James Coleman attempted to reconcile rational choice theory with the classical sociological concerns: the relationship between the individual and society, and the historical and normative status of rationality. He identifies limits to the rational choice model, and suggests some promising but ultimately unconvincing ways around them. His project does, however, offer an important critique of Weber's theory of bureaucracy, which is of value in analyzing relationships between corporate actors and particular persons.

Global network research is an exciting new area of social analysis. This book is the first to provide a thorough investigation of global network links across time and space. Robert Holton demonstrates the way in which technological and interpersonal networks organise global society, providing vivid examples from the present and the past. This text gives practical advice on how to research global networks, and brings together leading theory and new evidence on the subject for all students learning about globalisation (...) and contemporary social change. (shrink)

The Boston Colloquium for the Philosophy of Science began 2S years ago as an interdisciplinary, interuniversity collaboration of friends and colleagues in philosophy, logic, the natural sciences and the social sciences, psychology, religious studies, arts and literature, and often the celebrated man-in-the street. Boston University came to be the home base. Within a few years, pro ceedings were seen to be candidates for publication, first suggested by Gerald Holton for the journal Synthese within the Synthese Library, both from the D. (...) Reidel Publishing Company of Dordrecht, then and now in Boston and Lancaster too. Our colloquium was inheritor of the Institute for the Unity of Science, itself the American transplant of the Vienna Circle, and we were repeatedly honored by encouragement and participation of the Institute's central figure, Philipp Frank. The proceedings were selected, edited, revised in the light of the discussions at our colloquia, and then other volumes were added which were derived from other symposia, in Boston or elsewhere. A friendly autonomy, in dependent of the Synthese Library proper, existed for more than a decade and then the Boston Studies became fully separate. We were grateful to Jaakko Hintikka for his continued encouragement within that Library. The series Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science was conceived in the broadest framework of interdisciplinary and international concerns. Natural scientists, mathematicians, social scientists and philosophers have contributed to the series, as have historians and sociologists of science, linguists, psychologists, physicians, and literary critics. (shrink)

Addicts sometimes engage in such spectacularly self-destructive behavior that they seem to act under compulsion. I briefly review the claim that addiction is not compulsive at all. I then consider recent accounts of addiction by Holton and Schroeder, which characterize addiction in terms of abnormally strong motivations. However, this account can only explain the apparent compulsivity of addiction if we assume—contrary to what we know about addicts—that the desires are so strong as to be irresistible. I then consider accounts that (...) invoke the phenomenon of “ego depletion,” according to which a person can resist temptation for a while, but not indefinitely. Implicit in this account is the assumption that addiction-related desires persist long enough to deplete the addict’s willpower. The balance of the paper argues that the persistence of the desire to consume drugs is a significant form of dysfunction in its own right, and that it makes an important and independent contribution to the compulsivity of addiction. I argue that addiction involves dysfunction in a mechanism that normally prevents a person from being tempted to do something that would invite disaster. (shrink)

Historians of relativity theory have puzzled over the fact that, while Einstein regarded Ernst Mach as his chief philosophical mentor, Mach himself publicly rejected relativity in the preface to Die Prinzipien der physikalischen Optik. This work was first published by Mach's son Ludwig in 1921, five years after Mach's death, but the preface is dated “July 1913”, when Einstein was working on general relativity and believing not only that he had Mach's “friendly interest” and support, but also that his project (...) was the working-out of some of Mach's suggestions. To Einstein, whose sympathy for Mach's overall philosophy of science had already begun to wane by 1921, the posthumous appearance of the preface seemed to underscore the inconsistency between Machian positivism and his own program to construct an abstract and geometrical physics; this interpretation appears in important modern analyses like Blackmore, Holton, and Zahar, and it has frequently served the purposes of the philosophical reaction against logical positivism in general. Now Gereon Wolters' book challenges the usual interpretation with a startling claim: that Ernst Mach never wrote the preface, which in fact is a forgery by his son Ludwig. The words “A Forgery and its Consequences” suggest the sweeping consequences that the preface has had for our understanding of the relation between Mach and Einstein; the point of the book is not only to document the dramatic story of the forgery, but also to defend an equally sweeping reconsideration, indeed a rehabilitation, of Mach's philosophy and its role in the history of relativity. (shrink)

