It's Only A Theory

Templeton Foundation Funding Opportunities

2012-01-26T09:38:00.001-05:00

I've been asked to post the following announcement on behalf of the Templeton Foundation:

"As part of its spring open submission cycle, the John Templeton Foundation welcomes online funding inquiries in the areas of philosophy and theology. The submission window is February 1 to April 16, 2012. Proposed philosophical projects need not have religion or theology as a focus. To submit an online funding inquiry, please visit http://www.templeton.org/what-we-fund/our-grantmaking-process.

Please note that the Templeton Foundation does not normally provide dissertation fellowships through this open submission process. For more information on the kinds of projects that the Foundation can support, visit http://www.templeton.org/what-we-fund/core-funding-areas/science-and-the-big-questions.

A list of Foundation grants in the areas of philosophy and theology can be found here: http://www.templeton.org/what-we-fund/grant-search/results/taxonomy%3A5."

Radical reform for peer review?

2012-01-19T15:57:00.000-05:00

A recent piece by Scott Jaschik in “Inside Higher Education” pointed out what a number of us have been thinking for a while now: the peer review system for scholarly journals doesn’t work very well, needs to be reformed, and really ought to take radical advantage of new technologies. There is, of course, going to be quite a bit of resistance to any change coming from the usual quarters, beginning with older academics who still think of social networking in terms of meeting colleagues after work for a martini (well, okay, nothing wrong with that), administrators who are used to the simple (and simplistic) bean counting operations for tenure and promotion made possible by the current system, and journal publishers who make a ton of money while adding next to nothing in value to people’s publications (after all, they don’t pay for the research, don’t pay the writers, and don’t pay the editors and reviewers — which of course doesn’t stop them from charging an arm and a leg to university libraries).

Of course, since the new technologies are making an overhaul of the system possible, and since there is widespread frustration with the current modus operandi especially among younger faculty, change will happen one way or another — witness the rise of open access and online journals that bypass traditional publishers. It’s only a question of which paths to take, and that’s where the conversation gets interesting.

The most radical suggestion mentioned in the Inside article is the one by Aaron J. Barlow, associate professor of English at the City University of New York, where I work. Barlow is quoted in the article as saying that “peer review — in the sense that people work and a consensus may emerge that a given paper is important or not — doesn’t need to take place prior to publication.” He is, of course, right and as a matter of fact most peer review has always taken place after publication. A lot of bad or simply irrelevant stuff gets published and ends up augmenting someone’s c.v. by a line or two (good for promotion and tenure!), but then dies the common death of much academic scholarship: complete lack of citations by anyone other than the author.

The question that Barlow is raising is whether it wouldn’t be better to skip the preliminary step — the pre-publication filter — and simply leave everything to the community at large. I am sympathetic to that position, particularly because as author, editor and reviewer I have seen my share of unseemly behavior, gender and racial biases, personal vendettas, and so on that certainly don’t belong anywhere within a scholarly environment. But I think pretty much everyone agrees that we already have far too much pyrite to sift through in order to find the gold nuggets, and I shudder as to what would happen if anyone were suddenly able to claim “scholarship” by simply posting their papers on the web and ask people — anyone, not just the relevant expert community? — to comment, “+1” or “like.”

This is the same problem that has been faced by the publishing and journalism industries. These days anyone can self-publish a book at the click of a button, and anyone can set up an online newspaper with free or cheap software and access to a server. But I doubt these new technological possibilities will spell the demise of editors, publishing houses and newspapers like the New York Times, for the simple reason that these “classic” outlets do exercise a very valuable (if flawed, incomplete, sometimes biased) function of filtering a lot of distracting or poor quality nonsense (as the NYT’s famous tagline says, “all the news that’s fit to print,” or to pixellate, as the case may be).

Another approach commented on in the Inside piece is the one currently pursued by Cheryl Ball, the editor of an online journal on rhetoric and technology called Kairos, and an associate professor of English at Illinois State University. Her journal engages the entire editorial board in a lengthy discussion of every submitted paper, at the end of which an editor is assigned to coach the author on how to revise the manuscript to reflect the consensus of the board. This makes the system much more transparent (the author knows that all editors participated in the discussion, no anonymity on either side) and obviously immensely constructive from the point of view of the author and the community at large. But I seriously doubt this sort of model can be expanded to the whole industry. I edit a smallonline open access journal in philosophy of science, and even with our low number of yearly submissions it would be impossible to get my editorial board to do what Ball has been able to accomplish with hers. Again, the problem being that there are too many authors out there, and that far too high a proportion of submitted papers is simply not up to even minimum standards, or would require a huge amount of work to get there (not to mention, of course, that — again — editors and reviewers are not paid for this, nor do they get much concrete credit from university administrations for engaging in what they do).

I do not know what the solution is, and I suspect that we will see over the next few years increased experimentation on the part of younger editors to either ameliorate the problems with the current system or to overhaul the thing altogether. Some journals already make the author, not just the reviewers, anonymous, to minimize biases (it is well known, for instance, that women and minorities get fewer papers accepted if the reviewers know their names, and that the effect disappears if authorship is kept anonymous). Others publish all submitted papers that are technically correct — meaning that are written in an intelligible manner and include all the necessary documentation — while leaving to readers to judge the intrinsic value of the authors’ findings and opinions. We certainly are on the cusp of a technologically driven revolution in academic publishing, but just as in the already mentioned cases of book publishing and journalism, it remains to be seen exactly what will be left standing and what will have arisen anew once the storm has passed.

CFP: Special Issue of the Journal for General Philosophy of Science on Climate Science.

2012-01-17T17:34:00.001-05:00

CFP: Special Issue of the *Journal for General Philosophy of Science* on Climate Science.

Guest Editor: Eric Winsberg (University of South Florida)

Submission Deadline: August 1^st, 2012

Climate science is at the center of many of the world’s greatest environmental challenges, yet philosophy of science has only recently begun to pay attention to it. In this special issue of the Journal for General Philosophy of Science, we are looking for papers that explore climate science from a variety of philosophical points of view: epistemology, methodology, ethics, science and democracy, etc. We expect contributions on the foundations of climate science, the confirmation and testing of climate models and predictions, the role of ethics and values in climate science, the nature of explanation in climate science, the role of simulations and experiments, the relative importance of data and models, and any other topic related to climate science and philosophy.

Submission Details: Please send a pdf version of your paper (maximum 8000 words) prepared for blind review. The first page of the manuscript should contain the paper’s title, and a short abstract of 100-150 words. The pdf should be attached along with contact details for the corresponding author and all other authors (if any) in an email addressed to Eric Winsberg eric.winsberg@gmail.com

Title bout, round two

2011-12-16T10:44:00.004-05:00

My manuscript on natural kinds is in the hands of the publisher. It will, in due time, be one of the first books in Palgrave's series New Directions in Philosophy of Science.

It was to have been titled Carving up the world: Scientific enquiry and natural kinds, but yesterday I learned about a just-published collection of essays titled Carving nature at its joints: Natural kinds in metaphysics and science. The collection from MIT Press includes a wide range of essays from the 11th Inland Northwest Philosophy Conference, so it really isn't direct competition for a focused monograph on natural kinds. Yet the title, as my publisher says, is "a little close for comfort."

In short, I need a new title.

Brainstorming this morning led to the following list, plus others too terrible to record. Do any of these sound like books you would want to read?

1. Planets, mallards, and other natural kinds

2. Natural kinds and the structure of the world

3. Pragmatism, realism, and natural kinds

4. What about natural kinds?

5. Science, philosophy, and natural kinds

[Cross posted. Feel free to respond wherever.]

CFP: Science-Policy Interactions and Social Values

2011-11-30T03:15:00.002-05:00

Center for Values in Medicine, Science, and Technology conference on

Science-Policy Interactions and Social Values

at the University of Texas at Dallas
April 13-14th, 2012

Keynote Speaker: Kevin Elliott, University of South Carolina

The Center for Values in Medicine, Science, and Technology seeks proposals for papers and symposia for a conference to wrap up our 2011-2012 public lecture series on "Funded and Forbidden Knowledge: Science, Politics, and Cultural Values." The conference will be interdisciplinary, engaging the areas of science and technology studies, history and philosophy of science, science and technology policy studies, ethics and political philosophy, and science policy in exploring the interactions between science and policy-making, with special attention to the role of values in those interactions.

In these areas of scholarship, several categories of discussion concerning science and policy have emerged. Some focus on the role of science in the policy process, while others look at the inverse relationship of how politics influence scientific research. Some approach the topic in a very empirically grounded and particularistic fashion, while others take a normative approach and aim for general accounts. While there have been important interdisciplinary conferences in this area, the scholarship remains somewhat disjointed and piecemeal, whereas tackling the major issues in this area requires thinking across such boundaries. This conference will emphasize that the relationship between science and politics is mutually influential rather than unidirectional; it will emphasize the importance of normative or critical approaches that are also empirically grounded in the practice of science and realities of political institutions. We seek submissions that bring to the forefront issues of values in science-policy interactions.

Suggested topics (not an exhaustive list):

* Democratization of science
* Evidence-based policy
* Policy and the value-free ideal of science
* Forms of scientific and political representation
* Theories of scientific expertise
* Models of science advising
* History of science policy
* Lessons from environmental policy-making
* Scientific expertise and political advocacy
* Commercialization of science and the public good
* The aims of science and choice of research priorities
* Science and justice in political institutions
* Science, non-scientific views, and public reason
* Expertise and elitism in democratic deliberation
* Science and democracy in comparative and international contexts
* The influence of science on ethical values, and political ideals
* Obstacles to socially or politically responsible science

We're especially interested in proposals that cross the boundaries between already-established research programs.

Submissions

You should submit your proposal to

http://tinyurl.com/ScienceValues2012

We welcome submissions of both individual paper proposals and proposals for symposia and other multi-participant panel formats. For contributed papers, please submit a 250-500 word abstract. For symposia and other multi-participant panels, submit an abstract up to 250 words describing the panel and descriptions of up to 100 words describing each participant's contribution.

Submissions are due January 5, and decisions will be announced by early February.

Send any questions to centerforvaluesutdallas@gmail.com

Organizing Committee

Matthew J. Brown, UT Dallas - Philosophy of Science
Richard Scotch, UT Dallas - Economic, Political, and Policy Sciences
Magdalena Grohman, UT-Dallas - Psychology
Sabrina Starnaman, UT-Dallas - Literary Studies

Program Committee

Heather Douglas, University of Waterloo - Philosophy of Science, Science Policy
Kevin Elliott, University of South Carolina - Philosophy of Science, Applied Ethics
Mark B. Brown, CSU Sacremento - Political Science
Jeremy Farris, Harvard Law School - Political Philosophy

And the Winner of the 2011 (Unofficial) IOAT Readers' Choice Book Award is...

2011-11-20T01:53:00.010-05:00

With 139 votes cast and 14 more preferences than its closest competitor, the inaugural (unofficial) It's Only A Theory Readers' Choice Book Award goes to (drumroll):

Tim Maudlin!

for his 2007 book 'The Metaphysics Within Physics'!

Congratulations, Tim!!! Unfortunately for Tim, the Award is just for the glory (and I'm afraid not even much of that. I bet he won't put it on his CV.)

(For those of you without any sense of humor or much common sense, please let me clarify that I do realize that this is not a serious book award and that I do not mean our little poll to replace the judgement of the Lakatos Award's committee. Also, I'd like to apologize again to the many people whose books I failed to include in the poll (and, in particular, to fellow bloggers Steven French (for his 2006 book with Decio Krause Identity in Physics) and Eric Winsberg (for his 2010 book Science in the Age of Computer Simulations [shoot!!! this is worse than teaching logic! How many parentheses do I need to close now???]))) [That should do it. Can't be bothered to check :-)]

For the record, these were the numbers (the percentages don't add up because voters could choose multiple options):

1. Maudlin (2007) 38 (27%) 2. Wimsatt (2007) 24 (17%) 3. Ladyman & Ross (2007) 22 (15%) 4. van Fraassen (2009) 20 (14%) 5. Wilson (2006) 17 (12%) 6. Bokulich (2008) 13 (9%) 7. Chakravartty (2007) 10 (7%), Craver (2007) 10 (7%) Douglas (2009) 10 (7%) 8. Mitchell (2009) 7 (5%) 9. Snyder (2006) 2 (1%)

Should the Lakatos Award Have Been Awarded?

2011-11-19T21:12:00.001-05:00

UPDATE: The poll is now closed. 11% of the 139 voters agreed that the Lakatos Award should have not been awarded. (Let me note that I take the outcome of this vote for what it is and it's no ground to criticize the outcome of the LA. I was only curious as to see how many readers of this blog agreed with the decision not to award the LA this year)

(Originally posted on Nov 12, 2011)

The Lakatos Award is arguably the most prestigious book prize for monographs in the philosophy of science broadly construed. As many of you already know, no Lakatos Award has been awarded this year. This is the statement that announces the decision:

The London School of Economics and Political Science announces that the Lakatos Award, of £10,000 for an outstanding contribution to the philosophy of science, will not be awarded in 2011.
The Management Committee for the Lakatos Award has considered the reports from the Selectors on the books shortlisted for the 2011 prize. While there is no doubt that all of the shortlisted books have their virtues, and that some make weighty contributions to the field, the overall view taken by the Management Committee on the basis of the Selectors' reports is that none quite meets the level of impact and significance required to merit the Award; and consequently no Award will be made this year.

Many, including me, found this decision somewhat surprising, for many important and interesting philosophy of science books have been published in the last five years. The following are a few examples (Aside from a few additions I made, the list draws on a post by Eric Schliesser at NewAPPS and the comments to it. Please let me know if there are any other glaring omissions, as I'm sure there are [UPDATE: Unfortunately it turns out I can no longer add titles to the poll. SO I apologize for any omissions]).

Bokulich (2008) Reexamining the Quantum-Classical Relation: Beyond Reductionism and Pluralism
Chakravartty (2007) A Metaphysics for Scientific Realism: Observing the Unobservable
Craver (2007) Explaining the Brain: Mechanisms and the Mosaic Unity of Neuroscience
Douglas (2009) Science, Policy, and the Value-Free Ideal
Ladyman and Ross (2007) Every Thing Must Go
Maudlin (2007) The Metaphysics Within Physics.
Mitchell (2009) Unsimple Truths: Science, Complexity, and Policy
Ruetsche (2011) Interpreting Quantum Theories
Snyder (2006) Reforming Philosophy: A Victorian Debate on Science and Society
van Fraassen (2009) Scientific Representation: Paradoxes of Perspective
Wilson (2006) Wandering Significance An Essay on Conceptual Behaviour
Wimsatt (2007) Re-engineering philosophy for limited beings: piecewise approximations to reality

I'd be curious to hear what readers of this blog think. Should any of these books have won the 2011 Lakatos Award or was the committee right in claiming that 'none quite meets the level of impact and significance required to merit the Award'? I opened a poll where you can cast your vote.

[ADDENDUM: in order to compare "the level of impact and significance" of the above books to that of past winners of the Lakatos Award here is a list of the last five winners of the Lakatos Award:

2010: Godfrey-Smith, Darwinian Populations and Natural Selection),
2009: Okasha, Evolution and the Levels of Selection,
2008: Healey, Gauging Wat's Real
2007: No Award Made (Interestingly Okasha's book had already been published in 2006 so either it had not been nominated in 2007 or it was judged not to have met "the level of impact and significance required to win the award" in 2007)
2006: Brown, Physical Relativity and Chang, Inventing Temperature.]

Sorry, Catarina!

2011-11-18T23:32:00.003-05:00

I believe that people should apologize for their mistakes. So, in order to be coherent with my principles, I should apologize for making some unfair remarks about Catarina Dutilh Novaes (in reply to some of her comments in a recent highly-charged thread). I now regret having made those remarks and I'd like to take them back publicly and offer my sincere apologies to Catarina. I would also like to apologize to the other contributors and the readers of this blog for failing to live up to its standards as both a contributor and an administrator. Finally, I would also like to thank Catarina for being so gracious about all this and to fellow contributor Mohan Matthen for helping me to see the error in my ways. I will now remove the incriminated comments (as I would have done if someone else had made them).

Sorry, Catarina! (and no more late-night blogging for me!)

CFP: MODELS AND SIMULATIONS 5 (Helsinki)

2011-11-17T17:08:00.003-05:00

Helsinki, 14-16 June 2012

The Finnish Centre of Excellence in the Philosophy of the Social Sciences is delighted to host the 5th Models and Simulations (MS5) conference in Helsinki.

Conference website: http://www.helsinki.fi/ms5

The previous MS meetings have taken place in Paris, Tilburg, Charlottesville, and Toronto. As before, the overall theme of the conference will be the philosophical and methodological issues of simulations and models, broadly construed.

Papers on any aspect of this theme are welcome from both philosophers and practicing scientists. One focus of the 5th meeting will be on models and simulations within and across the social sciences. Of course, submissions of papers related to the natural sciences in particular and modeling and simulating in general are also welcome. Possible topics include the following: Models, simulations, and scientific representation. Models, simulations, and scientific explanation. Fictions vs. idealizations. The role of simplicity, generality, robustness, unifying power, and other non-empirical epistemic virtues in modeling. Styles and conventions of modeling in different disciplines. Transfer of model templates and modelling methods across disciplinary boundaries. What kinds of inherent biases do model-based research heuristics involve? What standards should be used in assessing model-based expertise in policy applications? How to combine different sources of evidence within a model? How to render model-based evidence commensurable with other evidence?

Keynote speakers

• Rosaria Conte (ISTC-CNR, Rome)
• Mary Morgan (LSE)
• Tim Benton (Leeds)

SUBMISSION OF ABSTRACTS

Abstracts of 100 words and extended abstracts of 800-1000 words

The deadline for submission is 5 February 2012

Abstract submission is electronic. To submit, please prepare a PDF file of your extended abstract. Make sure that the extended abstract is prepared for blind review. Then follow this link:

https://www.easychair.org/account/signin.cgi?conf=ms5

If you do not already have an EasyChair account, you first need to create one when you enter the site. When logged in, click on the new submission link. Include your 100 words abstract and upload the PDF file of your extended abstract. You will be able to revise your submission any number of times before the deadline.

For further information and inquiries, please contact jaakko.kuorikoski@helsinki.fi

New Comments Policy

2011-11-16T22:19:00.001-05:00

While most philosophy blogs have adopted stricter comments policies in the last year or so, until today I have tried to resist the trend here at IOAT. Unfortunately, as of today, I have decided that comments moderation is the way to go after all.

The plan is to publish most comments from people who sign their comments and provide a valid URL of their academic homepage unless they fail to meet the standards all contributions to a healthy debate should meet. The bar will be significantly higher for anonymous and pseudonymous commenters.
Please note that I have no intention of using this as a tool for censoring comments I do not agree with insofar as they meet the above-mentioned standards. In fact, please note that my approving a comment for publication does not in any way imply that I agree with the comment in question.

If other contributors to this blog want to adopt a different comments policy for some or all of their posts, please do let me know by e-mail.

I am really sorry it had to come to this but I'm just tired of dealing with trolls of all shapes and sizes.

On John Symons' Resignation from EiC of Synthese*

2011-11-14T14:13:00.010-05:00

[NOV 16, 2011 UPDATE: As Gregory Wheeler points out in the comments below, as of today (November 16), there is an official announcement on the Synthese website that says among other things that John Symons "has decided to step down in 2012"]

I don't know if the news is in the public domain yet (it's not on their website), but, as journalists would say, I learned from "an extremely reliable source" [NOV 16, UPDATE: the source has now been revealed by Gregory Wheeler in comments to be Symons himself] that John Symons, one of the Editors in Chief of Synthese during the Synthese Affair, has resigned from his position as EiC. I do not know if this has anything to do with the way the crisis that followed the publication of the special issue 'Evolution and Its Critics' was handled by the other two Editors-in-Chief and by Springer but, given the evidence available to me, I find it hard to believe that it doesn't.

When I first heard of the scandal, I was very surprised that things had been handled so badly by a journal that was well-known for being well-managed and efficient, especially because Symons had always come across as a great and professional EiC in all my dealings with him. As more evidence came in, it became clearer and clearer to me that Symons had actually been sidelined by the other two EiCs. His resignation seems to confirm my suspicions.

In any case, Symons should be congratulated for the excellent job he did at Synthese in the years preceding the Affair and, if as I suspect and as it seems to be confirmed by his resignation, he played a marginal role in the Affair, that editorial debacle should not cast any shadow on his many years of excellent service.

I have claimed in the past that Synthese is headed towards losing its status as a truly international journal and to become more and more a journal for formal philosophers working in continental Europe. Unfortunately, this new development seems to confirm my prediction, as Synthese has now lost its only Editor-in-Chief who did not work out of a very specific geographic region.

(Btw, despite my being quite vocal about boycotting Synthese, it's nice to see that they still invite me to referee papers for them! But as I said, thanks, but no thanks!)

* The original title of this post was 'Synthese Editor-in-Chief Resigns!!!' and was (a seemingly failed attempt at) a joke on sensational news titles. Since some readers took exception to the title, in order to avoid any further misunderstandings, I decided to change it.

City University of New York to turn into a glorified high school

2011-11-14T07:04:00.000-05:00

City University of New York’s Chancellor Matthew Goldstein is about to turn the prestigious system of senior and community colleges into a glorified high school. And few people seem to even want to try to stop him. This is bizarre, as Goldstein is a CUNY graduate himself and has been credited with major accomplishments since he took the lead at CUNY in 1999 (e.g., he raised admission standards, created the William E. Macaulay Honors College, and the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism).

Goldstein has recently begun what is known as the “Pathways to Degree Completion” initiative, which is being quickly rammed down the throats of the faculty members at all CUNY Colleges, in blatant disregard of faculty governance, interfering with curricula and the structure of majors, and possibly resulting in the elimination or great reduction of entire departments, mostly in the humanities (beginning with foreign languages, arts, assorted studies programs, history, and philosophy). The science and math requirements also are being reduced to ridiculous minimum common denominator standards, all in the name of increasing the graduation rate and decreasing the time to graduation of CUNY students — apparently the only currencies understood by the inept (to say the least) State legislators up in Albany.

