methods: During the early stages of the pandemic, research conducted on hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) was chaotic and sparked several heated debates with respect to the scientific methods used and the quality of knowledge generated. Research on HCQ is used as a case study in both papers. The authors explored biomedical databases, peer-reviewed journals, pre-print servers, and media articles to identify relevant literature on HCQ and COVID-19, and examined philosophical perspectives on medical research in the context of this pandemic and previous global health challenges. Results: This paper demonstrates that a lack of prioritization among research questions and therapeutics was responsible for the duplication of clinical trials and the dispersion of precious resources. Study designs, aimed at minimising biases and increasing objectivity, were, instead, the subject of fruitless oppositions. The duplication of research works, combined with poor-quality research, has greatly contributed to slowing down the creation of novel scientific knowledge. Conclusions: The COVID-19 pandemic presented challenges in terms of (1) finding and prioritising relevant research questions and (2) choosing study designs that are appropriate for a time of emergency. (shrink)

Rationale, aims and objectives: The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted every facet of society, including medical research. This paper is the second part of a series of articles that explore the intricate relationship between the different challenges that have hindered biomedical research and the generation of novel scientific knowledge during the COVID-19 pandemic. In the first part of this series, we demonstrated that, in the context of COVID-19, the scientific community has been faced with numerous challenges with respect to (1) finding (...) and prioritizing relevant research questions and (2) choosing study designs that are appropriate for a time of emergency. Methods: During the early stages of the pandemic, research conducted on hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) sparked several heated debates with respect to the scientific methods used and the quality of knowledge generated. Research on HCQ is used as a case study in both papers. The authors explored biomedical databases, peerreviewed journals, pre-print servers and media articles to identify relevant literature on HCQ and COVID-19, and examined philosophical perspectives on medical research in the context of this pandemic and previous global health challenges. Results: This second paper demonstrates that a lack of research prioritization and methodological rigour resulted in the generation of fleeting and inconsistent evidence that complicated the development of public health guidelines. The reporting of scientific findings to the scientific community and general public highlighted the difficulty of finding a balance between accuracy and speed. Conclusions: The COVID-19 pandemic presented challenges in terms of (3) evaluating evidence for the purpose of making evidence-based decisions and (4) sharing scientific findings with the rest of the scientific community. This second paper demonstrates that the four challenges outlined in the first and second papers have often compounded each other and have contributed to slowing down the creation of novel scientific knowledge during the COVID-19 pandemic. (shrink)

In recent analytic literature on the Trinity we have seen a variety of "social" models of the Trinity. By contrast there are few "non-­‐social" models. One prominent "non-­‐social" view is Brian Leftow's "Latin Trinity." I argue that the name of Leftow's model is not sufficiently descriptive in light of diverse models within Latin speaking theology. Next, I develop a new "non-­‐social" model that is inspired by Richard of St. Victor's description of a person in conjunction with my appropriating insights (...) about indexicals from David Kaplan and John Perry. I point out that the copula in tokens of statements like, "I am the Father," is an ambiguous term and when used by a certain divine person a different proposition is affirmed. Central to this model is the claim that the copula bears the "is of identity" and the "is of numerical sameness without identity." Further, I show that Leftow's model employs two concepts of "person," a Lockean one and a Boethian one, and mine employs Richard of St. Victor's. I describe Leftow's model as a "hard non-­‐social" model and mine as a "soft non-­‐social" model that is nearer to some social models. I conclude that Leftow's model is not the lone candidate among "non-­‐social" models and that the variety of "non-­‐social" models has yet to be exhausted. (shrink)

Scott Davison has raised an epistemic challenge to the doctrine of petitionary prayer. Roughly, the challenge is that we cannot know or have reason to believe that a prayer has been answered. Davison argues that the epistemic challenge undermines all the extant defenses of petitionary prayer. I argue that it does not.

