Philosophical Adventures
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Curriculum Vitae
BAS C. VAN FRAASSEN Curriculum Vitae Last updated 3/6/2019 I. Personal and Academic History .................................................................................................................... 1 List of Degrees Earned ........................................................................................................................................................ 1 Title of Ph.D. Thesis ........................................................................................................................................................... 1 Positions held ..................................................................................................................................................................... 1 Invited lectures and lecture series ........................................................................................................................................ 1 List of Honors, Prizes ......................................................................................................................................................... 4 Research Grants .................................................................................................................................................................. 4 Non-Academic Publications ................................................................................................................................................ 5 II. Professional Activities ................................................................................................................................. -
Philosophy in Biology and Medicine: Biological Individuality and Fetal Parthood, Part I
Oslo, Norway July 7–12, 2019 ISHP SS B BOOK OF ABSTRACTS 2 Index 11 Keynote lectures 17 Diverse format sessions 47 Traditional sessions 367 Individual papers 637 Mixed media and poster presentations A Aaby, Bendik Hellem, 369 Barbosa, Thiago Pinto, 82 Abbott, Jessica, 298 Barker, Matthew, 149 Abir-Am, Pnina Geraldine, 370 Barragán, Carlos Andrés, 391 D’Abramo, Flavio, 371 Battran, Martin, 158 Abrams, Marshall, 372 Bausman, William, 129, 135 Acerbi, Alberto, 156 Baxter, Janella, 56, 57 Ackert, Lloyd, 185 Bayir, Saliha, 536 Agiriano, Arantza Etxeberria, 374 Beasley, Charles, 392 Ahn, Soohyun, 148 Bechtel, William, 259 El Aichouchi, Adil, 375 Bedau, Mark, 393 Airoldi, Giorgio, 376 Ben-Shachar, Erela Teharlev, 395 Allchin, Douglas, 377 Beneduce, Chiara, 396 Allen, Gar, 328 Berry, Dominic, 56, 58 Almeida, Maria Strecht, 377 Bertoldi, Nicola, 397 Amann, Bernd, 40 Betzler, Riana, 398 Andersen, Holly, 19, 20 Bich, Leonardo, 41 Anderson, Gemma, 28 LeBihan, Soazig, 358 Angleraux, Caroline, 378 Birch, Jonathan, 22 Ankeny, Rachel A., 225 Bix, Amy Sue, 399 Anker, Peder, 230 Blais, Cédric, 401 Ardura, Adrian Cerda, 380 Blancke, Stefaan, 609 Armstrong-Ingram, Tiernan, 381 Blell, Mwenza, 488 Arnet, Evan, 383 Blute, Marion, 59, 62 Artiga, Marc, 383 Bognon-Küss, Cécilia, 23 Atanasova, Nina, 20, 21 Bokulich, Alisa, 616 Au, Yin Chung, 384 Bollhagen, Andrew, 402 DesAutels, Lane, 386 Bondarenko, Olesya, 403 Aylward, Alex, 109 Bonilla, Jorge Armando Romo, 404 B Baccelliere, Gabriel Vallejos, 387 Bonnin, Thomas, 405 Baedke, Jan, 49, 50 Boon, Mieke, 235 Baetu, -
2 Tracing the Development of Structural Realism
1 2 TRACING THE DEVELOPMENT OF STRUCTURAL REALISM Ioannis Votsis 1. Introduction This chapter traces the development of structural realism within the scientific realism debate and the wider current of structuralism that has swept the philosophy of the natural sciences in the twentieth century. 