This article investigates the erotic and youthful body in John Fletcher’s play The Faithful Shepherdess, written for The Children of the Queen’s Revels c.1607. For many early modern scholastic, medical, and conduct manual writers, the life stage of Youth was a particularly dangerous moment in an individuals’ life, a time where the body was in a constant state of flux and ruled by unhealthy bodily excess. Fletcher’s play presents an assortment of characters who are all ruled by or obsessed with (...) their own youthful passions. This article engages with Galenic humoral theory, an area that has been neglected in scholarship on Fletcher’s play, to provide a close analysis of Youth and erotic excess on the early modern stage. (shrink)

This ground-breaking text offers a fresh perspective on the governance of science from the standpoint of social and political theory. Science has often been seen as the only institution that embodies the elusive democratic ideal of the 'open society'. Yet, science remains an elite activity that commands much more public trust than understanding, even though science has become increasingly entangled with larger political and economic issues.

An enquiry into what future labour markets might look like is, necessarily, an enquiry into what future labour market institutions might look like. Any such enquiry requires a conceptual apparatus capable of dealing with labour markets and institutions. The conceptual apparatus of orthodox labour economics is incapable of this. An alternative conceptual apparatus, the ‘socio-economics of labour markets’, augmented with critical realist metatheory, is capable of dealing with future labour markets. This claim is demonstrated via the example of future labour (...) markets based on Basic Income. (shrink)

THIS IS AN EARLY DRAFT OF MY PAPER "RESEARCH PROBLEMS" PUBLISHED IN BJPS IN 2021. PLEASE REFER TO THAT PAPER INSTEAD OF THIS ONE. -/- Philosophers increasingly study how scientists conduct actual scientific projects and the goals they pursue. But as of yet, there are few accounts of goals that can be used to identify different kinds, and specific instances, of goals pursued by scientists. I propose that there are at least four distinct kinds of goals pursued by scientists: ameliorating (...) problems, addressing questions, satisfying values, and achieving epistemic aims. I focus on the first two kinds, and I provide tools to help conceptualize, distinguish, and identify the problems and questions pursued by scientists. This paper illustrates the use of those tools with two examples. (shrink)

Although The Structure of Scientific Revolutions is one of the most influential books of this century, its author, Thomas Kuhn, is notorious for disavowing most of the consequences wrought by his text. Insofar as these consequences have appeared "radical" or "antipositivist," this article argues that they are very misleading, and that Kuhn's complaints are therefore well placed. Indeed, Kuhn unwittingly succeeded where Daniel Bell's The End of Ideology tried and failed, namely, to alleviate the anxieties of alienated academics and defensive (...) policy-makers by teaching them that they could all profit from solving their own paradigmatic puzzles. The influence of tructure is traced from the philosophy of science into the social sciences and science policy. Special attention is paid to the import of the General Education in Science curriculum at Harvard, in which Kuhn taught for most of the period prior to writing tructure. Harvard President James Conant had designed this curriculum in order to keep "pure science" in the good favor of the American public, in whose eyes it suffered after the use of the atomic bomb. While Conant was keen to stress the distinctiveness of science from other social practices, Kuhn's model seemed to provide a blueprint for reconstituting any practice as a science. This enabled potentially antiscientific academics to become scientists themselves, thereby neutralizing any radical challenges to the ends of scientific inquiry. The article concludes by reconstructing some of the inchoate possibilities for radical critique that Kuhn's success preempted, and by making some suggestions for how they may be recovered in the present academic environment. (shrink)

Quintessence for the first time collects Quine's classic essays (such as "Two Dogmas" and "On What There Is") in one volume—and thus offers readers a much ...

