"Do We See Through a Social Microscope?: Credibility as Vicarious Selector"
Douglas Allchin, University of Texas at El Paso
Abstract:
Credibility in a scientific community (sensu Shapin) is a vicarious
selector (sensu Campbell) for the reliability of reports by individual
scientists or institutions. Similarly, images from a microscope (sensu
Hacking) are vicarious selectors for studying specimens. Working at different
levels, the process of indirect reasoning and checking indicates a unity
to experimentalist and sociological perspectives, along with a resonance
of strategies for assessing reliability.
"The Dogma of Isomorphism: A Case Study From
Speech Perception"
Irene Appelbaum, University of Montana
Abstract:
It is a fundamental tenet of philosophy of the "special sciences" that
an entity may be analyzed at multiple levels of organization. As a corollary,
it is often assumed that the levels into which a system may be theoretically
analyzed map straightforwardly onto real stages of processing. I criticize
this assumption in a case study from the domain of speech science. I argue
(i) that the dominant research framework in speech perception embodies
the assumption that units of processing mirror units of conceptual structure,
and (ii) that this assumption functions not as a falsifiable hypothesis,
but as an entrenched dogma.
"The Curve Fitting Problem"
Prasanta S. Bandyopadhyay and Robert J. Boik, Montana State University
Abstract:
In the curve fitting problem two conflicting desiderata, simplicity
and goodness-of-fit pull in opposite directions. To solve this problem,
two proposals, the first one based on Bayes' theorem criterion (BTC) and
the second one advocated by Forster and Sober based on Akaike's Information
Criterion (AIC) are discussed. We show that AIC, which is frequentist in
spirit, is logically equivalent to BTC, provided that a suitable choice
of priors is made. We evaluate the charges against Bayesianism and contend
that AIC approach has shortcomings. We also discuss the relationship between
Schwarz's Bayesian Information Criterion and BTC.
"Bell's Theorem, Non-Separability and Space-Time
Individuation in Quantum Mechanics"
Darrin W. Belousek, University of Notre Dame
Abstract:
We first examine Howard's analysis of the Bell factorizability condition
in terms of "separability" and "locality" and then consider his claims
that the violations of Bell's inequality by the statistical predictions
of quantum mechanics should be interpreted in terms of "non-separability"
rather than "non-locality" and that "non-separability" implies the failure
of space-time as a principle of individuation for quantum-mechanical systems.
And I find his arguments for both claims to be lacking.
"Why Physical Symmetries?"
Elena Castellani, University of Florence
Abstract:
This paper is concerned with the meaning of "physical symmetries,"
i.e. the symmetries of the so-called laws of nature. The importance of
such symmetries in nowadays science raises the question of understanding
their very nature. After a brief review of the relevant physical symmetries,
I first single out and discuss their most significant functions in today's
physics. Then I explore the possible answers to the interpretation problem
raised by the role of symmetries and I argue that investigating the real
nature of physical symmetries implies, in some sense, discussing the meaning
and methods of physics itself.
"Problems with the Deductivist Image of Scientific Reasoning"
Philip E. Catton, University of Canterbury
Abstract:
There seem to be some very good reasons for a philosopher of science
to be a deductivist about scientific reasoning. Deductivism is apparently
connected with a demand for clarity and definiteness in the reconstruction
of scientists' reasonings. And some philosophers even think that deductivism
is the way round the problem of induction. But the deductivist image is
challenged by cases of actual scientific reasoning, in which hard-to-state
and thus discursively ill-defined elements of though nonetheless significantly
condition what practitioners accept as cogent argument. And arguably, these
problem cases abound. For example, even geometry? for most of its history?
was such a problem case, despite its exactness and rigor. It took a tremendous
effort on the part of Hilbert and others, to make geometry fit the deductivist
image. Looking to the empirical sciences, the problems seem worse. Even
the most exact and rigorous of empirical sciences --mechanics-- is still
the kind of problem case which geometry once was. In order for the deductivist
image to fit mechanics, Hilbert's sixth problem (for mechanics) would need
to be solved. This is a difficult, and perhaps ultimately impossible task,
in which the success so far achieved is very limited. I shall explore some
consequences of this for realism as well as for deductivism. Through discussing
links between non-monotonicity, skills, meaning, globality in cognition,
models, scientific understanding, and the ideal of rational unification,
I argue that deductivists can defend their image of scientific reasoning
only by trivializing it, and that for the adequate illumination of science,
insights from anti-deductivism are needed as much as those which come from
deductivism.
"Are GRW Tails as Bad as They Say?"
Alberto Cordero, Graduate Center and Queens College, CUNY
Abstract:
GRW models of the physical world are severely criticized in the literature
for involving wave function 'tails', the allegation being that the latter
create fatal interpretive problems and even compromise standard arithmetic.
I find such objections both unfair and misguided. But not all is well with
the GRW approach. The complaint I articulate in this paper does not have
to do with tails as such but with the specific way in which past physical
structures linger forever in the total GRW wave function. I argue that
this feature, which is an artifact of a particular and ultimately optional
genre of collapse mechanisms, yields a total picture that is too close
to the "Many Worlds" type to deserve clear methodological acceptability,
particularly in light of the effective empirical equivalence between the
two objectivist approaches.
"Why Bayesian Psychology is Incomplete"
Frank Döring, University of Cincinnati
Abstract:
Bayesian psychology, in what is perhaps its most familiar version,
is incomplete: Jeffrey conditionalization is sensitive to the order in
which the evidence arrives. This order effect can be so pronounced as to
call for a belief adjustment that cannot be understood as an assimilation
of incoming evidence by Jeffrey's rule. Hartry Field's reparameterization
of Jeffrey's rule avoids the order effect but fails as an account of how
new evidence should be assimilated.
"The Conserved Quantity Theory of Causation and Chance
Raising"
Phil Dowe, University of Tasmania
Abstract:
In this paper I consider a problem for the Conserved Quantity Theory
of causation, in its most recent version (Salmon 1997). The problem concerns
cases where an event, which tends to prevent another, fails to on a particular
occasion, and where the two are linked by causal processes. I call this
the case of "connected non-causes." Chance-raising theories of causation,
on the other hand, do account easily for this problem, but face the problem
of chance-lowering causes. I show how the two approaches can be combined
to solve both problems.
"Laudan's Naturalistic Axiology"
Karyn Freedman, University of Toronto
Abstract:
Doppelt (1986, 1990), Siegel (1990) and Rosenberg (1996) argue that
the pivotal feature of Laudan's normative naturalism, namely his axiology,
lacks a naturalistic foundation. In this paper I show that this
objection is ill founded, and turns on an ambiguity in the notion of 'naturalism.
'Specifically, I argue that there are two important senses of naturalism
running through Laudan's work. Once these two strands are made explicit,
the objection raised by Doppelt et al. simply evaporates.
"Is Pure R-Selection Really Selection?"
Bruce Glymour, Kansas State University
Abstract:
Lennox and Wilson (1994) critique modern accounts of selection on the
grounds that such accounts will class evolutionary events as cases of selection
whether or not the environment checks population growth. Lennox and Wilson
claim that pure r-selection involves no environmental checks, and
that accounts of natural selection ought to distinguish between the two
sorts of cases. I argue that Lennox and Wilson are mistaken in claiming
that pure r-selection involves no environmental checks, but suggest
that two related cases support their substantive complaint, namely that
modern accounts of selection have resources insufficient for making important
distinctions in causal structure.
"Explanatory Pluralism in Paleobiology"
Todd A. Grantham, College of Charleston
Abstract:
This paper is a defense of "explanatory pluralism" (i.e., the view
that some events can be correctly explained in two distinct ways). To defend
pluralism, I argue that a certain class of macroevolutionary trends (what
I call "asymmetrical passive trends") can be explained in two distinct
but compatible ways. The first approach ("actual sequence explanation")
is to trace out the particular forces that affect each species. The second
approach treats the trend as "passive" or "random" diffusion from a boundary
in morphological space. I argue that while these strategies are distinct,
both kinds of explanation can be true of a single trend. Further, since
neither strategy can be reduced or eliminated from paleobiology, we should
accept that both strategies can provide correct explanations for a single
trend.
"Theories as Complexes of Representational Media"
Robin F. Hendry, University of Durham, and
Stathis Psillos, The London School of Economics
Abstract:
In this paper, we review two standard analyses of scientific theories
in terms of linguistic and nonlinguistic structures respectively. We show
that by focusing exclusively on either linguistic or extra linguistic representational
media, both of the standard views fail to capture correctly the complex
nature of scientific theories. We argue primarily against strong versions
of the two approaches and suggest that the virtues of their weaker versions
can be brought together under our own interactions approach. As historical
individuals, theories are complex consortia of different representational
media: words, equations, diagrams, analogies and models of different kinds.
To replace this complexity with a monistic account is to ignore the representational
diversity that characterizes even the most abstract physical theory.
"Helmholtz's Naturalized Conception of Geometry
and his Spatial Theory of Signs"
David J. Hyder, Max-Planck-Institut für Wissenschaftsgeschichte
Abstract:
I analyze the two main doctrines of Helmholtz's "The Facts in Perception,"
in which he argued that the axioms of Euclidean geometry are not, as his
neo-Kantian opponents had argued, binding on any experience of the external
world. This required two argumentative steps: (1) a new account of the
structure of our representations which was consistent both with the experience
of our (for him) Euclidean world and with experience of a non-Euclidean
one, and (2) a demonstration of how geometric and mathematical propositions
derived not from Kantian intuition, but from the contingent natures of
the representations themselves. I show how (1) and (2) together provided
a naturalized "physiological epistemology," a view that was adopted in
many of its essential features by Einstein, Wittgenstein and the Vienna
Circle.
"Use-Novelty, Gellerization, and Severe Tests"
Tetsuji Iseda, University of Maryland, College Park
Abstract:
This paper analyzes Deborah Mayo's recent criticism of use-novelty
requirement. She claims that her severity criterion captures actual scientific
practice better than use-novelty, and that use-novelty is not a necessary
condition for severity. Even though she is right in that there are certain
cases in which evidence used for the construction of the hypothesis can
test the hypothesis severely, I do not think that her severity criterion
fits better with out intuition about good tests than use-novelty. I argue
for this by showing a parallelism in terms of severity between the confidence
interval case and what she calls "gellerization." To account for the difference
between these cases, we need to take into account certain additional considerations
like a systematic neglect of relevant alternatives.
"A Note on Nonlocality, Causation and Lorentz-Invariance"
Federico Laudisa, University of Florence
Abstract:
The status of a causal approach to EPR-Bell nonlocal correlations in
terms of a counterfactual theory of causation is reviewed. The need to
take into due account the spacetime structure of the events involved is
emphasized. Furthermore, it is argued that adopting this approach entails
the assumption of a privileged frame of reference, an assumption that seems
even more in need of justification than the causal theory itself.
"Explaining the Emergence of Cooperative Phenomena"
Chuang Liu, University of Florida
Abstract:
Phase transitions, such as spontaneous magnetization in ferromagnetism,
are the most fundamental cooperative phenomenon in which long-range
orders emerge in a system under special conditions. Unlike collective phenomena
which are mere collections of processes (or actions) mostly accountable
by statistical averages of the micro-constituents' properties, they are
results of genuine cooperation in which unique properties emerge for the
whole system that are not such simple averages. In this paper I investigate
what the problem of phase transitions is, how it is solved by a mathematical
maneuver, i.e. taking the thermodynamic limit, and whether the solution
is sound and rigorous as claimed.
"Van Fraassen and Ruetsche on Preparation and Measurement"
Bradley Monton, Princeton University
Abstract:
Ruetsche (1996) has argued that van Fraassen's (1991) Copenhagen Variant
of the Modal Interpretation (CVMI) gives unsatisfactory accounts of measurement
and of state preparation. I defend the CVMI against Ruetsche's first argument
by using decoherence to show that the CVMI does not need to account for
the measurement scenario which Ruetsche poses. I then show, however, that
there is a problem concerning preparation, and the problem is more serious
than the one Ruetsche focuses on. The CVMI makes no substantive predictions
for the everyday processes we take to be measurements.
"Applying Pure Mathematics"
Anthony Peressini, Marquette University
Abstract:
Much of the current thought concerning mathematical ontology and epistemology
follows Quine and Putnam in looking to the indispensable application of
mathematics in science. In particular, the Quine/Putnam indispensability
approach is the inevitable staging point for virtually all contemporary
discussions of mathematical ontology. Just recently serious challenges
to the indispensability approach have begun appearing. At the heart of
this debate is the notion of an indispensable application of (pure) mathematics
in scientific theory. To date the discussion has focused on indispensability,
while little has been said about the process of application itself.
In this paper I focus on the process of applying (pure) mathematical theory
in physical theory.
