How can black feminist and women of color feminist theoretical interventions help create frameworks for discerning agentic action in the context of power, oppression, and violence? In this paper, I explore the social dimension of agency and argue that intention is not just authored by the agent as a function of practical reasoning, but is also socially authored through others' discernment and translation of her action. Further, when facilitated by reasoning designed to reinforce and rationalize systems of domination, social authoring (...) systematically distorts the intentions of some agents. Although some theorists have argued that those agents whose intentions are not recognized by others are forced to exercise a diminished agency, I contend that this account obscures agency that is practiced despite or through conditions of oppression. As an alternative, I propose that feminist of color theory that examines the structural and existential erasures of women of color maps a conceptual space to help us better discern agentic action that is practiced by those subjects whose acts are defined away from them. (shrink)

Scientific models invariably involve some degree of idealization, abstraction, or nationalization of their target system. Nonetheless, I argue that there are circumstances under which such false models can offer genuine scientific explanations. After reviewing three different proposals in the literature for how models can explain, I shall introduce a more general account of what I call model explanations, which specify the conditions under which models can be counted as explanatory. I shall illustrate this new framework by applying it to the (...) case of Bohr's model of the atom, and conclude by drawing some distinctions between phenomenological models, explanatory models, and fictional models. (shrink)

Resident-to-resident aggression is quite prevalent in long-term care settings. Within popular and empirical accounts, this form of aggression is most commonly attributed to the actions of an aberrant individual living with dementia characterized as the “violent resident.” It is often a medical diagnosis of dementia that is highlighted as the ultimate cause of aggression. This neglects the fact that acts of aggression are influenced by broader structural conditions. This has ethical implications in that the emphasis on individual aberration informs public (...) policy strategies for prevention with a focus on restricting the freedom of individuals using behavioural modification, drugs, or other restraints with the intent to protect others from harm. A more ethical approach requires attention to the structural conditions of long-term care that both foster aggression and constrain prevention efforts. To this end, we turn to a model of relational citizenship that offers a theory of embodied selfhood and relationality as essential to human dignity, thus entailing human rights protections. The application of an ethic based on this model offers a more holistic prevention strategy for resident-to-resident aggression by drawing attention to the critical need and obligation to promote human flourishing through system level efforts. (shrink)

In her groundbreaking volume Anaesthetics of Existence: Essays on Experience at the Edge, Cressida Heyes provokes readers with the question, “How might experience not only motivate politics but also itself act as a medium of political change?” This essay builds on Heyes’s provocation by exploring self-making and self-advocacy within carceral political economies. Engaging Heyes’s discussion of “normative temporality,” I consider unstable subjectivities and a black feminist formation of “revelatory agency” to contend that the carceral consumption of human life-time expands, complicates, (...) or radically shifts the scope of the political. (shrink)

From the Federal Theater Projects of the Great Depression to the disruptive performances of the 1960s and 1970s, theater has played an important role in American radicalism. This special issue of_ _Theater_ reports on socially conscious, politically active theaters in the United States. Despite the evaporation of Cold War passions and the rise of conservatism in the 1980s and 1990s, such theater work remains a persistent and evolving presence on the political landscape. Since the first inauguration of George W. Bush, (...) new opportunities have arisen for political performance and for significant new challenges to these artists. T_heater and Social Change_ not only tracks the historical evolution of political theater but also explores the current state and future prospects of different modes, including agit-prop, demonstrations, solo performance, Augusto Boal’s Theater of the Oppressed, and community-based production. With such notable contributors as Anna Deavere Smith, Jonathan Kalb, Holly Hughes, and Tony Kushner, the issue offers a diverse assemblage of personal statements, conversations, photographs, interviews, and performance text. _Contributors include:_ Reverend Billy, Jan Cohen-Cruz, Arlene Goldbard, Sharon Green, Lani Guinier, Holly Hughes, Jonathan Kalb, Tony Kushner, Judith Malina, Robbie McCauley, John O'Neal, Claudia Orenstein, Bill Rauch, Julie Salverson, Anna Deavere Smith, Alisa Solomon, Roberta Uno. (shrink)

