Science is a defining feature of the modern world, and popular science is where most of us make sense of that fact. Understanding Popular Science provides a framework to help understand the development of popular science and current debates about it. In a lively and accessible style, Peter Broks shows how popular science has been invented, redefined and fought over. From early-nineteenth century radical science to twenty-first century government initiatives, he examines popular science as an arena where the (...) authority of science and the authority of the state are legitimized and challenged. The book includes clear accounts of the public perception of scientists, visions of the future, fears of an anti-science movement and concerns about scientific literacy. The final chapter proposes a new model for understanding the interaction between lay and expert knowledge. This book is essential reading in cultural studies, science studies, history of science and science communication. (shrink)

In this systematic study, Professor Achinstein analyzes such concepts as definitions, theories, and models, and contrasts his view with currently held positions that he finds inadequate.

There has been a groundswell of interest in the account of modality that Kant sets forth in his pre-Critical Only Possible Argument. Andrew Chignell's reconstruction of Kant's theistic argument in terms of what he calls has a prima facie advantage in that it appears to be able to block the plurality objection (namely, that even if every modal fact presupposes some ground, this does not entail that all modal facts share the same ground). I argue that it is both textually (...) and philosophically problematic to interpret Kant's argument in terms of real harmony. Then, I set forth an alternative response to the plurality objection which does not require the adoption of the problematic notion of real harmony. Instead, I argue that the objection can be overcome by observing that the argument seeks to ground modal facts as a totality and that, according to Kant, such relations can be accounted for only by their schematization in a single intellect. (shrink)

This anthology presents work on major topics surrounding the concept of evidence as employed in the empirical sciences. Focusing on the "classificatory" concept of evidence rather than the quantitative "degree of confirmation," the selections include Carl G. Hempel's satisfaction definition, R.B. Braithwaite's hypothetic-deductive view, N.R. Hanson's account of retroduction, Nelson Goodman's entrenchment theory, probability definitions discussed by Rudolf Carnap and Wesley Salmon, Clark Glymour's bootstrap theory, and a view of Achinstein's that combines probability and explanation.

Emotion Review, Volume 14, Issue 1, Page 3-14, January 2022. Advocates for the psychological construction of emotion view themselves as articulating a non-essentialist alternative to basic emotion theory's essentialist notion of affect programs. Psychological constructionists have also argued that holding essentialist assumptions about emotions engenders misconceptions about the psychological constructionist viewpoint. If so, it is important to understand what psychological constructionists mean by “essentialism” and “non-essentialism.” To advance the debate, I take a deeper dive into non-essentialism, comparing the non-essentialist views (...) of the early empiricists with those of the psychological constructionists, focusing on the theories of James Russell and Lisa Barrett. Using Lakatos’ notion of scientific research programs, I also describe how Russell's and Barrett's views have evolved into different and potentially competing research programs under the psychological constructionist banner. (shrink)

Cramer et al.'s critique of latent variables implicitly advocates a type of scientific anti-realism which can be extended to many dispositional constructs in scientific psychology. However, generalizing Cramer et al.'s network model in this way raises concerns about its applicability to psychopathology. The model could be improved by articulating why a given cluster of symptoms should be considered disordered.

The essays in this volume address three fundamental questions in the philosophy of science: What is required for some fact to be evidence for a scientific ...

Thomas, Bracken, and Timimi (2012) make an important contribution in critiquing the extent to which the profession of psychiatry can be so bureaucratic that patients are treated as problems to be solved in an ‘efficient’ assembly line fashion rather than as individual persons. The trouble with bureaucracies is that they promote a cold and impersonal accounting approach in which critical reflection on purposes is circumvented by decision-making algorithms (Zachar and Bartlett 2009). Psychotherapy treatment manuals definitely satisfy the bureaucratic instinct, and (...) the fifteen-minute medication management session even more so (Harris 2011). Ideally, evidence-based medicine (EBM) should be used to promote the goals of .. (shrink)

