This paper examines the relevance of philosophical work on consciousness to its scientific study. Of particular concern is the debate over whether consciousness can be naturalized, which is typically taken to have consequences for the prospects for its scientific investigation. It is not at all clear that philosophers of consciousness have properly identified and evaluated the assumptions about scientific activity made by both naturalization and anti- naturalization projects. I argue that there is good reason to think that some of the (...) assumptions about physicalism and explanation made by the parties to the debate are open to serious doubt. Thus this paper is an invitation for those inquiring into whether consciousness can be naturalized to more carefully consider the expected payoff of such efforts. (shrink)

The purpose of this essay is to present and analyse the basic assumptions of Leszek Nowak’s conception of the unity of science. According to Nowak, the unity of science is manifested in the common application of the method of idealisation in scientific research. In accordance with his conception, regardless of the discipline they represent, researchers go through the same stages in building a theory. Two key ones among them are: introducing idealising assumptions into the representation and then their concretisation. In (...) this view, idealisation is the basis of the scientific method, while other cognitive procedures complement it. Nowak’s conception has particular relevance in the context of the dispute between naturalism and anti-naturalism and in the context of the continuing rift between social scientists and natural scientists. It calls into question the anti-naturalist thesis of the ontological uniqueness of social sciences and the resulting methodological consequences. I argue that Nowak’s conception is a cognitively valuable contribution to the contemporary epistemology of science, but it also has weaknesses, mainly due to the limitations of applying the idealisation-concretisation scheme in research practice. For it turns out, as I point out in this essay, that many idealising assumptions are not subject to concretisation and that concretisations do not always condition an increase in the explanatory and/or predictive power of the representations. (shrink)

Essay review of Stephanie Ruphy, Scientific Pluralism Reconsidered: A New Approach to the (Dis)Unity of Science.

While many philosophers speak of ‘pluralism’ within philosophy of biology, there has been little said about what such pluralism amounts to or what its underlying assumptions are. This has provoked so me anxiety about whether pluralism is compatible with their commitment to naturalism. This paper surveys three prominent pluralist positions ‘integrative pluralism’, and both Peter Godfrey-Smith’s and Beth Preston’s pluralist analyses of functional explanations in evolutionary biology) and demonstrates how all three are committed to a form of pragmatism. This analysis (...) both clarifies the justification and grounding of pluralism and allows these pluralisms to avoid the criticisms of Cussins. I close by making some more general points about pluralism and its relationship to history and integration. (shrink)

This paper aims to reassess the philosophical puzzle of the “applicability of mathematics to physical sciences” as a misunderstood disciplinary interplay. If the border isolating mathematics from the empirical world is based on appropriate criteria, how does one explain the fruitfulness of its systematic crossings in recent centuries? An analysis of the evolution of the criteria used to separate mathematics from experimental sciences will shed some light on this question. In this respect, we will highlight the historical influence of three (...) major disciplinary paradigms. According to the Aristotelian classification of the sciences, the separation of mathematics from physics is based on their respective objects of study. The Baconian system distinguishes these sciences by the type of knowledge involved in each field. Finally, the Whewellian disciplinary layout categorises these disciplines by their respective methods. In this paper, we argue that the cascading effect of such disciplinary categorisations—based successively on ontological, epistemological, and heuristic criteria—resulted in a profound redefinition of the border between mathematics and physics, with the consequence of obscuring the foundations of the interplay between these fields. Our approach intends to put forward such a mechanism as a constitutive piece of the puzzle of the applicability of mathematics. (shrink)

Przedmiotem artykułu jest zagadnienie wielości teoretycznych ujęć w nauce (w refleksji przedmiotowej, jak i metaprzedmiotowej) oraz mnogość perspektyw w ramach filozofii nauki. Zagadnienie pluralizmu omówiono w odniesieniu do stanowiska lubelskiego filozofa nauki, ks. prof. Zygmunta Hajduka. Twierdzi się, że swoiste pluralistyczne podejście do nauki oraz problemów z zakresu filozofii nauki zajmowało istotne miejsce w jego filozoficznej refleksji. Celem artykułu jest próba scharakteryzowania i interpretacji jego podejścia. Cel ten realizowany jest w kilku etapach. Zarysowano historyczne tło omawianej problematyki. W oparciu o (...) literaturę przedmiotu zostały wyróżnione rodzaje pluralizmów, a następnie przedstawiono własną propozycję ich odróżniania (w nawiązaniu do prac ks. Hajduka). Jest to model trzech płaszczyzn analizy nauki: przedmiotowej, metodologicznej oraz metametodologicznej. Na każdej z tych płaszczyzn można stwierdzić pluralizm ujęć. Model ten zastosowano do studium stanowiska ks. Hajduka w kwestii pluralizmu w nauce i metanauce. Nawiązując do filozofii nauki Paula Feyerabenda, zaproponowano interpretację filozoficznego dorobku ks. Hajduka i określonojego stanowisko mianem „dobry empirysta”. (shrink)