: An examination of two thought experiments in contemporary physics reveals that the same thought experiment can be reanalyzed from the perspective of different and incompatible theories. This fact undermines those accounts of thought experiments that claim their justificatory power comes from their ability to reveal the laws of nature. While thought experiments do play a genuine evaluative role in science, they do so by testing the nonempirical virtues of a theory, such as consistency and explanatory power. I conclude that, (...) while their interpretation presupposes a whole set of background theories and putative laws, thought experiments nonetheless can evolve and be retooled for different theories and ends. (shrink)

Classical mechanics and quantum mechanics are two of the most successful scientific theories ever discovered, and yet how they can describe the same world is far from clear: one theory is deterministic, the other indeterministic; one theory describes a world in which chaos is pervasive, the other a world in which chaos is absent. Focusing on the exciting field of 'quantum chaos', this book reveals that there is a subtle and complex relation between classical and quantum mechanics. It challenges the (...) received view that classical and quantum mechanics are incommensurable, and revives another, largely forgotten tradition due to Niels Bohr and Paul Dirac. By artfully weaving together considerations from the history of science, philosophy of science, and contemporary physics, this book offers a new way of thinking about intertheory relations and scientific explanation. It will be of particular interest to historians and philosophers of science, philosophically-inclined physicists, and interested non-specialists. (shrink)

We critically engage two traditional views of scientific data and outline a novel philosophical view that we call the pragmatic-representational view of data. On the PR view, data are representations that are the product of a process of inquiry, and they should be evaluated in terms of their adequacy or fitness for particular purposes. Some important implications of the PR view for data assessment, related to misrepresentation, context-sensitivity, and complementary use, are highlighted. The PR view provides insight into the common (...) but little-discussed practices of iteratively reusing and repurposing data, which result in many datasets’ having a phylogeny—an origin and complex evolutionary history—that is relevant to their evaluation and future use. We relate these insights to the open-data and data-rescue movements, and highlight several future avenues of research that build on the PR view of data. (shrink)

It has frequently been suggested that quantum mechanics may provide a genuine case of ontic vagueness or metaphysical indeterminacy. However, discussions of quantum theory in the vagueness literature are often cursory and, as I shall argue, have in some respects been misguided. Hitherto much of the debate over ontic vagueness and quantum theory has centered on the “indeterminate identity” construal of ontic vagueness, and whether the quantum phenomenon of entanglement produces particles whose identity is indeterminate. I argue that this way (...) of framing the debate is mistaken. A more thorough examination of quantum theory and the phenomenon of entanglement reveals that quantum mechanics is best interpreted as supporting what I call the “vague property” construal of ontic vagueness, where vague properties are understood in terms of determinable properties without the corresponding determinates. (shrink)

In this discussion, I engage the politics of intention to explore how structural racism structures the production of meaning and the practice of reason. Building on María Lugones's analysis of intention formation as a form of practical reasoning, I explore the reasoning at work during the 2011 Stand Your Ground (SYG) hearing of black survivor of domestic violence, Marissa Alexander, to contend that structural racism—in this case, both intimate personal violence and intimate state violence against black women—enacts race/gender domination through (...) projecting constructed intentions onto black women as a strategy to rationalize punishing black women. I also discuss two key black feminist critiques of reason—Patricia Hill Collins’ discussion of “controlling images” (2000) and Michelle Cliff's concept of the “mythic mind” (1982)—to propose controlling intentions as a framework to theorize how structural racism produces fictive intentions used to rationalize the criminal punishment of survival and justify that outcome as common sense. (shrink)

Model-data symbiosis is the view that there is an interdependent and mutually beneficial relationship between data and models, whereby models are data-laden and data are model-laden. In this articl...