"Functional and Intentional Action Explanations"
Mark Risjord, Emory University
Abstract:
Functional explanation in the social sciences is the focal point for
conflict between individualistic and social modes of explanation. While
the agent may have thought she had reasons for action, the functional explanation
reveals the hidden strings of the puppet master. This essay argues that
the conflict is merely apparent. The erotetic model of explanation is used
to analyze the forms of intentional action and functional explanations.
One result is that there are two kinds of functional explanation, and only
one is appropriate in the social sciences. While a functional explanation
may have the same topic as an intentional action explanation, they are
compatible.
"What Should a Normative Theory of Values in Science
Accomplish?"
Kristina Rolin, University of Helsinki
Abstract:
This paper compares two different views about the role of values in
scientific judgment, one proposed by Ernan McMullin and the other by Helen
Longino. I argue first that McMullin's distinction among epistemic and
non-epistemic values is based on a problematic understanding of the goals
of science. Second, I argue that Longino offers a more adequate understanding
of the goals of science but her concept of constitutive value is not sufficiently
normative. Third, I conclude that a normative theory of values in science
should address the normative concerns central to McMullin's work while
integrating the more complex understanding of the goals of science emerging
from Longino's work.
"Changing the Subject: Redei on Causal Dependence
and Screening Off in Relativistic Quantum Field Theory"
Laura Ruetsche and Rob Clifton, University of Pittsburgh
Abstract:
In a recent pair of articles (Redei 1996, 1997), Miklos Redei has taken
enormous strides toward characterizing the conditions under which relativistic
quantum field theory is a safe setting for the deployment of causal talk.
Here, we challenge the adequacy of the accounts of causal dependence and
screening off on which rests the relevance of Redei's theorems to the question
of causal good behavior in the theory.
"Visual Prototypes"
Pauline Sargent, University of California, San Diego
Abstract:
In this paper I introduce the concept of "visual prototype" to capture
one particular kind of work done by visual representation in the practice
of science. I use an example from neuroscience; more particulartly, the
example of the visual representation of the pattern of convolutions (the
gyri and sulci) of the human cortex as this pattern is constructed and
used in the practice of mapping the functional human brain. I argue that
this work which is visual representation as distinct from linguistic representation
is an essential piece of the human brain mapping project.
"Selection and the Extent of Explanatory Unification"
Rob Skipper, University of Maryland at College Park
Abstract:
According to Philip Kitcher, scientific unification is achieved via
the derivation of numerous scientific statements from economies of argument
schemata. I demonstrate that the unification of selection phenomena across
the domains in which it is claimed to occur, evolutionary biology, immunology
and, speculatively, neurobiology, is unattainable on Kitcher's view. I
then introduce an alternative method for rendering the desired unification
based on the concept of a mechanism schema which can be integrated with
Wesley Salmon's causal-mechanical model of explanation. I conclude that
the gain in unification provided by the alternative account suggests that
Kitcher's view is defective.
"Rhetoric, Narrative and Argument in Bruno Latour's
Science in Action"
David G. Stern, University of Iowa
Abstract:
Why does Latour's Science in Action, which approaches
science rhetorically, highlighting the persuasive and political work that
must be done to establish a scientific or technological fact, not examine
its own rhetoric? Latour acknowledges he is making use of the persuasive
techniques he attributes to science, but to submit his own techniques to
the demythologizing scrutiny he directs at philosophy of science would
undercut his primary goal of recruiting readers to his colors. The paper
scrutinizes three central figures in Science in Action: science
as war, as network, and as Janus-faced, and examines its disciplinary and
biographical context.
"The Failure of Equivariance for Real Ensembles
of Bohmian Systems"
Jitendra Subramanyam, University of Maryland
Abstract:
The continuity equation has long been thought to secure the equivariance
of ensembles of Bohmian systems. The statistical postulate then secures
the empirical adequacy of Bohm's theory. This is true for ideal ensembles
those represented as continuous fluids in configuration space. But ensembles
that confirm the experimental predictions of quantum mechanics are not
ideal. For these non-ideal ensembles neither equivariance nor some approximation
to equivariance follows from the axioms of Bohm's theory. Approximate equivariance
(and hence the empirical adequacy of Bohm's theory) requires adding to
Bohm's axioms or giving a detailed account of the behavior of Bohmian ensembles.
"Reconsidering the Concept of Equilibrium in Classical
Statistical Mechanics"
Janneke van Lith-van Dis, Utrecht University
Abstract:
In the usual procedure of deriving equilibrium thermodynamics from
classical statistical mechanics, Gibbsian fine-grained entropy is taken
as the analog of thermodynamical entropy. However, it is well known that
the fine-grained entropy remains constant under the Hamiltonian flow. In
this paper it is argued that we needn't search for alternatives for fine-grained
entropy, nor do we have to give up Hamiltonian dynamics, in order to solve
the problem of the constancy of fine-grained entropy and, more generally,
account for the non-equilibrium part of the laws of thermodynamics. Rather,
we have to weaken the requirement that equilibrium identified with a stationary
probability distribution
"Who's Afraid of Undermining? Why the Principal
Principle Need Not Contradict Humean Supervenience"
Peter B. Vranas, University of Michigan
Abstract:
The Principal Principle (PP) says that, for any proposition A, given
any admissible evidence and the proposition that the chance of A is x%,
one's conditional credence in A should be x%. Humean Supervenience (HS)
claims that, among possible worlds like ours, no two differ without differing
in the spacetime-point-by-spacetime-point arrangement of local properties.
David Lewis (1986b, 1994) has argued that PP contradicts HS, and his argument
has been accepted by Bigelow, Collins, and Pargetter (1993), Thau (1994),
Hall (1994), Strevens (1995), Ismael (1996), and Hoefer (1997). Against
this consensus, I argue that PP need not contradict HS.
"Reasoning With the 'Rosetta Stones' of Biology:
Experimental Systems and Doable Research"
Kevin Lattery, University of Minnesota
Abstract:
I compare the Rosetta Stone's function of making hieroglyphics research
"doable" with the use of experimental systems. Although biologists routinely
recognize the importance of these systems, philosophers have not. One reason
for this is that philosophers typically conceive experimental tools as
mere instruments for gathering evidence. I show why we need an account
of experimental tools that conceives them beyond the context of experiments
and evidential reasoning. More specifically, I describe an investigative
reasoning with experimental systems to establish and extend "doable research"
and argue that this investigative reasoning is central to justifying and
structuring our knowledge in experimental biology.
"The Limited World of Science: A Tractarian Account
of Objective Knowledge"
Alfred Nordmann, University of South Carolina
Abstract:
According to Wittgenstein's Tractatus, scientists determine
the structure of the world by identifying the true propositions which describe
it. This determination is possible because i) elementary propositions are
contingent, i.e., their truth depends on nothing but agreement with what
is the case, ii) completely general propositions delimit the degree of
freedom which the totality of elementary propositions leaves to the structure
of the world. Once such completely general propositions are adopted (e.g.,
the principle of conservation of weight), agreement among scientists can
reduce to agreement among representations. On this account, Lavoisier's
chemistry better promotes objective knowledge than Priestley's.
"The Likelihood Principle and the Reliability of
Evidence"
Andrew Backe, University of Pittsburgh
Abstract:
The leading philosophical account of statistical inference relies on
a principle which implies that only the observed outcome from an experiment
matters to an inference. This principle is the likelihood principle, and
it entails that information about the experimental arrangement itself is
of no inferential value. In the present paper, I argue that adherence to
the likelihood principle results in an account of inference that is insensitive
to the capacity of observed evidence to distinguish a genuine phenomenon
from a chance effect. This capacity, which is referred to as the reliability
of the evidence, is dependent on the error properties of the experimental
arrangement itself. Error properties incorporate outcomes not actually
observed and, thus, cannot always be captured by likelihood functions.
If my analysis is correct, then the central principle underlying the leading
philosophical theory of inference should be rejected.
"Objects or Events? Towards an Ontology for Quantum
Field Theory"
Andreas Bartels, Universität Gesamthochschule Paderborn
Abstract:
Recently P. Teller and S. Auyang have suggested competing ersatz-ontologies
which could account for the "loss of classical particples" in Quantum Field
Theory (QFT): Field quanta vs. Field events. However, both ontologies suffer
from serious defects. While quanta lack numerical identity, spatiotemporal
localizability, and independence from basic representations, events if
understood as concrete measurement events are related to the theory only
statistically. I propose an alternative solution: The entities of QFT are
events of the type "Quantum system S is in quantum state Y." The latter
are not point events, but Davidsonian events, i.e. they can be identified
by their location inside the causal net of the world.
"No One Knows the Date of the Hour: An Unorthodox
Application of Rev. Bayes' Theorem"
Paul Bartha, University of British Columbia, and
Christopher Hitchcock, Rice University
Abstract:
Carter and Leslie (1996) have argued, using Bayes' theorem, that our
being alive now supports the hypothesis of an early "Doomsday." Unlike
some critics (Eckhardt 1997), we accept their argument in part: given that
we exist, our existence now indeed favors "Doom sooner" over "Doom later."
The very fact of our existence, however, favors "Doom later." In simple
cases, a hypothetical approach to the problem of "old evidence" shows that
these two effects cancel out: our existence now yields no information about
the coming of Doom. More complex cases suggest a move from countably additive
to non-standard probability measures.
"Can Experiments Help Us Choose Between the Bohm
and Copenhagen Interpretations of Quantum Mechanics?"
Lon Becker, University of Illinois at Chicago
Abstract:
In this paper I will look at whether it is possible to help us decide
between the Bohm and Copenhagen interpretations of quantum mechanics. I
will look at experiments which assume that the two interpretations are
empirically indistinguishable but highlight features that might lead us
to favor one interpretation over the other. I will argue that such experiments
are interesting but ultimately not convincing. I will then sketch an experiment
to suggest how it might be possible to create an experiment which could
distinguish between the two interpretations by focusing on the presence
or absence of collapse.
"Empiricism, Conservativeness and Quasi-Truth"
Otavio Bueno, University of Leeds
Abstract:
A first step is taken towards articulating a constructive empiricist
philosophy of mathematics, thus extending van Fraassen's account to this
domain. In order to do so, I adapt Field's nominalisation programme, making
it compatible with an empiricist stance. Two changes are introduced: (a)
Instead of taking conservativeness as the norm of mathematics, the empiricist
countenances the weaker notion of quasi-truth (as formulated by da Costa
and French), from which the formal properties of conservativeness are derived.
(b) Instead of quantifying over space-time regions, the empiricist only
admits quantification over occupied regions, since this is enough for his
or her needs.
"Organization, Evolution and Cognition: Beyond
Campbell's Evolutionary Epistemology"
Wayne Christensen and Clifford Hooker, University of Newcastle
Abstract:
Daniel Campbell has long advocated a naturalist epistemology based
on a general selection theory, with the scope of knowledge restricted to
vicarious adaptive processes. But being a vicariant is problematic because
it involves an unexplained epistemic relation. We argue that this relation
is to be explicated organizationally in terms of the regulation of behavior
and internal state by the vicariant, but that Campbell's selectionist account
can give no satisfactory account of it because it is opaque to organization.
We show how organizational constraints and capacities are crucial to understanding
both evolution and cognition and conclude with a proposal for an enriched,
generalized model of evolutionary epistemology that places high-order regulatory
organization at the center.
"The Analysis of Singular Spacetimes"
Erik Curiel, University of Chicago
Abstract:
Much controversy surrounds the question of what ought to be the proper
definition of 'singularity' in general relativity, and the question of
whether the prediction of such entities leads to a crisis for the theory.
I argue that a definition in terms of curve incompleteness is adequate,
and in particular that the idea that singularities correspond to 'missing
points' has insurmountable problems. I conclude that singularities per
se pose no serious problems for the theory, but their analysis does
bringing focus several problems of interpretation at the foundation of
the theory often ignored in the philosophical literature.
"The Light at the End of the Tunneling: Observations
and Underdetermination"
Michael Dickson, Indiana University
Abstract:
Some version(s) of the following two theses are commonly accepted.
(1) Observations are somehow "theory-laden." (2) There are observationally
equivalent (but otherwise distinct) theories. How can both be true? What
is meant by observational equivalence" if there are no "observations" that
could be shared by theories? This paper is an attempt to untangle these
issues by saying what "theory-ladenness" and "observational equivalence"
amount to, and by considering an example. Having done so, the paper outlines
a program for reconciling (1) and (2) within some sciences, based on a
conception of theories as mathematical formalism plus interpretation.
"Inference to the Best Explanation is Coherent"
Igor Douven, Utrecht University
Abstract:
In his (1989) van Fraassen argues that Inference to the Best Explanation
is incoherent in the sense that adopting it as a rule for belief change
will make one susceptible to a dynamic Dutchbook. The present paper argues
against this. An epistemic strategy is described that allows us to infer
to the best explanation free of charge.