On this occasion, I shall try to respond to the suggestions that I report what it was like to be a graduate student at Harvard in the early 1930s engaged in writing a dissertation which took the shape in print of the monograph, Science, Technology and Society in Seventeenth-Century England. This, quite some time before the sociology of science had emerged with a cognitive and social identity. I shall not attempt an account – let alone an explanatory account – of (...) the micro-environment at Harvard back then that provided local context for that study. Indeed, I suspect that the Gerald Holton, Everett Mendelsohn and Arnold Thackray reconstructions come closer to the intellectual and social reality of that time and place than anything I might reconstruct. (shrink)

Most recent accounts of will-power have tried to explain it as reducible to the operation of beliefs and desires. In opposition to such accounts, this paper argues for a distinct faculty of will-power. Considerations from philosophy and from social psychology are used in support.

In this book Professor Holton continues his analysis of how modem science works and what its influences are on our world, with particular emphasis on the role of the thematic elements - those often unconscious presuppositions that guide scientific work to success or failure. The foundation of the book is provided by the author's research on the work of Albert Einstein, which is then contrasted with other styles of research in the advancement of science. The author deals directly with the (...) often unforeseen consequences of the progress of contemporary science, detailing its fruits as well as its burdens. The many questions examined in this work range over a broad spectrum of areas that command the attention of all readers with an interest in understanding the development of modem science. (shrink)

Can we decide to trust? Sometimes, yes. And when we do, we need not believe that our trust will be vindicated. This paper is motivated by the need to incorporate these facts into an account of trust. Trust involves reliance; and in addition it requires the taking of a reactive attitude to that reliance. I explain how the states involved here differ from belief. And I explore the limits of our ability to trust. I then turn to the idea of (...) trusting what others say. I suggest that we sometimes decide to trust people to be sincere and knowledgeable; and that having taken this attitude towards them, we come to believe what they say. I spell out some consequences that this has for an account of testimony, and for van Fraassen's decision theoretic principle of Reflection. (shrink)

Nozick analyzes fundamental issues, such as the identity of the self, knowledge and skepticism, free will, the foundations of ethics, and the meaning of life.

Using firsthand accounts gleaned from notebooks, interviews, and correspondence of such twentieth-century scientists as Einstein, Fermi, and Millikan, Holton shows how the idea of the scientific imagination has practical implications for the history and philosophy of science and the larger understanding of the place of science in our culture.

This book examines these questions not in the abstract but shows their historic roots and the answers emerging from the scientific and political controversies ...