What are the conditions for fixing the reference of a proper name? Debate on this point has recently been rekindled by Scott Soames, Robin Jeshion, and others. In this paper, I sketch a new pragmatic approach to the justification of reference-fixing procedures, in opposition to accounts that insist on an invariant set of conditions for fixing reference across environments and linguistic communities. Comparing reference to other relations whose instances are introduced through "initiation" procedures, I outline a picture in which (...) the procedures that are successful for fixing the reference of proper names depend in part on regularities in the actual environment. (shrink)

This paper discusses the coverage of ordinary language philosophy in Scott Soames' Philosophical Analysis in the Twentieth Century. After praising the book's virtues, I raise three points where I dissent from Soames' take on the history. First, I suggest that there is more to ordinary language philosophy than the rather implausible version of it that Soames sees to have been destroyed by Grice. Second, I argue that confusions between analyticity, necessity and priority are less important to the ordinary language (...) period than Soames takes them to be. Finally, I claim that Soames' criticisms of Ryle turn in part on attributing reductionist positions to Ryle that Ryle did not hold. (shrink)

Brief response to Brian Baigrie's "The Justification of Kepler’s Ellipse" (1990).

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)

One's inaccuracy for a proposition is defined as the squared difference between the truth value (1 or 0) of the proposition and the credence (or subjective probability, or degree of belief) assigned to the proposition. One should have the epistemic goal of minimizing the expected inaccuracies of one's credences. We show that the method of minimizing expected inaccuracy can be used to solve certain probability problems involving information loss and self-locating beliefs (where a self-locating belief of a temporal part of (...) an individual is a belief about where or when that temporal part is located). We analyze the Sleeping Beauty problem, the duplication version of the Sleeping Beauty problem, and various related problems. (shrink)

Vagueness as Indeterminacy. I defend the traditional view that a vague term is one with an indeterminate denotation from a bevy of recent challenges.

Uncertainty plays an important role in The General Theory, particularly in the theory of interest rates. Keynes did not provide a theory of uncertainty, but he did make some enlightening remarks about the direction he thought such a theory should take. I argue that some modern innovations in the theory of probability allow us to build a theory which captures these Keynesian insights. If this is the right theory, however, uncertainty cannot carry its weight in Keynes’s arguments. This does not (...) mean that the conclusions of these arguments are necessarily mistaken; in their best formulation they may succeed with merely an appeal to risk. (shrink)

The arguments for Bayesianism in the literature fall into three broad categories. There are Dutch Book arguments, both of the traditional pragmatic variety and the modern ‘depragmatised’ form. And there are arguments from the so-called ‘representation theorems’. The arguments have many similarities, for example they have a common conclusion, and they all derive epistemic constraints from considerations about coherent preferences, but they have enough differences to produce hostilities between their proponents. In a recent paper, Maher (1997) has argued that the (...) pragmatised Dutch Book arguments are unsound and the depragmatised Dutch Book arguments question begging. He urges we instead use the representation theorem argument as in his (1993). In this paper I argue that Maher’s own argument is question-begging, though in a more subtle and interesting way than his Dutch Book wielding opponents. (shrink)

We live in a world of crowds and corporations, artworks and artifacts, legislatures and languages, money and markets. These are all social objects — they are made, at least in part, by people and by communities. But what exactly are these things? How are they made, and what is the role of people in making them? In The Ant Trap, Brian Epstein rewrites our understanding of the nature of the social world and the foundations of the social sciences. Epstein (...) explains and challenges the three prevailing traditions about how the social world is made. One tradition takes the social world to be built out of people, much as traffic is built out of cars. A second tradition also takes people to be the building blocks of the social world, but focuses on thoughts and attitudes we have toward one another. And a third tradition takes the social world to be a collective projection onto the physical world. Epstein shows that these share critical flaws. Most fundamentally, all three traditions overestimate the role of people in building the social world: they are overly anthropocentric. Epstein starts from scratch, bringing the resources of contemporary metaphysics to bear. In the place of traditional theories, he introduces a model based on a new distinction between the grounds and the anchors of social facts. Epstein illustrates the model with a study of the nature of law, and shows how to interpret the prevailing traditions about the social world. Then he turns to social groups, and to what it means for a group to take an action or have an intention. Contrary to the overwhelming consensus, these often depend on more than the actions and intentions of group members. (shrink)

I argue that orthodox contextualist theories concerning 'know' make false predictions concerning the proper answers to questions containing 'know'.