According to CUNY’s central administration official mantra, Pathways is “designed to create a curricular structure that will streamline transfers and enhance the quality of general education across the University.” In reality, it will do little in the way of the first goal, and achieve exactly the opposite as far as the second goal is concerned. The centerpiece of this stunning coup that Goldstein and his associates are perpetrating on a system of 23 campusesserving 480,000 students is a reduction of the General Education requirements from above 50 credits (out of 120 necessary for graduation) — which is typical across CUNY’s senior colleges — to 30. Because, you know, our students already have far too much general education.

More specifically, Pathways is about to force the Colleges to adopt a common “required core” of 7 credits in English composition, 4 in mathematical and quantitative reasoning and 4 in life and physical sciences, accompanied by a “flexible core” of 15 credits distributed among very rigidly defined areas that include “world cultures,” “US experience and its diversity,” “creative expression,” and “individual and society.” This sounds good only until you realize that the individual Colleges are already requiring all of the above and then some, and that the core structures will severely limit the flexibility of the Colleges to establish their own curricula.

One of the major positive features of CUNY is that it is a system, where a student can go from community college to 4-yr college to Masters to PhD for comparatively little money and getting a pretty darn good education. Within the system, the individual colleges operate as quasi-independent laboratories of higher education, constantly trying different things, competing for admissions, and cross-fertilizing each other through a variety of instruments, including the inter-college disciplinary councils. Goldstein’s idea is not only a solution in search of a problem, it will essentially destroy what makes CUNY such an extraordinary place for both faculty and students.

The Chancellor and his hand-picked, faculty governance independent “task force” are moving at great speed, for instance allowing only two weeks to the Colleges to respond to the Pathways proposal (and, rumors have it, being prepared to reject pretty much any substantive counterproposal they may receive). By comparison, Harvard took two years to develop its GenEd curriculum...

Of course, there has been some resistance to this egregious abuse of power. The cross-CUNY Councils of a number of disciplines have met and asked the administration to reconsider. The Philosophy Council, on which I serve, for instance, has passed a resolution where it “urges the Board of Trustees to defer action on the current proposed framework and undertake to address the problems of degree completion and course transfer through a careful and consultative process that is better suited to the complexity of the issues, and in keeping with the principles of faculty governance.” We received no answer at all.

Hunter College, one of the most prestigious institutions within CUNY passed the following resolution, back in October:

“We, the undersigned Chairs and Program Directors of the Hunter College School of Arts and Sciences, oppose the process and implications of the Pathways Project proposal. While we all recognize the need to address the issue of student transfer policies, this proposal as it is being implemented will reduce the overall quality of a CUNY education and will erase the unique identity of its individual colleges. It lowers the standards of science and mathematics programs at a time when the U.S. is falling behind in these areas. It dilutes the rich liberal arts offerings of our college. Furthermore, in an increasingly globalized world, we do not see how CUNY can justify eliminating foreign language requirements and imposing curriculum changes that would undermine the value of pluralism and diversity. By undermining the expertise of CUNY faculty and our right to determine curricula, the Pathways Project will erode the national reputation of the university. Our goal is to offer the highest quality education to all of our students, not just the fastest and easiest path to a degree.”

As far as I know, this also was met with stone silence. Various bodies at the College of Staten Island have also issued anti-Pathways resolutions. Here is the one passed by the College’s General Education Committee (approved with no dissenting votes):

“The breakneck pace of the deadline Pathways imposes on CUNY Colleges and the Colleges' governance committees makes it impossible for such a radical change of our general education program to be given proper analysis and evaluation. Despite its best efforts, the General Education Committee has not been able to give due consideration to even this first stage of the Pathways master plan under this kind of pressure. The timetable would oblige the General Education Committee to overstep its bounds of authority by having it make major curricular decisions without guidance from the Departments, Curriculum Committees, and the Faculty Senate. We have been made aware that the student government and a growing majority of departments have made known their opposition to Pathways on pedagogical, social, legal, and ethical grounds in formal resolutions. For these reasons, the General Education Committee of the College of Staten Island believes the Pathways Proposal should not be implemented unless it is ratified by all of the CUNY Colleges in accordance with their governance procedures on curricular change.”

Again, nothing happened in response. The latest to act has been Queens College, whose Senate passed the following strongly worded resolution (just before releasing this I found out that Lehman College's Senate also approved a very similar document):

“Whereas the problem of improved student transfer facilitation, for which we recognize a need, can be addressed without the imposition of a standardized new curriculum on the colleges of the City University and

Whereas the Pathways initiative has shown a disregard for the legally defined and traditional rights of faculty governance over curriculum and

Whereas the imposition of a curriculum by a board of trustees, contrary to the national best practices of curricular reform, will make CUNY an outlier in the educational community, and so will erode the national reputation of the university and

Whereas Pathways would substantially cut the general education curriculum and devalue our students' education and the reputation of Queens College and the City University of New York and

Whereas Pathways undermines the College's stated goal in the strategic plan of ;advancing the schools academic programs; and

Whereas Pathways threatens to make the College less able to recruit and retain outstanding scholars due to its devaluing of the curriculum and undermining of shared governance and

Whereas the disregard shown to the faculty in the Pathways planning process undermines the College's stated goal of; building a culture of community;

Therefore the Academic Senate of Queens College concludes that the Pathways to Degree Completion Initiative cannot be redeemed by minor changes to its individual components and rejects Pathways on pedagogical, intellectual, and legal grounds.”

Despite these and other voices of dissent (including Brooklyn College), what is stunning is the inaction or complete silence by two other outlets that should obviously be deeply involved or interested: the faculty union and the local press.

PSC-CUNY (the Professional Staff Congress) has vaguely motioned toward the idea that what Goldstein & co. are doing (and the Board of Trustees has recklessly and hastily approved) may be in violation of faculty governance (you think?) and that the union will consider the possibility of legal action (consider? Why didn’t they file a suit immediately to stop the darn thing in its ill conceived tracks?).

What about the press? Ah, there too the silence is almost complete, and thereby all the more infuriating. WNYC, the local NPR affiliate, has a single entry on the matter, penned by education reporter Beth Fertig back in May (!!). It’s a good piece, but there has been no follow up since. As for the New York Times, I seem to remember something appearing during the spring, but I’ll be darned if I can find it on their web site, regardless of which combination of “CUNY,” “controversy,” “curriculum,” “transfer students” and “Pathways” I put in. Now, how is it possible that the leading newspaper and the leading radio news station in the city have been almost completely ignoring a huge controversy that is about to wreck New York’s largest institution of higher education, and which is going to impact, as I said, almost half a million New Yorkers and their families? If I were a bit paranoid I’d suspect political collusion, but it is as likely to be sheer indifference or incompetence.

So, dear readers, since few seem to want to do something about this mess, perhaps you can help stopping this train wreck of a reform by forwarding this post, or better yet by writing a brief note, directly to the people who ought to be interested and pay attention:

* Chancellor Goldstein.
* CUNY’s Board of Trustees.
* The University Faculty Senate.
* CUNY’s Union.
* The New York Times “news tips.”
* WNYC education reporter, Beth Fertig.

And whoever else you may think appropriate. Thank you.

PhD & Postdoc opportunities at Kent

2011-10-21T06:15:00.001-04:00

Postdoctoral Research Associate
£30,870 starting salary + annual increments.

PhD studentship
Fees paid + an annual maintenance grant of £13,590 per annum for three years.

1st May 2012 – 30 April 2015
Philosophy Department, University of Kent

To work with Prof. Jon Williamson on a project to research the relationship between Bayesian epistemology and inductive logic, funded by the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council.

The Postdoctoral Research Associate will focus on the development of a particular inductive logic, analysis of its key properties, and the development of computationally tractable methods for performing inferences in the inductive logic. This will require some familiarity with probability and logic. Programming competence would also be desirable. Applicants will be expected to hold a PhD on a related topic in mathematics, computing, philosophy or a related subject.

The PhD student will focus on the question of whether the resulting inductive logic survives a number of philosophical critiques. This will require competence in philosophical argumentation and knowledge of epistemology and elementary logic. Applicants will be expected to hold a Master’s degree, and a Bachelor’s degree at class 2(i) or higher; at least one of these degrees should be in philosophy.

Information about the project and application process is available at http://www.kent.ac.uk/reasoning/obeil.pdf

The deadline for applications is 15th December 2011.

CFP: 9th Annual Formal Epistemology Workshop

2011-10-13T17:41:00.000-04:00

We are happy to announce that the Ninth Annual Formal Epistemology Workshop (FEW 2012) will be held in Munich, May 29 - June 1, 2012. This year's meeting is sponsored by the Munich Center for Mathematical Philosophy. The meeting will take place at the (stunningly beautiful) Nymphenburg Palace (compliments of the Carl Friedrich von Siemens Foundation).
Confirmed invited speakers include: Cristina Bicchieri, David Christensen, Igor Douven, Sarah Moss, Eric Pacuit, Rohit Parikh, Jeff Paris, Paul Pedersen, Wlodek Rabinowicz, Charlotte Werndl, and Robbie Williams.
We are accepting submissions for contributed papers. The deadline for submissions is January 15, 2012. Notifications will be sent out by March 15, 2012. Please send submissions to Branden Fitelson. A selection of papers presented at FEW 2012 will be published in a special issue of Erkenntnis.
Some funding will be available for graduate student participation. Please contact Hannes Leitgeb for more information.
There will be two special (afternoon) sessions at this year's FEW. The first will be a special session on Logic & Rationality, which will include talks by David Christensen and Robbie Williams, and the second will be a memorial session for Horacio Arló-Costa, which will include talks (pertaining to Horacio's various seminal philosophical contributions) by Cristina Bicchieri, Eric Pacuit, Rohit Parikh, and Paul Pedersen.
We will also have two (two part) tutorials, presented by Jeff Paris (inductive probability), and Charlotte Werndl (determinism, indeterminism, and underdetermination).
This year's local organizers are Hannes Leitgeb, Florian Steinberger, Vincenzo Crupi, and Ole Hjortland.
FEW 2012 is being funded by the Munich Center for Mathematical Philosophy.

Call for Book Proposals: Experimental History and Philosophy of Science

2011-10-13T12:42:00.001-04:00

Paolo Palmieri and I are starting a new book series with the University of Pittsburgh Press. Please, contact us if you have book suggestions.

Another Philosophy Jobs Site: PhilJobs

2011-10-08T11:24:00.001-04:00

We had none, now we have two and they are both amazing!!! Open-access philosophy job listings, that is. Alongside Phylo Jobs (check out the new features, btw!), now we have PhilJobs (courtesy of David Bourget and David Chalmers).
The next step now is to replace first-round interviews at the Eastern with either Skype interviews or straight on campus interviews and the dysfunctional APA will have be made completely irrelevant.

Spreading the word on a new jobs board.

2011-09-19T11:01:00.002-04:00

Given what a disaster the APA website has turned out to be this year, I think its worth publicizing a new place to advertise philosophy jobs. Most of you have probably seen this already, but I think the more places it is posted, the better. Copying from The Philosophy Smoker:

David Morrow, who is awesome, writes:

Chris Sula and I have revamped the Phylo site to create an actual jobs board to (ahem) supplement the JFP. The URL is the same as the old wiki: http://phylo.info/jobs. As of today, we'll start accepting job postings in that space from departmental representatives only. Following Harry Brighouse's advice, we'll also require a link to an external site (e.g., an announcement on the department's web site) to verify each post's authenticity. We're moving the job wiki tohttp://phylo.info/jobs/wiki. People will still be able to post unofficial updates there. We're still in the process of updating the wiki software to play nicely with the jobs board, but it will be up well before anyone needs to post status updates. In the meantime, watch the main jobs board to find out about job openings..

The Conclusion of the Kanazawa Affair

2011-09-18T21:41:00.001-04:00

The LSE internal review into Satoshi Kanazawa's controversial blog post (which we discussed here and here) is finally concluded. The findings (and a letter of "apology" from Kanazawa) can be read here. The report states, among other things that

some of the arguments used in the publication were flawed and not supported by evidence, that an error was made in publishing the blog post and that Dr Kanazawa did not give due consideration to his approach or audience

that

some of the assertions put forward in the blog post were flawed and would have benefited from more rigorous academic scrutiny

and that

the author ignored the basic responsibility of a scientific communicator to qualify claims made in proportion to the certainty of the evidence.

As a result of these findings LSE has taken disciplinary action against Kanazawa:

In particular, Dr Kanazawa must refrain from publishing in all non-peer reviewed outlets for a year. Further, he will not be teaching any compulsory courses in the School for this academic year.

Somehow the school thinks that these measures will ensure that

an incident of this nature does not happen again.

I don't know what readers of this blog who followed this story think, but as far as I am concerned this is an egregious example of too little too late and I really can's see how the measures put in place by the school can stop a repeat offender like Kanazawa, whose modus operandi crucially involves making outrageous and divisive claims on the basis of very little or no evidence evidence for the purpose of presumably getting some press attention, from offending again. What do others think?

Evolutionary Psychology and Philosophy of Biology

2011-09-11T10:06:00.002-04:00

Philosophers of biology often have a very dim view of evolutionary psychology, and evolutionary-psychology bashing has been a successful cottage industry.

I have been unimpressed by many of these criticisms, in part because of the feeling that the critics of evolutionary psychology were very poorly informed about what evolutionary psychology was. Imo, many of them simply have no serious acquaintance with the field they are criticizing.

But, so far, my reaction was just that: an opinion, a feeling. Not anymore.

In a forthcoming article ("An evidence-based study of the evolutionary behavioral sciences" in BJPS), Kara Cohen and I have provided support for this impression. using a new tool: quantitative citation analysis. We show that the usual, very negative characterization of evolutionary psychology is largely mistaken, and that philosophers of biology have been fighting a strawman.

It is also noteworthy that quantitative citation analysis could be particularly useful for philosophers of science who want to add quantitative tools to their toolbox.

New Journal: The Journal of Causal Inference

2011-09-03T09:49:00.001-04:00

We are pleased to announce the launch of the Journal of Causal Inference, a new
journal dedicated to building a rigorous cross-disciplinary dialogue in causality.

Existing discipline-specific journals tend to bury causal analysis in the language
and methods of traditional statistical methodologies, creating the inaccurate
impression that causal questions can be handled by routine methods of regression
or simultaneous equations and glossing over the special precautions demanded
by causal analysis. In contrast, Journal of Causal Inference highlights both the
uniqueness and interdisciplinary nature of causal research. The journal serves as
a forum for the growing causal inference community to develop a shared language
and to study the commonalities and distinct strengths of their various disciplines’
methods for causal analysis.

Submissions

Journal of Causal Inference encourages submission of applied and theoretical work
from across the range of rigorous causal paradigms.

In addition to significant original research articles, Journal of Causal Inference also
welcomes:

1) Submissions that synthesize and assess cross-disciplinary methodological
research
2) Submissions that discuss the history of the causal inference field and its
philosophical underpinnings
3) Unsolicited short communications on topics that aim to highlight areas
of emerging consensus and ongoing controversy, or to bring unorthodox
perspectives to open questions
4) Responses to published articles in causality

To read more about JCI, including our aims and scope and editorial board
membership, please visit our website:

http://www.bepress.com/jci

Papers can be submitted electronically at:

http://www.bepress.com/cgi/submit.cgi?context=jci

The first issue is planned for Fall 2011.

Philosophy of Science in the Latest Journal Citation Reports

2011-07-11T09:28:00.008-04:00

On 28 June, Thomson Reuters released the 2010 edition of their Journal Citation Reports. The Social Science Edition contains a category for History and Philosophy of Science (for those interested, there's also a category for Ethics). Unfortunately, the coverage of journals specialising in philosophy of science is fairly incomplete, though it does include the three most important general journals. Here is the data for those journals:

Title	JCR Data						Eigenfactor^TM Metrics
Title	2010 Total Cites	Impact Factor	5-Year Impact Factor	Immediacy Index	2010 Items	Cited Half-life	E-factor	Infl
BIOL PHIL	548	0.829	1.299	0.564	39	6.5	0.00151	0.439
BJPS	767	1.048	1.146	0.161	31	>10.0	0.00139	0.434
PHIL SCI	1648	0.602	0.931	0.044	68	>10.0	0.00191	0.281
SYNTH	1471	0.676	0.783	0.063	142	>10.0	0.00250	0.199

For those unfamiliar with the metrics, here is a brief overview. Impact Factor measures the frequency with which an average article from the preceding two years was cited in a given year. So the data above reflects the average citations in 2010 to papers published in 2008 and 2009. 5-year Impact Factor is just what you would expect—the same but for the preceding five years. Immediacy Index is the average number of citations by articles published in some year to articles published by the journal in that year. Cited Half-Life is the median age (in years) of the articles cited in a given year. The Eigenfactor metrics are more complicated. Eigenfactor (E-Factor) is a measure that weights citations by the influence of the journal measured by citations, similar to the way Google's PageRank orders the influence of webpages. Influence (Infl) is a measure of per-article impact, similar to Impact Factor.

Some initial comments on these results:

Overall the Cited Half-Life figures, which are high, resemble the other humanities disciplines more than they do the sciences. To take some sample contrasts—linguistics, mathematical physics and biology tend to have journals with cited half-lives of less than 10 years, while history tends to have journals with cited half-lives of more than 10 years. (Biology and Philosophy looks like an exception, but I think the lower figure is an artifact of the fact that it only started publishing in 1986).
BJPS and PoS have more dissimilar 2-year impact factors than they do 5-year impact factors. I conjecture that this is because there are more replies and discussions in BJPS than in PoS.
I'm impressed by the performance of B&P, especially the high Immediacy Index. I conjecture that this is because it contains a large number of fora on books and target papers.
EigenFactor is friendlier to Synthese than are the JCR metrics. This suggests that while Synthese is cited less overall than the others, it is cited more in the more important venues.

Here are some journals that it would be good to see indexed in future:

Biological Theory
European Journal of Philosophy of Science
Foundations of Physics
International Studies in the Philosophy of Science
Metascience
Mind and Language
Philosophy and Theory in Biology
Review of Philosophy and Psychology
Science and Education
Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A
Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part B: Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics
Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences

No doubt I've forgotten some others, and some are too new to have two years of data to draw on. Of course, what would be really nice is a category dedicated to philosophy journals overall.

The meaning of “theory” in biology

2011-07-02T02:34:00.003-04:00

by Massimo Pigliucci

So, I’m spending a long weekend at the Konrad Lorenz Institute for Evolution and Cognition Research (KLI), where I have co-organized (with Kim Sterelny and Werner Callebaut) a workshop on the meanings of “doing theory” in biology. The basic idea is to ask questions about the (large and diverse, as it turns out) variety of activities that go under the rubric of theoretical biology, how they relate to each other, and what it is they are trying to accomplish.

My own talk got things started by highlighting some recurring trends in biological theory, and proceeding to discuss examples of different ways of engaging in theoretical biology. Let’s start with the trends. A pretty obvious and long-standing one is represented by what I think of as an obsession on the part of some biologists and philosophers of science to look for “laws” in biology. The literature is fascinating, but I am ultimately unconvinced that there are any such things as biological laws. Hell, I don’t think there are laws in physics, necessarily (only empirical generalizations). I think a good argument can be made that this search for biological laws is the result of the idea (put forth with the complicity of early 20th century philosophers of science) that physics is the “queen” of sciences, and since it always strives for the broadest possible generalization (of which laws are the epitome), then biology has to do the same in order to be taken seriously. I sincerely hope we are getting away from that kind of thinking and toward a more flexible and pluralistic way of what it means to do good science.

The second trend I noticed is more recent, though related, and it deals with attempts at producing “general” theories within the biological sciences. One of the best examples is Stephen Hubbell’s “unified neutral theory of biodiversity and biogeography,” or Sam Scheiner’s “conceptual framework for biology.” The first one is an attempt to set a general null hypothesis for community structure in ecology, while the second is an ambitious attempt at nothing less than the biological equivalent of a theory of everything. I tend to be skeptical of these grand plans as well, in Hubbell’s case because I don’t really have a high opinion of null hypotheses to begin with (and because data can too easily fit a null model even when there is quite a bit going on in the system), in Scheiner’s case because I think of “biology” as an inherently heterogeneous discipline that is ill suited to grand unifying schemes. But, of course, I could be wrong.

The central part of my talk — which was meant to be introductory to the workshop — quickly surveyed various modes of doing theory in the biological sciences, all legitimate in their own right, though of course all characterized by specific limitations and interesting problems.

To begin with, there are classical mathematical-analytical models, often explicitly inspired by theoretical physics. Fisher’s fundamental theorem of natural selection is an obvious example, and so is the Hardy-Weinberg “law” (really a mathematical truism that can be applied to describe the genotypic frequencies of a population at equilibrium if no evolutionary processes are at work disturbing that equilibrium). Typically, these models are rigorous but quickly become intractable because the number of variables affecting actual biological systems is very large.

Which brings us to the second type of modeling, statistically based (the analogy with physics here would be models in, say, statistical mechanics). This is the realm of quantitative genetics, where parameters such as means, variances and covariances are used to describe both the current state and foreseeable future of evolving populations. Quantitative genetics is extremely valuable for descriptive purposes but, I have argued in print, much less so as a predictive or explanatory approach to understand long-term evolutionary processes. Which doesn’t mean there aren’t people who (sometimes vehemently) disagree with me...

The third type of theoretical biology is the one relying on intensive computer modeling (the equivalent in physics here would be, say, climate science models). There is an increasingly fascinating literature using this approach, for instance Sergey Gavrilets’ modeling of very highly dimensional “adaptive landscapes,” or Andreas Wagner’s models of the relationship between robustness and evolvability — two fundamental properties of evolving biological lineages that are playing an increasingly significant role in what some of us refer to as the ongoing Extended evolutionary Synthesis.

Finally, there has always been a role in biology for conceptual/verbal theorizing, beginning of course with Darwin’s own “long argument” in the Origin, and continuing with the foundational books that established the Modern Synthesis during the 1940s. This non-mathematical approach, however, also includes visual models like those predominant in molecular biology — think of the kind of diagram used to summarize complex data sets concerning metabolic pathways and gene networks. Part of this heterogeneous group are also verbal/visual models of how the bio-physical properties of living cells and tissues generate organismal form, as in the work of Stuart Newman and Gerd Muller.

