This paper examines the form of mental representation of scientific theories in scientists and nonscientists. It concludes that images and schemas are not the appropriate form of mental representation for scientific theories but that mental models and perceptual symbols do seem appropriate for representing physical/mechanical phenomena. These forms of mental representation are postulated to have an analogical relation with the world and it is this relationship that gives them strong explanatory power. It is argued that the construct of naïve theories (...) as used in developmental psychology may be the appropriate form of mental representation for non physical/mechanical domains. The paper adopts a strong form of psychologism in the philosophy of science and argues that model-based approaches to scientific theories are more appropriate forms of representation for scientific theories than the formalist approaches that dominate current philosophy of science. (shrink)

The goal of this chapter is to describe recollective memory and give an account of some of the characteristics of this form of human memory. I take recollective memory to be the type of memory that occurs when an individual recalls a specific episode from their past experience. I start with this very loose definition because a large part of this chapter consists of an attempt to work out a more detailed and analytic description of this form of memory.

We use evidence from cognitive psychology and the history of science to examine the issue of the theory-ladenness of perceptual observation. This evidence shows that perception is theory-laden, but that it is only strongly theory-laden when the perceptual evidence is ambiguous or degraded, or when it requires a difficult perceptual judgment. We argue that debates about the theory-ladenness issue have focused too narrowly on the issue of perceptual experience, and that a full account of the scientific process requires an examination (...) of theory-ladenness in attention, perception, data interpretation, data production, memory, and scientific communication. We conclude that the evidence for theory-ladenness does not lead to a relativist account of scientific knowledge. (shrink)

In this paper we provide a psychological account of the nature and development of explanation. We propose that an explanation is an account that provides a conceptual framework for a phenomenon that leads to a feeling of understanding in the reader/hearer. The explanatory conceptual framework goes beyond the original phenomenon, integrates diverse aspects of the world, and shows how the original phenomenon follows from the framework. We propose that explanations in everyday life are judged on the criteria of empirical accuracy, (...) scope, consistency, simplicity, and plausibility. We conclude that explanations in science are evaluated by the same criteria, plus those of precision, formalisms, and fruitfulness. We discuss several types of explanation that are used in everyday life – causal/mechanical, functional, and intentional. We present evidence to show that young children produce explanations that have the same essential form as those used by adults. We also provide evidence that children use the same evaluation criteria as adults, but may not apply those additional criteria for the evaluation of explanations that are used by scientists. (shrink)

The metamemory approach to memory confidence was extended and elaborated to deal with semantic memory tasks. The metamemory approach assumes that memory confidence is based on the products and processes of a completed memory task, as well as metamemory beliefs that individuals have about how their memory products and processes relate to memory accuracy. In two experiments participants were asked deceptive and nondeceptive questions involving geographical information. In both experiments, as predicted by the metamemory approach to memory confidence, there was (...) a positive confidence/ accuracy relationship for nondeceptive items and a negative relationship for deceptive items. Experiment 2 used items that constrained the memory strategies (e.g., hierarchical reasoning about spatial location) used by the participants. The results supported the hypothesis that the participants were aware of the levels of memory accuracy associated with the different strategies and used that information to generate their memory confidence judgments. (shrink)

Phenomenal reports were obtained immediately after participants retrieved information from long-term memory. Data were gathered for six basic forms of memory and for three forms of memory that asked for declarative information about procedural tasks . The data show consistent reports of mental imagery during retrieval of information from the generic perceptual, recollective, motor—declarative, rote—declarative, and cognitive—declarative categories; much less imagery was reported for the semantic, motor, rote, and cognitive categories. Overall, the data provide support for the theoretical framework outlined (...) in Brewer and Pani. (shrink)

In 1880, Galton carried out an investigation of imagery in a sample of distinguished men and a sample of nonscientists (adolescent male students). He concluded that scientists were either totally lacking in visual imagery or had “feeble” powers of mental imagery. This finding has been widely accepted in the secondary literature in psychology. A replication of Galton’s study with modern scientists and modern university undergraduates found no scientists totally lacking in visual imagery and very few with feeble visual imagery. Examination (...) of Galton’s published data shows that his own published data do not support his claims about deficient visual imagery in scientists. The modern data for scientists and nonscientists and the 1880 data for scientists and nonscientists are in agreement in showing that all groups report substantial imagery on recollective memory tasks such as Galton’s breakfast questionnaire. We conclude that Galton’s conclusions were an example of theory-laden interpretation of data based on the initial responses from several very salient scientists who reported little or no visual imagery on Galton’s imagery questionnaire. (shrink)