In den letzten Jahren ist eine neue Betrachtungsweise in der Wissen­ schaftsgeschichte entstanden - eine Betrachtungsweise, die ihre fruchtbaren Ideen aus weit auseinanderliegenden Gebieten sucht, die von Wissenschafts­ philosophie und -_Jziologie bis hin zur Psychologie und Ästhetik reichen. Viel­ leicht wird bald ein neuer Name für dieses erweiterte Forschungsgebiet erfor­ derlich sein; noch wesentlicher sind jedoch seine neuen Fragestellungen, Be­ griffe und Modelle. Anhand spezifischer Fallstudien aus der Physik soll in diesem Buch ge­ zeigt werden, in welcher Beziehung die traditionellen (...) Ansichten über die Denkweise von Wissenschaftlern revisionsbedürftig sind.! Dazu mußte ich einige neue Begriffe einführen, wie beispielsweise den Begriff "thematischer Inhalt" der Wissenschaft. Der thematische Inhalt steht gewissermaßen ortho­ gonal zu den empirischen oder analytischen Inhalten der Wissenschaft. Ich werde zeigen, daß Themata eine dominante Rolle in der Entstehung, Durch­ setzung oder Ablehnung wissenschaftlicher Ergebnisse spielen. Zahlreiche unpublizierte Dokumente aus dem wissenschaftlichen Nachlaß Albert Ein­ steins erlauben es, dies besonders am Beispiel der Entstehung der speziellen Relativitätstheorie im Detail nachzuweisen. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Ideas 61.2 (2000) 327-341 [Access article in PDF] The Rise of Postmodernisms and the "End of Science" Gerald Holton * [Errata]In a remarkable essay, "The Apotheosis of the Romantic Will," Isaiah Berlin leads up to a key question facing historians of ideas today. He begins with the observation that beliefs have entered our culture that "draw their plausibility" from a deep and radical revolt (...) against the central tradition of Western thought. That central tradition rested on the "pillars of the social optimism," which had found its fullest expression in the Enlightenment, "that the central problems of men are, in the end, the same throughout history; that they are in principle solvable; and that the solutions form a harmonious whole." 1But these pillars, Berlin notes, "came under attack toward the end of the eighteenth century by a movement first known in Germany as Sturm und Drang, and later in the many varieties of romanticism... and the many contemporary forms of irrationalism of both the right and the left, familiar to everyone today." In our time, in the alleged absence of "objective rules," the new rules are those made up by the rebels: "Ends are not... objective values," and "ends are not discovered at all but made, not found but created." And he concludes: "The prophets of the nineteenth-century predicted many things... but what none of them, so far as I know, predicted was that the last third of the twentieth century would be dominated by... the enthronement of the will of individuals or classes, and the rejection of reason and order as being prison houses of the spirit. How did this begin?" 2 As if to ensure that the question be considered central to the understanding of our age, Berlin adds that the explosion of irrationalism is one of the "outstanding characteristics of our century, the most demanding of explanation [End Page 327] and analysis." 3 Elsewhere he also appeals to seek the causes of "what appears to me to be the greatest transformation of Western consciousness, certainly in our time." 4Focusing my presentation chiefly on the aspects concerning science, one may well rephrase Berlin's question: how did it come about that we have passed again in many areas into what Susan Haack calls an "Age of Preposterism?" 5 -- that, for example, scientists, who are now in a period of spectacular advances of knowledge across the board, find a whole array of highly placed academics and journalists asserting that scientists' hopes to reach objective truths (two highly suspect words now) are in vain because there is no difference between the laws scientists find in nature and the arbitrary rules that govern baseball games; that science is "just one language game among others"; that we must "abolish the distinction between science and fiction"; that "The natural world has a small or non-existent role in the construction of scientific knowledge"; and in any case, as the title of a current bestseller has it, we are at The End of Science: Facing the Limits of Knowledge in the Twilight of the Scientific Age." 6These are only a few glimpses, indicators of a stream of derogations, issuing from academe and the media. But happily, my concern here is not with the details of the current manifestation of what has been called the war on science but rather with examples of its historic lineage, with earlier phases of what Isaiah Berlin called the "Romantic Revolt." 7 Here we must begin our analysis by recognizing that any such multifaceted movement is best understood as a reaction against what went before, against what became so unsatisfactory or even intolerable as to cause the revolt.Historically, the most obvious and early reaction of this sort was the response to the breakthroughs in the seventeenth century that formed science and simultaneously signaled the great rupture from the ancient worldview, in which the individual, in principle, had been able to be both intellectually and spiritually comfortable. As one of the direct ancestors of romanticism, Johann Gottfried Herder (1744... (shrink)

INTRODUCTION: REASON AND THE PASSIONS i. Philosophy? This same philosophy is a good horse in the stable, but an arrant jade on a journey. ...

This important book charts the development of philosophical thinking about history over the past 250 years, combining extracts from key texts with new explanatory and critical discussion. The book is designed to make the work of thinkers such as Hume, Herder, Hegel, Dilthey, Nietzsche, Heidegger and Foucault accessible to students with no prior knowledge of Western philosophy. An introductory section is followed by nine further chapters exploring contrasting schools of thought. The volume reveals the origins of contemporary trends in the (...) discipline and relates wider philosophical reflections to the study of history itself. It also points to connections between philosophy of history and literary and cultural theory which have developed in recent decades. (shrink)

These are just a few of the questions posed in The Advancement of Science, and Its Burdens.

Our topic here is uncertainty, especially as this arises in medicine. We are concerned with the uncertainty of diagnosis and of prognosis, and about how this should be communicated and shared between a doctor and patient. We are concerned with the idea that the doctor might rightly take responsibility for some of that uncertainty, in the sense that they may manage it when the patient is unwilling or unable to do so. And we are concerned with the implications that this (...) has for informed consent, for shared decision making, and for other normative dimensions of the doctor–patient relationship. Most centrally we argue that it is best understood, not in terms of informed consent, but in terms of informed trust. (shrink)

Winner of the 1975 National Book Award, this brilliant and widely acclaimed book is a powerful philosophical challenge to the most widely held political and social positions of our age--liberal, socialist, and conservative.