The very last part of my talk was then devoted to the role of philosophy of science in its particularly incarnation as — in the felicitous phrase by Hasok Chang — “the continuation of science by other means.” According to Chang, history and philosophy of science, besides being independent disciplines in their own right, can interface with science itself in the pursuit of common knowledge objectives. Chang calls this “complementary science” that “identifies questions that are excluded by specialist science. ... The primary aim of complementary science is not to tell specialist science what to do, but to do what specialist science is presently unable to do. It is a shadow discipline, whose boundaries change exactly so as to encompass whatever gets excluded in specialist science.” Examples in the philosophy of biology include discussions of species concepts and the ontological status of “species,” the role of alternative (epigenetic) systems of inheritance in evolution, and analyses of the logical structure and foundations of evolutionary theory.

Below is a brief rundown of the full list of speakers and topics featured at the workshop. The proceedings will be published either as an MIT Press volume or as a special issue of the journal Biological Theory.

Speaker	Affiliation	Topic
Bruggeman, Frank	Netherlands Institute for Systems Biology	Systems biology and the meaning of “theory”
Callebaut, Werner	Konrad Lorenz Institute	What does it mean to do theory in biology?
Cleland, Carol	University of Colorado	Is a General Theory of Life Possible: Understanding the origins and nature of life in the context of a single example
Collins, Jim	Arizona State University	Role of theory in biology
Depew, David	University of Iowa	Rhetoric of evolutionary theory
Griesemer, Jim	University of California at Davis	Conceptual foundations of the “inexact” sciences
Gross, Lou	University of Tennessee	Selective Ignorance and Multiple Scales in Biology: Deciding on Criteria for Model Utility
Hammerstein, Peter	University of Berlin	Evolutionary game theory and the interface between evolution and economics
Kaplan, Jonathan	Oregon State University	Social impact of scientific theorizing
Leonelli, Sabina	University of Exeter, UK	Is there a difference between data-drive and theory-drive research?
Longino, Helen	Stanford University	Sociology of scientific theorizing
Love, Alan	University of Minnesota	Theory is as theory does...
Millstein, Roberta	University of California at Davis	Population genetics as the theoretical backbone of evolutionary biology?
Pigliucci, Massimo	City University of New York	Toward a broader concept of “theory”: back to Darwin?
Roughgarden, Joan	Stanford University	What might a general theory of ecology look like
Sterelny, Kim	University of Wellington, Victoria, NZ	Controversial theories in biology
Vorms, Marion	Institut d’Histoire et de Philosophie des Sciences et des Techniques	Theorizing and representational practices in Classical Genetics

Congratulations, Anna and Heather!!!

2011-06-16T21:49:00.003-04:00

Please join me in congratulating fellow bloggers Anna Alexandrova, who will be taking up a University Lectureship in the HPS Department at Cambridge in September, and Heather Douglas who will be the (first?) Wolfe Chair in Science and Society at the University of Waterloo as of January 2012!!! (And congratulations also to Cambridge and Waterloo on their great new hires!)

CfP: Philosophy & Theory in Biology

2011-06-15T16:23:00.002-04:00

Philosophy & Theory in Biology is an open access, online, peer reviewed journal devoted to the interface between philosophy of science and theoretical biology. The journal is published and permanently archived by the Scholarly Publishing Office, University of Michigan Library, and is standardly indexed (e.g., PhilPapers).

The Editorial Board is composed of prominent philosophers and biologists from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds. Recently published papers include “Natural Selection and Multi-Level Causation,” “Competition Theory and Channeling Explanation,” and “Beyond Inclusive Fitness? On A Simple And General Explanation For The Evolution of Altruism.” We have a streamlined editorial process with efficient reviewing of manuscripts and a short time from the final acceptance of a paper to its online publication.

We are currently accepting papers in one of four general categories: a) scholarly papers on a specific aspect of philosophy of biology or theoretical biology; b) in-depth "trend" review papers on topics of current interest within the areas covered by the journal; c) extended (essay style) reviews of a book or books pertinent to the journal; d) "crosstalk" discussions - technical yet accessible articles written by biologists on topics of interest to philosophers, or by philosophers on topics of interest to biologists.

For further information please contact the Corresponding Editor, Massimo Pigliucci, at massimo@platofootnote.org, or visit us at philosophyandtheoryinbiology.org.

Formal Epistemology Meets Experimental Philosophy (September 29-30, Tilburg)

2011-06-08T09:46:00.002-04:00

This may be of interest to some philosophers of science:

The preliminary program of the Workshop "Formal Epistemology Meets Experimental Philosophy" organized by Stephan Hartmann, Chiara Liscandra, and me, is here. This promises to be an exciting event!

Should Anonymous Comments Be Allowed?

2011-05-26T00:05:00.002-04:00

Lately, the question of the permissibility of anonymous comments has been raised on a number of threads on this and other blogs. While I understand that anonymity allows more "vulnerable" memebers of the philosophical community to express their views without fear of repercussions on their career and while I'm against moderating comments (readers often seem to mistake the approval of a comment for an endorsement of it), I feel that anonymity is too easily abused when the reputation of other people is at stake. I think we have seen some examples of this in the last month or so. So, I would like to hear from readers about whether they think anonymous comments should be allowed in these sorts of contexts, which we might call "sensitive". Please feel free to comment (whether anonymously or not) and/or vote in the poll.

More on the Kanazawa Scandal at LSE

2011-05-24T10:03:00.001-04:00

Satoshi Kanazawa

Further to our discussion last week, I emailed Add Health about the nature of the data that Kanazawa used in his scandalous post seeking explanation of the alleged finding that black women are "objectively" less attractive than women of other races. They sent me a statement this morning, which has obviously been sent to many others who enquired. Here are some excerpts:

"The data Kanazawa used for his research were drawn from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health), a congressionally-mandated study funded by the U.S. National Institutes of Health. Add Health data are available in two forms: a “public use” data set, which includes data from a subset of participants, and a “contractual” or “restricted-use” data set, which includes the full set of variables and participants. The “restricted-use” data are available to researchers who have appropriate research credentials (e.g., post-graduate degree) and an Institutional Review Board in their research institution that ensures their use of data security procedures required by Add Health to protect data and participant privacy and confidentiality. Kanazawa applied for and was granted access to these restricted data, as have thousands of other researchers . . .
"Kanazawa based his blog post on data derived from interviewer ratings of the respondents that were recorded confidentially after the interview was completed and the interviewer had left the interview setting. It is a widely-used and accepted survey practice for interviewers and researchers to include such post-survey completion remarks. These remarks provide both an additional observation about the respondent and data on the context of the interview for researchers to assess data quality. . .
"Interviewer ratings of respondent attractiveness represent a subjective “societal” perception of the respondent’s attractiveness. We included these items because there is a long line of research evidence that indicates that perceived attractiveness is related to important health and social outcomes, including access to health care, health education and instruction, job search, promotions, academic achievement, and social success in friendship and marriage. For example, males who are rated more highly attractive tend to have higher wages, shorter periods of unemployment, and greater success in the job market . . .

"Because the interviewer’s perception is subjective, researchers need to account for the characteristics and life experiences of the interviewer in interpreting their ratings. A wealth of research on perceived attractiveness (that is, as perceived by others, not oneself) has shown that such ratings vary according to the characteristics of the rater. For example, a male interviewer might rate a female’s attractiveness according to different criteria than a female interviewer rating the same female’s attractiveness. Other interviewer characteristics that are important to take into account are age, race, ethnicity, education, geographic location, and life experiences, in general."

Though some of us may have sussed out the main points, especially those contained in the final paragraph above, this statement clearly demonstrates the irresponsibility of Santoshi Kanazawa's "research". As somebody who was granted access to the restricted-use data-set, he would have been aware of the nature of the attractiveness rating. Yet, he gave no indication of this in his blog post.

Add Health Director, Dr. Kathleen Mullan Harris, a professor of sociology at UNC, Chapel Hill drove the point home in an interview with NPR, quoted in the email sent to me: "He's mischaracterizing the objectiveness of the data — that's wrong. It's subjective. The interviewers' data is subjective."

It is not unreasonable to ask that LSE investigate Kanazawa, and take appropriate action. I leave to others who are more experienced in this kind of action how this request could be prepared and communicated to LSE.

(This is cross posted at NewAPPS)

How to Break the Synthese Stalemate: The Case for a Subscription Boycott

2011-05-22T03:37:00.004-04:00

By now, it has become pretty obvious that, after the petition and the EiCs' response, the Synthese affair has reached a stalemate. On one side, the EiCs clearly have decided (or have been instructed) not to discuss the matter publicly (let alone retract the disclaimer or issue an apology). On the other, the boycott does not seem to have gained sufficient momentum yet. Brian Leiter recently posted a post asking for input from signatories to the petition on how to proceed and, with 16 comments so far, the response has been far from overwhelming. The poll Leiter ran also shows that only 20% of respondents are ready to boycott the journal (a much smaller poll run earlier on this blog showed that 32% of respondents were in favor of a boycott), while another 19% are "now less likely to submit to it or referee for it." The poll also shows that 71% now has a lower opinion of the journal.

If we are to believe that the poll reflects the opinion of the philosophical community (and it is far from clear to what extent it does), this is arguably the worst possible outcome for those of us who (used to) read, submit to, and referee for Synthese on a regular basis. On the one hand, the journal's reputation seems to have suffered a significant blow and, although it is still hard to assess the extent of the damage, it seems pretty clear that some damage has been done and that there is no clear way to undo it to everyone's satisfaction. On the other hand, before this affair, the journal was almost unanimously considered one of the best-run philosophy journals and it is very likely that, if the EiCs were to resign, the journal would significantly suffer from it and would likely be not as well-run as it used to be for the foreseeable future.*

Having said that, at this point, nothing short of an official public retraction-cum-apology and a full disclosure of the events that led up to this situation would be able to salvage Synthese's reputation and, if a boycott is what it's going to take, then so be it! However, if (and I'm saying 'if') the buck ultimately stops with Springer, then a subscription boycott would be more effective, easier to implement, and fairer (both to the EiCs and to grad student and untenured faculty) than the submission/refereeing boycott that has been suggested so far.

The good people at Springer might want to keep in mind that most university libraries would be very happy to cancel their subscriptions to Synthese at the request of the faculty members who are most likely to use those subscriptions and that, once those subscriptions are cancelled, it would pretty hard to get the libraries to resubscribe, especially given the exorbitant cost of the annual subscription to Synthese (which, I believe, is about 3,000EUR or 4,200USD these days). So, as much as it would pain me to give up electronic access to Synthese, I'm afraid I would have to do so unless (Springer lets) the EiCs issue a statement to be published in print and on the journal website in which the EiCs:

retract the disclaimer,
issue a public apology, and
fully disclose everything that went on (legal threats included).

If (and, again, I'm saying 'if') Springer somehow pressured the EiCs into acting as they (uncharacteristically) did and is now gagging them for fear of the economic repercussions of legal action, then this may be a good time for the people at Springer to double-check their math and reconsider their decision, as a subscription boycott might end up costing Springer hundreds of thousands of dollars every year (if not more), which, in the long run, would, presumably, add up to more than any legal costs Springer would likely incur. And that is only if the we decide not to persuade our librarians to unsubscribe from a few other Springer journals.

As far as I am concerned, the ball is now on Springer's court. If you are interested in joining me, please feel free to say so in the comments. (I'd give Springer and the EiCs a month before contacting your library). In the meantime, I'm going to look for the e-mail address of the Reference Librarian for philosophy (in these times of financial austerity she will be delighted to be able to count on $4,200 more a year in her budget!)

* Incidentally, I think that some people (who don't regularly read and submit to Synthese) fail to understand this quandary. They also fail to understand that an academic journal is, in a way, a public good for the academic community that relies on it and that, if the reputation of a journal like Synthese were to be permanently tarnished by this affair, this would not be something in which to rejoice and no one of its regular users (the academic community that relies on it) would be any better off for it. (Of course, one could say 'Who cares? The hell with them!' but the regular users are exactly those whose weight one would like to have behind a boycott campaign. You cannot effectively boycott McDonalds if you have never been a customer of it.) Finally, they also fail to understand that antagonizing the regular users who are sitting on the fence by, more or less explicitly, insinuating that the undecided don't join the protest because of self-interest, cronyism, or bad faith is not only unfair but also counterproductive and divisive.

More on the Kanazawa Affair

2011-05-20T12:59:00.004-04:00

Here is the cached version of Dr Kanazawa's original post (see here for a bit of background and see here for my letter to the Director of LSE). It is such a mind-bogglingly bad piece of [pseudo-]"scientific research" (even by evolutionary psychology standards) that one would hope no respectable academic institution would employ its author. As far as I can see, this is not a matter of academic freedom, it's a matter of academic standards. And, I have to say, I now think my initial requests to the LSE Director were too mild, especially considering the guy was already well-known for his shock jock brand of "research".

Evolutionary Psychology or Open Racism?

2011-05-19T10:07:00.013-04:00

Those of you outside of the UK might not have followed this story. Satoshi Kanazawa, an "evolutionary psychologist" and Reader in Management at LSE, has posted a post titled 'Why Are Black Women Less Physically Attractive Than Other Women' on his Psychology Today blog (which, alarmingly, is titled 'The Scientific Fundamentalist'). The post has since been taken down but above is a screenshot of it.

I have just sent the following e-mail to Professor J Rees (LSE's new Director after the resignation of its previous director on the heels of the Lybia scandal):

Dear Professor Rees,

I am writing to express my outrage about Dr Kanazawa's post on his Psychology Today blog. As a former Master's and doctoral student of LSE and as a philosopher of science, I am very disappointed that my Alma Mater's name is associated with research that seems to be as unsound in its methods as it is inflammatory and divisive in its content.
As an academic, I fully understand the importance of and strongly support academic freedom, but I do not think that academics should be allowed to express openly racist ideas under that guise, especially if this is done while claiming a pretense of scientificity. Of course, as researchers, we should always follow our research wherever it leads us, but the problem with Dr Kanazawa's research is that it is not its conclusion that is racist but its premises (as you probably know, the title of Dr Kanazawa's post was "Why Are Black Women Less Physically Attractive Than Other Women?", which assumes the racist stereotype that they are).
The LSE's reputation has already been tarnished enough by recent events that led to the resignation of your predecessor. I hope you will prevent it from being tarnished even more by this incident and issue a statement to distance the school from the ideas expressed by Dr Kanazawa and an apology to all people (and especially to black female students, faculty and staff) who felt offended and outraged by the open racism professed by one of your academics.

Sincerely,

Gabriele Contessa

PS I thought I'd let you know that I shall post this letter on the philosophy of science blog that I administer and contribute to. I'd be happy to also post a link to an apology statement from LSE when and if you decide to issue one.

I hope you'll join me in expressing your outrage at open racism being passed as science by e-mailing Professor Rees's PA at v.mizgailo@lse.ac.uk. (You'll receive a silly stock e-mail in return).

UPDATE: From the Guardian:

"The University of London [Student] Union Senate, the union's legislative body, which represents more than 120,000 students, to vote unanimously for the dismissal of Kanazawa, and to condemn his research." You can read the full article here.
"The LSE launched an internal investigation into Kanazawa's comments after senior academics at the school, including the new director, Judith Rees, received letters of complaint over the remarks."

You can read the full article here.

UPDATE #2: Here.

Synthese poll

2011-05-17T16:16:00.001-04:00

As followers of this blog know by now, a petition signed by about 450 philosophers was presented to the Editors of Synthese, asking them to retract their disclaimers regarding two articles published in their journal (in a special issue, edited by guest editors). There was extensive discussion of their actions here, on NewAPPS (http://www.newappsblog.com/), on Leiter Reports, and elsewhere. The editors posted a response to this petition on a website that was constructed for the sole purpose of posting their response; their response was posted as a jpeg image, presumably so that it would stay out of sight of web-crawlers, etc.

Now Brian Leiter is conducting a poll to gauge how philosophers have responded to the Synthese affair. The poll is here: http://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2011/05/a-post-petition-poll-about-synthese.html.

Please consider participating in this poll.

General Philosophy of Science: What is it Now?

2011-05-10T14:51:00.002-04:00

Further to my comment earlier about Scepticism and Philosophy of Science, some further thoughts about General Philosophy of Science:

General Philosophy of Science was almost entirely a twentieth century phenomenon. Before the 20th century, there was scientifically informed metaphysics and epistemology—I am thinking of Descartes, Locke, Kant and their intellectual heirs, philosophers who believed that science could teach us something about the structure of reality. The central problem of twentieth century GPOS, however, was new. What is the status of unobservable theoretical entities? What are they? And how can we know them? The problem was urgent because theoretical entities were increasingly a feature of nineteenth century (and later) physical science--atoms, fields, etc.

The idea that drove GPOS was that theoretical entities could be constructed from (or alternatively eliminated in favour of) sense data. This idea, which was also the founding idea of analytic philosophy, began its long decline in the 1960s, when Hilary Putnam introduced ways of talking about unobservables that did not rely on these constructive techniques. Putnam’s work was particularly attractive to philosophers because it showed a way out of the incommensurability problem that arose from Kuhn’s work, for incommensurability sounded to many like a reductio of the whole analytic programme. Now, a decade into the 21^st century, the problem of unobservables is no longer at the centre of analytic philosophy, and anti-sense-datum realism has become the norm. (In the PhilPapers survey, 82% of respondents leaned toward non-sceptical realism, and only 4% to idealism; 75% to scientific realism, and 75% to correspondence or deflationary theories of truth. The percentages don't change much when you look at self-identified GPOSers.)

Accordingly, GPOS has declined. How many top-twenty departments have hired GPOSers in the last decade? Very few, I venture: the assistant and associate professors who list themselves as philosophers of science are either philosophers-of-X (POXers?), GPOSers having given way to formal epistemologists or analytic metaphysicians.

GPOS does, however, live on, mostly in satellite departments devoted to History and Philosophy of Science—there are such units in Cambridge, Sydney, Pittsburgh, Chicago, Paris, Toronto—and also in a few philosophy departments that have chosen to develop specializations in philosophy of science—Bristol, the University of Washington, the University of British Columbia are examples that come to mind. In these departments, there are usually POXers devoted to physics and biology and social science, and a GPOSer who is viewed as providing support for the foundations. But the question that I think has not been resolved is how GPOS lives in an HPS environment. Has GPOS become, roughly, Kuhnian? Feminist? Is there a viable path for development that traces back to the Viennese origins of GPOS?

(Cross-posted at NewAPPS)

The Experiment Month Initiative

2011-05-09T20:58:00.001-04:00

The Experiment Month Initiative is a project organized by Joshua Knobe, Tamar Gendler, and Mark Phelan and run by Yale Cognitive Science with a grant from the American Philosophical Association. It hosts 17 different experimental philosophy studies designed by 29 philosophers, each working on illuminating a different philosophical question.

If you are interested in taking part to any of these studies please go to the Experiment Month website, where you will be able to fill out a brief questionnaire.

Conference: Philosophy of Cosmology (May 6-7, UWO)

2011-04-28T08:33:00.002-04:00

Philosophy of Cosmology Workshop
May 6-7, 2011 University of Western Ontario

Cosmology poses unique challenges to physicists and astronomers in the collection of data and in the interpretation of that data's relation to theory, both as evidence for existing theory and as inspiration for new theory. Philosophers of science have spent a good deal of the past century investigating the relations between theory and evidence. This workshop aims to bring together philosophers and physicists, in order to broaden and deepen what mutual discussion there already is between the two fields. The workshop will include papers on the epistemology of galaxy simulations, theoretical and observational problems regarding dark energy, and alternatives to dark matter and dark energy (modified Newtonian dynamics). Go to the conference website for a full list of titles and abstracts.

Confirmed Speakers: Niayesh Afshordi (Perimeter Institute), Céline Cattoën (Alberta), Bill Harper and Dylan Gault (UWO), Dragan Huterer (Michigan), Stacy McGaugh (Maryland), Priyamvada Natarajan (Yale), Simon Saunders (Oxford), and Lee Smolin (Perimeter Institute)
This workshop is sponsored by the Rotman Institute of Philosophy, the Department of Philosophy, the Dean of the Arts and Humanities, and the Department of Physics and Astronomy at UWO.

The workshop will be followed by the annual LMP graduate conference in philosophy of science, on May 8-9, with George Smith (Tufts) as the invited keynote speaker.
There is no fee to attend the workshop, but please send an email message to rotman "at" uwo.ca with the subject line "Cosmology Workshop," and indicate the number of people planning to attend. You can also send inquiries about the conference to the same address.

Organizing committee: Chris Smeenk (chair), Erik Curiel, Dylan Gault, and Bill Harper

Journal: HOPOS

2011-04-28T08:21:00.006-04:00

First Issue of HOPOS Journal Now Available Free

The University of Chicago Press is pleased to announce the publication of HOPOS: The Journal of the International Society for the History of Philosophy of Science. The digital edition of the inaugural issue (Spring 2011) is now available free for a limited time to all visitors to the journal’s home on the web: www.journals.uchicago.edu/hopos.

With no other current publication addressing the history of philosophy of science, the HOPOS journal will have its own place in a growing area of research. HOPOS will draw upon the multiple methods of philosophy and history to study the development, functioning, applications, and social and cultural engagements of the sciences.

The journal situates understanding of individual sciences within their historical settings and against the backdrop of mainstream issues in philosophical thought relevant to the growth of our knowledge of the world and of human nature.

“Our aim is a journal that provides an outlet for interdisciplinary work that is not often easy to publish in existing journals,” said HOPOS editor Rose-Mary Sargent of Merrimack College. “Both subject matter and length restrictions in existing journals do not allow for the extensive bibliographical references so often required in works that are of both a philosophical and a historical nature. HOPOS provides an important new venue for this kind of scholarship.”

The journal is available in both print and electronic formats. Each issue will contain a minimum of four articles and ten to fifteen book reviews. Articles are blind reviewed by two or three referees.

The first issue is dedicated to the memory of Ernan McMullin, one of the founders of the discipline who died unexpectedly while the issue was in press.

IN THE FIRST ISSUE:

Major Articles:

Ernan McMullin, “Kepler: Moving the Earth”

James G. Lennox, “Aristotle on Norms of Inquiry”

Thomas Uebel, “Beyond the Formalist Criterion of Cognitive Significance: Philipp Frank’s Later Antimetaphysics”

Warren Schmaus, “Science and the Social Contract in Renouvier”

Eric Schliesser, “Newton's Challenge to Philosophy: A Programmatic Essay”

Individuals receive access to the journal through their membership in the International Society for the History of Philosophy of Science. For membership information, go to the journal’s website, www.journals.uchicago.edu/hopos, or the society’s website, http://www.hopos.org/. For additional information, email subscriptions@press.uchicago.edu or call 877-705-1878 (outside the U.S. and Canada, call 773-753-3347).