The critical realist conception of open and closed systems is not about systems: it is about regularities in the flux of events and states of affairs. It has recently been criticised on the grounds that critical realists should take on board ideas about the general nature of systems; recognise that genuinely open social systems would be impossible; avoid polarities or dualisms where either there are event regularities and open systems, or there are no event regularities and closed systems and accept (...) partial regularities and partially open systems; and understand that orthodox economics is not based upon event regularities, laws or Humean empiricism. The objective of this paper is to ‘take stock’ of these recent criticisms. (shrink)

Wittgenstein's philosophy of mathematics has long been notorious. Part of the problem is that it has not been recognized that Wittgenstein, in fact, had two chief post-Tractatus conceptions of mathematics. I have labelled these the calculus conception and the language-game conception. The calculus conception forms a distinct middle period. The goal of my article is to provide a new framework for examining Wittgenstein's philosophies of mathematics and the evolution of his career as a whole. I posit the Hardyian Picture, modelled (...) on the Augustinian Picture, to provide a structure for Wittgenstein's work on the philosophy of mathematics. Wittgenstein's calculus period has not been properly recognized, so I give a detailed account of the tenets of that stage in Wittgenstein's career. Wittgenstein's notorious remarks on contradiction are the test case for my theory of his transition. I show that the bizarreness of those remarks is largely due to the calculus conception, but that Wittgenstein's later language-game account of mathematics keeps the rejection of the Hardyian Picture while correcting the calculus conception's mistakes. (shrink)

"Social epistemology" refers here to the work of analytic epistemologists and philosophers of science interested in providing an empirically adequate account of organized knowledge systems, with special emphasis on scientific inquiry. I critically survey the last ten years of this research. Unlike the pragmatist and Continental schools of philosophy, for which knowledge is "always already" social, progress in analytic social epistemology has been plagued by an oversharp distinction between individual and collective cognition; and a failure to query the ends of (...) science in addition to its means. Consequently, most analytic social epistemologists operate with a relatively weak sense of "normativity," one modelled more on taken-for-granted logical principles than legislated policy correctives. (shrink)

This paper clarifies the terms “institutions” and “social structures” and related terms “rules”, “conventions”, “norms”, “values” and “customs”. Part one explores the similarities between institutions and social structures whilst the second and third parts explore differences. Part two considers institutions, rules, habits or habitus and habituation, whilst part three critically reflects on three common conceptions of social structures. The conclusion comments upon reflexive deliberation via the internal conversation.

This article explores the proposition that the brain, normally seen as an organ of the human body, should be understood as a biologically based form of artificial intelligence, in the course of which the case is made for a new kind of ‘brain exceptionalism’. After noting that such a view was generally assumed by the founders of AI in the 1950s, the argument proceeds by drawing on the distinction between science—in this case neuroscience—adopting a ‘telescopic’ or a ‘microscopic’ orientation to (...) reality, depending on how it regards its characteristic investigative technologies. The paper concludes by recommending a ‘microscopic’ yet non-reductionist research agenda for neuroscience, in which the brain is seen as an underutilised organ whose energy efficiency is likely to outstrip that of the most powerful supercomputers for the foreseeable future. (shrink)

I reconstruct my own journey into the history of the human sciences, which I show to have been a process of discovering the metaphysical standing of the human. I begin with Alexandre Koyré’s encounter with Edmund Husserl in the 1930s, which I use to throw light on the legacy of Kant’s ‘anthropological’ understanding of the human, which dominated and limited 19th-century science. As I show, those who broke from Kant’s strictures and set the stage for the 20th-century revolutions in science (...) - from Hegel, to John McTaggart, to Max Weber - typically were pursuing crypto-theological questions about how a finite being can comprehend an infinite universe. This journey is about the ‘common measure’ of being human, which is what links Plato to Kuhn, but has been most consistently taken up by law. I suggest that in seeking this ‘measure of man’, we may discover that to be human is not necessarily to be Homo sapiens, which would suggest a radical reorientation of the history of the human sciences. (shrink)