NIH Consensus Conferences: Resolving Medical
Controversy with Data in a
Science Court
John H. Ferguson, Office of Medical Applications of Research, NIH
Abstract:
Although the word science connotes exactness and precision, especially
when applied to the so called hard sciences like mathematics, physics and
chemistry, there is the need in all the sciences for interpretation of
data. Interpretation of experiments and data may be even more essential
in the softer sciences like biology, medicine and certainly the social
sciences. As the courts must interpret the law, so too must the
latest scientific findings be interpreted by someone, some group or institution
to apply the findings in a useful or meaningful societal setting.
The NIH has had a program for the interpretation of new medical
science for the past twenty years called the Consensus Development Program.
This program was initiated to address some congressional concerns that
new
research funded by the NIH that was applicable to medical practice
was not getting applied in the health care community. The NIH Consensus
Conferences were designed to bridge this gap by assessing medical treatments
and procedures that were newly derived from research and were now ready
for application in the health care system, but where controversy
regarding use or application remained --- in other words ---
where unbiased interpretation was required. These conferences are
a kind of court proceeding attempting to resolve these controversies with
interpretation of the new medical science and health data by an impartial
jury.
"The Plurality of Bayesian Measures of Confirmation
and the Problem of Measure Sensitivity"
Branden Fitelson, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Abstract:
Contemporary Bayesian confirmation theorists measure degree of confirmation
using a variety of non-equivalent relevance measures. As a result, a great
many of the arguments surrounding quantitative Bayesian confirmation theory
are implicitly sensitive to choice of measure of confirmation. Strictly
speaking, such arguments are enthymematic, since they presuppose that some
relevance measure (or class of relevance measures) is superior to other
relevance measures that have been proposed and defended in the philosophical
literature. I present a survey of this pervasive class of Bayesian confirmation-theoretic
enthymemes, and a brief analysis of some recent attempts to resolve this
problem of measure sensitivity.
"Moral Responsibility and the 'Ignorant Scientist'"
John Forge, Griffith University
Abstract:
The question addressed in this paper is whether a scientist who has
engaged in pure research can be held morally responsible for outcomes of
that research which affect others, most notably through technology, when
these effects were not foresee. The scientist was "ignorant" of these outcomes.
It would appear that the answer must be that the or she could not be responsible,
for surely one is only responsible for what one is, in the appropriate
sense, in control of, and being genuinely ignorant would seem to preclude
control. As against this, it will be claimed that a case can be made for
saying that if the scientist can be held responsible for being ignorant,
then he or she can be held (indirectly) responsible for the outcomes in
questions, and indeed there are circumstances in which scientists can be
responsible for being ignorant. As it happens, it is only in the sense
of blame, and not of praise, that responsiblity has purchase here.
"Interpolation as Explanation"
Jaakko Hintikka, Boston University, and
Ilpo Halonen, University of Helsinki
Abstract:
A (normalized) interpolant I in Craig's theorem is a kind of explanation
why the consequence relation (from F to G) holds. This is because I is
a summary of the interaction of the configurations specified by F and G,
respectively, that shows how G follows from F. If explaining E means
deriving it from a background theory T plus situational information A and
if among the concepts of E we can separate those occurring only in T or
only in A, then the interpolation theorem applies in two different ways
yielding two different explanations and two different covering laws.
"Category Theory: The Language of Mathematics"
Elaine Landry, McGill University
Abstract:
In this paper, I set out to situate my claim that category theory provides
the language for mathematical discourse. Against foundational approaches,
I argue that there is no need to reduce either the content or structure
of mathematical concepts and theories to either the universe of sets or
the category of categories. I assign category theory the role of organizing
what we say about the structure of both mathematical concepts and
theories. Finally, I argue that category theory, sees as the language
of mathematics, provides a framework for mathematical structuralism.
"Defending Abduction"
Ilkka Niiniluoto, University of Helsinki
Abstract:
Charles S. Peirce argued that, besides deduction and induction, there
is a third mode of inference which he called "hypothesis" or "abduction."
He characterized abduction as reasoning "from effect to cause", and as
"the operation of adopting an explanatory hypothesis." Peirce's ideas about
abduction, which are related also to historically earlier accounts of heuristic
reasoning (the method of analysis), have been seen as providing a logic
of scientific discovery. Inference to the best explanation (IBE) has been
regarded as an important mode of justification, both in everyday life,
detective stories, and science. In particular, scientific realism has been
defended by an abductive no-miracle argument (Smart, Putnam, Boyd), while
the critics of realism have attempted to show that this appeal to abduction
is question-begging, circular, or incoherent (Fine, Laudan, van Fraassen).
This paper approaches these issues by distinguishing weaker and stronger
forms of abduction, and by showing how these types of inferences can be
given Peircean and Bayesian probabilistic reconstructions.
"'Laws of Nature' as an Indexical Term: A Reinterpretation
of Lewis's Best-System Analysis"
John Roberts, University of Pittsburgh
Abstract:
David Lewis's best-system analysis of laws of nature is perhaps the
best known sophisticated regularity theory of laws. Its strengths are widely
recognized, even by some of its ablest critics. Yet it suffers from what
appears to be a glaring weakness: It seems to grant an arbitrary privilege
to the standards of our own scientific culture. I argue that by reformulating,
or reinterpreting, Lewis's exposition of the best-system analysis, we arrive
at a view that is free of this weakness. The resulting theory of laws has
the surprising consequence that the term "law of nature" is indexical.
"Scientific Objectivity and Psychiatric Nosology"
Patricia Ross, University of Minnesota
Abstract:
This paper challenges the traditional conception of objectivity in
science by arguing that its singular focus on evidential relations and
search for a perspectivalism renders it inadequate. Through an examination
of psychiatric nosology, I argue that interesting and unique problems arise
that challenge this conception of objectivity and that these challenges
cannot be met by this account. However, a social practice account of objectivity
provides a much more successful way of thinking about values and objectivity
in psychiatric nosology. Moreover, it provides us with a far more successful
account in general.
"The Semantic (Mis)Conception of Theories"
C. Wade Savage, University of Minnesota
Abstract:
On the traditional, "syntactic" conception, a scientific theory is
a (preferably axiomatized) collection of statements. On the version of
the opposing "semantic" conception advanced by Beatty and Giere, a theory
is a definition plus an hypothesis that the definition has application.
On the version advanced by Giere and van Fraassen, a theory is a non-linguistic
model specified by a definition plus a hypothesis that the model applies
to some empirical system. On the version advanced by van Fraassen, Suppes,
and Suppe, a theory is a collection of mathematical models. The advantages
claimed for these versions of the "semantic" conception are either spurious
or can be obtained under a suitable version of the "syntactic" conception.
This conclusion will be argued here for the first two conceptions.
"Functionalism and the Meaning of Social Facts"
Warren Schmaus, Illinois Institute of Technology
Abstract:
This paper defends a social functionalist interpretation, modeled on
psychological functionalism, of the meanings of social facts. Social functionalism
provides a better explanation of the possibility of interpreting other
cultures than approaches that identify the meanings of social facts with
either mental states or behavior. I support this claim through a functionalist
reinterpretation of sociological accounts of the categories that identify
them with their collective representations. Taking the category of causality
as my example, I show that if we define it instead in terms of its functional
relations to moral rules, it becomes easier to recognize in other cultures.
"Proper Function and Recent Selection"
Peter Schwartz, University of Pennsylvania
Abstract:
"Modern History" version of the etiological theory claim that in order
for a trait X to have the proper function F, individuals with X must have
been recently favored by natural selection for doing F (Godfrey-Smith 1994,
Griffiths 1992, 1993). For many traits with prototypical proper functions,
however, such recent selection may not have occurred: traits may have been
maintained due to lack of variation or due to selection for other effects.
I examine this flaw in Modern History accounts and offer an alternative
etiological theory, the Continuing Usefulness account, which appears to
avoid such problems.
"Does Science Undermine Religion?"
Neven Sesardic, Miyazaki International College
Abstract:
In this paper I first explain the difference between three kinds of
questions (purely scientific, purely religious, and mixed). Second, I try
to show that historical conflicts between religion and science were not
accidental; there is an inherent logic that forces religion to make empirical
claims, putting it on a collision course with science. Third, I argue that
the defeat of religion in its conflict with science over a number of empirical
issues eventually undermines the credibility of "purely religious" beliefs
as well. Fourth, I discuss some consequences of these views for the relation
between science and religion.
"Degrees of Freedom in the Social World"
Mariam Thalos, SUNY at Buffalo
Abstract:
Ever since Hobbes we have sought to explain such extraordinarily commonplace
facts as that prudent people trust each other, keep promises and succeed
by and large at coordinating so as not to collide in corridors and roadways.
In fact, it is the success which meets our efforts to coordinate without
communication so as not to collide in corridors, which is perhaps the most
perplexing of all social phenomena, because it is enjoyed by creatures
with the capacity to conceive of (inconveniently) many coordination schemes
that achieve the same ends. And ever since Thomas Schelling we have been
suspecting that traditional game theory, which as I shall show embraces
a Kantian view of agency, cannot explain this success. I shall here propose
an anti-Kantian account of agency which takes as its point of departure
the kinds of coordinations that Schelling demonstrated are so difficult
for traditional game theory to explain. My proposal shall reject the Bayesian
foundations of game theory, which rest on this Kantian view of agency.
"Measured Realism and Statistical Inference: An
Explanation for the Fast Progress of 'Hard' Psychology"
J.D. Trout, Loyola University of Chicago
Abstract:
The use of null hypothesis significance testing (NHST) in psychology
has been under sustained attack, despite its reliable use in the notably
successful, so-called "hard" areas of psychology, such as perception and
cognition. I argue that, in contrast to merely methodological analyses
of hypothesis testing (in terms of "test severity," or other confirmation-theoretic
notions), only a patently metaphysical position can adequately capture
the uneven but undeniable successes of theories in "hard psychology." I
contend that Measured Realism satisfies this description and characterizes
the role of NHST in hard psychology.
"The Principle of the Common Cause Faces the Bernstein
Paradox"
Jos Uffink, Utrecht University
Abstract:
I consider the problem of extending Reichenbach's principle of the
common cause to more than two events, vis-à-vis an example posed
by Bernstein. It is argued that the only reasonable extension of Reichenbach's
principle stands in conflict with a recent proposal due to Horwich. I also
discuss prospects of the principle of the common cause in the light of
these and other difficulties known in the literature and argue that a more
viable version of the principle is the one provided by Penrose and Percifal
(1962).
"Inference to the Best Explanation and Theoretical
Entities"
Susan Vineberg, Wayne State University
Abstract:
Scientific entity realism has been challenged on the grounds that it
depends on the controversial principle of inference to the best explanation.
I defend the view against this challenge, by showing that the particular
inferences needed by the entity realist do not have the objectionable features
antirealists cite in questioning inference to the best explanation. Indeed,
these inferences are either ones needed by empiricists in arguing for empirical
adequacy, or which are no stronger than the realist needs for justifying
his claims about ordinary objects.
"Gravity and Gauge Theory"
Steve Weinstein, Northwestern University
Abstract:
Gauge theories are theories which are invariant under a characteristic
group of "gauge" transformations. General relativity is invariant under
transformations of the diffeomorphism group. This has prompted many philosophers
and physicists to treat general relativity as a gauge theory, and diffeomorphisms
as gauge transformations. I argue that this approach is misguided.
"Defending Longino's Social Epistemology"
K. Brad Wray, University of Calgary
Abstract:
Though many agree social factors influence inquiry, developing a viable
social epistemology has proved to be difficult. According to Longino, it
is the processes that make inquiry possible that are social; they require
a number of people to sustain them. These processes also ensure that the
results of inquiry are not merely subjective opinions, and thus deserve
the label "knowledge."
I defend Longino's epistemology against charges of Kitcher, Schmitt,
and Solomon. Longino rightly recognizes that different social factors have
different effects on inquiry, and recommends reconceptualizing "knowledge,"
distinguishing knowledge from opinion by reference to a social standard.
Organizer: Frederick M. Kronz, University of Texas at Austin
Chair: TBA
“Bohmian Insights into Quantum Chaos”
James T. Cushing, University of Notre Dame
Abstract:
The ubiquity of chaos in classical mechanics (CM), as opposed to the
situation in standard quantum mechanics (QM), might be taken as speaking
against QM being the fundamental theory of physical phenomena. Bohmian
mechanics (BM), as a formulation of quantum theory, may clarify both the
existence of chaos in the quantum domain and the nature of the classical
limit. Two interesting possibilities are (i) that CM and classical
chaos are included in and underwritten by quantum mechanics (BM) or (ii)
that BM and CM simply possess a common region of (noninclusive) overlap.
In the latter case, neither CM nor QM alone would be sufficient, even in
principle, to account for all the physical phenomena we encounter.
In this talk I shall summarize and discuss the implications of recent work
on chaos and the classical limit within the framework of BM.