Institutions can subscribe via JSTOR, http://about.jstor.org/participate-jstor/subscribe.

Founded in 1891, the University of Chicago Press is the largest American university press. The Journals Division publishes periodicals and serials in a wide range of disciplines, including several journals that were the first scholarly publications in their respective fields. The Journals Division has also been a pioneer in electronic publishing, delivering original, peer-reviewed research from international scholars to a worldwide audience.

Contact: Kevin Stacey, University of Chicago Press / 773-834-0386 / kstacey@press.uchicago.edu

Forrest on Science and Faith: In Response to Matthen

2011-04-28T00:16:00.010-04:00

First, I should like to defend the view that Forrest’s piece, 'The Non-Epistemology of Intelligent Design: Its Implications for Public Policy', may be reasonably viewed as making substantive philosophical claims, and not merely as 'contemporary historical research' (Matthen, Leiter Reports). I shall simply quote one of Forrest’s statements about her aims and findings for this purpose. (Those interested in further assessing this claim are directed to the second section of the paper, where Forrest outlines her argument.)

‘I examine the ID movement’s failure to provide either a methodology or a functional epistemology to support their supernaturalism, a deficiency that consequently leaves them without epistemic support for their creationist claims.’ (331)

I would also defend my assessment of the paper as philosophical, and the fairness of criticising it as such, on the basis of the nature and scope of the venue on which it appeared. Stating the full name of the journal should do the trick: Synthese: An International Journal of Epistemology, Methodology, and Philosophy of Science.

Second, I will turn to defending the style of objection I briefly made to her paper in a previous post. The cleanest way to do so, I think, is just to critique what she says in greater depth. I hope thereby not only to show that the issue of the nature of faith and its epistemic role arises in her paper in such a way to make the regress problem relevant, but also to further defend my overall reaction to her paper (which I think is weak, at best, from the point of view of general philosophy of science and epistemology). (I should perhaps mention that very little work from the philosophy of science and epistemology is referenced in the paper. As far as philosophy of science goes, for example, only one piece by Haack, in The Skeptical Inquirer, is cited. Perhaps some will see that as supporting the aforementioned view that the piece shouldn’t be judged as philosophical, rather than as an indication that it is not well grounded in the pertinent literature. But even if that’s right, it is surely reasonable to criticize some of the paper’s claims from a philosophical perspective.)

Let me just kick off with a quotation:

‘The epistemological problems generated by supernatural theism necessitate the faith commitments required of believers. The insufficiency of human cognitive faculties for knowing the supernatural demands willful assent without conclusive evidence—faith—from those who seek temporal meaning in a transcendent reality.’ (332)

What Forrest says here, in the first sentence, is that supernatural theism generates epistemological problems, and that this brings about a need for faith (or an appeal to faith). The suggestion of course, is that such faith is not otherwise required; or, at least, is not required in science. The worry, in short, is that this is false.

Some serious problems with the way Forrest sets up this issue become apparent in the second sentence. First, the demand for conclusive evidence seems quite inappropriate, in science or elsewhere. I take it that I do not need to argue for this in any depth on a philosophy of science blog; I will just list a few ‘greats’ who spring to mind in this context: Peirce, Russell, Carnap, Neurath, Ayer, Popper, Kuhn, Lakatos, and Feyerabend. Second, to foreshadow a later discussion, note the use of ‘willful’ here. As I will show with a later quotation, Forrest appears to just assume doxastic voluntarism, although this thesis is highly controversial (and the balance of opinion is that it is false). Third, notice that ‘faith’ in the way Forrest has defined it may not require commitment, and certainly does not require commitment come what may. So why mention ‘faith commitments’ in the first sentence? We will return to this too.

For the moment, let’s move back to Forrest’s prose, to see how she continues:

‘The significance of such commitment lies in the sustained effort it requires and the hoped-for recompense that believers see as its culmination. The U.S. Constitution was written to safeguard such commitment against government interference. However, it was also intended to insulate public policy from religious influence given the social tension— sometimes conflict—that results from the inability of believers to resolve disputes over doctrines that some of them would force upon others. The fundamental cause of such disputes is the lack of both a methodology and a [sic] epistemology that would enable believers not only to demonstrate to other knowers the existence of the supernatural object of their commitment, but also to reach consensus among themselves concerning the doctrinal corollaries of their belief.’ (332)

Remember that Forrest is drawing a contrast with science. So Forrest’s claim here, in the final paragraph, appears to be that scientists can resolve disputes because they have both, or at least one of, (a) ‘a methodology’ and (b) ‘a [sic] epistemology’, which fulfil the further criteria she mentions. I am not sure what to make of this somewhat cryptic prose. I do not think scientists study either methods or knowledge. Nor do I think that scientists have explicit theories of method or explicit theories of knowledge. They do, of course, have methods. (And they may, of course, have knowledge.) And there are sometimes procedural norms that may be used to enable consensus. But there is considerable dissensus in science too, and the balance between these two aspects of science is complex and difficult to understand; it is pretty much the central subject of an excellent book by Laudan, namely Science and Values, for example. Forrest makes it all look far too easy.

Here's a case in point. Some contemporary scientists think they can demonstrate the existence of virtual photons, by experiments showing the Casimir effect. Others think not. This kind of dispute is not uncommon, in the history of science, either. (What about so-called extraordinary science, imagining that something resembling this sometimes exists? Don’t the methods change over time? What consequences does this have for the suggested demarcation strategy?) In short, this is just a much more messy business than Forrest’s treatment allows. (The use of ‘demonstrate’ in the quotation needs serious unpacking too.) I emphasize I am not saying that this kind of approach is entirely without merit; it’s just that Forrest does no justice to it, or the intricate questions surrounding it. For example, still further, why not think about Kuhnian exemplars in this instance? And might Kuhn not have been right that what drives science is not rule following, but something more like pattern recognition? (At least, this is the interesting reading of Kuhn given by Alexander Bird, e.g., in his book on Kuhn.)

Let me also note that some of the things Forrest says in the piece directly question whether there is no method to (or are no methods in) ID. For example: ‘since ID ultimately rests on the special revelation of scripture—the Gospel of John—it is grounded on faith at its most fundamental level.’ (339) (Later still, Forrest mentions that ID relies on ‘faith and scriptural authority’ (354) [emphasis mine].) Isn’t there a method, namely reading the gospel, that here underpins ID? (And why are there not corresponding methodological rules, such as 'consult the gospel to resolve disputes'? Forrest does quote Dembski, saying that this is not a matter of textual interpretation, at one point. But this does not defeat the present point.) And can its advocate not invite me to read the gospel? I may not think it shows what the ID theorist thinks it does. But maybe that’s because observation is theory laden? Again, this is a tricky issue. I cannot find any argument against this view in Forrest’s piece; in fact, I find no mention of the idea that observations are theory laden at all. (On this issue, I’d also point to an interesting paper by Ward Jones in the special issue of Synthese that I edited with Otavio Bueno. Do ID theorists have different stances to scientists? Are observations actually stance laden?)

I have taken rather a detour from the issue of faith, I confess, but I think it is important to defend my overall view of the quality of the piece, and in particular to focus on the overarching charge of false (or better, unargued for) contrasting. So let’s get back to what Forrest says on faith. Here’s another key passage:

‘A virtue faith may be, but not an epistemic one. It is not a cognitive state in any identifiable sense, but an act of volition, a decision to believe when one lacks the requisite cognitive capability and evidence to be able to say one knows.’ (339)

I have several problems with this passage. Let’s begin with the issue of doxastic voluntarism, mentioned earlier. Forrest clearly says that faith is ‘a decision to believe’. I submit that it cannot be that, or rather that if it is then ID theorists do not have faith. The arguments are well rehearsed, e.g. by Alston. I cannot elect to believe that my daughter is not crunching on an apple as I type, any more than I can elect to believe in God. (I will note that some people think religious beliefs are special cases. But again, this should be discussed in proper depth in a paper such as Forrest’s.) What one might do, of course, is take actions designed to prevent one's beliefs changing, and so on. In fact, this makes pinning down what it takes to be genuinely open-minded - or critical - a tough problem. (It's one of the things Timothy Williamson pressed me on when we were discussing a draft of a section of my book, 'How to Be A Pancritical Rationalist', which appears at the end of the first chapter. In short, there are lots of strategies one can adopt to shield one's beliefs from criticism. There's a wealth of literature on this, by philosophers in the critical rationalist tradition, such as Bartley, Miller, Agassi and Jarvie.)

Now let’s go on to the next problem. The formulation appears to assume luminosity, i.e. that one is aware of knowing when one does; ‘one is able to say one knows’. I therefore think it also assumes internalism, i.e. that one must have internal access to reasons in order to know. But of course, nowadays, there is a strong externalist movement in epistemology (and in certain quarters in philosophy of science, especially realist ones). Besides, for the internalist, such as Forrest (on my reading) the problems with the formulation are clear. How about so-called basic beliefs, e.g. in simple observation statements such as “There is a table before me”? Do I have evidence 'to be able to say' I know that is true? What does that consist of? Now in the context of a contrast with ID, the significance of such concerns should be reasonably obvious. What grounds do we have for saying that forming beliefs by reading scripture is different? What is the nature of the ‘evidence’ that is present in the simple observational beliefs, but not in the simple revelational ones? (I submit an externalist route, e.g. a reliabilist one, may be easier to take.) I might mention the issue of theory ladenness again here; the route from retinal images (or even just firing of rods, cones, etc.) to observation statements is a difficult one.

Again, I could also point out the imprecise English used by Forrest, which often makes her claims difficult to nail down. Does she really mean ‘cognitive capability… to be able to say one knows’? Surely one can have that without knowing? So I presume she means something else; I am not sure what.

I have to stop somewhere (and I don’t want to turn this into a paper). So let me just finish by discussing one more quotation, which I think again supports my viewing the paper as philosophical:

‘My criticism is directed at ID proponents’ shirking their intellectual responsibility as scholars by elevating faith to an epistemic status it does not truly have, a move that prompts legitimate public concern given their efforts to translate personal conviction into public policy.’ (366)

Forrest needs to show that faith does not, in any interesting sense, have a role in science. She does not, and does not even attempt to. And there may be all kinds of ways in which it does. Perhaps we do have faith, in Forrest's sense, in universal theories. Perhaps, moreover, it is reasonable to believe in such theories in the absence of any evidence in their favour provided one also lacks evidence against them and there is a clearly specified way in which such evidence might arise. Of course, this is one way of taking Popper’s stance (or a Neo-Popperian stance) on science. (Like Herbert Keuth, whose The Philosophy of Karl Popper I heartily recommend for your students, I think it’s a good one; I defend it in my book.) Deny the thesis of evidentialism – this is something else that Forrest just appears to assume – which is roughly that ‘one should not believe in some proposition without evidence in favour of it’ – and instead say that it’s OK, for example, to believe in universal laws despite their logical probability being zero relative to any finite evidence.

On a related note, it is easy to conflate faith with commitment come what may, or faith with blind faith; but these are not the same. In short, some of what Forrest says appears to suggest that ID theorists are committed come what may to the truth of specific propositions in way that scientists are not. (Again, I think the hard arguments need to be made that scientists are not committed come what may, for instance, to metaphysical claims about the existence of spatio-temporally invariant laws of nature. I think such arguments can be made successfully, for what it's worth. And indeed I have tried to argue as much, e.g. in my recent book. The underlying idea is that this is a working assumption, made on functional rather than evidential grounds.)

What I say here also fits with putting a focus on the context of justification. Arguably faith is part of the context of discovery. But we might legitimately ignore that, according to many philosophers of science. We might look at what scientists do with their beliefs when they have them, and contrast that with what ID theorists do with theirs when they have them.

In summary, I do not think this paper is a good work of philosophy. Given the context, I should emphasise that this is purely an academic judgement of this particular paper. I do not intend it to reflect on Forrest, on the accuracy of her historical claims, or anything silly like that.

New SEP Entry on Scientific Realism

2011-04-27T14:37:00.004-04:00

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy has just published a new entry for 'Scientific Realism' The new entry is written by Anjan Chakravartty (Toronto) and replaces the old entry by Richard Boyd (Cornell) (the old entry is still available here though).

Scepticism and the Philosophy of Science: A Comment on Rowbottom

2011-04-26T09:54:00.004-04:00

In the thread on the Synthese affair, Darrell Rowbottom raises a point that deserves wider discussion. In her piece on what's-his-name, Barbara Forrest makes a distinction roughly between faith, which is directed at particular propositions, and science which is a method of inquiry. In response to my defence of Forrest, Rowbottom writes: "You may well 'find it sophistical to equate faith in God the Creator with "faith" in reason [and] experience'. But that is no argument. I was alluding to the issue of epistemological regress, and the tu quoque argument raised by Bartley in The Retreat to Commitment." He then expands his point as follows: "Is there any position, or belief set, that is not underpinned by faith (or that lacks dogmatic elements)? The worry is that if there is not, then relativism beckons; that it would be acceptable to choose whichever poison one likes (or to stick with whichever poison one inherits)."

Rowbottom has put his finger on a crucial pivot. Suppose I question Galilean Relativity on the grounds that it is refuted by the Michelson-Morley experiment. Is it legitimate to respond: "Oh, but I take GR on faith. And don't you go citing M-M against me. You would thereby display unquestioning faith in the veracity of sense-experience and scientific observation. And this is no better than my unquestioning faith in GR." Tu quoque.

A good bit of General Philosophy of Science is influenced by the desire to provide a response to scepticism that is better than mere "dogmatism". And this is a problem. For it is the business of epistemology to respond to scepticism. Epistemologists generally talk about beliefs as such, including those formed in ordinary non-scientific contexts. GPOSers, on the other hand, are constrained by their discipline to address the question in restricted contexts (e.g., laboratory situations, theory construction). And responses to scepticism generally do not make a lot of sense in restricted contexts.

In my view, it is important to differentiate arguments that work against any empirical proposition, or worse against any proposition at all, from arguments for and against a particular proposition. A scientific argument for or against Galilean Relativity cannot be transformed by mere substitution of terms into an argument for or against the Michelson-Morley experiment, or the Brain-in-a-Vat proposition. A sceptical argument against GR can be so transformed. Call the former kind of argument content-restricted and the latter content-general.

Here's a methodological observation. Philosophy of X type areas of philosophy -- Philosophy of Biology, Philosophy of Mathematics, Philosophy of Physics -- deal with content-restricted arguments. Epistemology is (most often) concerned with content-general arguments. Given that General Philosophy of Science is itself content-restricted -- i.e., it is concerned with scientific content -- should it not concern itself with content-restricted arguments? The tu quoque argument raised by Bartley is content-general. Therefore, it should have no place in General Philosophy of Science, and certainly no place in Philosophy of Biology, or any other Philosophy of X.

In the Synthese affair, Forrest is operating in the context of various content-restricted scientific arguments against Intelligent Design. She implies that these content-restricted arguments are different in kind from arguments supporting Intelligent Design. Her distinction is quite different from mine: her claim is that anti-ID arguments stem from a methodology not from an interest in a particular proposition. Very broadly, however, this suggests that ID theory employs content-general arguments, while anti-ID arguments are content-restricted. There is some justification for the latter position, but it would take a lot of hard analysis to provide it. (Forrest herself doesn't provide this, but then, she is not doing epistemology.) My point is much easier to make: Rowbottom's argument against Forrest is completely content-general. His argument is exactly the same as the tu quoque argument above, defending Galilean Relativity against Michelson-Morley.

It is my contention that Rowbottom's argument has no place in the Philosophy of Biology. But actually the point that I am making has wider consequences. A good bit of General Philosophy of Science -- operationalism, anti-realism, relativism, etc. -- is a response to content-general arguments. In my view, this is misplaced.

The Synthese Affair

2011-04-19T22:02:00.004-04:00

You probably have heard about this already, so I shall be brief (see here and here for more details). The Editors-in-Chief of Synthese prefaced the January 2011 special issue of Synthese on "Evolution and Its Rivals" (guest-edited by Glenn Branch and James H. Fetzer) with the following statement (apparently, without the Guest Editors' knowledge):

This special issue addresses a topic of lively current debate with often strongly expressed views. We have observed that some of the papers in this issue employ a tone that may make it hard to distinguish between dispassionate intellectual discussion of other views and disqualification of a targeted author or group.

We believe that vigorous debate is clearly of the essence in intellectual communities, and that even strong disagreements can be an engine of progress. However, tone and prose should follow the usual academic standards of politeness and respect in phrasing. We recognize that these are not consistently met in this particular issue. These standards, especially toward people we deeply disagree with, are a common benefit to us all. We regret any deviation from our usual standards.

Johan van Benthem

Vincent F. Hendricks

John Symons

Editors-in-Chief / SYNTHESE

This was likely the result of pressure from supporters of Intelligent Design in general and of Francis Beckwith (who is the polemical target of one of the papers in the special issue) in particular.

Over at Leiter Reports, Brian Leiter has urged 'all philosophers to stop submitting to Synthese; to withdraw any papers they have submitted at Synthese; and to decline to referee for Synthese until such time as the editors acknowledge their error, and make appropriate amends.'

Since Synthese is one of the main philosophy of science journals and many of the readers of this blog read, submit to, and publish in that Journal and since Leiter's post doesn't allow comments, I thought it might be a good idea to open the floor for discussion here.

To set the ball rolling, here are my two cents. In my experience (and from what I hear from most other people who have first-hand experience as well), Synthese is a very well-run journal and this is in great part to be attributed to the excellent job done by the Editors-in-Chief. I agree, however, that, on this occasion, the EiCs' conduct and judgement were questionable. I think it was inappropriate to add the above statement especially if, as it seems likely, this was done as a result of dubious external pressures. (Incidentally, I wouldn't go as far as saying that the statement 'undermines the integrity of the entire volume and its contributors', as Leiter somewhat hyperbolically does). If the EiCs had any concerns about the tone of any of the papers, they should have voiced them before the papers were published. Since apparently they had not done so, they should have stood by the papers (not all editors may be ready to go to the same lengths as the Editor of the European Journal of International Law but there must be a middle-ground). I think it would be in the best interest of the journal if the EiCs publicly acknowledged their lapse of judgement, but I trust that it's not going to take a boycott to get them to do that.

Conference on Explanation & Representation

2011-04-17T16:46:00.005-04:00

Conference of the International Academy for Philosophy of Science in Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium (building Socrate, Room SOCR40) on
Tuesday 26 - Thursday 28 April 2011, organised by Michel Ghins.

The general theme will be: Representation and Explanation in the Sciences.

Confirmed speakers include: Evandro Agazzi, Alberto Cordero, Mauro Dorato, Jan Faye, Hans Lenk, Peter Mitttelstaedt, Jesus Mosterin, Roland Omnès, Stathis Psillos, Mauricio Suarez, Bas van Fraassen, Isabelle Pechard, among others.

The full programme is available at
http://www.uclouvain.be/cps/ucl/doc/isp/documents/Programme_AIPS.pdf

CFP: 27th Boulder HPS Conference (Boulder, September 2011)

2011-03-29T15:21:00.001-04:00

Call For Papers: The 27th Boulder Conference on the History and Philosophy of Science

University of Colorado at Boulder

September 23rd – 25th, 2011

The Boulder Conference on the History and Philosophy of Science is an annual event focusing on a key topic in history and philosophy of science. Special invitations are extended to scholars in the Colorado area, but national and international participants are equally welcome.

This year’s topic is: History and Philosophy of Physics

Keynote speakers:

Daniel Kennefick (Department of Physics, University of Arkansas)

Laura Ruetsche (Department of Philosophy, University of Michigan)

Papers on any aspect of the history or philosophy of science are encouraged. Since the conference focus this year will be on history and philosophy of physics, some preference will be given to papers that focus on topics related to either of those areas.

To be considered for the program, either submit a completed paper with short abstract, or an extended (up to 1000 words) abstract. (Graduate students are asked to submit a completed paper.)

Any questions may be directed to one of the two conference organizers: Allan Franklin (Department of Physics, allan.franklin@colorado.edu) or Bradley Monton (Department of Philosophy, monton@colorado.edu). Submissions are due by 15 July 2011 and should be sent as an email attachment ( in .doc or .pdf format) to both Professors Franklin and Monton. Acceptances will be announced by 1 August 2011.

Graduate students are encouraged to submit for the program; those whose papers are accepted will receive a modest stipend of $100 to help offset expenses.

The Committee on the History and Philosophy of Science at University of Colorado at Boulder is cosponsored by the University of Colorado Museum of Natural History, the Center for the Humanities and the Arts, and by the following University of Colorado Departments: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology; Geological Sciences; History; Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology; Philosophy; Mathematics; and Physics.

Conference: Metaphysics and the Philosophy of Science (Toronto, May 2011)

2011-03-29T15:19:00.000-04:00

METAPHYSICS & THE PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE CONFERENCE
13-15 May 2011, University of Toronto

For a registration information and a tentative program, see:
http://www.facstaff.bucknell.edu/mhs016/MPSC2011/

CONFERENCE THEME
The philosophy of science has an illustrious history of attraction and
antipathy towards metaphysics. The latter was famously exemplified in
the Logical Positivist contention that metaphysical questions are
meaningless, but in the wake of the demise of Positivism, metaphysics
has found its way back into the philosophy of science. Increasingly,
questions about the nature of natural laws, kinds, dispositions, and
so on have taken a metaphysical cast. The metaphysics of science
commands significant attention in contemporary philosophy.

While many philosophers embrace the increased contact between
metaphysics and the philosophy of science, others are wary. Should
science (and its philosophical study) lead us into doing metaphysics?
If so, which metaphysical issues are genuine and which are illusory,
and how might we tell? Such questions dovetail with similar soul-
searching in metaphysics proper (sometimes under the banner of "meta-
metaphysics", sometimes simply as methodology).

This conference will examine ground-level debates about metaphysics
within the philosophy of physics and the philosophy of biology, and
broader methodological questions about the role of metaphysics in the
philosophy of science. Participation is open and welcome from all
parties to these questions: from those who hold that metaphysics must
have a place within the philosophy of science, to those who hold it
should not.