This paper examines the ‘justice’ and ‘care’ orientations in ethical theory as characterized in Carol Gilligan's research on moral development and the philosophical work it has inspired. Focus is placed on challenges to the justice orientation – in particular, to the construal of impartiality as the mark of the moral point of view, to the conception of moral judgment as essentially principle-driven and dispassionate, and to models of moral responsibility emphasizing norms of formal equality and reciprocity. Suggestions are made about (...) the implications of these challenges, and of the care orientation in ethics, for the ethical theory taught, the issues addressed, and the skills and sensitivities encouraged through bioethical education. Keywords: bioethical education, ethics of care, impartiality, moral judgment, moral psychology CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

There is a growing recognition that fictions have a number of legitimate functions in science, even when it comes to scientific explanation. However, the question then arises, what distinguishes an explanatory fiction from a nonexplanatory one? Here I examine two cases—one in which there is a consensus in the scientific community that the fiction is explanatory and another in which the fiction is not explanatory. I shall show how my account of “model explanations” is able to explain this asymmetry, and (...) argue that realism—of a more subtle form—does have a role in distinguishing explanatory from non- explanatory fictions. (shrink)

Despite widespread evidence that fictional models play an explanatory role in science, resistance remains to the idea that fictions can explain. A central source of this resistance is a particular view about what explanations are, namely, the ontic conception of explanation. According to the ontic conception, explanations just are the concrete entities in the world. I argue this conception is ultimately incoherent and that even a weaker version of the ontic conception fails. Fictional models can succeed in offering genuine explanations (...) by correctly capturing relevant patterns of counterfactual dependence and licensing correct inferences. Using the example of Newtonian force explanations of the tides, I show how, even in science, fiction can be a vehicle for truth. (shrink)

The fact that the same equations or mathematical models reappear in the descriptions of what are otherwise disparate physical systems can be seen as yet another manifestation of Wigner's “unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics.” James Clerk Maxwell famously exploited such formal similarities in what he called the “method of physical analogy.” Both Maxwell and Hermann von Helmholtz appealed to the physical analogies between electromagnetism and hydrodynamics in their development of these theories. I argue that a closer historical examination of the different (...) ways in which Maxwell and Helmholtz each deployed this analogy gives further insight into debates about the representational and explanatory power of mathematical models. (shrink)

At the center of quantum chaos research is a particular family of models known as quantum maps. These maps illustrate an important “horizontal” dimension to model construction that has been overlooked in the literature on models. Three ways in which quantum maps are being used to clarify the relationship between classical and quantum mechanics are examined. This study suggests that horizontal models may provide a new and fruitful framework for exploring intertheoretic relations.

The aim of this paper is to examine in detail the similarities and dissimilarities between Werner Heisenberg’s account of closed theories and Thomas Kuhn’s model of scientific revolutions. My analysis draws on a little‐known discussion that took place between Heisenberg and Kuhn in 1963, in which Heisenberg, having just read Kuhn’s Structure of Scientific Revolutions, compares Kuhn’s views to his own account of closed theories. I conclude that while Heisenberg and Kuhn share a holist conception of theories, a revolutionary model (...) of theory change, and even a notion of incommensurability, their views diverge fundamentally when it comes to the issue of scientific realism. I show that, contrary to popular opinion, Heisenberg is not an instrumentalist, but rather a pluralistic realist. (shrink)

In semiclassical mechanics one finds explanations of quantum phenomena that appeal to classical structures. These explanations are prima facie problematic insofar as the classical structures they appeal to do not exist. Here I defend the view that fictional structures can be genuinely explanatory by introducing a model-based account of scientific explanation. Applying this framework to the semiclassical phenomenon of wavefunction scarring, I argue that not only can the fictional classical trajectories explain certain aspects of this quantum phenomenon, but also that (...) an explanation that does not make reference to these classical structures is, in a certain sense, deficient. (shrink)

The Bayesian model of multisensory cue integration proposed by Ernst and Banks provides an attractive model for understanding a way that our sensory systems may interact. Moreover, it has been suggested that the process of multisensory integration that it models underpins conscious experiences with multisensory representational contents merged across modalities. Should we therefore take empirical support for the Bayesian model as evidence of the multimodality of perception? Focusing on evidence of integration across vision and touch, I argue that apparent support (...) for the model does not warrant the rejection of the view that each of our conscious perceptual experiences is associated with one and only one sense modality. (shrink)

Pornographic speech harms women by playing a key role in sustaining the social conditions through which women's liberty and equality are undercut. Though there is a principled moral and constitutional basis for pursuing a legal strategy in fighting pornography, we should not overestimate the effectiveness of the law or underestimate its potential dangers. The struggle against pornography must be waged through education, expressive exploration, and protest, not through the law.