When i was in graduate school, I inadvertently walked in on a fellow student taking his comprehensive exams. He was extremely frustrated because two of the questions asked about conceptual issues in personality and personality disorders. This student was not expecting such questions and considered them to be unfair. I knew other students in that same program who would have considered it a gift to get such “interesting” questions. Those clinical and counseling psychologists with theoretical–philosophical interests are often attracted to (...) the topics of personality and personality disorders. It has, therefore, puzzled me why these same topics are largely ignored by those philosophers who study the conceptual issues of .. (shrink)

I consider and reject William Whewell's attack on the inductivism of Isaac Newton and John Stuart Mill, as well as John Norton's attack on any universal system of inductive rules. I also explain how a system of inductive rules of the sort proposed by Newton and Mill should be understood.

In this brief commentary, I would like to discuss two reservations I have about the article by Bergner and Bunford. Before doing so let me make some preliminary remarks.Their hypothesis that the concept of disability unites the various mental disorder constructs that have been proposed over the centuries and across cultures is reasonable and accords well with common sense. The concept of disability does a lot of good work in helping us to understand mental disorders.With respect to the authors’ contrast (...) between the disability conception versus the behavioral conception of mental disorder, the notion that counting behaviors alone justifies diagnosing a psychiatric disorder is worth critiquing. Claiming that everyone... (shrink)

Confirmation theorists seek to define a function that will take into account the various factors relevant in determining the degree to which an hypothesis is confirmed by its evidence. Among confirmation theorists, only Rudolf Carnap has constructed a system which purports to consider factors in addition to the number of instances, viz. the variety manifested by the instances and the amount of analogy between the instances. It is the purpose of this paper to examine the problem which these additional factors (...) raise for confirmation theory, and to prove that, despite Carnap's claim, no confirmation function satisfying the requirements he has specified can take account of variety and analogy. This result is first proved for a special case, and then, in a subsequent section, is generalized through the introduction of a theorem (the proof of which is given in Appendix I). In the final section of the paper it is shown that, contrary to a claim which Carnap has made, not even the concept of the "logical width" of a predicate will enable confirmation functions satisfying his requirements to take adequate account of analogies between instances. (shrink)

A survey of 138 college students reveals an undergraduate major has a greater influence on corporate social responsibility than business ethics. Business students are no less ethical than nonbusiness students. Females are more ethical and socially responsible than males. Age is negatively related to one's Machiavellian orientation and positively related to negative attitudes about corporate efforts at social responsibility. The results suggest a greater need to focus busines ethics instruction based on student characteristics.

Peter Carruthers's essays on consciousness and related issues have had a substantial impact on the field, and many of his best are now collected here in revised form. The first half of the volume is devoted to developing, elaborating, and defending against competitors one particular sort of reductive explanation of phenomenal consciousness, which Carruthers now refers to as 'dual-content theory'. Phenomenal consciousness - the feel of experience - is supposed to constitute the 'hard problem' for a scientific world view, (...) and many have claimed that it is an irredeemable mystery. But Carruthers here claims to have explained it. He argues that phenomenally conscious states are ones that possess both an 'analog' intentional content and a corresponding higher-order analog content, representing the first-order content of the experience. It is the higher-order analog content that enables our phenomenally conscious experiences to present themselves to us, and that constitutes their distinctive subjective aspect, or feel.The next two chapters explore some of the differences between conscious experience and conscious thought, and argue for the plausibility of some kind of eliminativism about conscious thinking. Then the final four chapters focus on the minds of non-human animals. Carruthers argues that even if the experiences of animals aren't phenomenally conscious, this needn't prevent the frustrations and sufferings of animals from being appropriate objects of sympathy and concern. Nor need it mean that there is any sort of radical 'Cartesian divide' between our minds and theirs of deep significance for comparative psychology. In the final chapter, he argues provocatively that even insects have minds that include a belief/desire/perception psychology much like our own. So mindedness and phenomenal consciousness couldn't be further apart.Carruthers's writing throughout is distinctively clear and direct. The collection will be of great interest to anyone working in philosophy of mind or cognitive science. (shrink)

Newton deplored speculation in science, Einstein reveled in it. What exactly are scientific speculations? Are they ever legitimate? Are they subject to constraints? This book defends a pragmatic approach to these issues and applies it to speculations within science and to speculations about science.