This article presents the results of an experiment which investigated elementary school children's explanations of the day/night cycle. First, third, and fifth grade children were asked to explain certain phenomena, such as the disappearance of the sun during the night, the disappearance of stars during the day, the apparent movement of the moon, and the alteration of day and night. The results showed that the majority of the children in our sample used in a consistent fashion a small number of (...) relatively well‐defined mental models of the earth, the sun, and the moon to explain the day/night cycle. These mental models of the day/night cycle were empirically accurate, logically consistent and revealed some sensitivity on the part of the children to issues of simplicity of explanation. The younger children formed Initial mental models which provided explanations of the day/night cycle based on everyday experience (e.g., the sun goes down behind mountains, clouds cover up the sun). The older children constructed synthetic mental models (e.g., the sun and the moon revolve around the stationary earth every 24 hours; the earth rotates in an up/down direction and the sun and moon are fixed on opposite sides) which represented attempts to synthesize the culturally accepted view with aspects of their Initial models. A few of the older children appeared to have constructed a mental model of the day/night cycle similar to the scientific one. A theoretical framework is outlined which explains the formation of initial, synthetic, and scientific models of the day/night cycle in terms of the reinterpretation of a hierarchy of constraints, some of which are present early in the child's life, and others which emerge later out of the structure of the acquired knowledge. (shrink)

This paper proposes a set of criteria for an appropriate experiment on the issue of the theory ladenness of perception. These criteria are used to select a number of experiments that use: belief-based ambiguous figures, fragmented figures, or memory color. Crucially, the data in experiments of this type are based on the participant’s qualitative visual experience. Across many different types of experimental designs, different types of stimuli, and different types of belief manipulation, these experiments show the impact of belief/theory on (...) visual perception. Using an ecological validity argument, I conclude that attention-based interpretations of these findings are not successful because the relevant epistemological issues only require that we examine final perception, in the sense of visual awareness of the everyday world. Finally, I argue that the epistemological consequences of theory-ladenness can be reduced by using a top-down/bottom-up theoretical framework and by adopting appropriate methodological procedures to data derived from individual observations. (shrink)

This paper presents an analysis of the forms of response that scientists make when confronted with anomalous data. We postulate that there are seven ways in which an individual who currently holds a theory can respond to anomalous data: (1) ignore the data; (2) reject the data; (3) exclude the data from the domain of the current theory; (4) hold the data in abeyance; (5) reinterpret the data; (6) make peripheral changes to the current theory; or (7) change the theory. (...) We analyze psychological experiments and cases from the history of science to support this proposal. Implications for the philosophy of science are discussed. (shrink)

This paper analyzes recent work in psychology on the nature of the representation of complex forms of knowledge with the goal of understanding how theories are represented. The analysis suggests that, as a psychological form of representation, theories are mental structures that include theoretical entities (usually nonobservable), relationships among the theoretical entities, and relationships of the theoretical entities to the phenomena of some domain. A theory explains the phenomena in its domain by providing a conceptual framework for the phenomena that (...) leads to a feeling of understanding in the reader/hearer. The explanatory conceptual framework goes beyond the original phenomena, integrates diverse aspects of the world, and shows how the original phenomena follow from the framework. This analysis is used to argue that mental models are the subclass of theories that use causal/mechanical explanatory frameworks. In addition, an argument is made for a new psychologism in the philosophy of science, in which the mental representation of scientific theories must be taken into account. (shrink)

The perceptual symbol approach to knowledge representation combines structured frames and dynamic imagery. The perceptual symbol approach provides a good account of the representation of scientific models, of some types of naive theories held by children and adults, and of certain reconstructive memory phenomena. The ontological status of perceptual symbols is unclear and this form of representation does not succeed in accounting for all forms of human knowledge.