While some form of evaluation has always been employed in science (e.g. peer review, hiring), formal systems of evaluation of research and researchers have recently come to play a more prominent role in many countries because of the adoption of new models of governance. According to such models, the quality of the output of both researchers and their institutions is measured, and issues such as eligibility for tenure or the allocation of public funding to research institutions crucially depends on the (...) outcomes of such measures. However, concerns have been raised over the risk that such evaluation may be threatening epistemic pluralism by penalizing the existent heterodox schools of thought and discouraging the pursuit of new ones. It has been proposed that this may happen because of epistemic bias favouring mainstream research programmes. In this paper, I claim that (1) epistemic pluralism is desirable and should be preserved; (2) formal evaluation exercises may threaten epistemic pluralism because they may be affected by some form of epistemic bias; therefore, (3) to preserve epistemic pluralism, we need some strategy to actively dampen epistemic bias. (shrink)

Two central and well-known philosophical goals of the logical empiricists are the unification of science and the elimination of metaphysics. I argue, via textual analysis, that these two apparently distinct planks of the logical empiricist party platform are actually intimately related. From the 1920’s through 1950, one abiding criterion for judging whether an apparently declarative assertion or descriptive term is metaphysical is that that assertion or term cannot be incorporated into a language of unified science. I explore various versions of (...) this criterion throughout the works of Carnap and Neurath. (shrink)

In my contribution to this special issue, I draw attention to the topic of the imagination at the interface of modern science and Christian theology. The paper entertains in critical perspective the notion that language divides, while the imagination unites. While the paper is intended to be explorative, a clear thesis emerges: in its commitment to consilience, Christian theology is directed to the imagination under the pressure of the pluralizing effects of a reason that is constrained by language.

Scientific pluralism is an issue at the forefront of philosophy of science. This landmark work addresses the question, Can pluralism be advanced as a general, philosophical interpretation of science?

The paper outlines and discusses the major tenets of moderately pluralistic methodology. The latter is juxtaposed to J. Życiński’s principle of natural interdisciplinarity. It instantiates scientific pluralism as a domain-specific agenda for research. The symbolic and causal understanding are integrated in this methodological conception by means of a specific kind of counterfactual reasoning, which is coined the delimiting counterfactual. It makes the moderately pluralistic methodology applicable to non-experimental research. -/- Streszczenie Tytuł: “Umiarkowanie pluralistyczna metodologia” -/- Artykuł prezentuje i omawia zasadnicze (...) założenia koncepcji umiarkowanie pluralistycznej metodologii. Ta ostatnia jest zbieżna z J. Życińskiego zasadą naturalności interdyscyplinarnej. Reprezenuje ona szeroko rozumiany nurt pluralizmu naukowego w zakresie sposobu prowadzenia badań w danej dziedzinie. W tej koncepcji połączone są dwa poziomy rozumienia symboliczny i przyczynowy za pomocą swoistego rodzaju wnioskowań kontrfaktycznych, określonych tu jako rozgraniczających wnioskowań kontrfaktycznych. Dzięki nim umiarkowanie pluralistyczna metodologia ma zastosowanie do badań nieeksperymentalnych. -/- Słowa kluczowe: pluralizm naukowy, Józef Życiński, Rudolf Carnap, wnioskowanie kontrfaktyczne . (shrink)

Species are central to biology, but there is currently no agreement on what the adequate species concept should be, and many have adopted a pluralist stance: different species concepts will be required for different purposes. This thesis is a multidimensional analysis of species pluralism. First I explicate how pluralism differs monism and relativism. I then consider the history of species pluralism. I argue that we must re-frame the species problem, and that re-evaluating Aristotle's role in the histories of systematics can (...) shed light on pluralism. Next I consider different forms of pluralism: evolutionary and extra-evolutionary species pluralism, which differ in their stance on evolutionary theory. I show that pluralism is more than a debate about the species category, but a debate about which concepts are legitimate and a claim about how they interact with one another. Following that, I consider what sort of ontology is required for different forms of species pluralism. I argue that pluralists who deny the unity of biology will require a further plurality of frameworks, while those that ground their pluralism in evolution need only one framework. Finally, I consider what pluralism means for biological practice. I argue that species concepts are tools, and reflect on how pluralism can illuminate the way systematists approach the discovery of new species of yeast. Pluralism can make sense of the way species concepts are used, and can be developed to aid researchers in thinking about how to use the right tools for the right jobs. (shrink)