This book presents the first integrated treatment of the philosophy of Robert Boyle, one of the leading English natural philosophers of the Scientific Revolution.

A success-to-truth inference has always been at the heart of scientific realist positions. But all attempts to articulate the inference have met with very significant challenges. This paper reconstructs the evolution of this inference, and brings together a number of qualifications in an attempt to articulate a contemporary success-to-truth inference which is realistic. I argue that this contemporary version of the inference has a chance, at least, of overcoming the historical challenges which have been proffered to date. However, there is (...) a price to pay: the developments which help the realist answer the historical challenges also serve to increase the number of non-historical challenges. (shrink)

Recently in this journal Sherrilyn Roush (2004) defends positive relevance as a necessary (albeit not a sufficient) condition for evidence by rejecting two of the counterexamples from my earlier (2001) work. In this reply I argue that Roush's critique is not successful.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 9.3 (2002) 219-227 [Access article in PDF] The Practical Kinds Model as a Pragmatist Theory of Classification Peter Zachar Pragmatist theories of scientific classification are intended to be pluralistic models that recognize different ways of cutting up the world as valuable, but do not require us to adopt whatever-goes relativism or metaphysical antirealism. How ironic that my application of pragmatism to psychopathology has been (...) charged with not being sufficiently pluralistic because it tries to fit all psychiatric disorders into the Procrustean bed of practical kinds. The Practical Kinds Model in General As a point of clarification, the practical kinds model is not a description of a type of category combined with an argument that all psychiatric disorders should be seen as belonging to that type. If it were that kind of model, I would fully agree with Haslam that practical kinds, fuzzy kinds, and discrete kinds are all potential types of psychiatric disorders. Like Nick Haslam, I believe that there are many different things in the DSM-IV and the ICD-10, and they cannot neatly be classified as the same type of thing.Rather than identifying a type of category, the practical kinds model is a general theory of scientific classification. It is a nonessentialistic theory. Essentialism is the view that things have real essences. In the Aristotelian version of essentialism, an essence is an internal structure, and it is the internal structure that makes anything be the kind of thing it really is. In this classical category model, category members either have the essence or they do not, and everything that has the appropriate essence is a member of that category. The world is supposed to therefore have a well-defined structure, and the job of the scientist is to discover that structure. Ian Hacking (1999) has termed this view of categorization inherent structurism.The practical kinds model does not deny that things have internal structures; it only denies that internal structure by itself determines category membership. Internal structure is an important consideration in identifying categories, but external criteria can always play a role. External or relational criteria play more important roles in some cases than they do in others, but they cannot be eliminated once and for all. Essentialistic theories, which favor an almost exclusive focus on inherent structures, have the advantage of being more parsimonious, but they do so by ignoring real complexity.The best way to illustrate this point is to examine a category whose identification is heavily weighted in terms of internal criteria, or an inherent structure, such as a chemical element. [End Page 219] For example, hydrogen is defined as the element that has an atomic number of 1. This means that it has one proton in its nucleus and normally one electron orbiting its nucleus. The atomic number reflects an internal property, and anything that has an atomic number of 1 is hydrogen. The same is true for the other elements. Anything that has an atomic number of 79 is gold; anything that has an atomic number of 19 is potassium, and so on. Also part of the essentialistic view is the notion that all the important properties of an element are systematically (or lawfully) related to its internal structure.It would be foolish to deny the practical utility of the atomic theory of chemistry. But even in this strongest of cases, external criteria can potentially play a role in how we decide to carve up the world and what we identify as the relevant categories. The point can be clearly illustrated with a Gedanken experiment based on the ideas of Donnellan (1983). Assume that we were to make contact with extraterrestrial life, and the result of that contact was our initiation into a larger galactic community like those portrayed on Star Trek or Babylon 5. Fortunately for us, it turns out that all planets in the community use a gold-based currency, just like we do on Earth. What we call gold, however, is too common to be the galactic basis of a currency, but a particular isotope... (shrink)

