The history of the philosophy of thought experiments has touched on the work of Kuhn, Popper, Duhem, Mach, Lakatos, and other big names of the 20th century, but so far, almost nothing has been written about Paul Feyerabend. His most influential work was Against Method, 8 chapters of which concern a case study of Galileo with a specific focus on Galileo’s thought experiments. In addition, the later Feyerabend was very interested in what might be called the epistemology of drama, including (...) stories and myths. This paper brings these different aspects of Feyerabend’s work together in an attempt to present what might have been his considered views on scientific thought experiments. I conclude by contrasting Feyerabend’s ideas with two modern currents in the debate surrounding thought experiments: 1) the claim that the epistemology of thought experiments is just the epistemology of deductive or inductive arguments, and 2) the claim that the specifically narrative quality of thought experiments must be taken into account if we want a complete epistemology of thought experiments. (shrink)

.Western culture has a few traditions of representing the human body – among them mortuary art, the freak show, the culture of the relics, renaissance art and pre-modern and modern anatomy. A historical analysis in the spirit of Norbert Elias is offered with regard to body – person relationship in anatomy. Modern anatomy is characterized by separating the story of the person from the story of the body, a strategy that is incompatible with the bio-psycho-social paradigm of clinical (...) medicine. The paper discusses different aspects of the above traditions and how they might bear on this conflict and on contemporary bioethics and bedside practice. (shrink)

The paper studies the topography of the model landscape of the physics in the Higgs sector both within the Standard Model of Elementary Particle Physics and beyond in the months before the discovery of a SM Higgs boson. At first glance, this landscape appears fragmented into a large number of different models and research communities. But it also clusters around certain guiding ideas, among them supersymmetry or dynamical symmetry breaking, in which representative and narrative features of the models are combined. (...) These models do not stand for themselves, waiting to be experimentally confirmed and elevated to the status of theory. Rather do they, quite in the sense advocated by Morgan and Morrison, enjoy a far-reaching autonomy. Typically models in the Higgs sector entertain three types of mediating relationships. First, they mediate between the SM and the data in those instances where the SM contains some uncertainty in the values of its basic parameters. Second, they mediate between BSM physics and the data by instantiating the core ideas behind these often speculative generalizations of the SM as stories—in Hartmann’s sense—that motivate or justify the respective model. Third, the fact that Higgs models within BSM physics reproduce the SM predictions in the low-energy limit functions as a consistency constraint that does not involve any additional autonomy. Due to the second type of mediating relationship, the representative features of Higgs models BSM are complex. (shrink)

Miraculous Stories from the Japanese Buddhist Tradition: The Nihon ryoiki of the Monk Kyokai. Trans. and ed. Kyoko Motomachi Nakamura. Curzon Press, Richmond 1997. xii, 322 pp. £40.00. ISBN 0 7007 0449 3.

The expression ‘Oh’ in natural conversation is a signal topic in the development of the Epistemic Program. This article attempts to bring into view a sense of place for this simple expression in the early literature, beginning with ‘Oh’ as a ‘change-of-state token’ and through its subsequent treatments in the production of assessments. It reviews them with an interest in two allied developments. One is the rendering of ‘Oh’ as an expression that ‘indexes’ epistemic structure. The other, pursued in the (...) detail of transcript in Part 2, is how, as of this rendering, the literature manages its tasks of ‘animating transcript’, or how we portray ordinary talk as social action. We think these two moves are closely connected within the EP. And we think they yield a very different ‘vocabulary of motives’, different from the natural language studies of conversation analysis. Our discussions address in turn the central phrases of our title. (shrink)

In this paper, I present an alternative account of action that improves upon what has come to be known as the standard story. The standard story depicts actions as events that are caused by and made intelligible through the appropriate combinations of the agent’s beliefs, desires, decisions, intentions and other motivational factors. I argue that the standard story is problematic because it depicts the relation between the agent and their bodily actions as causally mediated by their motivational (...) factors. On the alternative account that I present, whenever an agent performs a bodily action, they do so by exerting a distinctive kind of effort so as to initiate, sustain, and control their own bodily capacities, an essential feature of bodily action that is absent from the standard story. (shrink)

Jonathan Dancy’s Practical Reality is, I think, best understood as an attempt to undermine our allegiance to these two purported constitutive claims about action. If we must think that psychological states figure in the explanation of action then, according to Dancy, we should suppose that those psychological states are beliefs rather than desire-belief pairs. Dancy thus prefers pure cognitivism to Humeanism. But in fact he thinks that we have no business accepting any form of psychologism in the first place; no (...) business accepting a theory that explains an agent’s actions by reference to that agent’s psychological states. For though it is indeed a truism that actions are explained by reasons, Dancy argues that psychological states are only rarely, if ever, reasons. He thus prefers the unadorned normative story, a story which contents itself with explaining actions by laying out the considerations in the light of which the agent acted as he did, to any form of psychologism. I will consider Dancy’s arguments for these claims in turn. (shrink)

The Torah in Deuteronomy is not so much a matter of rules to be obeyed as it is a matter of a story to be lived.