PLENARY SPEAKERS
Craig Callender (University of California, San Diego)
Anjan Chakravartty (University of Toronto)
Katherine Hawley (University of St. Andrews)
Jenann Ismael (University of Arizona)
James Ladyman (University of Bristol)
Kyle Stanford (University of California, Irvine)
Michael Strevens (New York University)
C. Kenneth Waters (University of Minnesota)
Robert Wilson (University of Alberta)

ORGANIZERS
Chris Haufe (University of Chicago)
Matthew H. Slater (Bucknell University)
Zanja Yudell (California State University, Chico)

Please direct general conference inquiries to mpsc2011@gmail.com

Presented by the Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science
and Technology, University of Toronto and the Fishbein Center for the
History of Science and Medicine, University of Chicago

Truth Be Told

2011-03-25T16:51:00.006-04:00

Truth Be Told is the name of a conference on truth in Amsteram, which has just finished. The idea was to make philosophers and logicians interact about truth. Old Jaakko Hintikka, Hartry Field and Paul Horwich crossed swords. Hannes Leitgeb, Volker Halbach, Leon Horsten, Pascal Engel, Wolfgang Hinzen, Albert Visser, John Collins and Michael Sheard were the other invited speakers. Some interesting contributed papers topped it off. Wednesday-evening was the annual E.W. Beth Lecture, provided by Hartry Field.

So how did it go, this interaction? Mwah. Albert Visser noted that both philosophers of truth and logicians who work on truth in their respective discourse follow their own inner melodies. Nonetheless Visser made serious attempts to teach philosophers lessons based on a high-brow stuff concerning non-standard satisfaction and a fearful world without induction --- The Great Equaliser. One take home message was the distinction between syntactic and semantic conservativeness, two notions that do not coincide but are related. Conservative extensions can be very strong. So when Deflationists claim that the T-theory should be conservative in order to express precisely what the 'non-substantiveness' of the T-pred consists in, they bet on the wrong horse. Moreover, it is well-known that the T-pred is not conservative (work of Jeff Ketland comes to my mind). Volker Halbach commented that a more limited conservativeness result should be aimed for, proof-theoretical in nature. Horwich at one point said that Deflationism consists of only the T-schema and some restrictions to avoid liar-troubles. What kind of predicate the T-pred is, must follow from the T-schema. No additional principles ought to be added such as to which kinds of predicate the T-pred belongs.

Visser also had bad news for Davidsonians. Tarski's commutation conditions do not yield alpha-conversion in non-inductive contexts. Take that! Truth behaves like satisfaction in inductive contexts only. Sensitivity on syntax comes to the fore only in non-inductive contexts. Induction hides the essence ... How worried Davidsonians need to be was not entirely clear to me.

Suppose a philosopher of truth says: I am interested in truths about the world, in how the world makes propositions true. The world is not 'the standard model' of my theories, scientific and common-sense, it is the only model that matters. So who cares about non-standard models?
Here the Lewisian may say: other possible worlds are other 'models', you need them to. What if you reject possible worlds?

Volker Halbach discussed various proposals how to restrict the T-schema to avoid paradox. Typing? Grounding? T-positive sentences? The last-mentioned was Halbach's way. Not conservative! Halback bited to dust and gave up conservativity. Commentator Bruni recalled that classical logic plus expressibility of elementary facts about T-pred blows up! We can't have it all. Something's got to give ...

Leitgeb did set-theory all over again but now as a theory of propositional functions. Typefree semantics to avoid all paradoxes was the reward. Aboutness entered the stage. The commentator remarked there is little difference between Leitgeb's theory and ZFC + T-pred. There you go. We also have a firm intuition about collections and its iterative conception as codified (to some extent) in ZFC, whereas we have nothing corresponding in Leitgeb's theory. Aboutness is the converse of membership, Leitgeb responded.

Field's Beth Lecture on 'Property Theory and the Foundations of Mathematics' was slightly disappointing. A modest layer of property theory on set-theory was his aim. What for? Realms for non-classical logic opened up, then. Fine. So we can do constructive math in the new layer? Fields wanted a serious conditional, which is one that is reflexive and yields modus ponendo ponens. Ties with his theory of truth presumably were in the background, but remained there.

Hintikka asked Who is afraid of Alfred Tarski? His ghost was spotted outside ... Hintikka's familiar song of IF-logic was sung, with rasping voice I must add, because a 1st-order language behaves such that a definition of the T-pred is impossible, as Tarski has taught us. No set-theory for Hintikka. But what is the range of his function-quantifiers in his game-theoretical semantics of IF-logic, then? So asked commentator Sean Welsh. 'For some' means 'Find one', was Hintikka's constructivist-like answer, and further he could reduce a Sigma 1-1 fragment of 2nd-order logic to IF-logic, in order to have his cherished quantifiers. Ho do you like them apples! The semantics of the quantifiers of his IF-logic remains however an open if not unsolvable problem. Few like these apples, I'm afraid. On other occaisons Hintikka promulgated a new Hilbert Programme for the foundations of mathematics, based on IF-logic. Not this time.

Talk about trustworthy and untrustworthy informers by Micheal Sheard was VERY accessible and rather unsatisfactory. He defined a trustworthy sourse as someone who gives you sentences that are consistent with your own beliefs. But they need not be true? Against another the informer may become untustworthy. When starting from a false belief and hearing a true one, one can revise. Beautiful co-organiser Theodora Achourioti slapped Shear around a bit in this vein. Belief-revision strangely seemed beyond Sheard's horizon. Revise, please.

A contributed paper by a Gang of Four defined tolerant and strict truth. New possibilities opened up. Their system ST+ is a conservative extension of classical logic. Without abandoning classical logic, paradoxes could be avoided due to failure of transtitivity of the strong-tolerant satisfaction relation.

Field's talk about Naive Truth Theories was in my judgment much better than his Beth Lecture.
Acceptance Logic, Paraconsistent Dialethism, Paracompleness, the near miss of Lukasiewicz system L-aleph-0 and the search for something weaker, but stronger than Strong Kleene. Commentator Speck came up with Silence Logic. The equivalence of L-aleph-0\U (where U is one axiom) and BCK was reported (I have forgotten what 'BCK' stands for, sorry).
A paracomplete truth theory with a BCK condition seemed the latest thing for Field.
Acceptence Logic yielded also a novel argument against LEM (Law Excl. Middle).

Leon Horsten talked about truth-hierarchies in Field's theory and the Revision Theory of Truth.
They are close. The Revenge Liar remains a problem for both theories. Horsten judged Kripke-Fefermann simpler than Rev. Theory. Ineffable liars. Stable truth, nearly stable truth and ultimate truth. Give it to me, Leon ...

Wolfgang Hinzen presented a theory about grammar at the speed of sound. Aristotle had it right when he said in De Interpretatione that ''falsity and truth have to do with combination and separation''. Only context-dependence has to be added. The T-predicate is a grammatical predicate, Hinzen argued. Our inclination to adher to the T-schema is a consequence of the grammar of language (broadly construed, so as to include the T-predicate) and can be analysed; therefor it is an unalysable starting point, as Deflationists hold. Lexical differences are unimportant. Because the T-pred is grammatical, it is not substantive, as Deflationists claim.

An equivocation seems to occur: Deflationists maintain that the T-schema is the basis for all philosophical explanations of 'truth-phenomena'. This is not in contradiction to analysing the T-schema grammatically. I asked Hinzen what then the grammar of intuitionists, constructivists and all other humans is who reject LEM --- for LEM is a consequence of the T-schema, plus Tr(not-p) implies Fa(p). Hinzen promised me he was going to think about this.

Pascal Engel argued against Alethic Pluralism, the thesis there are many kinds of truths, over and above kinds of propositions and accompanying kinds of truth-conditions; he focussed on the norm of belief, debating with absent Lycan. Truisms about truth (Swiss army knife: Engel is stationed in Geneva nowadays) are substantial, so truth must be substantial too, right?

The finale was Paul Horwich's undermining diagnosis of truth-relativism: we don't need it, we only need Deflationism. Horwich argued that truth-relativism originates in inflationary intuitions. Relativist theses are relational statements and they are true or false, in line with the T-schema. No independent relative-truth concept is needed. An otiose product of misunderstandings about truth. WHAM!

Textbook Question

2011-03-24T09:33:00.000-04:00

[cross-posted at Choice & Inference]

Quick question: I’m excited to be teaching a course on “Reasoning and Rational Decision Making” this fall. The department’s brief course description is as follows:

Analyzing and evaluating arguments, basic logical framework, Aristotelian logic and beginning logic of sentences, fallacies, fundamentals of probability, decision theory, and game theory.

There are no prerequisites, and students taking this course are typically getting their first glimpse at logic. Clearly, expecting students to develop a thorough understanding of, and facility with, Aristotelian logic, propositional logic, probability theory, decision theory, and game theory in a course like this would be to expect too much. Thus, my larger goal for this course will be to give them a very basic understanding of the workings and objectives of basic formal logic, probability theory, and decision theory. I’ll try to spark their interests in these formal theories by showing how they can be applied to the study of human reasoning and by exploiting some fallacies, paradoxes, and the like that arise when we apply them in this way. If I have students who want to take upper-level courses in any of these formal areas as a result of my course, I’ll be very happy.

So that tells you a bit about the course and how I want to approach it. Now the question: What textbook(s) might be appropriate for a course like this? It would be ideal if there was a text that covered the basics of each of these formal theories (at a very introductory level) and does some philosophy of logic too — discussing the relation and application of the theories to human reasoning. I like Hacking’s intro to probability and inductive logic, but I would like something that spends more time on basic deductive logic … and I’d like more ideas anyway. What do you all think?

Theoryladenness Dusseldorf

2011-03-15T09:37:00.003-04:00

Last week was a two-day conference on Theoryladenness of Experience (10-11 March 2011) at Dusseldorf, Germany, oganised by a.o. Ioannis Votsis (whose front teeth obtain information about the kind of dentists that populate the island of Cyprus). Philosophers of science, cognitive scientists and philosophers of mind and perception gathered. The phrase cognitive impenetrability is the thing nowadays, that much is certain and I have taken home. The very early stages of visual perception seem to be cognitive impenetrable, from which we may conclude that they are not theoryladen. Since in science we are only interested in observation reports, describing at best the propositional content of a perceptual mental state of a creature that has mastered a language at the end of the visual process, the mentioned finding seems to me irrelevant for philosophy of science.

Frequently the philosopher of science is presented with findings in cognitive science with the message that these findings surely are relevant for philosophy of science. But how? How precisely does which result affect which discussion or thesis in philosophy of science? Making that connexion is hard work. No one seems willing to perform it. Who should perform it?

The topic was raised that actual observation plays no major part in current science, which thrives on data gathering and data mining. Looking for the n-th time at the Meyer-Lyner illusion, duck-rabbits, bitch/witch (sorry, young lady/old woman) makes me feel sad. What has that got to do with science? Who cares about observation except zoologists?

Martin Kush gave an excellent talk about the microscope and its role in the strife about reality in the context of constructive empiricism. Bring in the realism debate and passions run high.

There were other informative talks, but see the opening paragraph of this post. Finally I mention Gerhard Schurz's learning an observational predicate, which in the end did not differed that much from my logical analysis of the concept of theory-ladenness. What this analysis results in? You had to be there ...

Charming Alan Franklin was there, who can see elementary particles with his bare eyes. His stories about visiting Karl Popper with Michael Redhead, marrying 4:15 hours in the morning because of his astrological wife, encounters with black bears, and his remark that he is more trusted as a referee than as an author were the crown of an enjoyable conference.

New Blog: M-Phi: A Blog Dedicated to Mathematical Philosophy

2011-03-11T12:39:00.002-05:00

It's here.

Kuhn and the Ashtray Argument

2011-03-08T17:32:00.005-05:00

In case anyone out there still doesn't know, the New York Times is publishing a five-part series by film-maker Errol Morris about his days as a grad student at Princeton supervised by Thomas Kuhn.
I must confess I'm having a hard time believing the ashtray anecdote related in Part One (if only because the ashtray-throwing Kuhn reminds me a bit too much of the poker-brandishing Wittgenstein) but at least it makes for an entertaining reading.

CFP: PSX2—2nd International Workshop on the Philosophy of Scientific Experimentation (Konstanz, October 2011)

2011-03-01T11:24:00.002-05:00

***********
PSX2—2nd International Workshop on the Philosophy of Scientific Experimentation

University of Konstanz, 21 – 22 October 2011
http://tinyurl.com/philexp2

**********

Experiments play an essential part in science. Not only are they used to test theories but they are also key to exploring new phenomenological realms, discovering new effects and phenomena. Nevertheless, experiments are still an underrepresented topic in main stream philosophy of science. The PSX workshop series therefore wants to give a home to philosophical interests in and concerns about experiment. Among the questions we want to discuss are the following: How is experimental practice organized, around theories or around something else? How independent is experimentation from theories? Does it have a life of its own? Can experiments undermine the threat posed to the objectivity of science by the thesis of theory-ladenness, underdetermination, or the Duhem-Quine thesis? What are the important similarities and differences between experiments in different sciences? What are the experimental strategies scientists use for making sure that their experiments work correctly? How are phenomena discovered or created in the laboratory? Is experimental knowledge epistemically more secure than observational knowledge? Can experiments give us good reasons for belief in theoretical entities? What role do computer simulations play in the assessment of experimental background noise? How trustworthy are they? Do they warrant the same kind of inferences as experimental knowledge?

Keynote speakers:
Deborah Mayo, Virginia Tech
Wendy Parker, Ohio University

We invite submissions of extended abstracts (1000 words) of papers of approximately 30 minutes presentation time. Please include your name, the title of the paper, your academic affiliation and your e-mail address in the submission. The deadline for submissions is June 1, 2011. Please direct your submissions to http://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=psx2. The decisions will be announced by July 15, 2011.

Organizing Committee: Samuel Schindler (chair), Allan Franklin, Deborah Mayo, John D. Norton, Wendy Parker, Slobodan Perovic, Marcel Weber.

Questions can be directed to samuel.schindler@uni-konstanz.de.

UWO Speaker Series Live-Streamed

2011-03-01T07:12:00.005-05:00

The Rotman Institute of Philosophy at the University of Western Ontario is now live-streaming (some of?) their Speaker Series talks. Videos of Philip Kitcher's talk from last October is on their website. The next speaker in the Series is Kyle Stanford (UC Irvine). His lecture, 'The Difference Between Ice Cream and Nazis', will be live-streamed here on March 4 at 3:30pm EST.
This sounds like a wonderful idea. It would be great if more departments and research centers were able to do the same.

CfP: Formal Epistemology Meets Experimental Philosophy (Tilburg, 29 - 30 September 2011)

2011-02-16T01:15:00.000-05:00

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First Pittsburgh -Tilburg workshop on Formal Epistemology Meets Experimental Philosophy

Tilburg Center for Logic and Philosophy of Science

29-30 September 2011

http://www.uvt.nl/tilps/FEMEP2011/

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Over the years, the methodological toolbox of philosophers of science has widened considerably. Today, formal and experimental methods importantly complement more traditional methods such as conceptual analysis and case studies. So far, however, there has not been much interaction between the corresponding communities. Formal work is all too often conducted in an a priori fashion, drawing on intuitions to substantiate various assumptions and to test their consequences. Experimental work, on the other hand, is often limited to testing various assumptions and intuitions, and often does not identify or create new phenomena that can subsequently be integrated into a formal framework. The working assumption of this workshop is that philosophy of science can gain a lot from combining formal and experimental studies. By doing so, philosophy of science will become increasingly scientific as a crucial aspect of the scientific endeavor lies in the combination of formal theories and experimental insights.

This workshop aims to explore the relation between formal and experimental approaches to the philosophy of science. We invite meta-theoretical papers, but especially papers that fruitfully combine both methods to problems from the philosophy of science. This first Pittsburgh-Tilburg workshop will pay special attention to the philosophy of the social sciences, but a focus on other subfields of philosophy of science is also welcome.

We invite submissions of both a short abstract (max. 100 words) and an extended abstract (1000-1500 words) by 1 May 2011. Decisions will be made by 15 May 2011. Submission details here.

Keynote Speakers

Christina Bicchieri, Philadelphia

Mark Colyvan, Sydney

Ralph Hertwig, Basel

Publication

Selected papers will be published in a special issue of Synthese (subject to the usual refereeing process). The submission deadline is 31 December 2011. The maximal paper length is 7000 words.

Organizers

Stephan Hartmann, Tilburg

Chiara Lisciandra, Tilburg

Edouard Machery, Pittsburgh

Program Committee

Jason Alexander, London School of Economics and Political Science

Horacio Arlo-Costa, Carnegie Mellon University

David Chalmers, Australian National University and New York University

Branden Fitelson, Rutgers University

Clark Glymour, Carnegie Mellon University

Thomas Grundmann, University of Cologne

Christopher Hitchcock, California Institute of Technology

Joshua Knobe, Yale University

Shaun Nichols, University of Arizona

Mike Oaksford, Birkbeck College London

Erik Olsson, University of Lund

David Papineau, King's College London

Wolfgang Spohn, University of Konstanz

Jesús Zamora, UNED Madrid

CFP: Society for Exact Philosophy Annual Conference

2011-02-06T18:35:00.002-05:00

The 39th annual meeting of the Society for Exact Philosophy will be held at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, Canada. May 26-28, 2011. Conference organizers: Chris Tillman and Esa Diaz-Leon.

CALL FOR PAPERS

The Society for Exact Philosophy invites submissions for its 2011 meeting. Paper submissions in all areas of analytic philosophy are welcomed. A selection of papers from the conference will be published in a special volume of Synthese, guest edited by Marc Moffett. Keynote speakers to be announced.

SUBMISSION DEADLINE: March 8th, 2011.

Submission Instructions

Authors are requested to submit their papers according to the following guidelines: 1) Papers should be prepared for blind refereeing, 2) put into PDF file format, and 3) sent as an email attachment to the address given below -- where 4) the subject line of the submission email should include the key-phrase "SEP submission", and 5) the body text of the email message should constitute a cover page for the submission by including i) return email address, ii) author's name, iii) affiliation, iv) paper title, and v) short abstract.

Electronic submissions should be sent to societyexactphilosophy2011@yahoo.ca

Nota Bene: All submissions will receive email confirmation of receipt. If your submission does not soon result in such an email confirmation, please send an inquiry either to the above address or to the local organizer.

More Information--

For more information on the conference, please visit the conference web site at: http://www.phil.ufl.edu/SEP/meeting/2011/
Or contact the conference organizers:

Chris Tillman chris.tillman@gmail.com
Esa Diaz-Leon esadiazleon@gmail.com

Information on the Society and its previous meetings is on the web at http://www.phil.ufl.edu/SEP.

"The SEP is dedicated to providing sustained discussion among researchers who believe that rigorous methods have a place in philosophical investigations."

Join us in Winnipeg.

Call for Book Proposals: Studies in Brain and Mind

2011-01-28T11:37:00.000-05:00

Studies in Brain and Mind is a book series published by Springer. It covers all areas in which philosophy and neuroscience intersect: philosophy of mind, philosophy of neuroscience, philosophy of psychology, philosophy of psychiatry, neurophilosophy, and neuroethics.

Under the previous editor, John Bickle, the series published several high quality books (see: http://www.springer.com/series/6540 for a list, but the series was inactive in recent years. The series is now being relaunched with a new Editor-in-Chief (yours truly) and Editorial Board:

Berit Brogaard (UM St Louis)
Carl Craver (Wash U)
Eduoard Machery (Pitt)
Oron Shagrir (Hebrew University in Jerusalem)
Mark Sprevak (Edimburgh U)

We aim to publish technical books for an academic audience of graduate students and up. We see the series as a great opportunity for the field, providing a venue for specialists as well as junior authors. Some high quality book projects are too specialized or their authors are too junior for other publishers. Studies in Mind and Brain fills this gap. We hope to make Studies in Brain and Mind an excellent addition to the development of interdisciplinary research in philosophy and neuroscience.

Every book published in the series will be available simultaneously in print and as e-book in SpringerLink. If a library has purchased the Springer e-book package, visitors of the library are able to download these PDF’s for free or order a paperback for Euro: 24.95 / USD 24,95.

The series aims for a high level of clarity, rigor, novelty, and scientific competence. Book proposals and complete manuscripts of 200 or more pages are welcome. Initial proposals can be sent to me at piccininig@umsl.edu.

For more information, see the Series website or contact me.

Please help spread the news if you have a chance (e.g., on other pertinent blogs).

Papineau on the Rise of Physicalism

2011-01-27T11:36:00.002-05:00

I just read David Papineau's excellent and provocative 2001 article, "The Rise of Physicalism ". He argues that physicalism is supported by the principle of the completeness of physics (sometimes known as the causal closure of the physical), and that theoretical and empirical evidence for such a principle slowly built up over the centuries but became overwhelming only in the middle of the 20th century, when — not coincidentally, if Papineau is right — contemporary physicalism replaced phemomenalism, vitalism, and other previously popular views and became a dominant view in metaphysics (especially with respect to the mind).

Papineau's paper is by necessity quick and occasionally explicitly speculative on how the history went. Does anyone know whether Papineau's story is correct? Is there any more detailed and recent historical literature on the topics covered by Papineau (conservation laws in physics, vitalism and its demise, physicalism about the mind) that supports (or undermine, as the case may be) Papineau's account?

(cross-posted at Brains.)

From the 2010 APA in Boston: Neuropsychology and ethics

2010-12-31T15:23:00.002-05:00

This session featured a single speaker, Joshua Greene from Harvard, known for his research on "neuroethics," the neurological underpinnings of ethical decision making in humans. The title of Greene's talk was "Beyond point-and-shoot morality: why cognitive neuroscience matters for ethics."

Greene started out actually acknowledging that there is a pretty strong line separating is and ought, but he contended that there are important points of contact, particularly when it comes to evaluating moral intuitions. Still, he was clear that neither neuroscience nor experimental philosophy will solve ethical problems.

What Greene is interested in is to find out to what factors moral judgment is sensitive to, and whether it is sensitive to the relevant factors. He presented his dual process theory of morality. In this respect, he proposed an analogy with a camera. Cameras have automatic (point and shoot) settings as well as manual controls. The first mode is good enough for most purposes, the second allows the user to fine tune the settings more carefully. The two modes allow for a nice combination of efficiency and flexibility.

The idea is that the human brain also has two modes, a set of efficient automatic responses and a manual mode that makes us more flexible in response to non standard situations. The non moral example is our response to potential threats. Here the amygdala is very fast and efficient at focusing on potential threats (e.g., the outline of eyes in the dark), even when there actually is no threat (it's a controlled experiment in a lab, no lurking predator around).