“Nonseparability and Quantum Chaos”
Frederick M. Kronz, The University of Texas at Austin
Abstract:
The clockwork image of classical physics has been shattered by the
relatively recent discovery of chaotic classical models. The converse
to this ironic situation seems to be developing in quantum physics.
Conventional wisdom has it that chaotic behavior is either strongly suppressed
or absent in quantum models. Some have concluded that these considerations
serve to undermine the correspondence principle thereby raising serious
doubts about the adequacy of quantum mechanics. So, the quantum chaos
question is a prime subject for philosophical analysis. The most
significant reasons given for the absence of suppression of chaotic behavior
in quantum models are the linearity of Schrödinger’s equation and
the unitarity of the time-evolution described by that equation. Both
are shown in this essay to be irrelevant by demonstrating that the crucial
feature for chaos is the nonseparability of the Hamiltonian. That
demonstration indicates that quantum chaos is likely to be exhibited in
models of open quantum systems. A measure for probing such models
for chaotic behavior is developed and then used to show that quantum mechanics
has chaotic models for systems having a continuous energy spectrum.
The prospects of this result for vindicating the correspondence principle
are then briefly examined.
“Chaos and Fundamentalism”
Gordon Belot, Princeton University
Abstract:
I discuss the philosophical significance of the problem of quantum
chaos. I concentrate on the most pressing form of this problem: the
fact that there are many chaotic classical systems whose quantizations
are non-chaotic, even periodic. I argue that this puts a strain on
the correspondence principle, conceived of as requiring that quantum mechanics
should be capable of accounting for the empirical successes of classical
mechanics. I argue that even very weak versions of the correspondence
principle are in some danger of being falsified in light of the problem
of quantum chaos: the viability of weak versions of the correspondence
principle depends upon rather delicate empirical considerations.
This leaves us worrying about a question which was once thought to have
been settled: the empirical and conceptual relationship between classical
mechanics and quantum mechanics. I close with some comments concerning
the philosophical import of the details of such limiting relations between
theories.
Symposium: The Organism in Philosophical Focus
Organizer: Manfred D. Laubichler, Princeton University
Chair: TBA
“Fashioning a Descriptive Model of the Worm”
Rachel Ankeny, University of Pittsburgh
Abstract:
The nematode Caenorhabditis elegans frequently is touted as an exemplar
of a model organism for genetics, development, and neurobiology.
This paper analyzes the concept of C. elegans as a model organism against
the background of a larger historical study. I argue that the early
history of the worm project included a pre-explanatory stage that involved
descriptive rather than explanatory models and accordingly lacked much
emphasis on theory or explanations as they are traditionally viewed in
the philosophy of science; therefore the applicability of previous philosophical
views on modeling (e.g., the semantic conception of theories) is limited.
As an alternative, I expand the concept of a descriptive model, and use
it to understand how C. elegans may be viewed as a prototype of the metazoa
against the backdrop of examples of the three types of modeling that occur
with C. elegans: modeling of structures, of processes, and of information.
In conclusion, I suggest that more investigation of descriptive models
(such as those generated in the worm project) and their relation to explanatory
models developed in later stages of a scientific research program must
be done in order to capture important aspects of organism-based research.
“Behavior at the Organismal and Molecular Levels: The Case of C. elegans”
Kenneth Schaffner, George Washington University
Abstract:
Caenorhabditis elegans (C. elegans) is a tiny worm that has become
the focus of a large number of world wide research projects examining its
genetics, development, neuroscience, and behavior. Recently two groups
of investigators (Lockery’s and Rankin’s labs) have begun to tie together
the behavior of the organism and the underlying neural circuits and molecular
processes implemented in those circuits. Behavior is quintessentially
organismal—it is the organism as a whole that moves and mates—but the explanations
are devised at the molecular and neurocircuit levels, and tested in populations
using protocols that span many levels of aggregation. This paper
presents a summary of key results in neural network analysis of the worm,
and considers the prospects for generalizing those results, both methodologically
and substantively, to other organisms. In particular, some comparisons
and contrasts with behavioral and neuroscience work on the fruit fly, Drosophila
melanogaster, will be briefly considered.
“Organism and Decomposition: Steps Towards an Integrative Theory of
Biology”
Manfred D. Laublicher, Princeton University, and
Günter P. Wagner, Yale University
Abstract:
The organism is the central reference frame for much of biological
theory and practice. It is therefore all the more surprising that
no well defined organism concept exists or even that the organism concept
does not draw similar attention as other intensely debated biological concepts
such as the gene or the species concept. So far, the problem of the
organism has been mostly discussed in the context of the problem of individuality
and the unit of selection issue (see e.g., Buss 1987, Hull 1989, Ghiselin
1974).
Here we investigate the question whether there is an organism hidden
in many successful biological theories and models. We propose a notion
of the organism that would serve as the focus of integration for the many
separate biological theories that make up the newly established fields
of organismal and integrative biology. We argue that the structural
weakness of many of these theories lies in the absence of a general theory
of the organism that, together with an appropriate decomposition theorem,
would account for the specific variables in these theories and models as
properly individualized characters of an organism. We will investigate
the formal properties of such a general organism concept and demonstrate
the application of a decomposition theorem in the case of the unit of selection
(see also Laubichler 1997, Wagner, Laubichler, and Bagheri 1997).
“Ontological Butchery: Distinguishing Organisms from Other Functionally
Integrated Biological Entities”
Jack A. Wilson, Washington and Lee University
Abstract:
Biological entities of many kinds, such as cells, organisms, and colonies,
are made up of physically continuous and causally integrated parts.
Some are composed of parts which are themselves built from causally integrated
parts, e.g., a colonial siphonophore and the zooids that compose it.
Both have many of the properties commonly associated with an organism.
The parts of these entities display diverse degrees of integration which
makes it difficult to distinguish organisms from other kinds of living
things. In this paper, I explore the history of the organism concept
in biology and defend a demarcation criterion based on a position shared
by J.S. Huxley and Richard Dawkins, that an organism is a living entity
that is sufficiently heterogeneous in form to be rendered non-functional
if cut in half.
“The Organism in Development”
Robert C. Richardson, University of Cincinnati
Abstract:
Developmental biology has resurfaced in recent years, but often apparently
without a clear central role for the organism. The organism is pulled
in divergent directions: on the one hand, there is an important body of
work that emphasizes the role of the gene in development, as executing
and controlling embryological changes (cf. Gilbert 1991); on the other
hand, there are more theoretical approaches under which the organism disappears
as little more than an instance for testing biological theories (cf. Brandon
1997; Schank and Wimsatt 1976, and Kauffman 1993). I press for the
ineliminability of the organism in developmental biology. The disappearance
of the organism is illusion. Heterochrony, or change of timing in
development, assumes a central role in evolutionary developmental biology
(Gould 1977; McKinney and McNamara 1991), whether or not it deserves the
role often accorded to it as the central developmental mechanism (cf. Raff
1996). Genetic studies of the basis of heterochrony in C. elegans,
for example, display early appearance of adult structures, and deletion
of early stages, both heterochronic changes. They nonetheless display
the global basis of heterochronies (Ambros and Moss 1994), and leave a
central role to the organism. More theoretical approaches treat heterotopy,
or spatial patterning in development, as the consequence of more general
and abstract processes of development (Kauffman 1993), or understand changes
in timing in terms of general dependency relations (Schank and Wimsatt
1976). These more global, “emergentist,” approaches fit poorly with
a broad range of cases in developmental biology. Classical transplantation
experiments show a degree of epigenetic (systemic and local) control for
normal growth (Bryant and Simpson 1984) which is not consistent either
with more formal models or with developmental entrenchment. In studies
of adult organisms (Maunz and German 1997), there are heterochronic patterns
of growth which are displayed by particular organisms (in this case, rabbits),
but which may not be general. There are many sources of heterochrony,
and it is important to determine which are prevalent in a given case.
Again, the organism turns out to be central in understanding the evolution
of development.
Commentator: Jane Maienschein, Arizona State University
Symposium: Studies in the Interaction of Psychology and Neuroscience
Organizer: Gary Hatfield, University of Pennsylvania
Chair: TBA
“Mental Functions as Constraints on Neurophysiology: Biology and Psychology
of Color Vision”
Gary Hatfield, University of Pennsylvania
Abstract:
The concept of function has been prominent in both philosophy of biology
and philosophy of psychology. Philosophy of psychology, or philosophical
analysis of psychological theory, reveals that rigorous functional analyses
can be carried out in advance of physiological knowledge. Indeed,
in the area of sensory perception, and color vision in particular, knowledge
of psychological function leads the way in the individuation and investigation
of visual neurophysiology. Psychological functions constrain biological
investigation. This example is of general interest as an instance
of the relation between biological and psychological functions and their
“wet” realizations.
“Cognitive Science and the Neuroethology of Electroreception”
Brian L. Keeley, Washington University in St. Louis
Abstract:
The theoretical relationship between psychology and neurobiology has
been a long standing point of debate within the philosophy of cognitive
science. Some, Fodor for example, have argued that psychology has
a significant degree of theoretical autonomy from the facts of neurobiology.
Others, such as the Churchlands, have responded with arguments purporting
to show that neurobilolgy has a crucial and ineliminable role to play in
cognitive theorizing at all levels. This paper takes as its starting
point the science of neuroethology—a multidisciplinary investigation of
animal behavior that shares many structural similarities with cognitive
science. The neuro-ethological investigation which led to the discovery
of electroreception (the ability of certain non-human animals to perceive
the world via electricity) is used as a model for how a variety of disciplines
should interact and cross-constrain one another. Such a model suggests
that the fields that make up cognitive science ought to co-evolve and constrain
one another in a mutually supportive fashion.
“Neuropsychology and Neurology”
William Hirstein, William Paterson University
Abstract:
Blind-sight and the various agnosias provide important windows on brain
functioning. Through the study of deficits caused by brain damage,
inferences can be made about the normal functioning of the brain.
But these inferences require a conception of normal function cast in psychological
terms. The methodology of neuropsychology shed light on the cross-constraints
between psychology and neuroscience.
Symposium: Toward a New Understanding of Scientific Success
Organizer: Janet A. Kourany, University of Notre Dame
Chair: TBA
“How Inevitable Are the Results of Successful Science?”
Ian Hacking, University of Toronto
Abstract:
There are innumerable ways in which successful sciences and their applications
could have gone differently—different questions, different aims, different
patrons, different talents, different recourses, different interests.
Yet there is a strong conviction, among many scientists, that any successful
investigation of a definite subject matter (such as genetics, heat, or
astrophysics) would produce equivalent results. But even some quite
cautious authors, like Keller, doubt this. Genetics without the idea
of a genetic program could, she seems to imply, have led to a non-equivalent
but successful genetics. The strongest claim for inevitability is
that any intelligent being who took up science, even an alien in outer
space, would develop something equivalent to our fundamental physics, if
that being was curious in the ways in which we are curious. In contrast
my claims about the forms of scientific knowledge seem to imply that had
the physics of the past fifty years not been weapons-funded, non-equivalent
physics would have resulted. Of course some workers with a social
approach to knowledge make much stronger suggestions than these.
Who is right? The “inevitabilist” or the “contingentist”?
To answer, one needs first to understand what it is to make different investigations
of the “same” field of inquiry. One needs to understand what it is
for two bodies of knowledge to be “equivalent.” Only when these conceptual
issues are clarified can one even begin to assess claims to inevitability
or contingency of successful fundamental scientific conclusions.
My contribution to this symposium will be an attempted clarification of
“equivalence,” and a discussion of the implications for “inevitability.”
“What Does ‘Explanation’ Mean in Developmental Biology?”
Evelyn Fox Keller, MIT
Abstract:
Three questions form the background to my remarks:
(1) What are the prevailing explanatory narratives in contemporary
biological discussions of development?
(2) What are the scientific functions of these narratives?
(3) How are we to assess the productivity of an explanatory narrative?
By referring to ‘explanations’ in terms of ‘narrative’, I mean to underscore
two starting assumptions: (a) Explanations are rarely if ever either logically
complete or robust; (b) Yet, whatever their purely logical shortcomings,
they are nonetheless indispensable to the conduct of science. Thus,
attempts to assess the productivity of explanatory narratives cannot rest
solely on logical measures, but will also need to take other measures,
including creativity and rhetorical power, into account. It is part
of my aim to describe more appropriate (in the sense, i.e., of realistic)
measures of explanatory narratives in developmental biology. It is
also my hope that such an exercise might even be useful to working scientists
in helping them to identify narratives that have outlived their usefulness.
As a case in point, I want to consider the notion of “genetic program.”
Ever since its introduction in 1961, this notion has served as something
of a rhetorical tour de force for molecular biology that has manifested
tremendous productivity. Today, however, I will argue that this notion
has outlived its usefulness, and may even have become counterproductive.