Phenomenal reports were obtained immediately after participants retrieved information from long-term memory. Data were gathered for six basic forms of memory and for three forms of memory that asked for declarative information about procedural tasks. The data show consistent reports of mental imagery during retrieval of information from the generic perceptual, recollective, motor—declarative, rote—declarative, and cognitive—declarative categories; much less imagery was reported for the semantic, motor, rote, and cognitive categories. Overall, the data provide support for the theoretical framework outlined in (...) Brewer and Pani. (shrink)

Malformations concerning the ventral body wall constitute one of the leading categories of human birth defects and are present in about one out of every 2000 live births. Although the occurrence of these defects is relatively common, few detailed experimental studies exist on the development and closure of the ventral body wall in mouse and human. This field is further complicated by the array of theories on the pathogenesis of body wall defects and the likelihood that there is no single (...) cause for these abnormalities. In this review, we summarize what is known concerning the mechanisms of normal ventral body wall closure in humans and mice. We then outline the theories that have been proposed concerning human body wall closure abnormalities and examine the growing number of mouse mutations that impact normal ventral body wall closure. Finally, we speculate how studies in animal models such as mouse and Drosophila are beginning to provide a much‐needed mechanistic framework with which to identify and characterize the genes and tissues required for this vital aspect of human embryogenesis. BioEssays 26:1307–1321, 2004. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

Zu seinen Lebzeiten war Kurt Gödel außerhalb der Fachwelt der Mathematiker, Philosophen und theoretischen Physiker kaum bekannt. Zu Beginn seiner Karriere schuf er beeindruckende Arbeiten zur Vollständigkeit und Beweisbarkeit formaler logischer Systeme, die zu seiner Dissertation und seiner Habilitations-schrift wurden und ihn unter Fachleuten weltberühmt machten. Seine Unvoll-ständigkeitssätze läuteten das Ende der formal-logischen Programme der Logizisten (Russell et al.) und der Formalisten (Hilbert et al.) ein. Später erzielte er auch signifikante Ergebnisse in der Mengenlehre. Nach seiner Emigration in die USA (...) (Princeton), widmete er sich mehr der Philosophie, dem Leitmotiv seines Lebens, und er fand auch eine einzigartige Lösung zu Einsteins Feld-gleichungen der Gravitation, sein "Gödel-Universum". Dieses Buch beschreibt sowohl den Gödel, der ein genialer Wissenschaftler war, und der gewagte und neuartige Hypothesen zu den Fundamenten der Mathe-matik und Physik hervorbrachte, ‒ als auch den Gödel, der ein perfekter Rationalist war, aber sein Alltagsleben nur mit Mühe meistern konnte und zeitlebens unter Depressionen, Angstneurosen und Hypochondrie litt. Ein Leben voller Paradoxen, in dem er trotz all seiner psychischen Probleme Beachtliches leistete und zu einem Vorbild für viele jüngere Wissenschaftler wurde. Das Buch liefert den Kontext zu seinen Errungenschaften, die ein verblüffend breites Spektrum intellektueller Unternehmungen darstellen, und zu seiner zunehmenden Geisteskrankheit; und es zeigt, wie er eine lange und erfolgreiche Karriere mit Hilfe seiner loyalen Ehefrau Adele und einigen seiner Freunde durchlaufen konnte. Dies ist eine faszinierende Geschichte der wissen-schaftlichen Genialität und der menschlichen Natur. (shrink)

This chapter takes a naturalized approach to the philosophy of science using evidence from cognitive psychology and from the history of science. It first describes the problem of the theory ladenness of perception. Then it provides a general top-down/bottom-up framework from cognitive psychology that is used to organize and evaluate the evidence for theory ladenness throughout the process of carrying out science (perception, attention, thinking, experimenting, memory, and communication). The chapter highlights both the facilitatory and inhibitory role of theory in (...) the scientific process. Both the historical record and the evidence from cognitive psychology suggest that the top-down factors have their greatest impact when the bottom-up information is weak or degraded. There is a short discussion of the normative implications of the material in the chapter for carrying out science. (shrink)

This commentary concludes that Bartlett took a functional approach to psychological theory. He hypothesized that schemata are active, holistic, unconscious, and show emergent properties. He provided no mechanism for going from episodic instances to a holistic schema or for the long-term retention of information in memory. Modern schema theories reject Bartlett's holism and interpret his hypothesis that schemata are active in terms of the active nature of top-down processes in memory and perception. Modern schema theories use the construct of instantiation (...) to account for memory of specific schema-related information and also postulate unconscious, generic memory structures to account for the impact of old knowledge on human cognitive processing. (shrink)

