Robustness is a common platitude: hypotheses are better supported with evidence generated by multiple techniques that rely on different background assumptions. Robustness has been put to numerous epistemic tasks, including the demarcation of artifacts from real entities, countering the “experimenter’s regress,” and resolving evidential discordance. Despite the frequency of appeals to robustness, the notion itself has received scant critique. Arguments based on robustness can give incorrect conclusions. More worrying is that although robustness may be valuable in ideal evidential circumstances (i.e., (...) when evidence is concordant), often when a variety of evidence is available from multiple techniques, the evidence is discordant. †To contact the author, please write to: Jacob Stegenga, Department of Philosophy, University of California, San Diego, 9500 Gilman Drive, La Jolla, CA 92093; e‐mail: [email protected]. (shrink)

As more and more historians acknowledge the central signifcance of science and technology with that of modern society, the need for a good, general history of the achievements of the Scientific Revolution has grown. Scientific Culture and The Making of the Industrial West seeks to explain this historical process by looking at how and why scientific knowledge became such an integral part of the culture of Europe in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and how this in turn lead to the (...) Industrial Revolution. This comparative study not only looks at England, and its success, but follows through with the history of France, the Netherlands, and Germany. (shrink)

Thought-provoking essays on science as an integral part of the culture of our age from a leader in the scientific humanism movement. "A profoundly moving, brilliantly perceptive essay by a truly civilized man."--Scientific American.

What theory should we accept from the practical point of view, or accept as a basis for guiding our actions, if we don’t know which theory is true, and if there are too many plausible alternative theories for us to take them all into consideration? This question is the theme of the first three parts of this dissertation. I argue that the problem of theory acceptance, so understood, is a problem of practical rationality, and hence that the appropriate grounds for (...) theory acceptance are practical considerations. I argue for a number of principles of theory acceptance, and I explore the implications of these principles for the acceptance both of descriptive theories and evaluative theories. (shrink)

I present a new argument for the repugnant conclusion. The core of the argument is a risky, intrapersonal analogue of the mere addition paradox. The argument is important for three reasons. First, some solutions to Parfit’s original puzzle do not obviously generalize to the intrapersonal puzzle in a plausible way. Second, it raises independently important questions about how to make decisions under uncertainty for the sake of people whose existence might depend on what we do. And, third, it suggests various (...) difficulties for leading views about the value of a person’s life compared to her nonexistence. (shrink)

The central aims of this paper are to show how linguistic corpora have been used and can be used in philosophy and to argue that linguistic corpora and corpus analysis should be added to the philosopher’s toolkit of ways to address philosophical questions. A linguistic corpus is a curated collection of texts representing language use that can be queried to answer research questions. Among many other uses, linguistic corpora can help answer questions about the meaning of words and the structure (...) of discourse. Through a discussion of examples, the paper shows that there are many philosophical questions that can be addressed by using a linguistic corpus. However, linguistic corpora need not (and often cannot) replace traditional philosophical methods. Lastly, it argues that the special properties of linguistic corpora, including their independence and the current ease and cheapness of access, make them an indispensable resource for philosophers. (shrink)

Our world is complex—it is composed of many interacting parts—and this complexity poses a serious difficulty for theorists of social reform. On the one hand, we cannot merely work out ways of ameliorating immediate problems of injustice, because the solutions we generate may interact to set back the achievement of overall long-term justice. On the other, we cannot supplement such problem solving with theorizing about how to make progress towards a long-term goal of ideal justice, because the very interactions that (...) render problem solving unsatisfactory raise insurmountable epistemic difficulties for this latter approach. To accommodate complexity, we must therefore give up on ideal theory, and instead supplement problem solving with a new sort of theorizing that aims to work out how to make our institutional arrangements more progressive: more conducive to further improvements in general, though not necessarily to the achievement of any antecedently specified goal. More concretely, we must identify ways of improving our capacity to flexibly experiment with many promising solutions to problems as they arise, to select for those solutions that prove successful while eliminating those that do not, and to learn from both our successes and our inevitable failures. (shrink)