The primary goal of this paper is not to argue for the “influence” of Cassirer, but rather to make known the reception of Cassirer in Japanese philosophy, illustrate the interconnection between Cassirer’s critique of culture and that of Japanese philosophy, and hopefully spark interest in what might be a fruitful dialog between Cassirer scholars and those working in Japanese philosophy. Historically, the paper defines Japanese philosophy and makes known its engagement with Western philosophy and the Marburg school of neo-Kantianism and (...) its project of a critique of culture during its own self-development. Systematically, the paper points to the possible interconnection between Cassirer’s critique of culture and that of Japanese philosophy and makes the case for a mutually productive dialog between Cassirer scholars and those working in Japanese philosophy. Implicitly, the paper attempted to show that an engagement with Japanese philosophy from the perspective of a critique of culture forces us to question the Western dichotomy between philosophy and religion and the importance of this for the further development of a non-Eurocentric critique of culture. And by extension, that a critique of culture must be cognitive of the historicity of the culture from which it speaks. (shrink)

Stephen Mumford concludes a recent paper in Religious Studies, in which he advances a new causation-based analysis of miracles, by stating that the onus is ‘on rival accounts of miracles to produce something that matches it’. I take up Mumford 's challenge, defending an intention-based definition of miracles, which I developed earlier, that he criticizes. I argue that this definition of miracles is more consistent with ordinary intuitions about miracles than Mumford 's causation-based alternative. I further argue that Mumford has (...) failed to demonstrate any advantages that his approach to miracles has over an intention-based approach. (shrink)

The complexity that we observe in nature can often be explained in terms of cooperative behavior. For example, the major transitions of evolution required the emergence of cooperation among the lower-level units of selection, which led to specialization through division-of-labor ultimately resulting in spontaneous order. There are two aspects to address explaining how such cooperation is sustained: how free-riders are prevented from free-riding on the benefits of cooperative tasks, and just as importantly, how those social benefits arise. We review these (...) problems from an economic perspective, and highlight how ideas from economics can help us to better understand how the benefits of social interactions arise, how they are sustained, and how they affect the underlying social dilemmas. (shrink)

Science and technology studies has perhaps provided the most ambitious set of challenges to the boundary separating history and philosophy of science since the 19th century idealists and positivists. STS is normally associated with `social constructivism', which when applied to history of science highlights the malleability of the modal structure of reality. Specifically, changes to what is implies changes to what has been, can be and might be. Latour's account of Pasteur's scientific achievement is a case in point. Two polar (...) attitudes towards the world's modal malleability are identified: over - and under - determination, which correspond, respectively, to a belief in the inevitability and the precariousness of science as a form of knowledge. The distinctness of these positions reflects a cordon sanitaire between the history and the philosophy of science. Consequently, historical agents are not given full voice as constructors of reality: They are either quarantined to a foreign realm called `the past' by the historian or selectively assimilated to an imperial present by the philosopher. The second half of the essay explores what it might mean to restore a robust sense of reality construction to the historical agents. My case in point here is that of the 13th century Franciscan friar, Roger Bacon, who has been alternatively seen as a mad medieval or a proto-modernist. To give Bacon full voice would involve taking the future that he envisaged as a normative benchmark for judging our own world. (shrink)

This reply to Finn Collin’s critically sympathetic review of my Back to the University’s Future: The Second Coming of Humboldt, addresses some of the tensions involved in realizing “Humboldt 2.0” in today’s higher education environment. Its focus is largely on the academic’s sense of researcher as being one of learner. In other words, the Humboldtian sees research as the necessary complement to teaching, not something radically distinct from it.

With the powerful analyses and resources they enable, digital humanities tools have captivated researchers from many different fields who want to use them to study science. Digital tools, as well as funding agencies, research communities, and academic administrators, require researchers to think carefully about how they conceptualize, manage, and store data, and about what they plan to do with that data once a given project is over. The difficulties of developing strategies to address these problems can prevent new researchers from (...) sticking with digital tools and flummox even experienced researchers. To help overcome the data hurdle, we present five principles to help researchers, novice and experienced alike, conceptualize and plan for their data. We illustrate the use of those principles with two digital projects from the history of science, the Embryo Project and the Marine Biological Laboratory History Project, and their associated HPS Repository for data. The principles apply beyond the digital realm, so those who collect and manage data by more traditional means will also find them useful. (shrink)

Jeffrey conditioning allows updating in Bayesian style when the evidence is uncertain. A weighted average, essentially, over classically updating on the alternatives. Unlike classical Bayesian conditioning, this allows learning to be unlearned.