At least since the middle of the twentieth century, philosophers have tended to identify weakness of will with akrasia—i.e. acting, or having a disposition to act, contrary to one‘s judgments about what is best for one to do. However, there has been some recent debate about whether this captures the ordinary notion of weakness of will. Richard Holton (1999, 2009) claims that it doesn’t, while Alfred Mele (2010) argues that, to a certain extent, it does. As Mele recognizes, the question (...) about an ordinary concept here is one apt for empirical investigation. We evaluate Mele’s studies and report some experiments of our own in order to investigate what in the world the ordinary concept of weakness of will is. We conclude that neither Mele nor Holton (previously) was quite right and offer a tentative proposal of our own: the ordinary notion is more like a prototype or cluster concept whose application is affected by a variety of factors. (shrink)

Theories of discourse bring to realism new ideas about how knowledge develops and how representations of reality are influenced. We gain an understanding of the conceptual aspect of social life and the processes by which meaning is produced. This collection reflects the growing interest realist critics have shown towards forms of discourse theory and deconstruction. The diverse range of contributions address such issues as the work of Derrida and deconstruction, discourse theory, Eurocentrism and poststructuralism. What unites all of the contributions (...) is a sense that it is essential to provide a realist alternative to the hitherto dominance of social constructionism, hermeneutics and postmodernism, over many of the issues discussed. By developing a realist perspective the different authors attempt to embed discourse within the structured nature of the reality of the world. Realism can situate language, discourse and ideology within context specific, or 'causally efficacious' circumstances. Realism can help to uncover issues of power, representation, and subjectivity and how discursive and other social practices produce real effects. This can help us understand the manner in which social structures are reproduced through various forms of ideology and discourse. And by knowing this, we can start to address questions concerning human emancipation and how the world is to be transformed. (shrink)

Robert Stern investigates how scepticism can be countered by using transcendental arguments concerning the necessary conditions for the possibility of experience, language, or thought. He shows that the most damaging sceptical questions concern neither the certainty of our beliefs nor the reliability of our belief-forming methods, but rather how we can justify our beliefs.

A revised edition of an undergraduate text for students in history of psychology courses. Designed for one semester, covers: the history of psychology in ancient philosophy, structuralism, neurophysiology, functionalism, behaviorism, psychoanalysis, and gestalt theories. The new edition has expanded.

This paper develops a view of the content of perceptual states that reflects the cognitive significance those states have for the subject. Perhaps the most important datum for such a theory is the intuition that experiences are ‘transparent’, an intuition promoted by philosophers as diverse as Sartre and Dretske. This paper distinguishes several different transparency theses, and considers which ones are truly supported by the phenomenological data. It is argued that the only thesis supported by the data is much weaker (...) than those typically considered in the literature, and has no obvious implications for the existence of sensory intermediaries. It does, however, have implications for the content of perceptual experience. It is argued that combining the first personal project with the transparency intuition yields an error theory of perception. The counterintuitive implications of this error theory are mitigated, however, by an account of perceptual beliefs which allows for them to be true even if the perceptual states are non-veridical. (shrink)

Richard Holton provides a unified account of intention, choice, weakness of will, strength of will, temptation, addiction, and freedom of the will. Drawing on recent psychological research, he argues that, rather than being the pinnacle of rationality, the central components of the will are there to compensate for our inability to make or maintain sound judgments. Choice is understood as the capacity to form intentions even in the absence of judgments of what action is best. Weakness of will is understood (...) as the failure to maintain an intention, or more specifically, a resolution, in the face of temptation--where temptation typically involves a shift in judgment as to what is best, or in the case of addiction, a disconnection between what is judged best and what is desired. Strength of will is the corresponding ability to maintain a resolution, an ability that requires the employment of a particular faculty or skill. Finally, the experience of freedom of the will is traced to the experiences of forming intentions, and of maintaining resolutions, both of which require effortful activity from the agent. (shrink)