: This paper examines the debate in the late 19th and early 20th centuries over the acceptability of atomic and molecular physics. It focuses on three prominent figures: Maxwell, who defended atomic physics, Ostwald, who initially rejected it but changed his mind as a result of experiments by Thomson and Perrin, and Duhem, who never accepted it. Each scientist defended the position he did in the light of strongly held methodological views concerning empirical evidence. The paper critically evaluates each of (...) these methodological positions. (shrink)

Probably the most dramatic historical challenge to scientific realism concerns Arnold Sommerfeld’s derivation of the fine structure energy levels of hydrogen. Not only were his predictions good, he derived exactly the same formula that would later drop out of Dirac’s 1928 treatment. And yet the most central elements of Sommerfeld’s theory were not even approximately true: his derivation leans heavily on a classical approach to elliptical orbits, including the necessary adjustments to these orbits demanded by relativity. Even physicists call Sommerfeld’s (...) success a ‘miracle’, which rather makes a joke of the so-called ‘no miracles argument’. However, this can all be turned around. Here I argue that the realist has a story to tell vis-à-vis the discontinuities between the old and the new theory, leading to a realist defence based on sufficient continuity of relevant structure. 1Introduction2No Realist Commitment Required?3Enter the Physicists4A New Approach to the Non-relativistic Success5Relativity and Spin6Structure and Realist Commitment7Conclusion. (shrink)

Included is a famous nineteenth-century debate about scientific reasoning between the hypothetico-deductivist William Whewell and the inductivist John Stuart Mill; and an account of the realism-antirealism dispute about unobservables in science, with a consideration of Perrin's argument for the existence of molecules in the early twentieth century.

Left-libertarian theories of justice hold that agents are full self-owners and that natural resources are owned in some egalitarian manner. Unlike most versions of egalitarianism, leftlibertarianism endorses full self-ownership, and thus places specific limits on what others may do to one’s person without one’s permission. Unlike the more familiar right-libertarianism (which also endorses full self-ownership), it holds that natural resources—resources which are not the results of anyone's choices and which are necessary for any form of activity—may be privately appropriated only (...) with the permission of, or with a significant payment to, the members of society. Like right-libertarianism, left-libertarianism holds that the basic rights of individuals are ownership rights. Such rights can endow agents—as liberalism requires—with spheres of personal liberty where they may each pursue their conceptions of “the good life”. Left-libertarianism is promising because it coherently underwrites both some demands of material equality and some limits on the permissible means of promoting this equality. It is promising, that is, because it is a form of liberal egalitarianism. Left-libertarian theories have been propounded for over two centuries. Early exponents of some form of self-ownership combined with some form of egalitarian ownership of natural resources include: Hugo Grotius (1625), Samuel Pufendorf (1672), John Locke (1690), William Ogilvie (1781), Thomas Spence (1793), Thomas Paine (1795), Hippolyte de Colins (1835), François Huet (1853), Patrick E. Dove (1850, 1854), Herbert Spencer (1851), Henry George (1879, 1892), and Léon Walras (1896).1 It is striking how much of the current debate about equality, liberty, and responsibility has already been addressed by these authors. (shrink)