Context: The problems that are most in need of interdisciplinary collaboration are “wicked problems,” such as food crises, climate change mitigation, and sustainable development, with many relevant aspects, disagreement on what the problem is, and contradicting solutions. Such complex problems both require and challenge interdisciplinarity. Problem: The conventional methods of interdisciplinary research fall short in the case of wicked problems because they remain first-order science. Our aim is to present workable methods and research designs for doing second-order science in domains (...) where there are many different scientific knowledges on any complex problem. Method: We synthesize and elaborate a framework for second-order science in interdisciplinary research based on a number of earlier publications, experiences from large interdisciplinary research projects, and a perspectivist theory of science. Results: The second-order polyocular framework for interdisciplinary research is characterized by five principles. Second-order science of interdisciplinary research must: 1. draw on the observations of first-order perspectives, 2. address a shared dynamical object, 3. establish a shared problem, 4. rely on first-order perspectives to see themselves as perspectives, and 5. be based on other rules than first-order research. Implications: The perspectivist insights of second-order science provide a new way of understanding interdisciplinary research that leads to new polyocular methods and research designs. It also points to more reflexive ways of dealing with scientific expertise in democratic processes. The main challenge is that this is a paradigmatic shift, which demands that the involved disciplines, at least to some degree, subscribe to a perspectivist view. Constructivist content: Our perspectivist approach to science is based on the second-order cybernetics and systems theories of von Foerster, Maruyama, Maturana & Varela, and Luhmann, coupled with embodied theories of cognition and semiotics as a general theory of meaning from von Uexküll and Peirce. (shrink)

Heather Douglas has helped to set the standard for twenty-first century discussions in philosophy of science on the topics of values in science and science in democracy. Douglas’s work has been part of a movement to bring the question of values in science back to center of the field and to focus especially on policy-relevant science. This first chapter, on the pervasive entanglement of science and values, includes an improved and definitive statement of the argument from inductive risk, which she (...) is single-handedly responsible for rehabilitating and returning to the center of the debate. This statement makes clear the fundamental and absolutely pervasive nature of inductive risk and its import for our understanding of the role of values in science. The chapter also provides a survey of the current field of alternative approaches to ideals for the epistemic role of values in science that is comprehensive and generous, yet critical of each. -/- In these brief comments, I focus on providing an alternative perspective on some conceptual and rhetorical issues in Douglas’s account, specifically dealing with the nature of values and the relation of the descriptive and the normative. This will lead me to somewhat different evaluations of two of the five new ideals for values in science that Douglas canvasses in the chapter. (shrink)

Laboratory experimentation was once considered impossible or irrelevant in economics. Recently, however, economic science has gone through a real ‘laboratory revolution’, and experimental economics is now a most lively subfield of the discipline. The methodological advantages and disadvantages of controlled experimentation constitute the main subject of this thesis. After a survey of the literature on experiments in philosophy and economics, the problem of testing normative theories of rationality is tackled. This philosophical issue was at the centre of a famous controversy (...) in decision theory, during which a methodology of normative falsification was first articulated and used to assess experimental results. In the third chapter, the methodological advantages of controlled experimentation are illustrated and discussed with examples taken from the experiments on the so-called ‘preference reversal’ phenomenon. Laboratory testing allows to establish with a high degree of certainty that certain phenomena lie behind the experimental data, by means of independent testing, elimination of alternative hypotheses, and the use of different instruments of observation. The fourth chapter is devoted to a conceptual analysis of the problem of ‘parallelism’. This is the problem of inferring from the occurrence of a phenomenon in the laboratory, to its instantiation also in non-laboratory environments. Experimental economists have discussed parallelism at length, and their views are presented and criticised. Eventually, it is argued that parallelism is a factual matter and as such can only be established on empirical grounds. The fifth chapter provides an example of how one can argue for parallelism, focusing on the case of experimentation on the ‘winner’s curse’ phenomenon. The role of experiments as ‘mediators’ between theoretical models and their target domain of application is illustrated, and the structure of parallelism arguments analysed in detail. Finally, in the last chapter, economic experiments are compared to simulations, in order to highlight their specific characteristics. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to examine, in the light of some recent works in general philosophy of science and special philosophy of biology, the different forms assumed by the thesis of the unity of science, in order to be able to determine in what sense one can speak of a unity of the biological sciences.