What is right in the corporation is not what is right in a man's home or in his church," a former vice-president of a large firm observes. "What is right in the corporation is what the guy above you wants from you." Such sentiments pervade American society, from corporate boardrooms to the basement of the White House. In Moral Mazes, Robert Jackall offers an eye-opening account of how corporate managers think the world works, and of how big organizations shape (...) moral consciousnss. Based on extensive interviews with managers at every level of two industrial firms and of a large public relations agency, Moral Mazes takes the reader inside the intricate world of the corporation. It is a world where hard work does not necessarily lead to success, but where sharp talk, self-promotion, powerful patrons, and sheer luck might; where intense competition is masked by cheerfully bland public faces; where intentions are cloaked and frankness is simply one of many guises; and where words are always provisional and accountability often depends on the ability to outrun mistakes. In this topsy-turvy world, managers must bring often unforgiving technology and always difficult people together to make money, an uncompromising task demanding continual compromises with conventional verities. Moral issues are translated into practical concerns and into issues of public relations. Sooner or later, managrs ask themselves: How does one act in such a world and maintain a sense of personal integrity? Moral Mazes is a brilliant, sometimes disturbing, often wildly funny study of corporate thinking, decision-making, and morality. It is an analytical work of great importance, one filled with compelling real life stories of the men and women charged with running the business of America. It is a book for anyone interested in how big organizations actually function, or who is concerned with the current moral malaise in our public life. (shrink)

Many theorists claim that if an agent benefits from an action that harms others, that agent has a moral duty to compensate those who are harmed, even if the agent did not cause the harm herself. In the debate on climate justice, this idea is commonly referred to as the beneficiary-pays principle . This paper argues that the BPP is implausible, both in the context of climate change and as a normative principle more generally. It should therefore be rejected.

Permissivism says that for some propositions and bodies of evidence, there is more than one rationally permissible doxastic attitude that can be taken towards that proposition given the evidence. Some critics of this view argue that it condones, as rationally acceptable, sets of attitudes that manifest an untenable kind of arbitrariness. I begin by providing a new and more detailed explication of what this alleged arbitrariness consists in. I then explain why Miriam Schoenfield’s prima facie promising attempt to answer the (...) Arbitrariness Objection, by appealing to the role of epistemic standards in rational belief formation, fails to resolve the problem. Schoenfield’s strategy is, however, a useful one, and I go on to explain how an alternative form of the standards-based approach to Permissivism – one that emphasizes the significance of the relationship between people’s cognitive abilities and the epistemic standards that they employ – can respond to the arbitrariness objection. (shrink)

As many studies around the theme of ‘too much medicine’ attest, investigations are being ordered with increasing frequency; similarly the threshold for providing treatment has lowered. Our contention is that trust is a significant factor in influencing this, and that understanding the relationship between trust and investigations and treatments will help clinicians and policymakers ensure ethical decisions are more consistently made. Drawing on the philosophical literature, we investigate the nature of trust in the patient–doctor relationship, arguing that at its core (...) it involves a transfer of discretion. We show that there is substantial empirical support for the idea that more trust will reduce the problem of too much medicine. We then investigate ways in which trust can be built, concentrating on issues of questioning, of acknowledging uncertainty and of shouldering responsibility for it. We argue that offering investigations or treatments as a way of generating trust may itself be an untrustworthy way of proceeding, and that healthcare systems should provide the institutional support for facilitating continuity, questioning and the entrusting of uncertainty. (shrink)

Many theorists claim that if an agent benefits from an action that harms others, that agent has a moral duty to compensate those who are harmed, even if the agent did not cause the harm herself. In the debate on climate justice, this idea is commonly referred to as the beneficiary-pays principle. This paper argues that the BPP is implausible, both in the context of climate change and as a normative principle more generally. It should therefore be rejected.

This book is a small handbook designed to give Institutional Review Board (IRB) members the information they need to protect the rights and welfare of research subjects in a way that is both effective and efficient. The chapters of this book are short and to the point. Topic-specific chapters list the criteria IRB members should use to determine how to vote on specific kinds of studies and offer practical advice on what IRB members should do before and during full-committee meetings.

This is a paradigmatic work of contemporary philosophy.