1 The primary aim is to make perspicuous the many manifestations of structural realism and their underlying claims. Among other things, I will compare structural realism’s various manifestations in order to throw more light onto the relations between them. At the end of the chapter, I will identify the main objections raised against the epistemic form of structural realism. This last task will pave the way for the evaluation of the structural realist answer to the main epistemological question, an evaluation that will be central to the rest of this dissertation. Generally construed, structuralism is a point of view that emphasises the importance of relations. It takes the structure, i.e. the nexus of relations, of a given domain of interest to be the foremost goal of research and holds that an understanding of the subject matter has to be, and most successfully is, achieved in structural terms. The following quote from Redhead (2001a) nicely conveys this intuition: “Informally a structure is a system of related elements, and structuralism is a point of view which focuses attention on the relations between the elements as distinct from the elements themselves”(74). This vision has shaped research programmes in fields as diverse as mathematics, linguistics, literary criticism, aesthetics, anthropology, psychology, and philosophy of science. It is the last-mentioned that I am concerned with in this chapter. -
Robert Klee and the Latest Face of Scientific Realism P. Kyle Stanford
Pergamon Stud. Hist. Phil. Sci., Vol. 30, No. 2, pp. 367–375, 1999 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved Printed in Great Britain 0039-3681/99 $ - see front matter Essay Review Preaching to the Choir? Robert Klee and the Latest Face of Scientific Realism P. Kyle Stanford* Robert Klee, Introduction to the Philosophy of Science: Cutting Nature at its Seams (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), xi ϩ 258 pp., ISBN 0- 19-5106113, paperback. Perhaps the most important point to make about Robert Klee’s recent Introduc- tion to the Philosophy of Science: Cutting Nature at its Seams is that we need many more books like it: it is an engaging, accessible and comprehensive introduc- tory text in the philosophy of science which manages to avoid sailing over the head of the beginner philosophy student without talking down to the working pro- fessional. I suspect that many teachers of the philosophy of science will, along with their students, find something in this book to stimulate their own thinking about the subject. Despite its many strengths, however, the book’s central strategy of argument is, as we shall see, compromised by a fundamental weakness. One particularly impressive feature of the text is its effective use of immunology as a case study. Klee’s first chapter presents the basics of immunological science, and it serves him well as a constant source of illustration throughout the text. As Klee notes, this pedagogical strategy avoids the traditional exclusive focus on the (sometimes idiosyncratic) features of physics. Far more importantly, however, it avoids the classic philosopher’s mistake of testing accounts of science against a high-school textbook reconstruction of scientific activity, rather than the sophisticated, complex, richly detailed and messy business in which real science consists. -
Objectivity in the Feminist Philosophy of Science
OBJECTIVITY IN THE FEMINIST PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requisites for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By Karen Cordrick Haely, M.A. ***** The Ohio State University 2003 Dissertation Committee: Approved by Professor Louise M. Antony, Adviser Professor Donald C. Hubin _______________________ Professor George Pappas Adviser Philosophy Graduate Program ABSTRACT According to a familiar though naïve conception, science is a rigorously neutral enterprise, free from social and cultural influence, but more sophisticated philosophical views about science have revealed that cultural and personal interests and values are ubiquitous in scientific practice, and thus ought not be ignored when attempting to understand, describe and prescribe proper behavior for the practice of science. Indeed, many theorists have argued that cultural and personal interests and values must be present in science (and knowledge gathering in general) in order to make sense of the world. The concept of objectivity has been utilized in the philosophy of science (as well as in epistemology) as a way to discuss and explore the various types of social and cultural influence that operate in science. The concept has also served as the focus of debates about just how much neutrality we can or should expect in science. This thesis examines feminist ideas regarding how to revise and enrich the concept of objectivity, and how these suggestions help achieve both feminist and scientific goals. Feminists offer us warnings about “idealized” concepts of objectivity, and suggest that power can play a crucial role in determining which research programs get labeled “objective”. -