I will illustrate by examining the specific case of the much publicized
recent success of mammalian cloning.
“A Successor to the Realism-Anti-Realism Question”
Janet A. Kourany, University of Notre Dame
Abstract:
Ian Hacking and Evelyn Fox Keller have suggested, both in their papers
for this symposium and in previous work, that our views of scientific assessment
have to be enriched in certain ways. What follows with regard to
our views of the results of such assessment? Traditional philosophy
of science, for the most part, gives us only two options. Either
scientific theories that are positively assessed are true (or approximately
true, or the like), or they are only useful fictions (“empirically adequate,”
or something of the sort). Of course, traditional philosophy of science
then goes on to disclose the intractable problems associated with each
of these options, leading at least some philosophers of science (e.g.,
Arthur Fine) to conclude that not only are both options indefensible, but
so is the question that calls them forth. From my point of view,
also, the traditional options are unacceptable, but for different reasons.
They inspire the wrong kinds of attitudes toward the results of science.
To say that a theory is true (or approximately true, etc.) is a discussion-stopper.
However socially dangerous or unhelpful or sexist or racist or whatever
the theory is, it is to say that that’s the way things are—we have to accept
them. Of course, we need not pursue such a theory, but that is a
difficult course of action to adopt. After all, truth, it is said,
has intrinsic value: it should not be suppressed. And at any rate
truth, it is said, will doubtless prove useful in the long run, even if
it does not seem so in the short run. To say, on the other hand,
that a theory is only useful (or empirically adequate, etc.) is another
discussion-stopper, though not as profound a one. However socially
dangerous or unhelpful or sexist or racist or whatever the theory is, it
is to say that it still has value, that it still can be used for purposes
of prediction. But it leaves open the possibility of pursuing an
alternative theory that is “just as useful,” but without the drawbacks.
The problem is that it buries the question of what the theory is useful
for, why the predictions are needed—whether, in fact, the theory is really
useful to us at all.
What changes occur when we enrich our views of theory assessment along
the lines suggested by Hacking and Keller? I will argue that the
realism-anti-realism question under these conditions changes significantly,
and I will link up pursuit of this changed question with the descriptive-prescriptive
program for philosophy of science I argue for elsewhere.
Symposium: Evidence, Data Generation, and Scientific Practice: Toward A Reliabilist Philosophy of Experiment
Organizer: Deborah G. Mayo, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University
Chair: Ian Hacking, University of Toronto
“Data, Phenomena and Reliability”
James F. Woodward, California Institute of Technology
Abstract:
This paper will explore, in the context of the distinction that I have
introduced elsewhere between data and phenomena, how data serve as evidence
for phenomena. Phenomena (e.g., the existence of neutral currents)
are stable, repeatable effects or processes that are potential objects
of explanation by general theories and which can serve as evidence for
such theories. Data (e.g., bubble chamber photographs) serve as evidence
for the existence of phenomena but are typically not explained or entailed
by general theory, even in connection with background information.
In contrast to standard philosophical models which invite us to think
of evidential relationships as logical relationships of some kind I will
argue that the reliability of the processes by which data are produced
is crucual to their evidential status. Reliability is roughly the
notion invoked by the reliabalist tradition in epistemology—it is a matter
of good error characteristics under repetition. On the reliabalist
picture, it is this information about error characteristics rather than
the deductive or inductive logical relationships between data and phenomena
claims that determine whether the former support the latter.
This paper will describe several examples of data to phenomena reasoning
in which the reliability of a detection process is at issue. I will
then use these to motivate a number of more general claims about reliability
and evidential support. For example, although the process by which
evidence is produced is usually regarded as irrelevant by the standard
models of confirmation, it is crucial on the reliabalist alternative.
Given two qualitatively identical pieces of evidence (e. g., two indistinguishable
bubble chamber photographs) one may be good evidence for the existence
of neutral currents and the other may not be at all, depending on the way
in which they have been produced. Similarly, while most standard
models of evidential support require that evidence be (or be representable
as) sentential or propositional in form the reliabalist model doesn’t impose
this requirement. Data which are non-propositional and which no one
knows how to represent propositionally (e. g. X-ray photographs of possible
tumors) can figure as the outcome of a reliable detection process.
Moreover, various patterns of data to phenomena reasoning that are actually
employed in science and that look circular or otherwise defective on standard
accounts are readily reconstructable as legitimate on a reliabalist analysis.
In all of these respects, the reliabalist account provides a better reconstruction
of reasoning from data to phenomena than standard models of confirmation.
“Can Philosophical Theories of Evidence be Useful to Scientists?”
Peter Achinstein, Johns Hopkins University
Abstract:
Scientists frequently argue about whether, or to what extent, some
putative evidence supports a given hypothesis. (Witness the recent
debate concerning whether the Martian meteorite is evidence of past life
on Mars.) The debates in question are not about whether the statements
describing the evidence are true but about the relationship between these
statements and the hypothesis they are supposed to support. Now there
is an abundance of theories of evidence proposed by philosophers of science—probabilistic
as well as non-probabilistic accounts—that attempt to say how to determine
whether, or to what extent, evidence supports an hypothesis. Yet
these theories are generally ignored by scientists in their disputes.
Why is this so?
Is it simply the result of a lack of communication between disciplines?
Is it that philosophical theories of evidence are too abstract to be of
any practical use? Is it that although methodological theories may
describe actual practice, they have little if any effect in shaping or
altering that practice? Perhaps some of each. But there is
another factor that I want to consider, viz. that philosophers, particularly
those espousing objective (by contrast to subjective) theories of evidence,
generally assume that evidence is an a priori relationship. They
assume that whether e, if true, supports h, and to what extent it does,
can be determined by a priori calculation. I believe this assumption
is mistaken. In general, whether e, if true, supports h, and to what
extent, are empirical questions. If so, then scientists in a given
discipline would seem to be in a better position to determine evidential
relationships than philosophers.
In this paper I propose to do the following:
(1) To argue that the relationship in question is empirical, not a
priori. I will do so by showing that whether, and the extent to which,
putative evidence supports an hypothesis depends crucially on how the evidence
was gathered. Flaws in selection procedures are possible that can
affect confirmation, and these can only be known empirically. Such
flaws can be totally unexpected, given what is known, yet they can be shown
to affect confirmation because they impugn the reliability of the data
gathering method. I will argue that this explains why certain controversies
occur among scientists over whether the putative evidence supports an hypothesis,
even when there is no disagreement over what the evidence is. It
also explains why certain experiments are repeated, usually with significant
modifications.
(2) To consider whether this makes philosophical accounts irrelevant
in settling evidential disputes (if so, why, if not, why not?); and to
consider, more generally, how philosophers can contribute to scientific
debates about evidence. Carnap held the idea that because the relationship
between evidence and hypothesis is a priori, in principle philosophers
can help settle scientific disputes by performing a priori calculations.
This goal, I think, must be abandoned. Nevertheless, I believe that
philosophical contributions are possible. I will argue that scientists
in actual practice operate with several different concepts of evidence
that need to be distinguished and clarified. I will distinguish four
such, one subjective and the other three objective. All of them,
I will argue, represent evidence as an empirical relationship. In
the objective class one concept is relativized to a set of beliefs, while
the other two are not. Of the latter, one requires the hypothesis
itself to be true, the other does not. So there are fundamental differences.
By reference to actual examples, I will show how certain scientific
disputes about the efficacy of the evidence arise because of empirical
disagreements involving the testing procedure (something one would expect
using concepts that represent evidence as an empirical relationship), while
some disputes emerge from a use of the different concepts themselves.
In the latter cases I will argue that attention to these differences and
clarification of the concepts can aid in the resolution of the disputes.
“Experimental Practice and the Reliable Detection of Errors”
Deborah G. Mayo, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University
Abstract
Given the growing trend to renounce “armchair” philosophy of science,
it is surprising that current philosophies of evidence remain largely divorced
from the problems of evidence in actual scientific practice. The
source of the problem, I argue, is the assumption—retained from logical
empiricist accounts of confirmation—that how well evidence supports a hypothesis
is a matter of a logical calculation based on given statements of data
and hypotheses. Such accounts lack the resources to address central
scientific questions about evidence because these questions turn on empirical
information about the overall reliability of the procedures for generating
the data and selecting the test—on what may be called procedural reliability.
Two pieces of evidence that would equally well warrant a given hypothesis
H on logical measures of evidential-relationship, may in practice be regarded
as differing greatly in their evidential value because of differences in
how reliably each is able to rule out errors in affirming H. I believe
it is time to remedy this situation. Drawing on the work of my fellow
contributors, Jim Woodward and Peter Achinstein, as well as my own work
(e.g., Mayo 1996), I will attempt to sketch the directions in which
a new “reliabilist” account of evidence might move.
Symposium: Conceptual Foundations of Field Theories in Physics
Organizer: Andrew Wayne, Concordia University
Chair: TBA
“The Gauge Argument”
Paul Teller, University of California at Davis
Abstract:
Contemporary quantum field theory contains a remarkable argument for
the existence of so called “gauge particles,” such as the photon and its
generalizations. Starting from the assumption that the quantum field
has certain very natural spatial symmetry properties, keeping the quantum
field equations consistent appears to force the introduction of a field
for the gauge particles. Physicists are careful not to claim that
this argument provides a purely a priori deduction of the existence of
gauge particles. But the argument does appear to require extraordinarily
little to get it started. My effort will be to understand the nature
of this argument as clearly as possible.
“Counterintuitive Features of Quantum Field Theory”
Gordon Fleming, The Pennsylvania State University
Abstract:
I will discuss the conceptual and structural aspects of several counterintuitive
features of quantum field theory selected from the following topics: The
Reeh-Schieder property of the vacuum state; Haag’s theorem and the existence
of unitarily inequivalent representations of a quantum field theory; Rindler
quanta and horizon radiation. All of these features were puzzling
surprises to the physics community when they were discovered. All
of them have long since been incorporated into the technical repertoire
of quantum field theorists via widely accepted formal structures.
None of them enjoys more than very indirect empirical support, if that.
And none of them has yet been provided with better than tentatively plausible
conceptual analysis and physical interpretation. This situation will
not be rectified here but some suggestions will be made.
“Description,
Individuation, and Relation in Gauge Field Theory”
Sunny Auyang, Independent Scholar
Abstract:
A quantum field is best interpreted as the quantization of a classical
field, a continuous system. Together with the gravitational field,
the quantum fields make up the fundamental ontology of modern physics.
Despite its importance, the philosophical implications of the field ontology
remain largely unexplored. This paper argues, first, the field ontology
does not abandon the common sense notion of individual entities with definite
properties but makes the notion precise; second, as spatio-temporally structured
matter, it is incompatible with both the substantival and relational theories
of spacetime.
Three types of entities are distinguished in field theories.
Events, represented by local field operators, are the basic extensionless
entities individuated spatio-temporally. The equivalent of enduring
bodies represented by paths, relate the events causally. Particles,
which are the modes of field excitation, lack numerical identity and cannot
be referred to individually. The primacy of local fields over particles
implies that the significance of spacetime lies in individuating and identifying
entities. As such it is built into the definition of the entities
and exhausted by the definition. Spacetime does not exist independently
and contain or support matter, as substantivalism maintains. Nor
is it the relation among predefined entities, for there are no individual
entities in the field without presupposing its spatio-temporal structure.
Commentator: Andrew Wayne, Concordia University
Symposium: Philosophy and the Social Aspects of Scientific Inquiry: Moving On From the “Science Wars”
Organizer: Noretta Koertge, Indiana University at Bloomington
Chair: Cassandra Pinnick, Western Kentucky University
“Reviving the Sociology of Science”
Philip Kitcher, University of California, San Diego
Abstract:
Despite the prevalence of the idea that “sociology of science” has
come to play a major role in science studies, the discipline of sociology
of science, begun by Merton and his successors, has been largely abandoned.
Using comparisons with other areas of sociology, I shall try to show what
a genuine sociology of science might be, arguing that it can make important
contributions to our understanding of scientific practices. Those
contributions would not be antithetical to philosophy of science but, rather,
would enrich our investigations.
“The Recent Past and Possible Future of the Sociology of Science”
Stephen Cole, SUNY at Stony Brook
Abstract:
In the 1980s the social constructivist approach became the overwhelmingly
dominant influence on the sociology of science. Contrary to the wide
definition of constructivism used by some historians and philosophers of
science, I see constructivism as having at its essence a relativistic epistemology.
Without relativism, constructivism does not differ in many significant
ways from the traditional Mertonian sociology of science. Mertonians,
in fact, studied more than twenty years ago many of the problems which
constructivists address.