The cognitive science of science studies the cognitive processes involved in carrying out science: How do scientists reason? How do scientists develop new theories? How do scientists deal with data that are inconsistent with their theories? How do scientists choose between competing theories? Research on these issues has been carried out by investigators in a number of cognitive science disciplines, particularly psychology, philosophy, and artificial intelligence. More detailed accounts of work in this area can be found in two recent conference (...) volumes. (shrink)

This paper presents a cognitive account of the process of evaluating scientific data. Our account assumes that when individuals evaluate data, they construct a mental model of a data-interpretation package, in which the data and theoretical interpretations of the data are integrated. We propose that individuals attempt to discount data by seeking alternative explanations for events within the mental model; data-interpretation packages are accepted when the individual cannot find alternative accounts for these events. Our analysis indicates that there are many (...) levels at which data-interpretation packages can be accepted or denied. (shrink)

This paper presents a cognitive account of the process of evaluating scientific data. Our account assumes that when individuals evaluate data, they construct a mental model of a data-interpretation package, in which the data and theoretical interpretations of the data are integrated. We propose that individuals attempt to discount data by seeking alternative explanations for events within the mental model; data-interpretation packages are accepted when the individual cannot find alternative accounts for these events. Our analysis indicates that there are many (...) levels at which data-interpretation packages can be accepted or denied. (shrink)

Part I: The Life of Cognitive Science:. William Bechtel, Adele Abrahamsen, and George Graham. Part II: Areas of Study in Cognitive Science:. 1. Analogy: Dedre Gentner. 2. Animal Cognition: Herbert L. Roitblat. 3. Attention: A.H.C. Van Der Heijden. 4. Brain Mapping: Jennifer Mundale. 5. Cognitive Anthropology: Charles W. Nuckolls. 6. Cognitive and Linguistic Development: Adele Abrahamsen. 7. Conceptual Change: Nancy J. Nersessian. 8. Conceptual Organization: Douglas Medin and Sandra R. Waxman. 9. Consciousness: Owen Flanagan. 10. Decision Making: J. Frank (...) Yates and Paul A. Estin. 11. Emotions: Paul E. Griffiths. 12. Imagery and Spatial Representation: Rita E. Anderson. 13. Language Evolution and Neuromechanisms: Terrence W. Deacon. 14. Language Processing: Kathryn Bock and Susan M. Garnsey. 15. Linguistics Theory: D. Terence Langendoen. 16. Machine Learning: Paul Thagard. 17. Memory: Henry L. Roediger III and Lyn M. Goff. 18. Perception: Cees Van Leeuwen. 19. Perception: Color: Austen Clark. 20. Problem Solving: Kevin Dunbar. 21. Reasoning: Lance J. Rips. 22. Social Cognition: Alan J. Lambert and Alison L. Chasteen. 23. Unconscious Intelligence: Rhianon Allen and Arthur S. Reber. 24. Understanding Texts: Art Graesser and Pam Tipping. 25. Word Meaning: Barbara C. Malt. Part III: Methodologies of Cognitive Science:. 26. Artificial Intelligence: Ron Sun. 27. Behavioral Experimentation: Alexander Pollatsek and Keith Rayner. 28. Cognitive Ethology: Marc Bekoff. 29. Deficits and Pathologies: Christopher D. Frith. 30. Ethnomethodology: Barry Saferstein. 31. Functional Analysis: Brian Macwhinney. 32. Neuroimaging: Randy L. Buckner and Steven E. Petersen. 33. Protocal Analysis: K. Anders Ericsson. 34. Single Neuron Electrophysiology: B. E. Stein, M.T. Wallace, and T.R. Stanford. 35. Structural Analysis: Robert Frank. Part IV: Stances in Cognitive Science:. 36. Case-based Reasoning: David B. Leake. 37. Cognitive Linguistics: Michael Tomasello. 38. Connectionism, Artificial Life, and Dynamical Systems: Jeffrey L. Elman. 39. Embodied, Situated, and Distributed Cognition: Andy Clark. 40. Mediated Action: James V. Wertsch. 41. Neurobiological Modeling: P. Read Montague and Peter Dayan. 42. Production Systems: Christian D. Schunn and David Klahr. Part V: Controversies in Cognitive Science:. 43. The Binding Problem: Valerie Gray Hardcastle. 44. Heuristics and Satisficing: Robert C. Richardson. 45. Innate Knowledge: Barbara Landau. 46. Innateness and Emergentism: Elizabeth Bates, Jeffrey L. Elman, Mark H. Johnson, Annette Karmiloff-Smith, Domenico Parisi, and Kim Plunkett. 47. Intentionality: Gilbert Harman. 48. Levels of Explanation and Cognition Architectures: Robert N. McCauley. 49. Modularity: Irene Appelbaum. 50. Representation and Computation: Robert S. Stufflebeam. 51. Representations: Dorrit Billman. 52. Rules: Terence Horgan and John Tienson. 53. Stage Theories Refuted: Donald G. Mackay. Part VI: Cognitive Science in the Real World:. 54. Education: John T. Bruer. 55. Ethics: Mark L. Johnson. 56. Everyday Life Environments: Alex Kirlik. 57. Institutions and Economics: Douglass C. North. 58. Legal Reasoning: Edwina L. Rissland. 59. Mental Retardation: Norman W. Bray, Kevin D. Reilly, Lisa F. Huffman, Lisa A. Grupe, Mark F. Villa, Kathryn L. Fletcher, and Vivek Anumolu. 60. Science: William F. Brewer and Punyashloke Mishra. Selective Biographies of Major Contributors to Cognitive Science: William Bechtel and Tadeusz Zawidzki. (shrink)