The so-called "Theology of Aristotle" is a translation of the Enneads of Plotinus, the most important representative of late ancient Platonism. It was produced in the 9th century CE within the circle of al-Kindī, one of the most important groups for the early reception of Greek thought in Arabic. In part because the "Theology" was erroneously transmitted under Aristotle's authorship, it became the single most important conduit by which Neoplatonism reached the Islamic world. It is referred to by such thinkers (...) as al-Fārābī, in an attempt to demonstrate the agreement between Platonism and Aristotelianism, Avicenna, who wrote a set of comments on the text, and later on thinkers of Safavid Persia including Mullā Ṣadrā. Yet the "Theology" is not just a translation. It may in fact more accurately be described as a creative paraphrase, which takes frequent liberties with the source text and even includes whole paragraphs' worth of new material. Adamson's book offers a philosophical interpretation of the changes introduced in the Arabic version. It is argued that these changes were in part intended to show the relevance of Plotinus' thought for contemporary Islamic culture, for instance by connecting the Neoplatonist theory of the First Principle to theological disputes within Islam over the status of God's attributes. At the same time the paraphrase reflects a tendency to harmonize the various strands of Greek thought, so that a critique by Plotinus of Aristotle's theory of the soul is subtly changed into a defense of Aristotle's theory against a possible misinterpretation. The upshot, or so Adamson argues, is that the "Theology" needs to be read as an original philosophical work in its own right, and understood within the context of the ʿAbbāsid era. (shrink)

This paper analyses the place of natural history within Bacon's divisions of the sciences in The Advancement of Learning and the later De dignitate et augmentis scientiarum. It is shown that at various points in Bacon's divisions, natural history converges or overlaps with natural philosophy, and that, for Bacon, natural history and natural philosophy are not discrete disciplines. Furthermore, it is argued that Bacon's distinction between operative and speculative natural philosophy and the place of natural history within this distinction, are (...) discontinuous with the later distinction between experimental and speculative philosophy that emerged in the methodology of the Fellows of the early Royal Society. (shrink)

Editors have a responsibility to retract seriously flawed articles from their journals. However, there appears to be little consistency in journals’ policies or procedures for this. In a qualitative study, we therefore interviewed editors of science journals using semi-structured interviews to investigate their experience of retracting articles. We identified potential barriers to retraction, difficulties in the process and also sources of support and encouragement. Our findings have been used as the basis for guidelines developed by the Committee on Publication Ethics.

Frederick Kronz constructs interesting examples in an attempt to show deficiencies in my concept of evidence and the advantages in Carnap's positive relevance idea. His discussion raises general questions of importance in developing an adequate account of scientific evidence questions about the relationship between evidence and belief and the role of emphasis in determining evidence. His examples are challenging, but do they work?

The claim that (OIC) “ought” implies “can” (i.e., you have an obligation only at times at which you can obey it) entails that (1) obligations that become infeasible are lost (i.e., you stop having an obligation when you become unable to obey it). Moreover, the claim that (2) obligations that become overridden are not always lost (i.e., sometimes you keep having an obligation when you acquire a stronger incompatible obligation) entails that (ONIM) “ought” does not imply “must” (i.e., some obligations (...) are not all-things-considered). It is standard to infer ONIM—via (2)—from the premise that becoming overridden can result in “moral residue” (e.g., in the appropriateness of feeling regret). But then, I note, one could similarly infer not-OIC—via not-(1)—from the premise that becoming infeasible can result in moral residue. So there is an argument against OIC which parallels the standard argument for ONIM. I respond by rejecting both arguments: it is a mistake to always infer from the presence of moral residue that an obligation is not lost. Then I propose new arguments both for ONIM and for OIC. (shrink)