Delayed gratification illustrates the interaction between the two modes. The brain is attracted by immediate rewards, no matter what kind. However, when larger rewards are eventually going to become available, other parts of the brain come into play to override (sometimes) the immediate urge.

When it comes to moral judgment, Greene's research shows that our automatic setting is "Kantian," meaning that our intuitive responses are deontological, rule driven. The manual setting, on the other hand, tends to be more utilitarian / consequentialist. Accordingly, the first mode involves emotional areas of the brain, the second one involves more cognitive areas.

The evidence comes from the (in)famous trolley dilemma and it's many variations. I will not detail the experiments here, since they are well known. The short version is that when people refuse to intervene in the footbridge (as opposed to the lever) version of the dilemma, they do so because of a strong emotional response, which contradicts the otherwise utilitarian calculus they make when considering the lever version.

Interestingly, psychopaths turn out to be more utilitarian than normal subjects - presumably not because consequentialism is inherently pathological, but because their emotional responses are stunted. Mood also affects the results, with people exposed to comedy (to enhance mood), for instance, more likely to say that it is okay to push the guy off the footbridge.

In a more recent experiment, subjects were asked to say which action carried the better consequences, which made them feel worse, and which was overall morally acceptable. The idea was to separate the cognitive, emotional and integrative aspects of moral decision making. Predictably, activity in the amygdala correlated with deontological judgment, activity in more cognitive areas was associated with utilitarianism, and different brain regions became involved in integrating the two.

Another recent experiment used visual vs. verbal descriptions of moral dilemmas. Turns out that more visual people tend to behave emotionally / deontologically, while more verbal people are more utilitarian.

Also, studies show that interfering with moral judgment by engaging subjects with a cognitive task slows down (though it does not reverse) utilitarian judgment, but has no effect on deontological judgment. Again, in agreement with the conclusion that the first type of modality is the result of cognition, the latter of emotion.

Nice to know, by the way, that when experimenters controlled for "real world expectations" that people have about trolleys, or when they used more realistic scenarios than trolleys and bridges, the results don't vary. In other words, trolley thought experiments are actually informative, contrary to popular criticisms.

What factors affect people's decision making in moral judgment? The main one is proximity, with people feeling much stronger obligations if they are present to the event posing the dilemma, or even relatively near (a disaster happens in a nearby country), as opposed to when they are far (a country on the other side of the world).

Greene's general conclusion is that neuroscience matters to ethics because it reveals the hidden mechanisms of human moral decision making. However, he says this is interesting to philosophers because it may lead to question ethical theories that are implicitly or explicitly based on such judgments. But neither philosophical deontology nor consequentialism are in fact based on common moral judgments, seems to me. They are the result of explicit analysis. (Though Greene raises the possibility that some philosophers engage in rationalizing, rather than reason, as in Kant's famously convoluted idea that masturbation is wrong because one is using oneself as a mean to an end...)

Of course this is not to say that understanding moral decision making in humans isn't interesting or in fact even helpful in real life cases. An example of the latter is the common moral condemnation of incest, which is an emotional reaction that probably evolved to avoid genetically diseased offspring. It follows that science can tell us that three is nothing morally wrong in cases of incest when precautions have been taken to avoid pregnancy (and assuming psychological reactions are also accounted for). Greene puts this in terms of science helping us to transform difficult ought questions into easier ought questions.

Personal question at the end of all this: if emotional ethical judgment is "deontological," and cognitive judgment is utilitarian, could it be that the integration of the two brings us closer to behave in a way consistent with virtue ethics? Something to ponder, methinks.

From the 2010 APA in Boston: Teleological thinking in scientific explanations

2010-12-29T16:11:00.002-05:00

The first talk of this session was by Devin Henry, Western Ontario. Plato and Aristotle's accounts of teleology is seen in the light of the concept of optimization. In the Phaedo Socrates says that we need to inquire into what is the best way for things to be, a research program stemming from the idea that the universe was put together by a mind aiming at what is best (because that mind is supremely good). The universe is the way it is by necessity, because that is the best way for things to be. Finding that necessity explains a given phenomenon.

This idea is seen by the author as the ancestor of Aristotle's ideas on the subject, including that nature does nothing in vain. It also follows that being the best is in accordance to nature. However, there are important differences between Plato and Aristotle. For instance, Socrates makes his argument at the cosmological level, the good is the good of the whole cosmos, not of individuals (indeed, the other way around, individuals are for the good of the cosmos). Aristotle doesn't invoke a cosmological principle, what is good for the organism is good for it, not for the broader context of the cosmos.

A second difference is that Plato clearly speaks of an intelligent designer. While Aristotle's language is full of design talk, his personification of nature is only metaphorical, like Darwin's. Aristotle's form of teleology is seen in his analysis of why snakes do not have legs. Nature does nothing in vain while doing the best for the organism: if the length of a snake is a built in feature, and if no blooded animal can move with more than four points of leverage (as Aristotle thought), then having no legs is better than having some legs (as a centipede type solution wouldn’t work for bloodied animals).

Aristotle even criticized what today we would label a Panglossian view of the world: things are the best they can be, not the best they can conceived to be. (Again, close to the conception of constraints by modern biologists, the author citing the Gould & Lewontin paper on spandrels.) So Aristotle's concept of teleology is based on optimality, not perfection.

In his analysis of male testis, for instance, Aristotle claims that we need to understand the function of the organ in order to understand its form. Again, a remarkably modern sounding connection between form and function. Aristotle was aware that some species of animals (fish) don't have male testis, which means that testis cannot be essential for reproduction, and yet somehow have to make it better in the animals in which they are present. (Aristotle's specific explanation, that testis slow down sperm production, is not the correct one, of course, but the idea is still guiding functional biology today.)

The second talk was by Jeffrey McDonough, Harvard. A teleological explanation purports to explain something in terms of its outcome. In ancient and early medieval periods the range of teleological explanations was broad, including not just rational beings, but living beings more generally, and even features of the cosmos at large.

In Plato, as well as for Augustine and Aquinas, goodness is prior to being: the universe exists because it is good, it isn't good as one consequence of existing. So goodness figures into explanations of why things are. Also, in this view, teleological explanations are just as appropriate, if not better, than efficient explanations.

This ancient view, however, seemed to commit one to some sort of moral necessitarianism, where god simply has to do what is good, in contradiction with the classic Christian view of divine agency. In later medieval and early modern views, from Scotus to Boyle to Descartes, we see the concept of a libertarian will, where one could choose something that is not best. This means, however, that one can no longer explain what the agent does by considering the outcome. It is the will's efficient decision that becomes central to explanation.

This quickly led to philosophers giving up teleological explanations (final causes) for anything that is not a rational agent (god, angels, and human beings). Hence a mechanistic view of anything that is not a rational agent, a la Descartes.

In more modern times, Spinoza is considered the ultimate enemy of teleology and final causes, again, however, with the exception of rational agents. However, Spinoza was also a naturalist, and it becomes difficult to justify limiting teleology only to a particular subset of natural entities. Accordingly, for him there is no sharp distinction between rational and non rational agents. Spinoza also rejected the idea of objective goodness, which means that one cannot invoke goodness as explanatory. For Spinoza we do not strive toward certain things because we think them valuable, but on the contrary we think certain things valuable because we happen (by our nature) to want them.

Leibniz, on the other hand, presented himself as a strong defender of teleology, in important ways arching back to the Greeks. God here does things because they are good, but god has to consider total goodness, and so chooses whatever maximizes good overall, and may not necessarily be individually good. Leibniz therefore opens again himself to the problem of moral determinism (for finite agents) and moral necessitarianism (for god). Hence some of his compatibilist maneuvering when it comes to free will.

Overall, it seems to me that this session was badly titled, as neither talk (and particularly the second one!) had much to do with scientific explanations, certainly not in the modern sense of the term. Oh well.

From the 2010 APA in Boston: Social networking and philosophy

2010-12-29T11:34:00.002-05:00

The APA meeting in Boston is turning into a disaster because of the weather: many sessions have been canceled because speakers couldn’t get to this frozen hell, while other sessions are being run by substitute speakers gathered at the last minute, with some presenting talks that only have a vague connection to whatever it was that the original session was supposed to be about.

This particular session was billed as having to do with how Twitter is changing the connectedness of philosophical communities, but turned out to be about social networking more broadly. Neither of the original speakers was present, and neither of the two replacement talks was about Twitter specifically. Oh well.

The first speaker was Casey Haskins (SUNY Purchase), who announced that he was going to talk about aesthetics and interconnected communities (though eventually aesthetics didn’t really make much of an appearance, probably a good thing). I find it amazing that someone gives a talk about Twitter, Facebook, and RSS feeds but freely admits that he doesn't know much about and has in fact just started using them.

"Small worlds" (the term Haskins uses for social networks) can be thought of as analogous to biological ecosystems that exchange information instead of organic materials. They are media that allow our "extended minds."

The guy was all over the place, using the term "good ideas" to talk about things ranging from Twitter to the evolution of coral reefs (apparently, nature can have ideas too, though what determines whether Twitter and corals are "good" isn't clear).

Reefs are then conceptualized as "platforms," apparently in the engineering sense (like Twitter!), structures that make it possible for other things to happen. He suggests an analogy between information flow on Twitter and material flow in biological ecosystems. I couldn’t be more unconvinced.

Twitter is presented as a "cultural exaptation" of a more primitive text based system (hence the 140 characters limit). Of course this is an example of an intentional exaptation, and hence yet another disanalogy with biology. I wonder what’s up with some philosophers’ biology envy. Someone should do a sociological study on this.

The second co-opted speaker was Saray Ayala (Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona). She talked about whether the computational theory of mind accounts for the “extended mind” (again!) made possible by environmental inputs, including social networks. Social networks (as environmental structures) may impose constraints on the functioning of our minds, and some of these constraints may not be computable.

She brings up an interesting example of robots that literally "embody" the ability of carrying out simple computations, by virtue of the way they are physically put together. A particular morphology of the robot plays the role of the hidden layer in a three-way layer system producing a logical XOR function (the other two layers being the input and the output).

The author then suggests that a computational theory of mind does not explain the environmental contribution of social networks to mind, because the theory treats the environment as background, passive with respect to computation, as opposed to as a structural component of what the mind does. Well, I’m not too sympathetic to computational theories of mind anyway, so I’ll need to look into this.

A Query (or two) on Coherence

2010-11-19T17:39:00.001-05:00

Two formal theories of coherence are currently available. The probabilistic views have suffered heavy criticism, partly because of their inability to capture explanatory relations, which seem to be at the heart of coherence. Thagard's model of explanatory coherence fairs better here. But it is not clear whether the coherence that Thagard describes so well is a good measure of the short-term reliability of a scientific claim. It captures well episodes in the history of science, but that could be more because of the fecundity of coherent views (which helps produce long term success) rather than short term reliability.

So, here is the query: 1) Are there any other contenders for a theory of coherence out there? and 2) Do we have any reason to think that a more coherent (however construed) view is more reliable right now?

Conference: Evolution, Cooperation and Rationality (Bristol, June 2011)

2010-11-08T14:12:00.002-05:00

An international conference at the University of Bristol, June 27th-29th, 2011

The conference forms part of the AHRC-funded project on Evolution, Cooperation and Rationality, based in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Bristol, under the direction of Samir Okasha and Ken Binmore. The aim of this inter-disciplinary project is to study the connections between evolutionary theory and rational choice theory. The first project conference, held in September 2009, explored the different theoretical approaches to decision-making and social behaviour used in biology, economics, and psychology.

This conference is a sister to our 2009 conference, but with a more philosophical focus. The aim is to explore the philosophical foundations of recent scientific work on co-operation and social behaviour, in both human and non-human animals.

Confirmed Speakers:
Elliott Sober, Peter Godfrey-Smith, Kim Sterelny, Samir Okasha, Ken Binmore, David Papineau, Cedric Paternotte, Jonathan Grose

Papers will be both contributed and invited. For further details, including information on how to submit a paper, please see our conference website:

https://www.bris.ac.uk/evolution-cooperation/events/conferences/2011conference

CFP "More Too Funky Causation" (Funky III), February 23-24, 2011, Ghent.

2010-10-23T03:54:00.001-04:00

The Department of Philosophy and Moral Sciences, Ghent University, Belgium, is proud to announce a call for papers for:
"More Too Funky Causation" (Funky III), February 23-24, 2011.
Keynote speaker is Jeffrey K. McDonough (Harvard): "Leibniz on Agency and Optimal Form"
The conference is the third to explore *funky* notions of causation in historical perspective.
'Funky' causes are defined negatively as those notions of causation that are neither final nor (Humean) efficient causation.
We welcome paper proposals that explore a funky cause in depth. Topics need not be limited to Early Modern topics or figures,
but we would especially welcome papers on formal causation.
Abstracts (no more than 500 words) prepared for blind review should be mailed to Eric Schliesser (nescio2@yahoo.com) by December 1. Inquiries can be directed to same address.

Ravello meeting on Chance and Necessity, part III (last one)

2010-10-22T10:59:00.002-04:00

I am at the Ravello meeting on Chance and Necessity in biology, on the 40th anniversary of Jacques Monod's seminal book, and will be posting a few entries while the meeting is going on this week.

The gathering is organized by Giorgio Bernardi, sponsored by International Union of Biological Sciences and Istituto Italiano di Studi Filosofici.

What follows are the raw and somewhat selective notes only, in order of presentation of the various speakers. Hopefully this will provide a feeling for what the meeting is about and generate some discussion. Throughout, parenthetical comments are my own, unless otherwise noted.

Denis Duboule, Constraints (necessity) and flexibility (chance) in the evolution of vertebrate morphologies.

Across vertebrates the structure of proximal bones is strongly constrained, while there is a lot of variation in distal structures, like the number and shape of digits. This pattern appears to be related to the pattern of deployment of a cluster of Hox genes during the development of vertebrate limbs. It is the differential regulation of distal Hox that generates the type of phenotypic variation that shows up in evolution. The reason the proximal pattern of the limb is much more constrained is because its regulation has been co-opted from the trunk, and the latter is obviously resistant to evolutionary change. (Nice and elegant explanation.) There are exceptions, like limbless lizards and snakes. But in those cases, obviously, you do also observe dramatic changes in the trunk. There is a similar reason why tetrapods cannot have symmetrical limbs: the developmental genes that cause the asymmetry are co-opted from the trunk, and changing the pattern would affect the trunk in inviable ways.

Walter Gehring, Chance and necessity in eye evolution.

Jacques Monod compared the eye to the camera to highlight both the similarities, as in the relation between form and function, and the difference between teleonomy - for the eye - and teleology - for the camera. Monod's insight is confirmed by modern research on how genetic control is deployed during the development of the eye: the observed patterns are clearly not the sort of thing that an engineer would put in place, but are instead the kind of hodgepodge that results from sequentially overlapping historical events. Eyes of vertebrates, insects, Cephalopoda, and other invertebrates have been thought as non homologous because they are morphologically different and because they develop differently. Molecular biology however shows a "deep homology" in the fact that all these eyes are affected by different version of the Pax6 gene. (But of course that raises the thorny question of the degree of congruence of homology at different levels: is the genetic one more fundamental than the developmental one? On what grounds?)

Takashi Gojobori, Chance and necessity in the evolution of connections between sensory and nervous systems.

Starts out with gene expression in Planaria brains, the most primitive of all structures that we recognize as brains. Turns out that half of known Planarian genes expressed in the head are shared by humans. Next, what about Hydra, which does not have a central neural system, just a diffuse nerve set? Again, half of the relevant genes are also expressed in human nerve cells. What about sea urchins, which have lost a central nervous system? Sure enough, gene expression patterns show that the arm of sea urchin larvae are degenerated from an ancestral more fully developed nervous system. Looking for connection between sensory and nervous systems back in the Hydra, because of the simplicity of their nervous system. Focus on gap junctions as precursors of fully formed sensory-nervous connections. (Once again, not much here about Monod, chance or necessity, but it’s near the end of the meeting...)

Ravello meeting on Chance and Necessity, part II

2010-10-22T02:35:00.002-04:00

I am at the Ravello meeting on Chance and Necessity in biology, on the 40th anniversary of Jacques Monod's seminal book, and will be posting a few entries while the meeting is going on this week.

The gathering is organized by Giorgio Bernardi, sponsored by International Union of Biological Sciences and Istituto Italiano di Studi Filosofici.

Werner Arber, Contingency of spontaneous genetic variation.

Talk started with a (somewhat peculiar) historical overview leading from Darwinism and the Modern Synthesis, through Watson and Crick and genomics, to a broader "synthesis" concerning molecular evolution. Different definitions of mutation if issue considered from phenotypic or molecular perspective, of course (just like the definition of gene itself). (Long-winded) introduction covering basics of molecular genetics. (Not clear at all what the point of this was, other than giving us a quick molecular genetics 101.)

Masatoshi Nei, Hugo de Vries and species formation: new perspectives from recent genomic data.

de Vries was famous for his experiments on mutations in Oenothera plants (and for contributing to the rediscovery of Mendel's work). These mutations were soon shown to be the result of chromosomal rearrangements and abnormalities, as opposed to the sort of point mutations discovered at the time by Morgan in Drosophila. Stebbins referred to de Vries' mutationist theory as a figment of imagination, even though polyploidy is very common in plants and other groups (this can't be right, Stebbins was well aware of polyploidy and it's role in speciation). Modern molecular genetics suggests that following genomic duplication there is a reduction in gene numbers that leads to incompatibility and speciation. (Lots of refs to Nei's own work on hybrid sterility back from the '70s and '80s.) Nei doesn't like Coyne and Orr's critique, in 2004, of his neutral model of hybrid speciation, proposed in 1983, suggesting that neutral models are under appreciated. (On this one I think Coyne and Orr were correct, actually.) (Overall, Nei seemed to want to significantly scale down the evolutionary importance of selection in favor of mutation, though I don't think his arguments were very coherent.)

Eviatar Nevo, Stress and evolution at micro- and macro- scales.

Importance of a variety of environmental stresses as major drivers of adaptive phenotypic evolution. (This has been a theme of Nevo for decades now.) Documented differences between, for instance, underground and above ground mammals, range across morphology, behavior, and even fine aspects of physiology. No question that life style drives phenotypic evolution. Evidence for a positive relationship between genetic diversity and levels of environmental stress. Similarly, indices of sexual activity, as opposed to asexual reproduction, increase with stress. (This morning we've steered pretty clear from Monod, chance and necessity. Hopefully better this afternoon, judging from the titles.)

Eugene Koonin, The role of extremely rare events in the evolution of life.

Major transitions in evolution are examples of extremely rare events and how important they can be, e.g., origin of life, nucleotides, cells, eukaryotes, or multicellularity. How do we explain the origin of replication and translation processes? Neither natural selection nor exaptation are adequate since both processes require replication and translation to get started. One popular answer is the RNA world type scenarios. However, known RNA replicases are ligases, not polymerases. (Somehow) the answer is related to inflation in cosmology... Which leads to a multiverse with island universes, of which ours is one, and in which the big bang becomes a local event... (Apparently) this is relevant because the number of times a given macroscopic history is repeated in an island universe is infinite. (Voila, by epistemological sleight of hand we solved the problem!) So anthropic (so called) selection would have preceded Darwinian selection.

Tomoko Otha, Near-neutrality, robustness and epigenetics.

Starts with brief history of neutral and near-neutral theories of molecular evolution. Neutral theory predicts that rate of evolution is same as rate of neutral mutation; near-neutral theory predicts rate of evolution to be inverse to population size. Much recent comparative genomic data compatible with near-neutral expectations. Robustness of gene networks made possible by near neutrality (this agrees with work by both A. Wagner and S. Gavrilets.) While robustness implies that many genotypes can result in the same phenotype, epigenetics results in the opposite: many phenotypes can be produced by the same genotype. (Not entirely clear what the role of epigenetics was here, but I take Otha to imply that it increases the range of near-neutrality as a theory of molecular evolution.)

Giorgio Bernardi, The neo-selectionist theory of evolution.

The two major determinants of gene expression are cis factors and chromatin structure. Lots of stats followed about the differential abundance of the various classes of DNA trinucleotides in the human genome. Selection favors certain types of chromatin structure in vertebrates, namely those that stabilize the thermodynamic properties of the chromatin itself. Indeed, patterns concerning the distribution of GC-rich chromatin is conserved across a hundred million years of mammalian evolution. (Not clear why this is “neo-selectionist,” however.)

Ravello meeting on Chance and Necessity

2010-10-21T02:18:00.002-04:00

I am at the Ravello meeting on Chance and Necessity in biology, on the 40th anniversary of Jacques Monod's seminal book by the same title, and will be posting a few entries while the meeting is going on this week. The gathering is organized by Giorgio Bernardi and sponsored by International Union of Biological Sciences and the Istituto Italiano di Studi Filosofici.

Agnes Ullman, In memoriam of Jacques Monod.

Monod was prominent in the critique of Lysenko and his brand of anti-scientific ideology. Shown charming early photos and even family drawings of young Jacques. I Did not know that Monod early on almost turned to a career as orchestra director before concentrating full time on genetics. He was active in the French resistance during WWII as a chief, a dangerous position that had cost three of his predecessors their lives. After WWII Monod immersed himself in the work on bacterial protein regulation that resulted in his Nobel in 1965. The latter was made possible by the intense collaboration with Francois Jacob, who eventually shared the Nobel. Their work led of course to the classic papers on the concept of the operon and of allosteric regulation of enzymes. In the late '60s Monod was politically involved with the student protest movement. In 1969 he gave four lectures at Pomona College, on "modern biology and natural philosophy," which became the core for Chance and Necessity - the book became an unexpected best seller in the early '70s. Monod then became a very effective manager and fund raiser, starting the first French institute of molecular biology, which now carries his name. He remained involved in politics, for instance in defense of abortion rights, until the premature end of his life.

"A beautiful theory may not be right, but an ugly one must be wrong." -JM

Bernardino Fantini, Monod's vision of life and the theoretical structure of contemporary biology.