The following progress report views language acquisition as primarily the attempt to create processes that connect together in a fruitful way linguistic input and other activity. The representations made of linguistic input are thus those that are optimally effective in mediating such interconnections. An effective Language Acquisition Device should contain mechanisms specific to the task of creating the desired interconnection processes in the linguistic environment in which the language learner finds himself or herself. Analysis of this requirement gives clear indications (...) as to what these mechanisms may be. (shrink)

There is a wealth of evidence which indicates that arguments are not very efficient tools for changing minds. Against this scepticism, Dutilh Novaes (2023) presents evidence that, given the right social context, arguments sometimes play a significant role in belief revision. However, drawing on Levy (2021), I argue that the evidence Dutilh Novaes cites is compatible with the view that it is not arguments that change individual minds but instead belief outsourcing that occurs alongside the consideration of arguments.

The gist of the many-subjects argument is that, given physicalism, it’s hard to avoid the absurd result that there are many conscious subjects in your vicinity with more-or-less the same experiences as you. The most promising ways of avoiding this result have a consequence almost as bad: that there are many things in your vicinity that are in a state only trivially different from being conscious, a state with similar normative significance. This paper clarifies and defends three versions of the (...) many-subjects argument. One version poses the threat of conscious parts. Its key premise is that if physicalism is true, then not only you, but also certain parts of your body, are conscious. These parts might include your brain, your head, all-of-you-except-your-left-pinky, all-of-your-brain-except-one-neuron, or your left cerebral hemisphere. A second version poses the threat of conscious coinciders, things that currently occupy the same spatial region as you and share all your matter. Its key premise is that if physicalism is true, then not only you, but also some things that currently coincide with you, are conscious. These might include your body or the aggregate of particles of which you are currently composed. A third version poses the threat of conscious person candidates, the many human-body-shaped material objects in your vicinity that mostly overlap one another, differing only in a few peripheral atoms. This version claims that if physicalism is true, then there are many conscious person-candidates in your vicinity. -/- . (shrink)

Brian C. Ribeiro’s _Sextus, Montaigne, Hume: Pyrrhonizers_ invites us to view the Pyrrhonist tradition as involving all those who share a commitment to the activity of Pyrrhonizing and develops fresh, provocative readings of Sextus, Montaigne, and Hume as radical Pyrrhonizing skeptics.

Predictive algorithms are playing an increasingly prominent role in society, being used to predict recidivism, loan repayment, job performance, and so on. With this increasing influence has come an increasing concern with the ways in which they might be unfair or biased against individuals in virtue of their race, gender, or, more generally, their group membership. Many purported criteria of algorithmic fairness concern statistical relationships between the algorithm’s predictions and the actual outcomes, for instance requiring that the rate of false (...) positives be equal across the relevant groups. We might seek to ensure that algorithms satisfy all of these purported fairness criteria. But a series of impossibility results shows that this is impossible, unless base rates are equal across the relevant groups. What are we to make of these pessimistic results? I argue that none of the purported criteria, except for a calibration criterion, are necessary conditions for fairness, on the grounds that they can all be simultaneously violated by a manifestly fair and uniquely optimal predictive algorithm, even when base rates are equal. I conclude with some general reflections on algorithmic fairness. (shrink)

Have you ever thought about how self-consciousness (self-awareness) originated in the universe? Understanding consciousness is one of the toughest "nuts to crack." In recent years, scientists and philosophers have attempted to provide an answer to this mystery. The reason for this is simply because it cannot be confined to solely a materialistic interpretation of the world. Some scientific materialists have suggested that consciousness is merely an illusion in order to insulate their worldviews. Yet, consciousness is the most fundamental thing we (...) know, even more so than the external world since we require it to perceive or think about anything. Without it, reasoning would be impossible. Dr. Scott Ventureyra, in this ground-breaking book, explores the idea of the Christian God and Creation in order to tackle this most difficult question. He demonstrates that theology has something significant to offer in reflection of how consciousness originated in the universe. He also makes a modest claim that the Christian conception of God and Creation provide a plausible account for the origin of self-consciousness. He integrates philosophy, theology, and science in an innovative way to embark on this exploration. (shrink)

Value pluralists believe in multiple dimensions of value. What does betterness along a dimension have to do with being better overall? Any systematic answer begins with the Strong Pareto principle: one thing is overall better than another if it is better along one dimension and at least as good along all others. We defend Strong Pareto from recent counterexamples and use our discussion to develop a novel view of dimensions of value, one which puts Strong Pareto on firmer footing. We (...) conclude by defending Dimensionalism, the hypothesis that overall value relations are determined solely by how things compare along value dimensions. These are first steps towards a more systematic value pluralism. (shrink)