The ontic conception of explanation, according to which explanations are "full-bodied things in the world," is fundamentally misguided. I argue instead for what I call the eikonic conception, according to which explanations are the product of an epistemic activity involving representations of the phenomena to be explained. What is explained in the first instance is a particular conceptualization of the explanandum phenomenon, contextualized within a given research program or explanatory project. I conclude that this eikonic conception has a number of (...) benefits, including making better sense of scientific practice and allowing for the full range of normative constraints on explanation. (shrink)

This essay critically assesses two strategies of accommodation used by defenders of impartialism in ethics to argue that the care orientation represents no genuine challenge to impartialist theoretical paradigms. One strategy focuses on impartiality as a constraint on moral deliberation, the other as a constraint on moral justification. While highlighting respects in which the commitment to impartiality is more consonant with the care orientation than many advocates of care have acknowledged, this essay attempts to clarify crucial ways in which each (...) accommodationist strategy falls, thus locating some of the more important contributions and challenges the care orientation offers to moral theory. (shrink)

In 2012, the Geological Time Scale, which sets the temporal framework for studying the timing and tempo of all major geological, biological, and climatic events in Earth’s history, had one-quarter of its boundaries moved in a widespread revision of radiometric dates. The philosophy of metrology helps us understand this episode, and it, in turn, elucidates the notions of calibration, coherence, and consilience. I argue that coherence testing is a distinct activity preceding calibration and consilience, and I highlight the value of (...) discordant evidence and trade-offs scientists face in calibration. The iterative nature of calibration, moreover, raises the problem of legacy data. (shrink)

Despite an enormous philosophical literature on models in science, surprisingly little has been written about data models and how they are constructed. In this paper, I examine the case of how paleodiversity data models are constructed from the fossil data. In particular, I show how paleontologists are using various model-based techniques to correct the data. Drawing on this research, I argue for the following related theses: first, the ‘purity’ of a data model is not a measure of its epistemic reliability. (...) Instead it is the fidelity of the data that matters. Second, the fidelity of a data model in capturing the signal of interest is a matter of degree. Third, the fidelity of a data model can be improved ‘vicariously’, such as through the use of post hoc model-based correction techniques. And, fourth, data models, like theoretical models, should be assessed as adequate for particular purposes. (shrink)

This article intervenes in a critical debate about the use of consent to distinguish sex from rape. Drawing from critical contract theories, it argues that sexual consent is a cruel optimism that often operates to facilitate, rather than alleviate, sexual violence. Sexual consent as a cruel optimism promises to simplify rape allegations in the popular cultural imagination, confounds the distinction between victims and agents of sexual violence, and establishes certainty for potential victimizers who rely on it to convince themselves and (...) others that their partners implicitly or explicitly agreed to sex. In each of these cases, the power of consent rests in its tendency to obscure sexual violence in a set of questions around victimhood and agency, rather than to clarify whether or when it has occurred. Following in the critical contract tradition, this article argues that the optimistic attachment to the clarifying power of consent helps to explain the persistent commitment to better sexual consent as a ‘solution’ to the problems of rape and sexual violence, and that this ‘solution’ is insufficient to the task. (shrink)

Simulations using idealized numerical models can often generate behaviors or patterns that are visually very similar to the natural phenomenon being investigated and to be explained. The question arises, when should these model simulations be taken to provide an explanation for why the natural phenomena exhibit the patterns that they do? An important distinction for answering this question is that between ‘how-possibly’ explanations and ‘how-actually’ explanations. Despite the importance of this distinction there has been surprisingly little agreement over how exactly (...) this distinction should bedrawn. I shall argue that inadequate attention has been paid to the different contexts in which an explanation can be given and the different levels of abstraction at which the explanandum phenomenon can be framed. By tracing how scientists are using model simulations to explain a striking periodic banding of vegetation known as tiger bush, I will show how our understanding of the distinction between how-possibly and how-actually model explanations needs to be revised. (shrink)