I propose a dynamical analysis of interaction in anarchy, and argue that this kind of dynamical analysis is a more promising route to predicting the outcome of anarchy than the more traditional a priori analyses of anarchy in the literature. I criticize previous a priori analyses of anarchy on the grounds that these analyses assume that the individuals in anarchy share a unique set of preferences over the possible outcomes of war, peace, exploiting others and suffering exploitation. Following Hobbes' classic (...) analysis of anarchy, I maintain that typically in anarchy some moderate individuals will most desire mutual cooperation while other dominators will most desire to exploit others' cooperation. I argue that once one allows for different types of individuals in anarchy, any a priori analysis of anarchy requires unrealistic assumptions regarding the agents' common knowledge of their situation. However, this move also suggests a dynamical analysis of anarchy, one that assumes no common knowledge. In the Variable Anticipation threshold model developed here, individuals modify their behavior as they learn from repeated interactions. I present specific instances of this model where the individuals in anarchy converge to different equilibria corresponding to either peace or war, depending on the initial conditions. I show that individuals are liable to converge to Hobbes' war of all against all even if only a small percentage of are dominators. The presence of only a few “nasty” individuals gradually drives all, including those inclined to be “nicer”, to imitate the “nasty” conduct of these few. This dynamic analysis suggests that the Hobbesian war in anarchy is indeed inevitable in most realistic circumstances. You have the same propension, that I have, in favor of what is contiguous above what is remote. You are, therefore, naturally carry'd to commit acts of injustice as well as I. Your example both pushes me forward in this way by imitation, and also affords me a new reason for any breach of equity, by showing me, that I shou'd be the cully of my integrity, if I alone shou'd impose on myself a severe restraint amidst the licentiousness of others. (David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature) (Published Online July 11 2006) Footnotes1 Thanks to Luc Bovens, Sharon Lloyd, Brian Skyrms, Susanne Sreedhar and an anonymous referee for many helpful comments of early versions of this essay. (shrink)

Levinas ahead of his time--and himself--on politics, postcolonialism and globalization, animals and the environment, and science and technology.

Peter Byrne presents a detailed study of the role of the concept of God in Kant's Critical Philosophy. After a preliminary survey of the major interpretative disputes over the understanding of Kant on God, Byrne explores his critique of philosophical proofs of God¿s existence. Examining Kant¿s account of religious language, Byrne highlights both the realist and anti-realist elements contained within it. The notion of the highest good is then explored, with its constituent elements - happiness and virtue, in pursuit (...) of an assessment of how far Kant establishes that we must posit God. The precise role God plays in ethics according to Kant is then examined, along with the definition of religion as the recognition of duties as divine commands. Byrne also plots Kant¿s critical re-working of the concept of grace. The book closes with a survey of the relation between the Critical Philosophy and Christianity on the one hand and deism on the other. (shrink)

It is often said that singular causal statements express a relationship between one event and another or between a fact and an event. This is a very strong view, which has the following simple corollary: singular causal statements whose cause-term purports to refer to an event and whose effect-term purports to refer to an event express a relationship between an event and an event.Thus, both Davidson and Kim would claim that the singular causal Statement Socrates’ drinking hemlock at dusk caused (...) his death expresses a relationship between two events, referred to, respectively, by the expressions “Socrates’ drinking hemlock at dusk” and “his death.” For Kim, but not for Davidson, an event is analyzable as a thing's having a property at or during a time. The event of Socrates’ drinking hemlock at dusk consists of Socrates’ at a certain time having the property of drinking hemlock at dusk. I shall not here try to choose between their respective theories of events but will only note that both theorists would say that expresses a relationship between events however the latter are to be construed. (shrink)

ABSTRACTCatholic Christianity possesses a distinctive power, which has remained latent and undertheorised for a long time: the power to adapt itself to cultural traditions. In theology, it has often been seen as accidental, even when it was manifest in practice, especially in local traditions. Since Vatican II, inculturation has been actively encouraged, and new approaches were developed in missiology and ecclesiology. In this article, Christianity’s power of adaptation is presented as central to the ‘salvific event’ itself. Human beings need to (...) be formed by concrete traditions in order to be human. A redemption that would stamp out their attachment to tradition would amount to their destruction. The relative autonomy of traditional life in relation to God, would, so to speak, constitute a problem for God, if he wanted to provide humankind with a divine assistance geared to its real needs. The incarnation, and the founding of a ‘kingdom of heaven’, populated by human beings from different traditions, can... (shrink)