This paper reports laboratory data for games that are played only once. These games span the standard categories: static and dynamic games with complete and incomplete information. For each game, the treasure is a treatment in which behavior conforms nicely to predictions of the Nash equilibrium or relevant refinement. In each case, however, a change in the payoff structure produces a large inconsistency between theoretical predictions and observed behavior. These contradictions are generally consistent with simple intuition based on the interaction (...) of payoff asymmetries and noisy introspection about others’ decisions. (shrink)

Science and technology are so intertwined that technoscience has been argued to more accurately reflect the progress of science and its impact on society, and most socioscientific issues require technoscientific reasoning. Education policy documents have long noted that the general public lacks sufficient understanding of science and technology necessary for informed decision-making regarding socioscientific/technological issues. The science–technology–society movement and scholarship addressing socioscientific issues in science education reflect efforts in the science education community to promote more informed decision-making regarding such issues. (...) Now Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics education has emerged as a major reform movement impacting science education. STEM education efforts emphasize literacy across the disciplines of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, but with rare exceptions, treat issues of technology superficially and uncritically. Informed decision-making regarding many personal and societal issues requires technological literacy beyond merely becoming an enthusiastic designer or skilled user of technology, but the science education community has given little attention to what such literacy entails. Here, we present results of an extensive review of the literature regarding the nature of technology in order to identify key issues among scholars who study technology. We then provide predominant perspectives among those scholars and suggest which identified NOT issues are most essential to address as part of STEM education efforts that seek to promote informed personal and societal decision-making. (shrink)

Wigner's quantum-mechanical classification of particle-types in terms of irreducible representations of the Poincaré group has a classical analogue, which we extend in this paper. We study the compactness properties of the resulting phase spaces at fixed energy, and show that in order for a classical massless particle to be physically sensible, its phase space must feature a classical-particle counterpart of electromagnetic gauge invariance. By examining the connection between massless and massive particles in the massless limit, we also derive a classical-particle (...) version of the Higgs mechanism. (shrink)

Over de vraag hoe geloof en verstand zich onderling verhouden, bestaat geen communis opinio; ook in het verleden is die er nooit geweest. Integendeel, de filosofiehistorie vertoont een complexe verscheidenheid van opvattingen. In dit artikel heb ik deze geordend in een beperkt aantal grondschema’s of grondmodellen. Ik breng zeven van die grondmodellen ter sprake, en duid ze kortweg aan met de termen identificatie, conflict, subordinatie, complementariteit, fundering, authenticiteit en transformatie. Mijn analyse laat zien hoe deze modellen, eenmaal present op het (...) publieke forum, zich blijvend doen gelden, tot op de dag van vandaag. Hun sterke en zwakke kanten dagen ons uit tot een eigen standpuntbepaling in het debat over religie en rede. (shrink)

This article begins with a review of studies in perception and depth psychology concerning the experience of exposure to sacred artworks in Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox contexts. This follows with the results of a qualitative inquiry involving 45 Roman Catholic, Eastern and Coptic Orthodox, and Protestant Christians in Canada. First, participants composed narratives detailing memories of spiritual experiences involving iconography. Then, in the context of a darkened room evocative of a sacred space, they viewed artworks depicting Biblical themes and (...) interpreted their meanings. Stimuli included “Western” paintings from the Roman tradition—a selection from the Gothic, Northern Renaissance, and Renaissance canon—and matched “Eastern” icons in the Byzantine style. Spiritual experience narratives were analyzed in terms of word frequencies, and interpretations of sacred artworks were analyzed thematically. Catholics tended to utilize emotional language when recalling their spiritual experiences, while religious activity was most often the concern of Protestants, and Orthodox Christians wrote most about spiritual figures and their signifiers. A taxonomy of response styles was developed to account for participants’ interpretations of Western and Eastern artworks, with content ranging from detached descriptions to projective engagement with the art-objects. Our approach allows for representation of diverse Christians’ interpretations of sacred art, taking into consideration personal, collective, and cultural-religious sources of meaning. Our paradigm also offers to enrich our understanding of the numinous or emotional dimension of mystical contact. (shrink)