Detailed examinations of scientific practice have revealed that the use of idealized models in the sciences is pervasive. These models play a central role in not only the investigation and prediction of phenomena, but in their received scientific explanations as well. This has led philosophers of science to begin revising the traditional philosophical accounts of scientific explanation in order to make sense of this practice. These new model-based accounts of scientific explanation, however, raise a number of key questions: Can the (...) fictions and falsehoods inherent in the modeling practice do real explanatory work? Do some highly abstract and mathematical models exhibit a noncausal form of scientific explanation? How can one distinguish an exploratory "how-possibly" model explanation from a genuine "how-actually" model explanation? Do modelers face tradeoffs such that a model that is optimized for yielding explanatory insight, for example, might fail to be the most predictively accurate, and vice versa? This chapter explores the various answers that have been given to these questions. (shrink)

Although predictive power and explanatory insight are both desiderata of scientific models, these features are often in tension with each other and cannot be simultaneously maximized. In such situations, scientists may adopt what I term a ‘division of cognitive labor’ among models, using different models for the purposes of explanation and prediction, respectively, even for the exact same phenomenon being investigated. Adopting this strategy raises a number of issues, however, which have received inadequate philosophical attention. More specifically, while one implication (...) may be that it is inappropriate to judge explanatory models by the same standards of quantitative accuracy as predictive models, there still needs to be some way of either confirming or rejecting these model explanations. Here I argue that robustness analyses have a central role to play in testing highly idealized explanatory models. I illustrate these points with two examples of explanatory models from the field of geomorphology. (shrink)

The problem of identity and identity of the individual, which exists throughout human history, is particularly acute at the intersection of epochs, when existing knowledge and skills are not enough to understand the processes taking place in society, history, and nature, and new theories and tools have not yet been developed. When a civilization was faced with a paradox, when it was decided whether to live as before or accept a new one, it was individuals who were able to go (...) beyond identity that showed a new path. It went against the existing dogmas, against identity. Moreover, over time, man had to accept many more rules and restrictions than at the beginning of his existence. At the intersection of epochs, there was an infusion of new ideas into society. This was done by people who did not just see the future in dreams or nightmares, but were able to imagine what the implementation of a particular postulate in the life of society entails. There was a crisis that literally buried all the old ideas about the world around us and other communities. It was then that the metaphysical perception of the world took on a real form, which, nevertheless, had to be worked out for the sake of the existence of society as a whole. (shrink)

This paper describes a long-standing, though little-known, debate between Paul Dirac and Werner Heisenberg over the nature of scientific methodology, theory change, and intertheoretic relations. Following Heisenberg’s terminology, their disagreements can be summarized as a debate over whether the classical and quantum theories are “open” or “closed.” A close examination of this debate sheds new light on the philosophical views of two of the great founders of quantum theory.

In the spirit of explanatory pluralism, this chapter argues that causal and noncausal explanations of a phenomenon are compatible, each being useful for bringing out different sorts of insights. After reviewing a model-based account of scientific explanation, which can accommodate causal and noncausal explanations alike, an important core conception of noncausal explanation is identified. This noncausal form of model-based explanation is illustrated using the example of how Earth scientists in a subfield known as aeolian geomorphology are explaining the formation of (...) regularlyspaced sand ripples. The chapter concludes that even when it comes to everyday "medium-sized dry goods" such as sand ripples, where there is a complete causal story to be told, one can find examples of noncausal scientific explanations. (shrink)

This book will be of particular interest to those philosophers, scientists, and mathematicians who are interested in the foundations of science.

We reconstruct Kuhn’s philosophy of measurement and data paying special attention to what he calls the “fifth law of thermodynamics”. According to this "law," there will always be discrepancies between experimental results and scientists’ prior expectations. The history of experiments to determine the values of the fundamental constants offers a striking illustration of Kuhn’s fifth law of thermodynamics, with no experiment giving quite the expected result. We highlight the synergy between Kuhn’s view and the systematic project of iteratively determining the (...) value of physical constants, initiated by spectroscopist Raymond Birge, that was ongoing when Kuhn joined Berkeley in 1956. Our analysis sheds light on various underappreciated aspects of Kuhn’s thought, especially his notion of progress as improvement in measurement accuracy. (shrink)