Monod's philosophical work is largely under appreciated. It is true that he did not have a professional grounding in philosophy, but he was awake to the importance of philosophy in the biological sciences. According to Francis Crick's obituary of Monod in Nature, Chance and Necessity presented a vision of life that is shared by most practicing scientists, and yet feels alien to the majority of the public: life is an accident and Darwinian evolution is the impersonal causal mechanism that shaped it. Monod was interested in the apparent paradox of living organisms functioning in a way that cannot be explained only by the laws of physics and chemistry, which constitute the foundations of our scientific understanding of the world. He saw molecular biology not as a branch of chemistry, but rather as a biological-Darwinian understanding of biochemistry. Emphasis on biological form rather than specific matter constituents ("Plato sometimes is right" -JM). Monod saw evolution not as a law or a principle of life, but rather as an emergent result of complexity and certain environmental conditions. Monod attributed the idea that everything is the result of randomness and necessity to Democritus, though no specific quote to that effect can actually be found in the Greek atomist. For Monod life is bound by the laws of physics, but requires additional causal principles when it comes to the specificity of biological information. Delbruck quasi-seriously suggested to give the Nobel to Aristotle for the discovery of the basic principle of molecular biology, that DNA plays the role of the unmoved mover in biology. Many biologists rejected this idea that structure and function, form and information, can be conceptually separated in a way reminiscent of Aristotle's causes. Monod's ideas here derived naturally from his experimental work separating the control of enzymatic function from the biochemical function itself: allosteric control is entirely independent of the structural details of the functional enzyme.

Massimo Pigliucci, Biology as a historical and experimental science: the epistemic challenges of chance and necessity.

My talk was about situating the concepts of chance and necessity, in their broader sense, within the context of recent and ongoing discussions about the structure of evolutionary theory - from the Modern Synthesis of the 1940s to the newly proposed Extended Synthesis. I discussed the classic debate between Fisher and Wright, then moved to Gould's emphasis on contingency, at the same time that he was trying to establish paleontology on nomothetic grounds. I then used Cleland's distinction between prediction of future events and postdiction of past ones to mediate between experimental and historical aspects of evolutionary biology. I concluded with an overview of the Extended Synthesis as outlined in a MIT Press volume that I recently co-edited with Gerd Muller.

David Haussler, The genome 10k project, what we might learn from sequencing 10,000 vertebrate genomes.

Cost of DNA sequencing going down faster than cost of microprocessor power. Hence the idea of starting on a 10,000 - out of 60,000 known - vertebrate species genome project. Interested scientists and tissue samples sufficient for sequencing are available already for 16,000 species. Work made difficult by the structural / architectural changes in the various genomes over time, which superimpose on sequence-level changes. Still, one can follow both the birth of new genes, via duplication, and their death, via mutation causing a stop codon. The (rather naive?) long term scenario is to map genomic changes to phenotypic ones, thereby mapping the evolution of vertebrate form at the genomic level. An interesting early result is that early on in the phylogenetic history of vertebrate clades we observe an excess of regulatory innovation affecting transcription factors. This excess then tapers off, and regulatory elements become just as likely to mutate as other parts of the genome. On the other hand, changes in receptor binding sites become more important later in evolution, also eventually dropping off. Finally, more recent evolution is marked mostly by changes in intra-cellular signaling. So, early importance of developmental changes, intermediate period targeting intercellular-level changes, and finally intra-cellular changes. (This was an interesting talk on its merits, though it is hard to see what it had to do directly with the theme of the conference. I suspect this will be true for several other talks over the next couple of days.)

Gill Bejerano, Change and constancy in the evolution of the human genome.

Consider the contrast between having 20,000 protein coding genes vs about 1,000,000 genomic switches controlling the expression of those genes. A large number of cis non coding regions seem to have evolved under purifying selection. (Must admit that my eyes glaze over when slide after slide explains the various techniques used to gather the relevant molecular biology data...) (Still asleep, in the last two talks I have not heard the words "Monod," "chance," or "necessity" very much, if at all.)

Daniel Hartl, Chance favors the prepared genome, copy number variation and the origin of new genes.

Whole gene and partial duplications are frequent, though most of them are lost quickly. Chimeric combinations often lead to the evolution of new genes in Drosophila. The estimate is of about 100 duplications peer million years, 10% of which are chimeras. The two types of genes are then lost at the same rate. The rest of the talk focused on a couple of specific examples of the evolution of particular chimeric genes, one of which has been the locus of a recent - 15,000 years ago - selective sweep. The second example presented the case of a large number of structural events - deletions and insertions - which would maintain functionality only if they happened simultaneously. The way this happened was not by intelligent design ;-) but by way of resolving a stalled replication fork, which would have caused cell death at the moment of division. In other words, a number of molecular events that normally would be interpreted as having happened over a large number of generations likely occurred in a single molecular reshuffling inside an individual cell. (Talk about non-gradual evolution...)

CALL FOR ABSTRACTS WORKSHOP: Discovery in the social sciences: Towards an empirically-informed philosophy of social science

2010-10-19T08:32:00.000-04:00

University of Leuven, Belgium, March 22-23, 2011
Submission deadline for abstracts: 31 December, 2010.
Notification of acceptance: January 15, 2011.
Keynote speakers
Alison Wylie (University of Washington)
Jack Vromen (Erasmus University Rotterdam)

Call for papers:
The aim of this workshop is to bring together scholars who are working in the philosophy of the social sciences, especially those interested in scientific practice. The theme is discovery in the social sciences.
We invite submissions of extended abstracts (about 1000 words), and we are especially eager to hear from young researchers, including graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, tenure-track professors and other recent PhDs, working in the philosophy of the social sciences or related fields. We are interested in both case studies that examine specific instances of discovery in social sciences, and in more theoretical or methodological papers that are informed by scientific practice. We take 'discovery' in a broad sense, meaning discovery of empirical phenomena, theories and laws. 'Social sciences' refers to a broad range of disciplines, including (but not limited to) economics, anthropology, history, archaeology, psychology (including neuroscience), linguistics, and sociology.

Possible topics (not an exhaustive list) include:
- What is specific to discoveries in the social sciences?
- What is the epistemic role of artefacts in discovery, for example in neuroscientific research?
- Can we discern patterns in discovery in the social sciences?
- The discovery of laws in social sciences.
- Case-studies of discovery in specific social sciences.
- Creativity in social scientific practice.

Please send your abstract, preferably as pdf or rtf to Helen De Cruz, using the following e-mail address philosophy.social.sciences @ gmail.com (remove spaces) by December 31 2010. Please also indicate your position (e.g., graduate student, postdoc, assistant professor, etc).
Scientific committee: Helen De Cruz (University of Leuven), Eric Schliesser (Ghent University), Farah Focquaert (Ghent University), Raymond Corbey (University of Leiden and Tilburg University).
This workshop is supported by funding from the University of Leuven and Ghent University.

Postdoc: Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship at Wisconsin

2010-10-16T15:45:00.002-04:00

The University of Wisconsin Madison invites applications for Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowships in the humanities and the humanistic social sciences. The theme for 2011-13 is Life, broadly construed.

Details about the fellowship can be found at http://www.humanities.wisc.edu/programs/mellon-postdocs/call.html

The deadline for applications is November 15, 2010. Applications should be sent electronically to: fellows@humanities.wisc.edu.
If you have questions, please contact Jessica Courtier, Mellon Postdoctoral Fellows Coordinator, at that email address or phone her at 608.516.8109.

Leiter concedes, redoes poll

2010-10-15T13:52:00.000-04:00

Brian Leiter has graciously accepted the arguments (http://www.newappsblog.com/2010/10/philosophy-of-science-in-20th-century-.html) that his original poll on the most significant philosopher of science was marred by oversight: http://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2010/10/most-significant-philosophers-of-science-of-the-20th-century-one-more-time.html

I am very pleased that Duhem, Michael Polanyi, Moritz Schlick, David Lewis, Frank Ramsey, and David Hull are now all included (but no Weber, Russell, and Weyl, alas!!!). I suspect only Lewis will make a big dent on the list, but I think it is important to avoid encouraging the already existingbias toward the recent past in such polls, which do help shape the discipline's self-perception

Most significant 20th century philosophers

2010-10-14T01:36:00.003-04:00

Brian Leiter is running a poll of interest to readers of this blog:
http://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2010/10/most-significant-philosophers-of-science-of-the-20th-century.html

He has acknowledged some significant oversights (Schlick and Hull). But as I point out here: http://www.newappsblog.com/2010/10/philosophy-of-science-in-20th-century-.html
I think the situation is worse without Duhem, Russell, Weyl, and a few more controversial others (Husserl, Foucault, Zilsel, and Weber).
Chime in, and vote!

Job: Tenure stream position in the HPS department at the University of Pittsburgh

2010-10-10T11:39:00.001-04:00

POSITION: Tenure stream assistant professor in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science, pending budgetary approval.

Area of Specialization: History and philosophy of science and related areas that naturally complement departmental strengths. We have interest in strengthening areas of history and philosophy of neuroscience, physics, and general methodology.

Rank: Assistant professor

Responsibilities: Undergraduate and graduate teaching; regular departmental duties.

Applicants must submit the following materials, which will not be returned:

A curriculum vitae.
At least three confidential letters of reference.
Relevant academic transcripts.
Evidence of teaching ability.
Samples of recent writing.

The department regrets that it cannot solicit missing materials from applicants, or return any materials.

Please direct all inquiries and application materials regarding this position to:

The Appointment Committee
Department of History and Philosophy of Science
1017 Cathedral of Learning
University of Pittsburgh
Pittsburgh, PA 15260.

The University of Pittsburgh is an Affirmative Action, Equal Opportunity Employer. Women and members of minority groups underrepresented in academia are especially encouraged to apply.

Deadline for Applications: November 15, 2010

Please note that by accident this ad was not included in the October issue of the Job for Philosophers.

The financial corruption of the economics profession

2010-10-05T12:44:00.001-04:00

[Apologies for x-posting this from Apps: http://www.newappsblog.com/2010/10/the-financial-corruption-of-the-economics-profession.html, but the regulars here are familiar with my self-promotional activities!]
In general I argue that philosophers and citizens more generally ought to be more economically literate than they tend to be. In my view a lot of criticism of contemporary economics is based on conflation between political rhetoric and the complex reality of economic research. (Such criticism also often conflates a lot of different trends within economics.)

Nevertheless, there is a class of economists that have leveraged their economic expertise and have become part of revolving door between academia, industry, and government. (Often they also become apologists of worst abuses by foreign dictatorships from Left and Right!) What is significant about the piece below is that it exposes the financial incentives that tempt economists. It may be well over due that when economists publish journal articles and textbooks that they reveal not just research grants, but also their consulting fees/sources? It would be strange if economists, of all people, would think that (financial) incentives don't matter.

http://chronicle.com/article/Larry-Summersthe/124790/

Hacking and Franklin on the Functional Complexity of Evidence

2010-09-30T14:36:00.000-04:00

After posting my paper here, in the last few days, I've just happened to come across two fabulous statements related to my position. Of course, just when you start to think you're doing something a little bit original, you come across all kinds of people saying basically the same thing.

Ian Hacking, on the first page of the monumental "Experimentation and Scientific Realism":

Experiments, the philosophers say, are of value only when they test theory. . . So we lack even a terminology to describe the many varied roles of experiment. (Hacking 1982, p. 71)

And Allan Franklin, on the first page of his Selectivity and Discord:

Experiment plays many roles in science. One of its important roles is to test theories and provide the basis for scientific knowledge. It can also call for a new theory. . . Experiment can provide hints about the structure or mathematical form of a theory, and it can provide evidence for the existence of the entities involved in our theory. . . it may also have a life of its own, independent of theory: Scientists may investigate a phenomenon just because it looks interesting. Such experiments may provide evidence for future theories to explain. (Franklin 2002, p. 1)

It is a nice surprise to find myself in such good company. The aim of my paper, of course, is to try to provide a coherent picture of and some terminology for the various roles of evidence. One of the points that I make in the paper, which I'm not sure Hacking or Franklin would accept, is that there is a useful (functional) distinction to be drawn between observational and experimental evidence. I suspect they might even say that I leave some roles out of my picture.

Milton Friedman and Richard Swinburne, coupled

2010-09-28T07:51:00.004-04:00

Charles Manski, an economist at Northwestern associated with the prestigious NBER, has a working paper, POLICY ANALYSIS WITH INCREDIBLE CERTITUDE:
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1648007
It explores an important topic, namely the tendency of policy sciences "to regularly express certitude about the consequences of alternative policy choices." In the paper Manski offers a typology of variants of this problem and offers an alternative. (I must thank one of my regular informants from within economics, Robert Goldfarb (who has done some lovely empirical work on how economists handle empirical data), for calling Manski to my attention!)
Now early in the paper Manski goes after Milton Friedman's famous (1953) methodology paper (known as F1953) and couples him with the philosopher Richard Swinburne (well known in metaphysics and philosophy of religion), and criticizes both of them for their advocacy of the simplest hypothesis at the exclusion of others. (To the best of my knowledge Milton Friedman has never been compared to Richard Swinburne before.)

So far so good. Then Manski writes: "Does use of criteria such as “simplicity” to choose one hypothesis among those consistent with the data promote good policy making? This is the relevant question for policy analysis. To the best of my
knowledge, thinking in philosophy has not addressed it."
Funny that. My recently published paper on the influence of Milton Friedman's methodology on the Chilean Chicago Boys explores precisely this issue:
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1142741
Rarely have I had a better advocate for the relevancy of my work!
But...is there other work on the relationship between simplicity and policy science?

Varieties of Evidence Redux

2010-09-26T00:21:00.000-04:00

About a year ago, I posted three blog posts here, arguing that scientific evidence serves a more complex and dynamic set of functions in scientific inquiry than simply supporting hypotheses. I've finally manage to work the idea out in a form that I'm satisfied with:

The Functional Complexity of Scientific Evidence (Draft)

I'm especially indebted to the commenters on this blog for the content of section 6, including Thomas Basbøll, Greg Frost-Arnold, Gabriele Contessa, and Eric Winsberg. (I hope I've appropriate credit where credit is due there. I was a bit stymied in how exactly to refer to a conversation we had on the blog, and so made the acknowledgments there fairly general. Advice on that point is welcome.)

I hope I've managed to present it in a compelling way and answer the objections in a satisfactory way, even though I'm sure many traditionalist won't be convinced. The goal in this paper is to motivate the need for more complex, functionalist, dynamic model of evidence in contrast with the oversimplification of the traditional-type model, to set out in detail such a model, to illustrate it with an example, and to reply to some basic objections. I've got a second paper in progress which applies the basic framework to a variety of problems of evidence, from theory-ladenness and the experiment's regress to "evidence for use" and evidence-based public policy. My central claim there is that this apparently diverse set of problems all share a set of assumptions, and the strongest way to solve them all is to adopt the dynamic evidential functionalism that I've laid out in this first paper.

One reason that I needed to whip this paper into shape is that I'm presenting on the topic of the sequel at the Pitt workshop on scientific experimentation. Getting this in final form is part of finishing up that paper. The working title there is "From the Experimenter’s Regress to Evidence-Based Policy: The Functional Complexity of Scientific Evidence."

If anyone gets a chance to look at the paper, I'd appreciate any comments, here or via email.

1st Dutch-Flemish Graduate Conference on Philosophy of Science and/or Technology, Ghent 25-26 November

2010-09-24T04:23:00.002-04:00

1st Dutch-Flemish Graduate Conference on Philosophy of Science and/or Technology
The NFWT organizes its first graduate conference for advanced master students, Phd-students, and recent Phd’s, working on philosophy of science and/or technology. The goal of this conference is to help such researchers establish a research network, and try out papers in a cordial setting. All participants will be alloted ca. 30 minutes to present a paper, followed by 15 minutes of discussion.
There will be two keynote lectures on the topic of “levels of organization in the life sciences”, and contributions related to this topic are especially encouraged, without this being an exclusionary criterion.
Abstract of maximum 500 words should be submitted no later than October 1, 2010, by email to: maarten.vandyck@ugent.be. Notification of acceptance will be sent by October 10.
Dates: 25 and 26 November 2010
Venue: Het Pand, Ghent University, Ghent
Keynote speakers: Jon Williamson (Kent University) and Gertrudis Van de Vijver (Ghent University)
For more information on the NFWT (Dutch-Flemish Network for Philosophy of Science and Technology), see: http://logica.ugent.be/NFWT/index.php

CFP: EPSA, Athens, Greece 5-8 sept, 2011.

2010-09-24T03:40:00.001-04:00

The Third Conference of the European Philosophy of Science Association (EPSA) will take place at the University of Athens, Greece, 5-8 October 2011. Contributed papers and proposals for symposia are invited by 28 February 2011.
For details of the call, please visit this website:
http://epsa11.phs.uoa.gr/index_files/Page388.htm

PhD Position (Ghent)

2010-09-20T08:17:00.001-04:00

The Department of philosophy and moral sciences Ghent University has a vacancy for a PhD researcher in connection with the research professorship of Prof. Dr. Eric Schliesser. The area of interest is open with a slight preference for candidates interested in philosophy and history of economics, history and philosophy of science, early modern philosophy (from Descartes to Kant), and metaphysics.
For more information: http://www.ugent.be/en/news/vacancies/scientific/esphd

CFP: NOVEL PREDICTIONSFebruary 25-26 2011, Heinrich-Heine Universitaet Duesseldorf, Germany.

2010-09-15T11:54:00.002-04:00

Organisers: Gerhard Schurz, Ludwig Fahrbach and Ioannis Votsis

Invited Speakers: Martin Carrier (Bielefeld), Deborah Mayo (Virginia
Tech), Cornelis Menke (Bielefeld), Stathis Psillos (Athens), Roger White
(MIT) and John Worrall (LSE).

The aim of the conference is to explore new and fruitful answers to
three central questions: What are novel predictions? Ought novel
predictions have more epistemic weight than mere accommodations? Can
novel predictions help us make headway in the scientific realism debate?
We expect that the talks will cover one or more of the following related
topics, simplicity, unification, curve-fitting, approximate truth,
inference to the best explanation, the no-miracles argument and
scientific theory change.

We invite abstracts of up to 500 words on any of the above or closely
related topics. Please e-mail contributions to Ioannis Votsis (
votsis@phil-fak.uni-duesseldorf.de ). Make sure to include your full
name, institutional affiliation and e-mail address.

Submission Deadline: 15 OCTOBER 2010
Acceptance Notification: 15 NOVEMBER 2010

We hope to publish the proceedings of the conference in a reputable
scientific journal. Upon completion of the conference, we will invite
participants to submit written-up versions of their talks. Submitted
papers will then be subjected to a peer-review process.

Speakers – Provisional Talk Titles:
Martin Carrier (Bielefeld) 'Prediction in Context: On the Comparative
Epistemic Merit of Predictive Success'
Deborah Mayo (Virginia Tech) 'Some Surprising Facts About (the problem
of) Surprising Facts'
Ludwig Fahrbach (Duesseldorf) 'Novel Predictions: In Search of the
Wow-Factor'
Cornelis Menke (Bielefeld) 'On the Vagueness of "Novelty" and Chance as
an Explanation of Predictive Success'
Stathis Psillos (Athens) 'Novelty-in-Use: On Perrin's Argument for
Molecules'
Gerhard Schurz (Duesseldorf) 'Theoretical Parameters and Use-Novelty
Criterion of Confirmation'
Ioannis Votsis (Duesseldorf) 'Novel Predictions: The Few Miracles
Argument for Scientific Realism'
Roger White (MIT) 'Testing'
John Worrall (LSE) 'Prediction and Accommodation: A Comparison of Rival
Views'

Attendance is open to all. If you plan to attend please contact Ioannis
Votsis ( votsis@phil-fak.uni-duesseldorf.de ).

CFP: THEORY-LADENNESS OF EXPERIENCE March 10-11 2011, Heinrich-Heine Universitaet Duesseldorf, Germany.

2010-09-15T11:50:00.002-04:00

Organisers: Gerhard Schurz, Michela Tacca and Ioannis Votsis
Invited Speakers: William Brewer (Illinois, Urbana-Champaign), Allan Franklin (Colorado), Martin Kusch (Vienna), Athanassios Raftopoulos (Cyprus), Susanna Siegel (Harvard) and Markus Werning (Bochum).

The aim of the conference is to bring together philosophers, psychologists and cognitive scientists whose work contributes to our understanding of the scope and limits of theory-ladenness phenomena, where these are broadly construed to include the domains of perception, scientific evidence and language. We hope that the resulting synergy will help provide novel and fruitful answers to questions like the following: Is perception cognitively penetrable and, if so, how? Does the choice of scientific theory affect how we select, interpret and assess the evidential worth of
data from experiments? Under what circumstances can we doubt the veridicality of scientific instruments? Can we draw a sharp distinction between terms that are theoretical and those that are observational? We thus expect that the talks will deal with one or more of the following topics: the modularity of mind, nonconceptual content, the epistemology of evidence and the semantics of observational terms.

We invite abstracts of up to 500 words on any of the above or closely related topics. Please e-mail contributions to Ioannis Votsis ( votsis@phil-fak.uni-duesseldorf.de ). Make sure to include your full name, institutional affiliation and e-mail address.
Submission Deadline: 01 NOVEMBER 2010
Acceptance Notification: 01 DECEMBER 2010

We hope to publish the proceedings of the conference in a reputable scientific journal. Upon completion of the conference, we will invite participants to submit written-up versions of their talks. Submitted papers will then be subjected to a peer-review process.

Speakers – Provisional Talk Titles:
William Brewer (Illinois, Urbana-Champaign) 'Naturalized Approaches to Theory Ladenness: Evidence from Cognitive Psychology History, and the Ecological Validity Argument'
Allan Franklin (Colorado) 'Theory Ladenness and the Epistemology of Experiment'
Martin Kusch (Vienna) 'Modules and Microscopes'
Athanassios Raftopoulos (Cyprus) 'Cognitive Impenetrability, Nonconceptual Content, and Theory-Ladenness'
Gerhard Schurz (Duesseldorf) 'Ostensive Learnability as Criterion for Theory-Neutral “Observation” Concepts'
Susanna Siegel (Harvard) 'Cognitive Penetrability and Perceptual Belief'
Michela Tacca (Duesseldorf) 'Cognitive Penetrability and the Content of Perception'
Ioannis Votsis (Duesseldorf) 'The Observation-Ladenness of Theory'
Markus Werning (Bochum) 'The Role of Action in Perception'

Attendance is open to all. If you plan to attend please contact Ioannis Votsis ( votsis@phil-fak.uni-duesseldorf.de ).