Currently, the most popular views about how to update de se or self-locating beliefs entail the one-third solution to the Sleeping Beauty problem.2 Another widely held view is that an agent‘s credences should be countably additive.3 In what follows, I will argue that there is a deep tension between these two positions. For the assumptions that underlie the one-third solution to the Sleeping Beauty problem entail a more general principle, which I call the Generalized Thirder Principle, and there are situations (...) in which the latter principle and the principle of Countable Additivity cannot be jointly satisfied. The most plausible response to this tension, I argue, is to accept both of these principles, and to maintain that when an agent cannot satisfy them both, she is faced with a rational dilemma. (shrink)

Abstract: Laudan (1984) distinguishes between two senses of success for scientific theories: (i) that a particular theory is successful, and (ii) that the methods for picking out approximately true theories are successful. These two senses of success are reflected in two different ways that the no miracles argument for scientific realism (NMA) may be set out. First, I set out a (traditional) version of NMA that considers the success of particular theories. I then consider a more recent formulation of NMA (...) (Psillos, 1999). This version of NMA is aimed at making us believe that our methods for picking out approximately true theories are reliable. I shall argue that the success of the latter argument is dependent on the success of the first. Therefore, even though Psillos presents a new formulation of NMA, the evidential support for it is no stronger than the evidential support for the original version. (shrink)

Enhanced indispensability arguments claim that Scientific Realists are committed to the existence of mathematical entities due to their reliance on Inference to the best explanation. Our central question concerns this purported parity of reasoning: do people who defend the EIA make an appropriate use of the resources of Scientific Realism to achieve platonism? We argue that just because a variety of different inferential strategies can be employed by Scientific Realists does not mean that ontological conclusions concerning which things we should (...) be Scientific Realists about are arrived at by any inferential route which eschews causes, and nor is there any direct pressure for Scientific Realists to change their inferential methods. We suggest that in order to maintain inferential parity with Scientific Realism, proponents of EIA need to give details about how and in what way the presence of mathematical entities directly contribute to explanations. (shrink)

In this article, part of a symposium on David Miller's Global Justice and National Responsibility, I first focus on an area of disagreement: Miller‘s attempt to attribute to nations responsibility that I think ought to be generally attributed to states. I then sketch a theory that disregards nations more or less completely, and yet issues in a two-level theory like Miller‘s, sanctioning important differences between intrastate and interstate distribution. It is only like Miller‘s, because the distinction between states and nations (...) is one with a very real difference indeed. Moreover, I think that Miller aims to build up the moral and historical prestige of the nation-state to make it a viable competitor with the claims of universal morality, whereas I will engage in a kind of deflation that teaches us not to expect contingent forms of political organization to instantiate great moral truths. But this results in an account that is perhaps more like his than either is like cosmopolitanism visions, whether egalitarian or libertarian. (shrink)

Introduction Wilhelm Dilthey's name is most often linked with the title of a nonexistent book: Critique of Historical Reason. Although he never published a ...

In engaging five of Plato's dialogues—Theaetetus, Euthyphro, Cratylus, Sophist, and Statesman—and by paying particular attention to Socrates' intellectual defense in the "philosophic trial" by the Stranger from Elea, Jacob Howland illuminates Plato's understanding of the proper relationship between philosophy and politics. This insightful and innovative study illustrates the Plato's understanding of the difference between sophistry and philosophy, and it identifies the innate contradictions of political philosophy that Plato observed and remain entrenched within the field to this day. This is (...) essential reading for anyone interested in the past, present, and future of political philosophy. (shrink)

Three ethical conflicts in particular are paradigmatic of what we define as “clerkship ethics.” First, a distinction that differentiates the clerkship student from the practicing physician involves the student’s principal role as a learner. The clerkship student must skillfully balance her commitment to her own education against her commitment to patient care in a fashion that may compromise patient care. While the practicing physician can often resolve the tension between these two goods when they come into conflict, the clerkship student (...) is left with a more ambiguous set of choices. Second, evaluative scrutiny during clinical clerkships often forces medical students to balance doing what is morally fitting against the perceived expectations of the medical teams in which they work. Third and finally, a deeply entrenched culture of medical hierarchy presents a particular challenge to innovation and improvement in ethics education during the clerkship years. Students regard faculty as exemplars, but are not provided with the tools to assess when technical medical competence is not matched by moral competence; moreover, these faculty are unlikely to have experienced the ethics education in which students are asked to demonstrate mastery. (shrink)

Parfit argues that a form of rule consequentialism can be derived from the most plausible formulation of the fundamental principle of Kantian ethics. And so he concludes that Kantians should be consequentialists. I argue that we have good reason to reject two of the auxiliary premises that figure in Parfit's derivation of rule consequentialism from Kantianism. 1.