Social constructivism is seen not only as an intellectual movement,
but as a political movement. As an intellectual movement constructivism
is in shatters, not being able to successfully defend itself from the problems
of reflexivity, the countless cases brought to light where evidence from
the empirical world played determining roles in theory choice, and from
attacks by natural scientists. As a political movement, constructivism
retains its hegemony. All major disciplinary organizations and journals
are dominated by or controlled by constructivists. It is not surprising
that the number of people doing non constructivist sociology of science
has dwindled to a mere handful. A once promising discipline, with
important policy implications, has essentially been killed.
There are many problems in the organization and doing of science which
cry out for sociological analysis. The new sociologists of science
will be informed by some of the work of constructivists, but will ultimately
return to their disciplinary routes and use the theories and methods of
sociology which made the earlier work of substantial utility. The
paper will briefly outline some of the problems that are most in need of
attention.
“Science, Values and the Value of Science”
Noretta Koertge, Indiana University at Bloomington
Abstract:
Many people who reject the strong claims of postmodernists about the
inevitability of epistemic relativism, the tyranny of language games, and
the determinative influence of social values and professional interests
on the content of scientific knowledge, nevertheless share some sympathy
with the political critiques of science, technology and science policy
coming out of cultural studies. In this paper I demonstrate the influence
of postmodernist perspectives on definitions of scientific literacy and
new initiatives in math and science education. Philosophers of science
need to articulate more clearly a normative model of the role of values
in science that can supplant the simplistic alternatives of positivism
and postmodernism. I contrast Longino’s approach with one deriving
from Popper’s philosophy of social science.
“The Contexts of Scientific Practice”
Rose-Mary Sargent, Merrimack College
Abstract:
When those in science studies began to look at the particularities
surrounding laboratory practices it was a good counter to what had been
a rather simplistic account of experiment in the philosophical literature.
But the trend to see practices as purely social and divorced from the realm
of theoretical knowledge has gone too far. I argue that studies of
the social, technological, and intellectual contexts of science must be
integrated in order to capture the full complexity and variety of experimental
activities. In addition, historical cases show that although experimenters
have pursued different goals ranging from the purely epistemic to the primarily
social, significant methodological standards have tended to remain constant
across contexts.
Symposium: Philosophy of Chemistry
Organizer: Eric R. Scerri, Bradley University
Chair: TBA
“Agency of Multilevel Coherences: in Chemistry and in Other Sciences”
Joseph E. Earley, Sr., Georgetown University
Abstract:
Investigators in many fields routinely deal with compound individuals—entities
composed of parts that themselves have definite characteristics.
Observable properties of composites generally depend in complex ways on
features of the constituents. In the kinds of systems that chemists
deal with, agency of compound entities can adequately be understood in
terms of the composition and structure of the coherence, and the properties
of the components—but that understanding is not always straightforward.
This paper considers approaches to the functioning of compound individuals
that are generally employed in contemporary chemistry, and examines whether
such approaches might be useful in dealing with some currently-open questions
of philosophical interests, such as the validity of “multi-level selection”
in evolutionary biology (cf. special issue of The American Naturalist,
July 1997).
“Can We Exclude Nature from the Stability of Laboratory Research?”
Daniel Rothbart, George Mason University
Abstract:
How can we explain the stability of chemical research? In his
Representing and Intervening Ian Hacking argues that the technician’s use
of modern instruments is stabilized by the causal powers of certain entities,
a position known as entity realism. But the conception of laboratory
research that emerges from his more recent writings contradicts, by implication,
entity realism, and suggests a kind of constructivist antirealism.
We find in these writing an impoverished conception of research, one which
fails to recognize the philosophical importance of the engineer’s design
of modern instruments. An exploration of modern spectrometers in
chemistry illustrates this point. A functional realism is developed,
according to which the experimenter is committed to the existence of causal
processes as defined purposively from the engineer’s design of the modern
instrument.
“Putting Quantum Mechanics to Work in Chemistry”
Andrea I. Woody, The University of Chicago
Abstract:
This essay examines contemporary diagrammatic and graphical representations
of molecular systems, specifically molecular orbital models and electron
density graphs, derived from quantum mechanical models. Its aim is
to suggest that recent dissatisfaction with reductive accounts of chemistry
(see, e.g., Synthese, June 1997) may stem from the inability of standard
analyses of reduction to incorporate the diverse forms of representation
widely employed in the application of the stationary state Schrödinger
equation to chemistry. After a brief sketch of the historical development
of these techniques, in part to display the computational complexities
inherent in corresponding quantum calculations, I compare algebraic and
diagrammatic representations of a few specific molecules, demonstrating
the strengths of each as tools for a variety of reasoning tasks prevalent
in chemical practice. I subsequently provide a more general, and
preliminary, analysis of the inferential resources of molecular orbital
diagrams, arguing that certain characteristics of this two-dimensional
representation scheme are particularly well-designed to promote the robustness
of common forms of chemical inference.
“The Periodic System: Its Status and its Alleged Reduction”
Eric R. Scerri, Bradley University
Abstract:
One of the reasons why philosophers of science have not paid much attention
to chemistry, until recently, has been the view that this field does not
possess any profound theories or ideas like quantum mechanics, relativity
or Darwin’s theory of evolution. The purpose of this article is to
suggest that, within chemistry and in terms of explanatory power, the periodic
system possesses a comparable status to the above mentioned theories.
The tendency to dismiss the periodic system’s role seems to stem from
the mistaken view that it has been reduced to quantum mechanics.
It will be argued that all that can be strictly deduced from the principles
of quantum mechanics is an explanation for the closing of electron shells,
whereas the independent problem of the closing of the periods cannot.
In order to obtain the electron configurations of atoms it is necessary
to use a number of ad hoc schemes such as assuming the order of filling
of electron shells by reference to experimental data. The periodic
system exists as an autonomous and essentially chemical explanatory principle.
Symposium: The Coevolution of Language and Brain: Is there Anything New Under the Sun?
Organizer: Edward Manier, University of Notre Dame
Chair: Edward Manier, University of Notre Dame
“The Roots of Human Linguistic Competence—in Apes”
Duane M. Rumbaugh, Georgia State University
Abstract:
Human competencies for language, symbolism, facile learning, prediction,
mathematics, and so on, are natural expressions of processes that evolved
notably within the order Primates. The evolution of large-bodied
primates was basic to the evolution of a large brain. But particularly
within the great ape and human species the process of encephalization contributed
to an even larger brain, one within which the operations of intelligence
played an increasingly important role in adaptation. From that point,
it is proposed that evolution became directed more to the evolution of
large brains, not large bodies. Even at that point in evolutionary
history, the neurological bases for language and a broad range of cognitive
skills were in place. From these natural endowments, our species
has excelled as a natural projection of competencies that became refined
in the hominids.
Recent research with apes has revealed the critical importance of the
logic-structure of early environment and patterns in interaction with brain
size and complexity to the acquisition of language and relational learning
processes in young apes. It will be argued that conventional views
of learning that emphasize stimuli, responses, and reinforcement are insufficient
to the challenge of accounting for the acquisition of such skills in infant
apes. To account for them, the merits of a new class of learning
phenomena termed Emergents will be advanced.
“Syntax Facit Saltum: Minimal Syntactic Computation and the Evolution
of Language”
Robert C. Berwick, MIT
Abstract:
Ever since Darwin and long before, the species-specific human language
faculty has captured the imagination of evolutionary thinkers. The
reason is simple: For evolutionists, novelties or new traits in a single
lineage— “autapomorphies”—have always posed a challenge. Whatever
the evolutionary scenario, one must strike a balance between language’s
singularity and evolutionary continuity: How can one account for the striking
specificity of human syntactic constraints and at the same time retain
a Darwinian-style explanation for language’s emergence?
In this talk we show how to resolve this discontinuity paradox in a
new way—appealing to the recent linguistic syntactic theory dubbed the
“Minimalist Program” (Chomsky, 1995). We show that once the fundamental
property of generativity emerges, then minimalism forces much of the rest
of human syntax to follow. All we need in addition is what Deacon
argues for: pre-existing substrate of symbols/words (a lexicon).
Coupled with the appearance of a single combinatorial operation of “hierarchical
concatenation,” this leads directly to many of the distinguishing human
syntactic properties: recursive generative capacity; basic grammatical
relations like subject and object (and only these); observed locality constraints
on natural language syntax; and the non-counting, structure dependence
of natural language rules.
Put another way, while it is surely true that natural language, like
the vertebrate eye, is in some sense an “organ of extreme complexity and
perfection” in Darwin’s terms, we shall argue that one does not need to
advance incremental, adaptationist arguments with intermediate steps to
explain much of natural language’s specific syntactic design.
“Evolutionary Engineering: How our Mental Capacities were Built from
a Set of Primitives.”
Marc Hauser, Harvard University
Abstract:
Studies within cognitive neuroscience illustrate how patients with
particular forms of neurological damage can exhibit dissociations between
implicit and explicit knowledge. Similarly, recent work in cognitive
development shows that up to a certain age, infants have an implicit understanding
of the physical and psychological world, but that this knowledge only becomes
explicit with the emergence of other domains of expertise such as language.
In this presentation, I would like to propose that the distinction between
implicit and explicit knowledge can shed light on cognitive evolution,
and in particular, the ways in which nonhuman animals are relatively constrained
in their cognitive abilities. More specifically, I propose that in
the domain of belief-desire psychology, nonhuman animals are limited to
implicit understanding and that the evolutionary acquisition of language
facilitated the transition from implicit to explicit understanding of the
psychological world. To evaluate this hypothesis, I present results
from experiments on nonhuman primates using tasks that tap into both implicit
and explicit knowledge. Tests of implicit knowledge are modeled after
those used in studies of prelinguistic infants. Specifically, we
use the preferential looking time procedure to explore what nonhuman primates
know about (i) invisible displacements, (ii) the causes of object contact
and movement, (iii) the distinction about animate and inanimate objects,
and (iv) objects with goals, desires and beliefs. We then use the
results from tests of implicit knowledge to explore comparable problems
at an explicit level. Results support the position that for some
domain-specific systems of knowledge, nonhuman primates may be incapable
of accessing, explicitly, what they know implicitly. Consequently,
nonhuman primates may be frozen in an implicit state of understanding the
world, in much the same way that some autistic children and prelinguistic
human infants appear to be.
“Could Grammar Have Evolved?”
Terry Deacon, McLean Hospital, Harvard Medical School, and Boston University
Abstract:
One intention of many models of language evolution is to explain how
grammatical analysis algorithms could have evolved to become innately represented
in some form within the human mind (read brain). Though I think that
the presumed necessity of postulating such a linguistic instinct to explain
language learning is incorrect for other reasons (see Deacon, 1997), I
intend in this paper to examine the claim that a biological evolutionary
mechanism could produce such results.
A biologically plausible model cannot merely postulate some big bang
mutation that creates this unique and sophisticated set of interlinked
algorithms by accident. It must instead either show how it is already
present in other systems in a sort of preadaptationist argument (e.g. theories
that grammar and syntax are entirely computationally parasitic on prior
motor action programming systems) or show how it can be progressively “instantiated”
in the brain’s wetware by a form of Baldwinian evolution, which, by entirely
Darwinian means, gradually allows patterns of language use to select for
specific biological substrates that support more efficient performance.
Though I am sympathetic with the preadaptationist approach and the
analogies between syntax and action planning are insightful, I do not think
the strong form of this argument can succeed. The principal evidence
against it is the fact that the corresponding preadaptation is present
in quite elaborate form in most birds and mammals, without any correlated
language ability. There are also well known linguistic challenges
to many related functionalist accounts of grammar which cannot be entirely
discounted.
Baldwinian models also provide very informative approaches and some
have led to remarkable predictions about rates and constraints of this
sort of coevolution. However, all Baldwinian models must make certain
assumptions that I will show cannot be met, specifically in the case of
language. These have to do with the requirement that for selection
to take place the neural substrate of the linguistic computation in question
must be essentially the same for all users in essentially all circumstances
across long stretches of evolutionary time.
The principal problem is the identification of which sign stimuli will
constitute which grammatical categories of language elements. If
the assignment of these grammatical categories (or any surrogate categorical
distinction) can be “given” by some universal invariants in the input or
output stimuli, or in the computation itself, then there can be a universal
neural substrate correlated with the grammatical computation enabling selection
to take place.
Such invariants are evident in the case of many aspects of language
function (sound analysis, speech articulation, symbol learning, short-term
verbal memory demands) and in much nonlanguage communication (alarm calls,
honey bee foraging dances, human laughter and sobbing), but not with respect
to the categorical distinctions that define the basic units of a grammar
and syntax.
Because these are symbolic rule systems applied to arbitrary and highly
variable surface structures from phonemes to phrases, they are intrinsically
not correlated with invariants present in the surface structure or use
patterns, and rapidly change in very brief time spans. Grammatical
and syntactic knowledge thus cannot evolve to be increasingly innate for
essentially the same reasons that word reference cannot: the indirect nature
of symbolic reference (that both are based on) necessarily undermines any
potential invariance relationships. The interesting question is “What
invariant relationships are left for explaining the unquestioned evolution
of a uniquely human propensity for grammar and syntax?”