The use of multiple means of determination to “triangulate” on the existence and character of a common phenomenon, object, or result has had a long tradition in science but has seldom been a matter of primary focus. As with many traditions, it is traceable to Aristotle, who valued having multiple explanations of a phenomenon, and it may also be involved in his distinction between special objects of sense and common sensibles. It is implicit though not emphasized in the distinction between (...) primary and secondary qualities from Galileo onward. It is arguably one of several conceptions involved in Whewell’s method of the “consilience of inductions” (Laudan 1971) and is to be found in several places in Peirce. (From M. Brewer and B. Collins, eds., (1981); Scientific Inquiry in the Social Sciences (a festschrift for Donald T. Campbell), San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, pp. 123–162.). (shrink)

The work of William Morris (1834-1896) was hugely influenced by the medieval sagas and poetry of Iceland; in particular, they inspired his long poems "The Lovers of Gudrun" and Sigurd the Volsung. Between 1868 and 1876, Morris not only translated several major sagas into English for the first time with his collaborator the Icelander Eiríkur Magnússon (1833-1913) but he also travelled on horseback twice across the Icelandic interior, journeys which led him through the best known of the saga sites. (...) By looking closely at his translations of the sagas and the texts on which he based them, the journals of his travels in Iceland, and his saga-inspired long poems and lyric poetry, this book shows how Morris conceived a unique ideal of heroism through engaging with Icelandic literature. It shows the sagas and poetry of Iceland as crucial in shaping his view of the best life a man could live and spurring him on in the subsequent passions on which much of his legacy rests. (shrink)

: In a short and much-neglected passage in the second Critique, Kant discusses the threat posed to human freedom by theological determinism. In this paper we present an interpretation of Kant’s conception of and response to this threat. Regarding his conception, we argue that he addresses two versions of the threat: either God causes appearances directly or he does so indirectly by causing things in themselves which in turn cause appearances. Kant’s response to the first version is that God cannot (...) cause appearances directly because they depend essentially on the passive sensibility of finite beings. Kant’s response to the second version is that human beings are endowed with transcendental freedom, which blocks the causal transitivity that is presupposed by this version. We also contrast his position on this topic with Leibniz’s and Spinoza’s. (shrink)

The standard paradigm for mental causation is a person’s acting for a reason. Something happens - she intentionally φ’s - the occurrence of which we explain by citing a relevant belief or desire. In the present context, I simply take for granted the following two conditions on the appropriateness of this explanation. First, the agent φ’s _because_ she believes/desires what we say she does, where this is expressive of a _causal_ dependence.1 Second, her believing/desiring this gives her a _reason_ for (...) φ-ing: recognizing that she has this belief/desire makes her φ-ing intelligible as rational in the light of her other attitudes and circumstances. A further condition must be met, though, if this is to be a genuine psychological explanation, a case of her acting _for_ the reason in question. Consider the following example of Davidson’s (1973, p. 79). An exhausted climber is desperate to rid herself of the weight and danger of holding her partner on a rope; and her sudden realization that simply letting go would achieve this so unnerves her that her grip loosens slightly and he falls. Her releasing him causally depends upon her having this belief and desire, which provide _a_ reason for doing what she does. But this is not _why_ she does it: it would be at best misleading to say that she dropped him, intentionally, because she was fed up with holding his weight, or because she thought that she might otherwise fall. Her letting go does not depend upon her having these reasons in the right way. The reason-giving relation is causally irrelevant. If we are to explain a person’s acting _for_ a reason, then her doing. (shrink)