ArgumentRecurring economic crises, like the one of 2007-2008, led to criticism of economic research and a demand to develop new strategies to avoid them. Standard economic theories use conventional approaches to deal with economic challenges, heterodox theories try to develop alternatives with which to face them. It remains unclear whether the 2007-2008 crisis led to a change in economic research as well as to a consideration of alternative approaches. We used co-word analysis to map the structure of economic research in (...) Germany between 2005 and 2014. Core topics within economic research, such as “market” or “production” hardly shift and can be linked to standard economic theories. Peripheral topics such as “inequality” or “unemployment” show greater dynamics. However, only a few of these topics can be linked to heterodox approaches. Certain changes have occurred in reaction to the 2007-2008 crisis. However, the unchanged importance of standard economic topics raises the question whether these changes are sufficient to face coming economic challenges. (shrink)

Le travail d’identification, de reclassement et d’enregistrement informatique des fragments de la réserve du nouveau musée de l’Acropole ainsi que l’étude de nombreux fragments déposés jusqu’ici dans des caisses en bois a permis la matérialisation d’une quarantaine de raccords, en particulier sur des statues archaïques, dont les plus significatifs sont publiés ici. Certains complètent, parfois de manière substantielle, des oeuvres connues (chien Acr. 143, cavalier Acr. 700, géant Acr. 631C). Une «nouvelle » corè (Acr. 588) a aussi été recomposée. L’article (...) illustre l’intérêt et l’utilité de l’étude systématique des fragments, même des plus modestes. (shrink)

Many just war theorists (call them traditionalists) claim that just as people have a right to personal self-defense, so nations have a right to national-defense against an aggressive military invasion. David Rodin claims that the traditionalist is unable to justify most defensive wars against aggression. For most aggressive states only commit conditional aggression in that they threaten to kill or maim the citizens of the nation they are invading only if those citizens resist the occupation. Most wars, then, claimed to (...) be justified by the traditionalist fail to meet the proportionality criterion. Thus, a just war, for Rodin, is best conceived of as a punitive war of law enforcement, not as a war of national-defense. I argue that Rodin does not have a case against the traditionalist. If national-defense is a disproportionate response to conditional aggression, then punitive war is a disproportionate response as well. Furthermore, the belief that punitive war is a proportionate response to conditional aggression underscores the traditionalist’s view that self-determination, cultural identity and the like are of sufficient value to defend by means of lethal force. I end the paper by very briefly sketching an account, different from that of Rodin’s, of how individual nations can be justified in waging wars of law enforcement. (shrink)

Many take the claim that you cannot ‘get’ an ‘ought’ from an ‘is’ to imply that non- moral beliefs are by themselves incapable of justifying moral beliefs. I argue that this is a mistake and that the position that moral beliefs are justified exclusively by non-moral beliefs—a view that I call moral inferentialism—presents an attractive non-sceptical moral epistemology.

The underdetermination of theory by data argument (UD) is traditionally construed as an argument that tells us that we ought to favour an anti-realist position over a realist position. I argue that when UD is constructed as an argument saying that theory choice is to proceed between theories that are empirically equivalent and adequate to the phenomena up until now, the argument will not favour constructive empiricism over realism. A constructive empiricist cannot account for why scientists are reasonable in expecting (...) one theory to be empirically adequate rather than another, given the criteria he suggests for theory choice. (shrink)