“Richard Rudner, Postmodern Separatism and The Symbolic Species”
David Rudner, Tufts University
Abstract:
The philosophy of science and the ethnography of science represent
respectively prescriptive and descriptive approaches to a common
topic. But neither is pure. Both disciplines poach in each
other’s waters. Both pass judgments about each other’s competencies.
Neither one can ignore the other. This paper will explore certain
key elements in the post-modern ethnographic critique of science, a surprising
convergence between these elements and parallel tenets in a pragmatic philosophy
of science, and the prospects for a new science of humanity based on empirical
findings reported in Terrence Deacon’s book, The Symbolic Species.
I begin this discussion by quoting a paper that my father, Richard
Rudner, wrote twenty five years ago. At the time, he had taken up
the gauntlet against philosophers and social scientists who would deny
the very idea of social science. At best, according to proponents
of (what my father termed the “separatist position”) students of human
behavior were engaged in what Peter Winch called, “a misbegotten epistemology”—an
exercise in analysis, explication and definition, but an exercise that
necessarily lacked any component of empirical verification. In this
regard, the social sciences were held to be essentially distinct from the
non-social or non-human or natural sciences.
The separatist arguments were diverse. Some were powerful and
subtle; others not. My father addressed all of them and, as far as
I’m concerned, demolished them. But his efforts predated the rise
of postmodernism in the academy and, twenty-five years later, the separatists
are back with a vengeance. Indeed, in an ironic twist, some of the
more extreme separatist arguments now militate against the possibility
of any science at all—social or natural. In effect, these extremists
have become proponents of a new unified view of human inquiry—but a non-scientific
view.
I believe my father would have welcomed the unification of systematic
inquiry and even relished the irony in the separatists’ self-inflicted
alliance with the non-social sciences. I think he would also have
welcomed many aspects of the postmodern critique of science. But
I am also certain that he would have deconstructed that critique and made
use of the deconstruction to forge a new vision of science that covered
both human and non-human domains. My task in this paper will be to
explore certain key elements in the post modern critique of science, a
surprising convergence between these elements and parallel tenets in a
pragmatic philosophy of science, and the prospects for a new science of
humanity based on empirical findings reported in Terrence Deacon’s book,
The Symbolic Species.
Contents:
The Gauntlet
Science as a Cultural System
Power, Hegemony and the Privileging of Science
Discursive Ascent
Indeterminacy, Plurality and Incoherence
“The Scientist qua Scientist Makes Value Judgments”
The Symbolic Species and the Evolution of Science
Symposium: The Developmental Systems Perspective in Philosophy of Biology
Organizer: Peter Godfrey-Smith, Stanford University
Chair: TBA
“Causal Symmetries and Developmental Systems Theory”
Peter Godfrey-Smith, Stanford University
Abstract:
Some of the central philosophical claims made by Oyama and other developmental
systems theorists concern causation. In particular, it is argued
that there is no way to apportion causal responsibility between genetic
and environmental factors, when explaining particular biological traits.
So developmental systems views oppose the idea that some traits are “mostly
genetic” while others are “mostly environmental.”
The plausibility of this idea depends on how causal relations are understood.
I will evaluate this part of the developmental systems view, making use
of some new ideas about the nature of causation.
“Development, Culture, and the Units of Inheritance”
James R. Griesemer, University of California at Davis
Abstract:
Developmental systems theory (DST) expands the unit of replication
from genes to whole systems of developmental resources, which DST interprets
in terms of cycling developmental processes. Expansion seems required
by DST’s argument against privileging genes in evolutionary and developmental
explanations of organic traits. DST and the expanded replicator brook
no distinction between biological and cultural evolution. However,
by endorsing a single expanded unit of inheritance and leaving the classical
molecular notion of gene intact, DST achieves only a nominal reunification
of heredity and development. I argue that an alternative conceptualization
of inheritance denies the classical opposition of genetics and development
while avoiding the singularity inherent in the replicator concept.
It also yields a new unit—the reproducer—which genuinely integrates genetic
and developmental perspectives. The reproducer concept articulates
the non-separability of “genetic” and “developmental” roles in units of
heredity, development, and evolution. DST reformulated in terms of
reproducers rather than replicators leaves intact a conceptual basis for
an empirically interesting distinction between cultural and biological
evolution.
“Causal Democracy and Causal Contribution in DST”
Susan Oyama, John Jay College, CUNY
Abstract:
In reworking a variety of biological concepts, DST has made frequent
use of parity of reasoning. We have done this to show that factors
that have similar sorts of impact on a developing organism, for instance,
tend nevertheless to be invested with quite different causal importance.
We have made similar arguments about evolutionary processes. Together,
these analyses have allowed DST not only to resolve some age-old muddles
about the nature of development, but also to effect a long-delayed reintegration
of developmental into evolutionary theory.
Our penchant for causal symmetry, however (or “causal democracy,” as
it has recently been termed), has sometimes been misunderstood. This
paper shows that causal symmetry is neither a platitude about multiple
influences nor a denial of useful distinctions, but a powerful way of exposing
hidden assumptions and opening up traditional formulations to fruitful
change.
“Development, Evolution, Adaptation”
Kim Sterelny, Victoria University, New Zealand
Abstract:
Developmental systems theorists argue that standard versions of neo-Darwinism
need fundamental reorganization, not just repair. They argue, for
example, that the notion of an innate trait depends on a dichotomous view
of development that is unrescuably confused. They have argued that
the “Modern Synthesis” downplayed the role of development and failed to
integrate developmental biology within evolutionary biology. But
they further suggest that developmental biology cannot be integrated within
evolutionary biology without fundamentally rethinking neo-Darwinian ideas.
In this paper I shall argue against these claims. The developmental
systems theory critique of the received view of evolutionary theory has
often been insightful, but these insights can, I argue, be incorporated
within a modified version of that view.
Symposium: The Prospects for Presentism in Spacetime Theories
Organizer: Steven Savitt, The University of British Columbia
Chair: Lawrence Sklar, University of Michigan
“There’s No Time Like the Present (in Minkowski Spacetime)”
Steven Savitt, The University of British Columbia
Abstract:
Mark Hinchliff concludes a recent paper, “The Puzzle of Change,” with
a section entitled “Is the Presentist Refuted by the Special Theory of
Relativity?” His answer is “no.” I respond by arguing that presentists
face great difficulties in merely stating their position in Minkowski spacetime.
I round up some likely candidates for the job and exhibit their deficiencies.
Specifically I consider proposals that the surface of a point’s past
light cone (Godfrey Smith), its absolute elsewhere (Weingard), and only
the point itself (Sklar?) be considered its present. I also consider the
suggestion that the present be relativized to “observers” and reject it
in (I think) a novel way.
“Special Relativity and the Present”
Mark Hinchliff, Reed College
Abstract:
This paper opens by responding to a set of stock objections to presentism
(the view, roughly speaking, that only presently existing things exist)
that arise from the special theory of relativity. It then considers
two further STR-based objections that have received less attention.
And it ends with a proposal for how to fit a view of time, presentism,
having considerable intuitive support together with a scientific theory,
STR, having considerable empirical support. Guiding the paper in
many places is an analogy with the complexity and subtlety of fitting our
intuitive view of the mind with our best scientific theories of the body.
“Is Presentism Worth Its Price?”
Craig Callendar, The London School of Economics
Abstract:
This paper highlights some of the undesirable consequences of presentism
and then asks whether the original reasons for believing in presentism
are worth suffering these consequences. First, I review the state
of presentism in a specially relativistic (SR) world. I argue that
recent contributions which define “objective becoming” upon Minkowski spacetime
(e.g., Dorato 1995, Hogarth and Clifton 1995, and Rakic 1997) are not really
doing presentists a favor. By “deflating” tenses so that they are
compatible with correctly representing the world as a 4-dimensional manifold,
these recent contributions miss the point of presentism. With no
escape through the “deflated tenses” program, I claim that we must agree
with S. Savitt (see his contribution) that no plausible presentist position
compatible with SR is in the offing.
I then briefly look at general relativity (GR), where matters are even
worse. Here presentists must try to make sense of objective becoming
in all sorts of “pathological” spacetimes, e.g., spacetimes without the
ability to be temporally oriented, without global time functions, with
closed timelike curves, and more. If SR makes one pessimistic about
the chances of reconciling presentism with modern spacetime physics, GR
causes one to despair.
One way out of all of these problems is to interpret relativity (SR
and GR) “instrumentally,” à la J.S. Bell. Since this reading
of relativity may be forced upon us by the nonlocalities of quantum mechanics,
this move (for this reason) may be a respectable one. Understood
either way, it is clear that presentism requires a radical re-thinking
of contemporary spacetime physics. Given all the work one must do
to sustain presentism, therefore, I would like to re-examine the original
reasons for believing it in the second half of the paper. Are these
reasons so compelling as to warrant radically re-conceiving contemporary
physics? I think not. For even in its own territory, metaphysics,
the case for presentism is far from convincing. Presentism just isn’t worth
its price.
“Presentism According to Relativity and Quantum Mechanics”
Simon Saunders, University of Oxford
Abstract:
Presentism is not, I claim, a viable metaphysical position, given the
special or general theory of relativity as currently understood. For presentism
is only plausible insofar as “the present” is taken to be an intersubjective
spatial reality, rather than attaching to an individual person or world
line. From a 4-dimensional point of view, this is to specify a particular
space-time foliation; but failing special matter distributions (and associated
solutions to the Einstein equations), there is no such privileged foliation.
An example, indeed, would have been the Lorentz ether; this is just the
kind of object required by presentism (and, in general, by “tensed” theories
of time). In renouncing the ether as a physical object, Einstein keyed
the equations to space-time structure instead, and not to any special matter
distribution.
On the other hand we can surely define an “effective” dynamics, appropriate
for the description of a single world-line. There is no claim that the
resulting equations have universal applicability; they are as keyed to
the specific as you like. But do they have to obey at least some of the
fundamental symmetries? Would it matter if these equations turned out to
be non-local, for instance?
The question has parallels in the case of quantum mechanics. In the
De Broglie-Bohm theory there is likewise an “effective” dynamics (an “effective”
state reduction); the same is true in the Everett relative-state theory.
The latter, of course, purports to respect the space-time symmetries. Would
it matter if these equations were non-local or non covariant? I suggest
that it would, and locality and covariance should function as a constraint
even at this level.
Locality and covariance cannot be renounced at the “effective” level,
because, ultimately, that is the basis of the experience of each one of
us. If these theories cannot deliver at that level, then any purported
consistency of the fundamental (as opposed to effective) equations with
relativity would seem little more than specious.
Commentator: Lawrence Sklar, University of Michigan [???]
Symposium: Special Relativity and Ontology
Organizer: Yuri V. Balashov, University of Notre Dame
Chair: TBA
“Becoming and the Arrow of Causation”
Mauro Dorato, University of Rome
Abstract:
In a reply to Nicholas Maxwell, Stein (1991) has proved that Minkowski
spacetime can leave room for the kind of indeterminateness required both
by certain interpretations of quantum mechanics and by objective becoming.
More recently, his result has been strengthened and extended to worldline-dependent
becoming by Clifton and Hogarth (1995). In a recent paper, however,
I have argued that by examining the consequences of outcome-dependence
for the co-determinateness of spacelike-related events in Bell-type experiments,
it turns out that the only becoming relation that is compatible with both
causal and noncausal readings of nonlocality is the universal relation
(Dorato 1996). Such a result will be discussed vis-à-vis recent
claims to the effect that the relation of causation should be treated as
time-symmetric (Price 1996), something which would rule out, on a different
basis, Stein’s attempt at defining objective becoming in terms of an asymmetric
relation of causal connectibility. Other, more recent attempts (Rakic
1997) at extending Minkowksi spacetime by introducing a non-invariant becoming
relation will be examined and rejected on methodological grounds.
Finally, aspects of the crucial problem of exporting current attempts at
defining becoming in STR into GTR will be presented.
“QM and STR: Combining Quantum Mechanics With Relativity Theory”
Storrs McCall, McGill University
Abstract:
Stein (1991) and Clifton & Hogarth (1995) argue that Minkowski
spacetime permits the notion of objective becoming to be defined, provided
that an event may be said to have “become” only in relation to another
event in its absolute future (Stein) or to a particular inertial worldline
or observer (Clifton & Hogarth). Non-locality in quantum mechanics,
on the other hand, would appear to call for a broader definition.
Thus in the Bell-Aspect experiment if the outcome at A is h, the probability
of h at B is p, whereas if the outcome at A is v the probability is p'.
For the photon at B it is plausible to argue that the outcome at A has
“already become,” or that the entangled quantum state has “already partially
collapsed,” even though A lies outside the past light cone of B and hence
has not “become” in the Stein-Clifton-Hogarth sense.