This thesis will address the question of whether there are any situated cognition concepts of memory functioning as investigative kinds in the sciences of memory. Situated cognition is an umbrella term, subsuming extended, embedded, embodied, enacted and distributed cognition. I will be looking closely at case studies of investigations into memory where such concepts seem prima facie most likely to be found in order to establish a) whether the researchers in question are in fact employing such concepts, and b) whether (...) the concepts are functioning well – functioning as investigative kinds – and should therefore continue to be employed, or whether something has gone wrong in the practice of the science and they should employ a different kind of concept. An historically situated approach to the case studies will allow me to answer part b) here. -/- Along the way, I will argue for a way of construing scientific research that I call the dynamic framework account, an account of (im)maturity for science, a variety of conceptual role semantics with respect to scientific concepts, and the historically situated case study-based method I will employ in answering the central question. My conclusions, and the way I reach them, constitute contributions to debates about situated cognition particularly, and to philosophy of science more generally, as well as recommendations for scientific practice. (shrink)

1. A Historical Look at Unity 2. Field Guide to Modern Concepts of Reduction and Unity 3. Kitcher's Revisionist Account of Unification 4. Critics of Unity 5. Integration Instead of Unity 6. Reduction via Mechanisms 7. Case Studies in Reduction and Unification across the Disciplines.

The objective of this papper is to examine, under the light of some recent works in general philosophy of science as well as in special philosophy of biology, the different forms that assumes the thesis of the unity of science, in order to be able to determine in what sense it can be spoken about the unity of biological sciences.

We examine the question of whether scientific theories can ever be complete. For two closely related reasons, we will argue that they cannot. The first reason is the inability to determine what are “valid empirical observations”, a result that is based on a self-reference Gödel/Tarski-like proof. The second reason is the existence of “meta-empirical” evidence of the inherent incompleteness of observations. These reasons, along with theoretical incompleteness, are intimately connected to the notion of belief and to theses within the philosophy (...) of science: the Quine-Duhem (and underdetermination) thesis and the observational/theoretical distinction failure. Some puzzling aspects of the philosophical theses will become clearer in light of these connections. Other results that follow are: no absolute measure of the informational content of empirical data, no absolute measure of the entropy of physical systems, and no complete computer simulation of the natural world are possible. The connections with the mathematical theorems of Gödel and Tarski reveal the existence of other connections between scientific and mathematical incompleteness: computational irreducibility, complexity, infinity, arbitrariness and self-reference. Finally, suggestions will be offered of where a more rigorous (or formal) “proof” of scientific incompleteness can be found. (shrink)

A large part of the controversy surrounding the publication of DSM-5 stems from the possibility of replacing the purely descriptive approach to classification favored by the DSM since 1980. This paper examines the question of how mental disorders should be classified, focusing on the issue of whether the DSM should adopt a purely descriptive or theoretical approach. I argue that the DSM should replace its purely descriptive approach with a theoretical approach that integrates causal information into the DSM’s descriptive diagnostic (...) categories. The paper proceeds in three sections. In the first section, I examine the goals (viz., guiding treatment, facilitating research, and improving communication) associated with the DSM’s purely descriptive approach. In the second section, I suggest that the DSM’s purely descriptive approach is best suited for improving communication among mental health professionals; however, theoretical approaches would be superior for purposes of treatment and research. In the third section, I outline steps required to move the DSM towards a hybrid system of classification that can accommodate the benefits of descriptive and theoretical approaches, and I discuss how the DSM’s descriptive categories could be revised to incorporate theoretical information regarding the causes of disorders. I argue that the DSM should reconceive of its goals more narrowly such that it functions primarily as an epistemic hub that mediates among various contexts of use in which definitions of mental disorders appear. My analysis emphasizes the importance of pluralism as a methodological means for avoiding theoretical dogmatism and ensuring that the DSM is a reflexive and self-correcting manual. (shrink)

Species pluralism allows for multiple species concepts. Given the overwhelming number of such concepts, this seems like an obvious interpretation of how `species' is used in contemporary biology. But why has it taken so long for this approach to be considered? I argue that part of the reason pluralism was overlooked due to the widespread use of a particular rhetorical strategy developed by Ernst Mayr. This strategy provided a framework for debates about the correct conception of species. That is, the (...) strategy offered a means of comparing modern concepts with a monistic-essentialist understanding of species. I ask what would happen if we replaced this concept with Aristotle's own pluralist-essentialist understanding of species. As recent scholarship shows, Aristotle's philosophy of biology allows for an approach to classification that is in practice highly pluralistic. From this new framework we can understand what sort of assumptions are at stake between modern forms of species pluralism. My analysis shows that the essentialist story told by Mayr and others left us asking the wrong questions about how to conceive of species in an evolutionary world. Having a deeper understanding of Aristotle's approach to the classification of animals allows us to shift focus from the so-called species problem in order to raise four issues that are relevant to current debates. These are questions about: the explanatory power of taxonomic ranks, the importance of the species category problem, whether species are constituted by intrinsic or extrinsic properties, and how to interpret the ``cross-cutting'' metaphor endemic to the pluralist literature. In order to get to these questions I will first explain what sort of claim species pluralism is at the most general level, and a gloss on the standard interpretation of the historical shift from species monism to species pluralism. (shrink)