"A gem of enlightenment.... One rejoices in Bronowski's dedication to the identity of acts of creativity and of imagination, whether in Blake or Yeats or Einstein or Heisenberg."--Kirkus Reviews "According to Bronowski, our account of the world is dictated by our biology: how we perceive, imagine, symbolize, etc. He proposes to explain how we receive and translate our experience of the world so that we achieve knowledge. He examines the mechanisms of our perception; the origin and nature of natural language; (...) formal systems and scientific discourse; and how science, as a systematic attempt to establish closed systems one after another, progresses by exploring its own errors and new but unforeseen connections.... A delightful look at the inquiring mind."--Library Journal "Eminently enjoyable to read, with a good story or 'bon mot' on every page."--Nature "A well-written and brilliantly presented defense of the scientific enterprise which could be especially valuable to scientists and to teachers of science at all levels."--AAAS Science Books & Films Contents 1. The Mind as an Instrument for Understanding 2. The Evolution and Power of Symbolic Language 3. Knowledge as Algorithm and as Metaphor 4. The Laws of Nature and the Nature of Laws 5. Error, Progress, and the Concept of Time 6. Law and Individual Responsibility. (shrink)

For most of the century and a half that began roughly with the later works of John Stuart Mill, the most important divide within liberal political thought was that between classical liberalism and welfare liberalism. The questions that were important to the socialist/liberal debate also became important for debates within liberalism: What is the relationship between property and freedom? Between free trade and freedom? Is freedom of commercial activity on a moral par with other sorts of freedom? Is the alleviation (...) of poverty or material need a more important political goal than freedom? How do freedom and equality fit together in a liberal understanding of justice? What degree of state economic planning, or state taxation and expenditure, is compatible with liberal freedom? (shrink)

Essays defending the human claim to have a mind.

The revised classic on the professional and legal standards of school psychology This completely updated edition of the leading ethics and law guide provides ...

An emphasis on explanatory contribution is central to a recent formulation of the indispensability argument for mathematical realism. Because scientific realism is argued for by means of inference to the best explanation, it has been further argued that being a scientific realist entails a commitment to IA and thus to mathematical realism. It has, however, gone largely unnoticed that the way that IBE is argued to be truth conducive involves citing successful applications of IBE and tracing this success over time. (...) This in turn involves identifying those constituents of scientific theories that are responsible for their predictive success and showing that these constituents are retained across theory change in science. I argue that even if mathematics can be shown to feature in best explanations, the role of mathematics in scientific theories does not satisfy the condition that mathematics is always retained across theory change. According to a scientific realist, this condition needs to be met for making ontological claims on the basis of explanatory contribution. Thus scientific realists are not committed to mathematical realism on the basis of this recent formulation of IA. (shrink)

The transition from a relatively federal to a relatively centralized constitutional structure in the United States has often been identified with the shift from classical to welfare liberalism as a matter of public philosophy. This article argues against that distinction. The liberal argument for federalism is a contingent one, built on approximations, counterbalancing, and political power. A more federalist constitution is not automatically a freer one on classical liberal understandings of freedom. Neither is a more centralized constitution automatically a better (...) match with the ideals of welfare liberalism. The article sketches a constitutional history of federalism from the founding, through an era in which centralization was aligned with skepticism about liberal constitutionalism (for both meanings of liberal), to an era in which centralization was aligned with increases in liberal freedom (for both meanings of liberal). (shrink)

What makes one individual’s experience vicarious is that it is both similar to, and caused by, another’s psychological state. Vicarious responses are mediated by the observation of another’s goal-directed or expressive action. While the evidence from cognitive neuroscience suggests the ubiquity of vicarious responses to others’ goals, intentions, sensations and emotions, the question is: is the general function of vicarious responses to understand another’s mind? In this paper, I argue for a dual view of the function of vicarious responses: while (...) empathetic responses are other-directed, contagious responses are self-centered. (shrink)

Desde una perspectiva histórica se intenta aportar elementos que clarifiquen la problemática sobre la mundialización y la confrontación de las culturas jurídicas. Así, por una parte, se ofrece una interrogación acerca de la manera en que se practica la teoría del derecho en el mundo anglosajón y en el continental europeo, lo cual conduce a poner en cuestión su pretensión de universalidad. Por otra parte se analiza y discute el estatus y la pertinencia de ciertas teorías del derecho, como la (...) del legal origins theory, que afirman la superioridad del common law sobre el resto de las culturas jurídicas. Se destaca además la necesidad de introducir la dimensión sociológica para la comprensión del fenómeno jurídico. (shrink)