A broader definition would make becoming and collapse relative not
to particular events or worldlines but to coordinate frames. Thus
in frame f the collapse at A affects the probability at B, while in frame
f' B precedes A and the collapse at B affects the probability at A.
Becoming and collapse are world-wide processes, though always relative
to a frame, and causal influences in the EPR experiment are reciprocal
rather than unidirectional. We end by showing that the apparently
conflicting currents of world-wide becoming in different frames can be
reconciled in a Lorentz-invariant branched spacetime structure defined
in terms of formal constraints on an ordering relation ‘<’, the Einstein
causal relation.
“Relativity and Persistence”
Yuri Balashov, University of Notre Dame
Abstract:
The nature of persistence over time has been intensely debated in contemporary
metaphysics. The two opposite views are widely known as “endurantism”
(or “three dimensionalism”) and “perdurantism” (“four-dimensionalism”).
According to the former, objects are extended in three spatial dimensions
and persist through time by being wholly present at any moment at which
they exist. On the rival account, objects are extended both in space
and time and persist by having “temporal parts,” no part being present
at more than one time.
Relativistic considerations seem highly relevant to this debate.
But they have played little role in it so far. This paper seeks to
remedy that situation. I argue that the four dimensional ontology
of perduring objects is required, and the rival endurantist ontology is
ruled out, by the special theory of relativity (SR). My strategy
is the following. I take the essential idea of endurantism, that
objects are entirely present at single moments of time, and show that it
commits one to unacceptable conclusions regarding coexistence, in the context
of SR. I then propose and discuss a plausible and relativistically-invariant
account of coexistence for perduring objects, which is free of these defects.
The options available to the endurantist are as follows: (1) reject endurantism,
(2) reject the idea that objects can coexist, (3) reject SR or (4) take
an instrumentalist stance with regard to it.
Of these options, (4) is surely the least implausible one for the endurantist.
I briefly discuss what is at stake in taking it up.
Symposium: Kuhn, Cognitive Science, and Conceptual Change
Organizer: Nancy J. Nersessian, Georgia Institute of Technology
Chair: Nancy J. Nersessian, Georgia Institute of Technology
“Continuity Through Revolutions: A Frame-Based Account of Conceptual
Change During Scientific Revolutions”
Xiang Chen, California Lutheran University, and
Peter Barker, University of Oklahoma
Abstract:
According to Kuhn’s original account, a revolutionary change in science
is an episode in which one major scientific system replaces another in
a discontinuous manner. The scientific change initiated by Copernicus
in the 16th century has been used as a prototype of this kind of discontinuous
scientific change. However, many recent historical studies indicate
that this “prototype” exhibited strong continuity. We suggest that
the difficulty in capturing continuity results, in part, from an unreflexive
use of the classical account of human concepts, which represents concepts
by means of necessary and sufficient conditions.
A more satisfactory account has been developed in cognitive psychology
over the last decade, using “frames” as the basic vehicle for representing
concepts. Using frames to capture structural relations within concepts
and the direct links between concept and taxonomy, we develop a model of
conceptual change in science that more adequately reflects the current
insight that episodes like the Copernican revolution are not always abrupt
changes. We show that, when concepts are represented by frames, the
transformation from one taxonomy to another can be achieved in a piecemeal
fashion not preconditioned by a crisis stage, and that a new taxonomy can
arise naturally out of the old frame instead of emerging separately from
the existing conceptual system. This cognitive mechanism of continuous
change demonstrates that anomaly and incommensurability are no longer liabilities,
but play a constructive role in promoting the progress of science.
“Nomic Concepts, Frames, and Conceptual Change”
Hanne Andersen, University of Roskilde, Denmark, and
Nancy J. Nersessian, Georgia Institute of Technology
Abstract:
In his last writings Thomas Kuhn introduced a distinction between normic
concepts—concepts such as ‘liquid’, ‘gas’ and ‘solid’, which together form
contrast sets—and nomic terms—terms such as force which form part of laws
of nature, such as Newton’s three laws of motion. We argue that family
resemblance is the basis on which both normic and nomic concepts build,
but that nomic concepts show an additional fine structure that cannot be
explained by the family resemblance account alone.
We develop a cognitive-historical account of concepts drawing both
on investigations from the cognitive sciences on how humans reason and
represent concepts, generally, and on fine-grained historical investigations
of cognitive practices employed in science. Our account shows that
representing nomic concepts requires extending current cognitive science
research on family resemblance concepts. We propose that nomic concepts
can be represented in frame-like structures that capture such aspects of
the concept in question as the ontological status and function and causal
power attributed to it in explanations of the problem situations in which
it participates. Finally, we explore the implications of this account
for conceptual change, specifically for the problem of the cognitive disequilibrium
preceding conceptual change. On our account of concepts, conceptual
change can be triggered by two different kinds of disequilibrium in the
conceptual system: either related to changes of the similarity classes
of problem situations or related to changes in the fine structure of the
situation type.
“Kuhnian Puzzle Solving and Schema Theory”
Thomas J. Nickles, University of Nevada at Reno
Abstract:
In a recent article I showed how case-based reasoning (CBR) illuminates
and corrects Kuhn’s account of puzzle solving by direct modeling on exemplars.
But CBR helps only up to a point, where it must yield to something like
schema theory. After developing this theme and attending to some
difficulties within schema theory, I consider the implications for methodology
and philosophy of science. (1) A non-rules conception of inquiry
obviously challenges traditional conceptions of method and of inquiry itself
as a rationally intelligible, step-by-step procedure. (2) Kuhnian
inquiry is rhetorical rather than logical in the senses {plural????} that
similarity, analogy, metaphor, etc., are the important cognitive relations;
Kuhn’s similarity metric is graded rather than all-or nothing; and he introduces
place (topos) as well as time (history) into his model of science.
Rather than searching the space of all logical possibilities, scientists
in a given historical period construct and explore local search spaces
around the points they actually occupy. The resulting scientific
development resembles the nearly continuous biological evolutionary pathways
through design space more than the great leaps that have long tempted rationalistic
philosophers. But what could methodology then look like?
Symposium: The Medical Consensus Conference
Organizer: Miriam Solomon, Temple University
Chair: TBA
“The Epistemic Contribution of Medical Consensus Conferences”
Paul Thagard, University of Waterloo
Abstract:
I recently completed a study of the development and acceptance of the
bacterial theory of peptic ulcers (Thagard, forthcoming). A key event
in the general acceptance of this theory, which was greeted with great
skepticism when it was first proposed in 1983, was a Consensus Conference
sponsored by NIH in 1994 that endorsed antibacterial treatment of ulcers.
In the following three years, at least nine other countries held similar
conferences and the American Digestive Health Foundation sponsored a second
American consensus conference in February 1997. I attended the Canadian
Helicobacter Pylori Consensus Conference that took place in Ottawa in April
1997. My talk will describe the aims and events of the conference,
then focus on the general question: how do medical consensus conferences
contribute to medical knowledge and practice? After a discussion
of the nature of evidence-based medicine and the logic involved in decisions
about treatment and testing, I extend and apply Alvin Goldman’s (1992)
epistemic standards to evaluate the scientific and practical benefits of
consensus conferences.
Title TBA
John H. Ferguson, Office of Medical Applications of Research, NIH
Abstract:
To be provided
“Are Consensus Conferences Political Instruments?”
Reidar Lie, University of Bergen, Norway
Abstract:
Consensus conferences have been adopted by health authorities in a
number of countries as a method of technology assessment in medicine.
The idea is that by having evidence from a variety of experts presented
to a panel of neutral people it is possible to reach a balanced decision
concerning appropriate use of a new technology. Critics have pointed
out that the conclusion reached by the panel depends crucially on who are
chosen as the experts and panelists, and that it is possible to predict
the decision if you know who these people are. There is also a problem
when consensus conferences are organized in rapidly evolving fields of
knowledge: the results of ongoing clinical trials may for example make
the decision by a consensus conference quickly obsolete. For this
reason one may suspect that consensus conferences are used as political
instruments rather than as instruments of neutral assessment of new technologies.
Two examples from Norway, the consensus conferences to assess ultrasound
screening in pregnancy and estrogen replacement therapy, will be used to
examine this claim.
Commentator: Miriam Solomon, Temple University
Symposium: Relations between Philosophy of Science and Sociology of Science in Central Europe, 1914?1945
Organizer: Alan Richardson, University of British Columbia
Chair: TBA
“On the Relations between Psychologism and Sociologism in Early Twentieth-Century
German Philosophy”
Martin Kusch, Cambridge University, UK
Abstract:
In this paper I shall investigate one of the intellectual roots of
the early sociology of knowledge in the German-speaking world (especially
Fleck, Jerusalem, Mannheim, Scheler). This root is the debate over
psychological naturalism. I shall show that the sociology of knowledge
was informed and influenced by both psychologism and by the phenomenological
critique of psychologism. I shall also focus on missed opportunities,
and some important social influences upon the sociology of knowledge (e.g.
one might say that a strong programme in the sociology of knowledge first
surfaced in Scheler’s war-writings).
“Edgar Zilsel’s ‘Sociological Turn’ in Philosophy”
Elisabeth Nemeth, University of Vienna, Austria
Abstract:
Edgar Zilsel’s studies on the origins of modern science are well known
to historians and sociologists of science. Philosophers, by contrast,
have hardly taken note of his work. One reason might be that it is
difficult to define his philosophical position “on the periphery” of the
Vienna Circle, that is, it cannot be exclusively related to analytic philosophy
or, for all that matter, to any other twentieth-century philosophical tradition.
It could also be that philosophers have never really appreciated the “sociological
and historical turn” that Ziesel wanted to introduce in philosophy.
That Ziesel is ignored as a philosopher is certainly unfortunate.
First, his philosophical position is interesting in and of itself: his
Kantian philosophy of science in conjunction with a materialist theory
of history and his very broad research interests in the history of philosophy,
aesthetics and science brought forth his unique sort of empiricism.
Second, Ziesel provides an interesting illustration of how a philosophical
and epistemological concern with science can be fruitfully incorporated
in a project of empirical research. My essay will sketch some of
the characteristic features of this “transposition” of philosophy into
sociology.
“Logical Empiricism and the Sociology of Knowledge: Rethinking the Relations
of Philosophy and Sociology of Science”
Alan Richardson, University of British Columbia
Abstract:
Recent re-appraisals of logical empiricism have highlighted some hitherto
seldom noticed features of the “received view” of science and related projects
such as Popper’s critical rationalism. A number of themes in the
recent interpretative work invite a curiosity about the relation of logical
empiricism to sociology of science as practiced in the 1930s and 1940s
and as practiced now. This essay will examine some themes in Carnap’s
philosophy of science with an eye toward their relations to historical
and contemporary concerns with the social aspects of knowledge. The
themes are: a concern for objectivity in the sense of intersubjectivity;
pluralism, conventionalism, and voluntarism in the foundations of knowledge;
practical principles for the adoption of linguistic frameworks, practical
rationality, and the limits of epistemological explanation. It will
explore features of Carnap’s project in relation to Scheler’s sociology
of science (especially, the rejection of transcendental philosophy of value
as a constraint on practical rationality), Merton’s normative sociology,
and current projects in SSK, especially David Bloor’s work on constructivism
and conventionalism and Harry Collins’s on the experimenter’s regress.
“Otto Neurath and the Sociology of Knowledge”
Thomas E. Uebel, The London School of Economics, UK
Abstract:
Neurath was the only one of the core members of the Vienna Circle,
who actively pursued an interest in the sociology of knowledge. This
paper will consider several aspects of Neurath’s involvement, partly to
chronicle it historically and partly to assess its systematic place in
his thought. This paper will show that, predisposed by his training
in the social sciences, Neurath early on showed an awareness of the ideological
dimension of economic and social theories and, by the time of the Circle,
of that of scientific metatheory and philosophy. Relevant texts include
the Circle’s manifesto as well as his critique of Mannheim. Moreover,
his own version of naturalism, already controversial in the Circle itself,
attempted to integrate sociological considerations within his epistemology.
A brief comparison with some contemporary approaches will conclude the
paper.
Symposium: Realism and Classification in the Social Sciences
Organizer: Michael Root, University of Minnesota
Chair: John Dupre, University of London
“How We Divide the World?”
Michael Root, University of Minnesota
Abstract:
Most systems of classification or kinds in the social sciences are
invented rather than discovered, though, in most cases, invented by the
subjects of the science and not the social scientist. Some of these
kinds are real and other only nominal. According to conventional
wisdom, this cannot be, for a kind cannot be both constructed and real.
I explain how kinds can be both and use the account to resolve a recent
debate over the reality of race.
“The Politics of Taxonomy”
Richard W. Miller, Cornell University
Abstract:
In the natural sciences, taxonomies are justified by their role in