The Limits of Science

2010-09-15T09:06:00.002-04:00

Philosophy of science in the public domain:
http://moreintelligentlife.com/content/ideas/anthony-gottlieb/limits-science
I think Gotliebb is a bit unfair to the skeptics, but still pretty decent stuff.

Speculative vs experimental philosophy

2010-09-14T00:10:00.005-04:00

There is a new Otago-based blog centered on a fun, timely, and interesting HPS project:
https://blogs.otago.ac.nz/emxphi/
With the rise of experimental philosophy, renewed interest in earlier attempts at experimental philosophy are timely, and I wish the Otago group much luck!
One of the main conceits behind the Otago project is that the Empiricism-Rationalism distinction is a construct of Kantian philosophy and misdescribes Early modern philosophy. This view is widespread among Early modern scholars, although I wouldn't be surprised if a majority of practitioners still buy into some version of the distinction. The Otago group proposes another distinction, that between speculative and experimental philosophers. And that framework drives the project. This has three virtues: 1. The distinction can be mapped onto debates within contemporary philosophy; 2. It's a distinction that does justice to much 17th century thought (it is an actor's category) 3. It allows the group to have a coherence and economies of scale (to use grant-speak).
Now as the wording of my second virtue suggests, I have some qualms. It ignores at least one other group of philosophers, namely those that believed in (mathematical) theory mediated measurement. I am thinking of Galileo, Huygens, and Newton, among the best known. These are not best described as experimental, although all were accomplished experimentalists (and Newton's oOptics is often assimilated to experimental traditions), but their work has very different character from say, Bacon or Boyle. (They are also not best described as speculative, because all three practiced a self-restraint on published speculation.) Certainly after the Principia this approach created standing challenge to all other forms of philosophizing. So the Otago framework will run into big trouble in 18th century.
I have argued that a better contrast can be drawn between those who thought that inspecting ideas (whatever the source--so this includes rationalists and empiricists) was the way forward and those who advocated theory mediated measurement. Moreover, it turns out that this distinction maps onto a related one: between system-building philosophers and the piecemeal approach, and I think better clarifies the predicaments of our philosophic times. But about these matters some other time.

Wittgenstein/Kuhn

2010-09-12T06:13:00.005-04:00

In re-reading Quentin Skinner's classic "Meaning and Understanding in History of Ideas" I was struck that Skinner welds together a Witgensteinian philosophy of language (and Anscombian philosophy of action) with Kuhnian philosophy of science (All acknowledged in the text). (Given the intellectual proximity of Kuhn and Cavell something of this sort can also be found in Kuhn's writings.) The resulting therapeutic aims for the (contingency in, contingency out model supplied to the) historical sciences are only mildly to my liking, but about that some other time. Here my question is does anybody know if in all the writings on Kuhn anybody has targeted or clearly diagnosed the Wittgenstein appropriation of Kuhn or the Wittgensteinian elements in Kuhn?

Philosophy of statistical mechanics

2010-09-02T03:29:00.002-04:00

David Albert has a (rather self-indulgent--yes, and that coming from me!), but usefully critical review of a collection of essays on the philosophy of statistical mechanics edited by Gerhard Ernst and Andreas Hutteman, which includes chapters by several contributors to this blog. The review can be found here:
http://ndpr.nd.edu/review.cfm?id=21208

Maybe it's time [sic] for à good discussion?

Second Young Researchers Days & Workshop on the Relations between Logic, Philosophy and History of Science

2010-08-31T05:29:00.001-04:00

September 6-7, 2010, Palais des Académies, Rue Ducale / Hertogstraat 1, Brussels.
If you happen to be in the Low Countries next week, this should be fun:
http://www.bslps.be/YRD2.html

A mainstream economist admits the obvious [told you!]

2010-08-29T06:18:00.004-04:00

It is rare to hear a prominent mainstream economist discuss so frankly (in public) the ways in which non trivial value judgments enter into welfare economics and public pronouncements of economists:
http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/08/27/when-value-judgments-masquerade-as-science/

I probably shouldn't say, "I told you so," but...I told you so:
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1142741
[The published version will be available soon: http://www.amazon.com/Elgar-Companion-Chicago-School-Economics/dp/1840648740]

Moreover, elsewhere I tell the story how even at Chicago-Economics (where they were early and rather trenchant critics of the claims of value-neutrality of welfare economics), the new welfare economics was adopted: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1628102
For philosophers this paper may be entertaining (or a cautionary note) because I show how Kuhn's ideas were both anticipated and then aggressively promoted to create a mythic history (and, thus stiffle dissent) at 'Chicago'.

Duck and drake clusters

2010-08-27T15:10:00.005-04:00

The following post about homeostatic property clusters (HPCs) is pretty long, so I've split it into several sections. Here's the very short version: Ereshefsky and Matthen argue that the HPC approach to natural kinds fetishizes similarity and is undone by polymorphism. I argue that it's not, and that the HPC approach is really about looking for causal structure.
[crossposted at Footnotes on Epicycles]

HPCs

Richard Boyd* has argued that many natural kinds should be understood as homeostatic property clusters (HPCs). The proposal is offered as an alternative to the view that a natural kind must have an essence, a set of conditions that are necessary and sufficient for membership. After Wittgenstein, it is common to say that a kind can have a cluster of properties rather than an essence. Cluster concepts are notoriously wooly-headed. What an HPC adds to the cluster is that there is a causal process that produces the properties and is responsible for their being clustered.

As an example, consider mallards. Members of the species typically look like ducks, walk like ducks, and quack like ducks. A one-legged mallard will not walk like a duck, a mute mallard will not quack, and so on, but they are nonetheless still mallards. So the properties are a cluster rather than an essence. Yet the cluster is sufficiently stable as to support induction. The cluster of duck properties is maintained in an individual duck by its physiology, literally by its homeostatic processes. It is propagated beyond individuals by duck reproduction. Mommy ducks and daddy ducks spawn clusters of duck properties in the form of ducklings.

The example may be complicated by noting that there is no such thing as a daddy duck. Male mallards are drakes.** Aside from the point about archaic nomenclature, one must also admit that ducks and drakes are rather different in many respects. Marc Ereshefsky and Mohan Matthen*** argue that the HPC approach fails precisely because of differences like these.

Enter E&M

Ereshefsky and Matthen (E&M) observe that the tradition of thinking about natural kinds has been about similarity. If kinds have essences, then all members of the kind are similar in that specifiable way. If kinds have property clusters, then members of the kind are roughly and probably similar.

As E&M note, identifying kinds cannot be done ex nihilo. One must start with some description of the relevant properties and their respective importance. E&M call such a description a morphospace.

They then reconstruct what someone who wants to identify HPCs must do. It goes like this: 1. Notice some clusters in the morphospace; i.e. similarities. 2. Look for the mechanisms responsible for those clusters. 3. Rejigger the morphospace in light of the mechanisms and start again.

The rejiggering is necessary because you ultimately want to group together specimens that would not initially look similar. For example, imagine one starts by making brief observations of caterpillars and moths. The two occupy different bits of the initial morphospace. Yet one wants to count them as members of the same species, because such caterpillars grow up to be such moths who lay eggs for such caterpillars.

Trying to understand this in terms of property clusters and similarity is awkward. The caterpillar crawls and the moth flies. If one characterizes the causal process as homeostatically maintaining a single property, then one has several unappealing options:

Option A: Rejigger the properties that are included in the morphospace. That is, say that the cluster includes the disjunctive property of crawling-or-flying.

As E&M note, this reply threatens to make similarity vacuous. Moreover, it would lose track of the fact that there are two separate clusters. Members of the species aren't just crawling-or-flying and cocoon-weaving-or-egg-laying. The crawling and the egg laying are never found together.

Option B: Rejigger the weighting of properties in the morphospace. Say that the cluster includes only crawling or flying, whichever is natural, and that the other is a kind of deformity.

This would miss the point, because both are stages in the butterfly life cycle. A caterpillar's not flying is different than a one-legged duck's not walking.

Option C. Adjust the kinds so that you do not need to rejigger the morphospace. Say that the caterpillar and the butterfly are members of different HPCs.

This would mean that the species is not an HPC after all, which is just to give up the Boydian idea.

None of A, B, or C are acceptable. So if we accept E&M's description of the workflow, the flow from 1 to 3 above, then the HPC view collapses.

Boyd often insists that natural kinds are ones that support induction, and straight-rule induction does require that members of kinds share similar properties. So E&M's reading is plausible. I think there's an alternate reading, however, according to which the HPC view does not collapse.

Another approach

Diagnosing an HPC leads us to identify causal processes. Once we have identified the causal process, we don't need to characterize the kind in terms of similarity at all. Rather, it is characterized in terms of the causal process itself.

So, rather than E&M's reconstruction, I offer the following: 1. Notice clusters of similarities. 2. Look for the mechanisms responsible for those clusters. 3. Identify natural kinds in terms of the presence or absence of those mechanisms.

The caterpillar and the butterfly are members of the same HPC because the causal process that produces the crawling and cocoon weaving cluster of properties early in its life later produces the flying and egg laying.

However, E&M argue that such a strategy won't help with sexual dimorphism. They say, "Sexual dimorphism ... is due to males and females having different chromosomes and different developmental processes. There is no theoretically meaningful similarity under which the variation between the males and females ... can be subsumed."****

For a single individual mallard, this is entirely correct. The casual processes that make a duck continue to walk and quack also give her female colouration and behaviour. Conversely, the specific causal processes that make a drake walk and quack also give him male features. Yet the causal process responsible for the mallard-cluster's persistence are not just the metabolisms of individual mallards. New mallards appear in the world. That causal process is mallard reproduction, and it necessarily requires both the ducks and the drakes.

Because the HPC approach leads us (at my step 3) to define the natural kind relative to the causal process - and because the causal process of duckiness requires both ducks and drakes - the natural kind involves both duck features and drake features. This is not by way of a rejiggered morphospace in which we pretend that ducky-or-drakey is a feature, but instead directly from the casual processes that the approach identifies.

I think my proposal is a more accurate reading of Boyd. Despite Boyd's talk of projectibility and induction aside, he does not think that scientific inference is simply a matter of applying the straight rule. It is also a matter of providing explanations, and the explanatory machinery of the HPC approach bottoms out in causal processes. Boyd says, for example, that the definition of an HPC kind "is thus a historical process like, e.g., the second world war or the emergence of capitalism."***** The best candidate for the historical process of sustained mallardhood is not the life of one mallard but the whole lineage. The lineage does not include ducks or drakes accidentally, but involves both integrally. So the HPC makes sense of the dimorphism.

So what?

There are two possibilities which I will mention but not address.

First, it may be that the suggestions I have made would be welcomed by E&M. I don't have a good grasp of the alternative that they call Population Structure Theory. Perhaps HPC as I understand it and PST look fairly similar. The disagreement then would just be one of emphasis, that mentioning 'property clusters' suggests that similarity is paramount.

Second, there may be some examples of what E&M call deep polymorphism that cannot be handled by HPC as I sketch it above. I don't see a problem with any of the other examples they mention in their paper, but I have not thought through all of them.

* All over the place. Imagine the usual flurry of citations here.
** 'Mallard', in its etymology, originally referred to a wild drake.
*** 'Taxonomy, Polymorphism, and History: An Introduction to Population Structure Theory.' Philosophy of Science, 72 (January 2005) pp. 1–21.
**** The ellipses leave out that they are talking about mammalian species, but I'll continue with the example of ducks. I don't think anything turns on this point.
***** Here he's discussing the example of Procyon lotor (raccoons). p. 71, 'Kinds at the "Workmanship of Men": Realism, Constructivism, and Natural Kinds.' It's in a German proceedings volume with a long title. You can Google it.

SEP on ENlightenment

2010-08-26T13:13:00.005-04:00

I love the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, which is why I try to read (well, scan) most of new and updated entries. You can, too: http://plato.stanford.edu/new.html
So, I really don't want to be known for kvetching about SEP (as I did recently: http://itisonlyatheory.blogspot.com/2010/08/copernicus-at-stanford-encyclopedia-of.html).

But while I picked on the Copernicus article because of my own (no doubt rather eccentric) pet-peeves, the entry on "Enlightenment" is based on claims that do not withstand scrutiny. It is also clearly informed by a self-serving German (if not outright Kantian as understood by certain Rawlsians) historiography of Enlightenment. (This dawned upon me when I read that "Only late in the development of the German Enlightenment, when the Enlightenment was near its end, does the movement become self-reflective." Such a bizarre claim is only possible because Rousseau, who famously challenged the value of Enlightenment, is treated as an entirely moral-political thinker; his three Discourses are not even mentioned in the bibliography! [The secondary literature bibliography is rather limited.]

In what follows, I have tried to emphasize the HPS relevance of my concern. (This is not a reach because Newton plays a crucial role in the narrative: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/enlightenment/#TruSciEpiMetEnl
So when WIlliam Bristow writes, "It belongs centrally to the agenda of Enlightenment philosophy... to provide a metaphysical framework within which to place and interpret this new knowledge" he imposes the Kantian conception onto the subject; for many Enlightenment thinkers natural philosophy makes metaphysics irrelevant.)

Here are two claims from the entry's very first paragraph that reveal some of the article methodological and historical flaws:
I. "Enlightenment thought culminates historically in the political upheaval of the French Revolution." If we think in strict calendar-periods--then one might be inclined to agree. But a) now it looks like the French [why not American?] Revolution is a kind of teleological outcome of Enlightenment thought; this goes against the self-understanding of a lot of politically-gradualist Enlightenment thinkers (especially in Scotland). And b) if the Enlightenment is a kind of regulative ideal (for future-oriented action), then the French revolution may mark the real (as opposed to merely theoretical) possibility of Enlightenment, but by no means its completion. (Think of Lincoln at Gettysburg who turned the US Constitution into an open-ended project.) This option not irrelevant for those (i.e., many eighteenth century historians) that wish to have a *science of history* that can shape the future. C) Why think that Enlightenment must culminate in political events rather than in a change of attitudes or knowledge?

II "The dramatic success of the new science in explaining the natural world, in accounting for a wide variety of phenomena by appeal to a relatively small number of elegant mathematical formulae, promotes philosophy (in the broad sense of the time, which includes natural science) from a handmaiden of theology, constrained by its purposes and methods, to an independent force with the power and authority to challenge the old and construct the new, in the realms both of theory and practice, on the basis of its own principles."
Well, no. A lot of philosophy (including natural philosophy) remained in some respects a handmaiden of theology or natural theology. Newtonianism routinely got connected with theological (theo-cosmological) arguments. (It is as if Weber and Merton never wrote.) Many of the folk that are most eager to see philosophy end its handmaiden role (Spinoza, Hume, Diderot) are also most ambivalent about the course of mathematical natural philosophy. [Not to mention that there is now a very rich literature on Catholic Enlightenments.]
The whole article conflates secularization and the advancement of science (as well as the idea of progress).

I could go on and on, paragraph by paragraph (and maybe I will in future postings), but this is long enough for now.

cfp - Graduate Conference on Philosophy of Science and/or Technology GHENT

2010-08-24T04:52:00.003-04:00

1st Dutch-Flemish Graduate Conference on Philosophy of Science and/or Technology
The NFWT organizes its first graduate conference for advanced master students, Phd-students, and recent Phd’s, working on philosophy of science and/or technology. The goal of this conference is to help young researchers establish a research network, and try out papers in a cordial setting. All participants will be alloted ca. 30 minutes to present a paper, followed by 15 minutes of discussion.
There will be two keynote lectures on the topic of “levels of organization in the life sciences”, and contributions related to this topic are especially encouraged, without this being an exclusionary criterion.
Abstract of maximum 500 words should be submitted no later than October 1, 2010, by email to: maarten.vandyck@ugent.be. Notification of acceptance will be sent by October 10.
Dates: 25 and 26 November 2010
Venue: Het Pand, Ghent University, Ghent
Keynote speakers: Jon Williamson (Kent University) and Gertrudis Van de Vijver (Ghent University)

For more information on the NFWT (Dutch-Flemish Network for Philosophy of Science and Technology), see: http://logica.ugent.be/NFWT/index.php

Copernicus at Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

2010-08-19T06:46:00.002-04:00

The entry on Copernicus has been updated at the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy:
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/copernicus/

I want to offer one minor kvetch. The article claims: Copernicus "was responsible for the administration of various holdings, which involved heading the provisioning fund, adjudicating disputes, attending meetings, and keeping accounts and records. In response to the problem he found with the local currency, he drafted an essay on coinage (MW 176–215) in which he deplored the debasement of the currency and made recommendations for reform. His manuscripts were consulted by the leaders of both Prussia and Poland in their attempts to stabilize the currency."

This is all what's said about the matter! Now, this understates the significance of Copernicus on these matters. First Copernicus articulated what is often known as Gresham's Law well before Gresham. (See wikipedia here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gresham%27s_law) More important, Copernicus articulated what is known as the quantity theory of money (often attributed to David Hume). Again, see wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantity_theory_of_money#Origins_and_development_of_the_quantity_theory

The quantity theory is a major conceptual and 'scientific' achievement. It is a milestone in economic theorizing. Now, by failing to investigate this more fully, the entry at SEP perpetuates the blindness among philosophers to a) the shared history between philosophy and economics (and political economy); b) their ongoing mutual development; c) makes Copernicus' interest in theorizing about currency (shared by Galileo, Newton, Locke, Berkeley, and Hume) seem largely insignificant.

End of rant!

CFP: METAPHYSICS & THE PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE CONFERENCE

2010-08-19T05:29:00.003-04:00

13-15 May 2011, University of Toronto. Presented by the Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology, University of Toronto and the Fishbein Center for the History of Science and Medicine, University of Chicago

The philosophy of science has an illustrious history of attraction and antipathy towards metaphysics. The latter was famously exemplified in the Logical Positivist contention that metaphysical questions are meaningless, but in the wake of the demise of Positivism, metaphysics has found its way back into the philosophy of science. Increasingly, questions about the nature of natural laws, kinds, dispositions, and so on have taken a metaphysical cast. The metaphysics of science
commands significant attention in contemporary philosophy.
While many philosophers embrace the increased contact between metaphysics and the philosophy of science, others are wary. Should science (and its philosophical study) lead us into doing metaphysics? If so, which metaphysical issues are genuine and which are illusory, and how might we tell? Such questions dovetail with similar soul-
searching in metaphysics proper (sometimes under the banner of "meta-metaphysics", sometimes simply as methodology).
This conference will examine ground-level debates about metaphysics within the philosophy of physics and the philosophy of biology, and broader methodological questions about the role of metaphysics in the philosophy of science. Participation is open and welcome from all parties to these questions: from those who hold that metaphysics must have a place within the philosophy of science, to those who hold it
should not.

PLENARY SPEAKERS
Craig Callender (University of California, San Diego)
Anjan Chakravartty (University of Toronto)
Katherine Hawley (University of St. Andrews)
Jenann Ismael (University of Arizona)
James Ladyman (University of Bristol)
Kyle Stanford (University of California, Irvine)
Michael Strevens (New York University)
Robert Wilson (University of Alberta)
C. Kenneth Waters (Minnesota)

CALL FOR PAPERS:
Essays of 4,000-5,000 words (30 minutes allotted for presentations) concerning any aspect of metaphysics and the natural or social sciences will be accepted for review until January 10, 2011. Please include a short abstract (200 words or so), a few keywords, prepare your essay for blind review (do not include your name or other
identifying references in the document), and submit it in PDF format here: http://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=mpsc2011
Notification by early February 2011.

ORGANIZERS
Chris Haufe (University of Chicago)
Matthew H. Slater (Bucknell University)
Zanja Yudell (California State University, Chico)
Please direct general conference inquiries to mpsc2011@gmail.com

Homage to Ian Mueller

2010-08-17T13:49:00.002-04:00

I was in the Chicago philosophy graduate program during the 1990s. My
primary field of study was philosophy of physics, but I spent a good
third of my time on ancient Greek philosophy as well, most of it with
Ian. I adored Ian, both personally and professionally. I feel
privileged to have been his student, and even more to have known him
as a person. I find as I make my way through the world of academic
philosophy that by and large the people who know Ian---and when
someone in the field knows Ian, they invariably revere him---are those
people who themselves do the finest work.

Ian was a philosopher's philosopher---a true scholar and open-minded
thinker who never let his astonishing carefulness and thoroughness
degenerate into pedantry. He was the only person I know who could
make the commentaries and the apparatuses fun. (Indeed, this is the
thanks I gave him in the "Acknowledgments" section of my doctoral
dissertation, the second person I thanked there: "It is a pleasure to
acknowledge and thank the following people.... Ian Mueller---for
exemplifying the spirit of careful scholarship, and for making me
realize that sometimes (not often, but sometimes) studying the
secondary literature can be almost as rewarding as reading the
original text.")

This is one of my fondest memories of Ian. We were in the weekly
group he used to lead on Aristotle's *Metaphysics*, going through a
particularly difficult passage in Book Lambda, as always going through
the text line by line, word by word (while always keeping an eye
firmly fixed on the bigger picture). At one point, I recalled that
Ross, in the commentary to his edition of the Greek, had an
interesting take on a disputed reading, so I offered my recollected
gloss on it. Ian looked puzzled, and said surely that was not right,
that was not what Ross had said. I guess I was feeling cocky, because
normally I would have deferred to Ian's mastery of the apparatus, but
on that occasion I was sure I was right and said so. Like dueling
gunslingers, Ian and I simultaneously and gleefully (albeit, Ian in
his understated way) reached for our copies of Ross and scrambled to
beat each other to the relevant part of the commentary. At about the
same moment, again, we each declared ourselves to be right. And
looked at each other puzzled, because we could not both be right.
After a moment's confusion, we worked out that I had the second
edition of Ross and Ian had the first. I figured that was the end of
the matter, but Ian asked to see my copy. Lovingly he lay the two
editions side by side and perused them in turn for several moments,
working out the details and subtleties of Ross's apparent change of
heart, clearly trying to figure out not only the substance but the
reasons behind it. Finally, dreamily, he looked up, eyes on the
Platonic Heaven, and said softly, "God help me, I love this stuff."

I tried to tell Ian several times how much he meant to me, how much he
had contributed to my intellectual development---how much of my
teaching and research, even to this day, even on topics not related to
ancient philosophy, is still done with him consciously in my mind as a
paragon. He always brushed it aside with a shy modesty that was
humbling to me. I know full well that I am far from the only one of
Ian's ex-students to feel this way.