This article addresses the question whether supertasks are possible within the context of non-relativistic quantum mechanics. The supertask under consideration consists of performing an infinite number of quantum mechanical measurements in a finite amount of time. Recent arguments in the physics literature claim to show that continuous measurements, understood as N discrete measurements in the limit where N goes to infinity, are impossible. I show that there are certain kinds of measurements in quantum mechanics for which these arguments break down. (...) This suggests that there is a new context in which quantum mechanics, in principle, permits the performance of a supertask. (shrink)

At the intersection of taxonomy and nomenclature lies the scientific practice of typification. This practice occurs in biology with the use of holotypes (type specimens), in geology with the use of stratotypes, and in metrology with the use of measurement prototypes. In this paper I develop the first general definition of a scientific type and outline a new philosophical theory of types inspired by Pierre Duhem. I use this general framework to resolve the necessity-contingency debate about type specimens in philosophy (...) of biology, to advance the debate over the myth of the absolute accuracy of standards in metrology, and to address the definition-correlation debate in geology. I conclude that just as there has been a productive synergy between philosophical accounts of natural kinds and scientific taxonomic practices, so too there is much to be gained from developing a deeper understanding of the practices and philosophy of scientific types. (shrink)

While the predominant focus of the philosophical literature on scientific modeling has been on single-scale models, most systems in nature exhibit complex multiscale behavior, requiring new modeling methods. This challenge of modeling phenomena across a vast range of spatial and temporal scales has been called the tyranny of scales problem. Drawing on research in the geosciences, I synthesize and analyze a number of strategies for taming this tyranny in the context of conceptual, physical, and mathematical modeling. This includes several strategies (...) that can be deployed in physical modeling, even when strict dynamical scaling fails. In all cases, I argue that having an adequate conceptual model—given both the nature of the system and the particular purpose of the model—is essential. I draw a distinction between depiction and representation, and use this research in the geosciences to advance a number of debates in the philosophy of modeling. (shrink)

Given dramatic increases in recent decades in the pace of scientific discovery and understanding of the functional organization of the brain, it is increasingly clear that engagement with the neuroscientific literature and research is central to making progress on philosophical questions regarding the nature and scope of human freedom and responsibility. While patterns of brain activity cannot provide the whole story, developing a deeper and more precise understanding of how brain activity is related to human choice and conduct is crucial (...) to the development of realistic, just, and intellectually rigorous models of human agency and moral responsibility. In this special issue, we acknowledge that “free will” and “moral responsibility” are not concepts with which neuroscience can directly engage, and instead focus on self-governance, and the capacities that contribute to self-governance, which are more tractable for scientific investigation and are prerequisites for the presence of moral responsibility. (shrink)

Morally contoured empathy is a form of reasonable partiality essential to the healthy care of dependents. It is critical as an epistemic aid in determining proper moral responsiveness; it is also, within certain richly normative roles and relationships, itself a crucial constitutive mode of moral connection. Yet the achievement of empathy is no easy feat. Patterns of incuriosity imperil connection, impeding empathic engagement; inappropriate empathic engagement, on the other hand, can result in self-effacement. Impartial moral principles and constraints offer at (...) best meager protection against these perils, and hence serve poorly in securing morally contoured empathy. More nuanced and practical guidance should be sought in normatively substantive conceptions of our roles and relationships and their defining moral stakes. These, joined with more abstract moral tools, can facilitate rich, narratively textured interpretations of moralitys demands. While the content of our normative conceptions must be continually debated, engaging in this debate is vital to the achievement of proper empathy, and thus to effective, respectful, morally healthy care of dependents. (shrink)

Journal of Social Philosophy, EarlyView.

Model-data symbiosis is the view that there is an interdependent and mutually beneficial relationship between data and models, whereby models are not only data-laden, but data are also model-laden or model filtered. In this paper I elaborate and defend the second, more controversial, component of the symbiosis view. In particular, I construct a preliminary taxonomy of the different ways in which theoretical and simulation models are used in the production of data sets. These include data conversion, data correction, data interpolation, (...) data scaling, data fusion, data assimilation, and synthetic data. Each is defined and briefly illustrated with an example from the geosciences. I argue that model-filtered data are typically more accurate and reliable than the so-called raw data, and hence beneficially serve the epistemic aims of science. By illuminating the methods by which raw data are turned into scientifically useful data sets, this taxonomy provides a foundation for developing a more adequate philosophy of data. (shrink)