In her 1983 work How the Laws of Phyiscs Lie [1] Nancy Cartwright argued for antirealism about fundamental laws alongside realism about phenomenological laws. Her position was considerably altered by 1989 when, in Nature's Capacities and Their Measurement [2], she argued for a realist construal of capacities (close relations of Powers, natures, tendencies, propensities and disptısitions), which she took fundamental laws to be about. Most realists about capaeities, and their ilk, are realist about fundamental laws as well. However this is (...) not true of Cartwright. In [2] she emphatically reaffirmed her antirealism about fundamental laws, stating that 'fundamental laws are not true, nor nearly true, nor true for the most part' [2, p.175]. In 'So the Laws of Physics Needn't Lie' [4] Chalmers argues that Cartwright's advocacy of realism about Nature's capacities in [2] undermines her antirealism about fundamental laws. He accuses Cartwright of apparent contradictions in her position as articulated in [2]. Given Chalmers' reading of Cartwright, an appearance of contradiction does seem to arise. Against Chalmers, I advocate an alternative reading of Cartwright, which is much more charitable to her. This alternative reading of Cartwright has the advantage of avoiding the charge of contradiction. Indeed, if this reading is accepted, the appearance of contradiction, that Chalmers taxeses Cartwright with, does not even arise. A further virtue of this reading of Cartwright is that it is consistent with Cartwright's more recent writing, as I will show. (shrink)

Social epistemology is an interdisciplinary project that mobilizes the empirical resources of the "sociology of knowledge" for the purposes of informing a normative philosophy of science. Thus, the social epistemologist gives informed advice on how inquiry should be conducted. Because of its prescriptive character, social epistemology is nowadays most naturally seen as a branch of philosophy. This paper is part of a larger project devoted to removing the obstacles that currently prevent philosophers and psychologists from pooling their resources in the (...) cause of social epistemology. 2012 APA, all rights reserved). (shrink)

An assessment of Joel Isaac’s recent, well-researched attempt to provide a context for the emergence of Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. That context consisted in the open space for cross-disciplinary projects between the natural and social sciences that existed at Harvard during the presidency of James Bryant Conant, from the early 1930s to the early 1950s. Isaac’s work at the Harvard archives adds interesting detail to a story whose general contours are already known. In particular, he reinforces the view (...) that the guiding intellectual presence of what Isaac dubs Harvard’s “interstitial academy” was the biochemist Lawrence Henderson, someone who was enamored of Vilfredo Pareto’s version of scientism and was materially supported by the Rockefeller Foundation’s interest in increasing worker productivity. Isaac fails to consider the normative implications of Henderson’s vision, which influenced Talcott Parsons even more deeply than Kuhn. Isaac’s book is read in light of this concern, which reveals a profound sense of what is required of the sort of future elite policy maker that Harvard hoped to train: namely, a systems-based orientation that is at the same time tolerant of considerable intrasystemic incommensurability. The epistemological and ethical aspects of this prescription are analyzed. (shrink)

Analysis of the use of the key term the people shows that it has varied both semantically and syntactically along the time-line of the evolution of the CPC.

Stephen White (1989) suggests that current reductionist orthodoxy has been too restricted in its concern with psychological facts only. But once we widen the range of facts that we allow, including, for example, certain cultural or technological facts (the metapsychological facts), the boundaries we draw around persons will be determined by factors that cannot be fixed absolutely. Whether one survives or not won’t be a matter merely of psychological continuity between one’s different person-stages; inter alia, it will be a matter (...) of what one’s society presupposes about such things as “personal identity, responsibility, and the unity and character of the self”. Such presuppositions differ across cultures and times. So, according to White, there are no universal facts about personal identity and survival; personal identity is a relative notion. In this paper I offer an alternative, and in so doing draw out some important morals for the methodology we apply in investigating questions of personal identity. (shrink)