Models, Perspectives, and Scientific Realism
MODELS, PERSPECTIVES, AND SCIENTIFIC REALISM: ON RONALD GIERE'S PERSPECTIVAL REALISM A thesis submitted to Kent State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts by Brian R. Huth May, 2014 Thesis written by Brian R. Huth B.A., Kent State University 2012 M.A., Kent State University 2014 Approved by Frank X. Ryan, Advisor Linda Williams, Chair, Department of Philosophy James L. Blank, Dean, College of Arts and Sciences ii TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS................................................................................................. iv INTRODUCTION............................................................................................................... 1 CHAPTER I. FROM THE RECEIVED VIEW TO THE MODEL-THEORETIC VIEW........................................................................................................... 7 Section 1.1.................................................................................................... 9 Section 1.2.................................................................................................... 16 II. RONALD GIERE'S CONSTRUCTIVISM AND PERSPECTIVAL REALISM.................................................................................................... 25 Section 2.1.................................................................................................... 25 Section 2.2.................................................................................................... 31 Section 2.3................................................................................................... -
Twisting the Tale of Human Evolution
COMMENT BOOKS & ARTS details the evolutionary analysis of human mating patterns, showing that monogamous mating goes way back. Human childhood is long compared with that of our ape relatives, and the palaeofantasy explanation is that cognitive development necessitates a long childhood. Zuk runs through extensive data on the supply side, establishing the credibil- ity of the alternative hypothesis that humans have maintained high rates of reproduction MUSEUM, LONDON/SPL HISTORY NATURAL by reducing maternal energy investment in children, instead recruiting grandparents and other relatives to help care for them. There are other such examples. Many clear cases of recent adaptation show that natu- ral selection has kept pace with some rapid environmental shifts. For example, malaria has induced dozens of genetic adaptations in tropical peoples during the past few thou- A recreation of a Neanderthal hunting party in prehistoric Britain. sand years. And diets in the late Pleistocene epoch, which came to a close about 11,700 EVOLUTIONARY BIOLOGY years ago, were very diverse; Neanderthals, for instance, noshed on cooked grains. With advances in our understanding of the global human population and the rapidly shifting Twisting the tale of climates of the most recent glaciation, no single model can encompass this diversity. There are a few real mismatches among human evolution the fake ones Zuk highlights. Diet is one. Pleistocene people did not rely on large John Hawks enjoys a debunking of myths about our stored harvests of starchy grains, fatty meat evolutionary fitness for the twenty-first century. and milk from domesticated animals, or processed sugars — all of which are among the causes of the obesity, type 2 diabetes and dvances in medicine and psychology to feet, legs and backs metabolic syndrome that are so prevalent may be stunning, but why is human- are rife among run- today. -
Fehr, “What Is in It for Me? the Benefits of Diversity in Scientific