We tend to suppose that the ancient Greeks had primitive ideas of the self, of responsibility, freedom, and shame, and that now humanity has advanced from these to a more refined moral consciousness. Bernard Williams's original and radical book questions this picture of Western history. While we are in many ways different from the Greeks, Williams claims that the differences are not to be traced to a shift in these basic conceptions of ethical life. We are more like the ancients (...) than we are prepared to acknowledge, and only when this is understood can we properly grasp our most important differences from them, such as our rejection of slavery. The author is a philosopher, but much of his book is directed to writers such as Homer and the tragedians, whom he discusses as poets and not just as materials for philosophy. At the center of his study is the question of how we can understand Greek tragedy at all, when its world is so far from ours. Williams explains how it is that when the ancients speak, they do not merely tell us about themselves, but about ourselves. _Shame and Necessity_ gives a new account of our relations to the Greeks, and helps us to see what ethical ideas we need in order to live in the modern world. (shrink)

Former Google advertising strategist, now Oxford-trained philosopher James Williams launches a plea to society and to the tech industry to help ensure that the technology we all carry with us every day does not distract us from pursuing our true goals in life. As information becomes ever more plentiful, the resource that is becoming more scarce is our attention. In this 'attention economy', we need to recognise the fundamental impacts of our new information environment on our lives in order to (...) take back control. Drawing on insights ranging from Diogenes to contemporary tech leaders, Williams's thoughtful and impassioned analysis is sure to provoke discussion and debate. Williams is the inaugural winner of the Nine Dots Prize, a new Prize for creative thinking that tackles contemporary social issues. This title is also available as Open Access. (shrink)

Perhaps the most fundamental and distinctive idea of Kantian moral psychology is that no behavior can count as action unless it is performed on a subjective practical principle, or a maxim of action. The maxim is supposed to provide the target of moral assessment of all actions, whether this assessment is prospective or retrospective. The presence of a maxim is also supposed to illuminate how it is that agents are active in, hence responsible for, the peculiar species of events we (...) call actions. To put the point roughly, agents are the sources of their actions in that they have in some sense affirmed or endorsed the maxims of these actions. (shrink)

An analysis of two heuristic strategies for the development of mechanistic models, illustrated with historical examples from the life sciences. In Discovering Complexity, William Bechtel and Robert Richardson examine two heuristics that guided the development of mechanistic models in the life sciences: decomposition and localization. Drawing on historical cases from disciplines including cell biology, cognitive neuroscience, and genetics, they identify a number of "choice points" that life scientists confront in developing mechanistic explanations and show how different choices result in (...) divergent explanatory models. Describing decomposition as the attempt to differentiate functional and structural components of a system and localization as the assignment of responsibility for specific functions to specific structures, Bechtel and Richardson examine the usefulness of these heuristics as well as their fallibility—the sometimes false assumption underlying them that nature is significantly decomposable and hierarchically organized. When Discovering Complexity was originally published in 1993, few philosophers of science perceived the centrality of seeking mechanisms to explain phenomena in biology, relying instead on the model of nomological explanation advanced by the logical positivists (a model Bechtel and Richardson found to be utterly inapplicable to the examples from the life sciences in their study). Since then, mechanism and mechanistic explanation have become widely discussed. In a substantive new introduction to this MIT Press edition of their book, Bechtel and Richardson examine both philosophical and scientific developments in research on mechanistic models since 1993. (shrink)

In the Critique of Judgment, Kant claims that genius is a talent for art, but not for science. Despite his restriction of genius to the domain of fine art, several recent interpreters have suggested that genius has a role to play in Kant’s account of cognition in general and scientific practice in particular. In this paper, I explore Kant’s reasons for excluding genius from science as well as the reasons that one might nevertheless be tempted to think that his account (...) allows room for the scientific genius. I then argue that Kant’s concerns are not only epistemic, but also moral, and together, they give us good reason for resisting the veneration of genius. (shrink)