Chapter 7 What Is in It for Me? The Benefits of Diversity in Scientific Communities Carla Fehr Abstract I investigate the reciprocal relationship between social accounts of knowledge production and efforts to increase the representation of women and some minorities in the academy. In particular, I consider the extent to which femi- nist social epistemologies such as Helen Longino’s critical contextual empiricism can be employed to argue that it is in researchers’ epistemic interest to take active steps to increase gender diversity. As it stands, critical contextual empiricism does not provide enough resources to succeed at this task. However, considering this view through an employment equity lens highlights areas where such theories need to be further developed. I argue that views such as Longino’s ought to attend to nuances of community structure and cultural features that inhibit critical social interactions, if we are to maximize the epistemic as well as the ethical improvements associated with a social approach to knowing. These developments advance these epistemic theories for their own sake. They also help develop these theories into a tool that can be used by those calling for increased diversity in the academy. Keywords Feminist philosophy of science • Social epistemology • Implicit bias • Employment equity • Workplace environment issues 7.1 What Is in It for Me? A while ago I gave a lecture to science faculty members and university administrators regarding the underrepresentation of women and minorities in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields.1 After my talk, an administrator, with 1 In this paper I am primarily focusing on gender diversity. -
The Pragmatics of Explanation: Remarks on Van Fraassen's Theory of Why-Questions1
The Pragmatics of explanation: Remarks on van Fraassen’s theory of why-questions1 A Pragmática da explicação: Comentários sobre a teoria das questões-por-quê de van Fraassen Renato Cesar Cani Universidade Federal do Paraná – UFPR/CAPES – Brasil [email protected] Abstract: In this article, my aim is to analyze Bas van Fraassen’s pragmatic solution to two of the traditional problems concerning scientific explanation, namely, rejection and asymmetry. According to his view, an explanation is an answer to some request for information. The emergence of a question, as well as the evaluation of the explanations adduced, depends on considerations about contextual factors. In addition, I will evaluate the pertinence of objections raised by Philip Kitcher and Wesley Salmon against van Fraassen’s account. I will argue that their charge is not sound, for it actually misunderstands the role played by context in van Fraassen’s account. Although Salmon’s and Kitcher’s realist commitments motivate the point made by them, I will hold that a pragmatic account of explanation does not commit one to an anti-realist approach to science. Keywords: Pragmatics of Explanation. Bas van Fraassen. Why-questions. Asymmetry. Realism. Resumo: Neste artigo, meu objetivo é analisar a solução pragmática oferecida por Bas van Fraassen a dois dos tradicionais problemas da explicação científica, quais sejam, o da rejeição e o da assimetria. Em sua visão, uma explicação é uma resposta a alguma demanda por informação. O surgimento de uma questão, bem como a avaliação das possíveis explicações, depende de fatores contextuais. Além disso, avaliarei a pertinência das objeções de Philip Kitcher e Wesley Salmon contra a concepção de van Fraassen. -
Empiricism, Stances, and the Problem of Voluntarism
Swarthmore College Works Philosophy Faculty Works Philosophy 1-1-2011 Empiricism, Stances, And The Problem Of Voluntarism Peter Baumann Swarthmore College, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://works.swarthmore.edu/fac-philosophy Part of the Philosophy Commons Let us know how access to these works benefits ouy Recommended Citation Peter Baumann. (2011). "Empiricism, Stances, And The Problem Of Voluntarism". Synthese. Volume 178, Issue 1. 27-36. DOI: 10.1007/s11229-009-9519-7 https://works.swarthmore.edu/fac-philosophy/13 This work is brought to you for free by Swarthmore College Libraries' Works. It has been accepted for inclusion in Philosophy Faculty Works by an authorized administrator of Works. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Empiricism, Stances and the Problem of Voluntarism Peter Baumann Synthese 178, 2011, 207-224 Empiricism can be very roughly characterized as the view that our knowledge about the world is based on sensory experience. Our knowledge about the world is "based" on sensory experience in the sense that we could not know what we know without relying on sense experience. This leaves open the possibility that sense experience is only necessary but not sufficient for the knowledge based upon it1-as long as the non-empirical elements are not themselves sufficient for the relevant piece of knowledge.2 The basing relation is not just a genetic one but also a justificatory one: Sense experience does not only lead to beliefs which happen to count as knowledge but also qualifies them as knowledge. In his important book The Empirical Stance Bas van Fraassen characterizes traditional empiricism at one point in a more negative way-as involving the rejection of "metaphysical" explanations which proceed by postulating the existence of something not 1 "But although all our cognition commences with experience, yet it does not on that account all arise from experience." (Kant, CpR, B1). -
Toward an Engaged Account of Objectivity: Contributions from Early Phenomenology
Toward an Engaged Account of Objectivity: Contributions from Early Phenomenology Author: Amanda Gibeault Persistent link: http://hdl.handle.net/2345/730 This work is posted on eScholarship@BC, Boston College University Libraries. Boston College Electronic Thesis or Dissertation, 2009 Copyright is held by the author, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise noted. ! ∀# ∃%∃&∋ ∃! ∃∀( )&∗ ( ) & + ( ∃ !) + , −../ 0 +( ∃ !) −../ ! ∀# ∃%∃&∋ ∃! ∃∀( )&∗ ( ) & + ∃ 1∃2 +321 45 6∃ 45 +1 ++ 72 1 18 +426∃ 8 6∀1∃ 54 2+326∃ 72+321 45 61∃ 1 +326 5 5 + 2+ 9215 5+ +326 1∃ 2 ∗) :815 +32 ,6∗ 1+, 2 6∃2 54 ;15 ∃∗ 6∀1∃+ +81 22251 +326 251 ,+325 2214 281+121 ,6∃ 1∃ + 5 +326 ! ∀ #∃ % ∀ &∋( ) ∗ ∀ %+ ∀ %, %∀ % ∃ %− +∀ + +% ,∀ . +, /∀ 0 +− ∀ 1 23 +4 %∀ . 5 . 6 +! +∀ ∃ 7 8 8 9 ,: ,∀ 3 3; , −∀ 3 6 < 3 ,% /∀ / ,+ ∀ & 3 ,+ %∀ 6∋ . ,∗ +∀ = ∃ >1 2 −% 3 ∀ ( ∃ −, ∀ −∗ ,∀ / −! /∀ 4% % 3 4, ∀ 6 & 4∗ ∀ ? 4∗ %∀ 6 4≅ +∀ 0 . ∗: ,∀ 6∃ 3 6 ∗ ∀ 1 ? 0 & ∗, ∀ ? !− /∀ 7 <∃ 8> 8& ≅, /∀ :+ + ; 3 :4 ∀ ; 3 0 :∗ ∀ Α . ∃ . :! ∋ %∀ 76;1 81 8 % 1 ∀ ; 3 − ∀ ∋ 8∃85 − %∀ 7 5 ∃ ∗ +∀ ; 3 %∗ ,∀ +: ∀ 1 6 +− ∀ 6 +4 %∀ 6 ,: +∀ =3 , ,∀ 6 ; 3 ,% /∀ ,4 ,∃?(6 −: ∀ 6 6 −% ∀ 4: ∀ ∗: ∀ ∗: %∀ ∗− /∀ = ∗≅ ∀ = ∗≅ %∀ = ! +∀ & = !− /∀ 3) 3 !! ∀ 6 ≅% /∀ 6 ≅, /∀ ≅∗ − 6 ≅! ∀ 0 %: ∀ .∃ %:− ∀ %:− %∀ % +∀ = 6∃ %+ ,∀ 66 %≅ -
1 a Tale of Two Interpretations
Notes 1 A Tale of Two Interpretations 1. As Georges Dicker puts it, “Hume’s influence on contemporary epistemology and metaphysics is second to none ... ” (1998, ix). Note, too, that Hume’s impact extends beyond philosophy. For consider the following passage from Einstein’s letter to Moritz Schlick: Your representations that the theory of rel. [relativity] suggests itself in positivism, yet without requiring it, are also very right. In this also you saw correctly that this line of thought had a great influence on my efforts, and more specifically, E. Mach, and even more so Hume, whose Treatise of Human Nature I had studied avidly and with admiration shortly before discovering the theory of relativity. It is very possible that without these philosophical studies I would not have arrived at the solution (Einstein 1998, 161). 2. For a brief overview of Hume’s connection to naturalized epistemology, see Morris (2008, 472–3). 3. For the sake of convenience, I sometimes refer to the “traditional reading of Hume as a sceptic” as, e.g., “the sceptical reading of Hume” or simply “the sceptical reading”. Moreover, I often refer to those who read Hume as a sceptic as, e.g., “the sceptical interpreters of Hume” or “the sceptical inter- preters”. By the same token, I sometimes refer to those who read Hume as a naturalist as, e.g., “the naturalist interpreters of Hume” or simply “the natu- ralist interpreters”. And the reading that the naturalist interpreters support I refer to as, e.g., “the naturalist reading” or “the naturalist interpretation”. 4. This is not to say, though, that dissenting voices were entirely absent.