In this article we argue that philosophy can facilitate improvement in cross-disciplinary science. In particular, we discuss in detail the Toolbox Project, an effort in applied epistemology that deploys philosophical analysis for the purpose of enhancing collaborative, cross-disciplinary scientific research through improvements in cross-disciplinary communication. We begin by sketching the scientific context within which the Toolbox Project operates, a context that features a growing interest in and commitment to cross-disciplinary research (CDR). We then develop an argument for the leading idea (...) behind this effort, namely, that philosophical dialogue can improve cross-disciplinary science by effecting epistemic changes that lead to better group communication. On the heels of this argument, we describe our approach and its output; in particular, we emphasize the Toolbox instrument that generates philosophical dialogue and the Toolbox workshop in which that dialogue takes place. Together, these constitute a philosophical intervention into the life of CDR teams. We conclude by considering the philosophical implications of this intervention. (shrink)

The contributors to The Moral of the Story, all preeminent political theorists, are unified by their concern with the instructive power of great literature. This thought-provoking combination of essays explores the polyvalent moral and political impact of classic world literatures on public ethics through the study of some of its major figures-including Shakespeare, Dante, Cervantes, Jane Austen, Henry James, Joseph Conrad, Robert Penn Warren, and Dostoevsky. Positing the uniqueness of literature's ability to promote dialogue on salient moral and intellectual (...) virtues, editor Henry T. Edmonson III has culled together a wide-ranging exploration of such fundamental concerns as the abuse of authority, the nature of good leadership, the significance of "middle class virtues" and the needs of adolescents. This collection reinvigorates the study of classic literature as an endeavor that is not only personally intellectually satisfying, but also an inimitable and unique way to enrich public discourse. (shrink)

In 1995 Walker & Company published a small book authored by the professional writer Dava Sobel entitled Longitude: The Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time. Not only did the book sell exceptionally well; it also spawned a three‐hour film, Longitude, starring Jeremy Irons and Michael Gambon, and a new, lavishly illustrated work, The Illustrated Longitude, by Sobel and Harvard's William J. H. Andrewes. It is difficult to think of another book (...) in the history of science that has attained comparable success. Yet it seems that history of science journals have taken scant notice of the book; my efforts to locate reviews of Sobel's volume in history of science journals have turned up only a single review, that being in Italian. This is all the more distressing because the book and film present a very controversial view of Astronomer Royal Nevil Maskelyne. This is not the place to examine Sobel's recipe for success, but it seems relevant background in reviewing a book also written by a professional journalist, also published by Walker, and fairly comparable in format to Sobel's.The history of science is rich in fascinating stories that could delight a variety of readers. The story of the search for longitude in the eighteenth century is certainly one of these; the dramatic quest to discover Neptune in the mid nineteenth century is another. Put overly briefly, the latter is the story of the frustrated efforts of a young, personally diffident but intellectually bold Cambridge graduate, John Couch Adams, to convince either the director of the Cambridge Observatory or England's Astronomer Royal to look for a planet that Adams's calculations had told him must be located at a specific position. It is also the story of the brilliant and arrogant Urbain J. J. Leverrier, who had independently completed comparable calculations and who beat Adams to the discovery by persuading not one of his French colleagues but an astronomer at the Berlin Observatory to launch a search, which within a few hours had located Neptune. It is also the story of the immense controversy that followed and that has in the last few years been given a new twist with the recovery of key documents carried off to Chile from the Royal Greenwich Observatory.Tom Standage, science correspondent for the Economist and author of The Victorian Internet, has taken up the challenge of retelling the Neptune story, which had previously been treated in dozens of articles and in book‐length studies by John Pringle Nichol, Albert Glodin, Morton Grosser, and Patrick Moore. Moreover, Standage presents the Neptune narrative as the centerpiece in a story that stretches from William Herschel's discovery of Uranus to the discovery of Pluto in 1930 and even to the spectroscopic detection in the last few years of dozens of extra–solar system planets. Standage's clear and engaging prose is based on extensive reading in English and French sources, some manuscript work, and interviews with a number of the discoverers of extra–solar system planets. Although the book is bereft of footnotes, an annotated bibliography at its end partially fulfills their function. Numerous illustrations appear, but these tend to be rather dark and small.Although the book is generally reliable, some significant errors appear. For example, whereas Standage reports that William Herschel did not see Uranus alter in size, Herschel observed its diameter nearly double in the two months after his first observation of it. It is John, not William, Herschel who is buried in Westminster Abbey. Benjamin Peirce's last name is misspelled , as is Christiaan Huygens's first name , and it is incorrect to say that Huygens “considered it was unlikely that there was life elsewhere in the solar system” . Also, because Lowell Observatory director Vesto Slipher played such a major role in the discovery of the planet Pluto by creating and directing the research program that enabled a recent high school graduate, Clyde Tombaugh, to be the first to recognize the planet on a photographic plate, it seems inappropriate that Standage makes no mention of Slipher in recounting the discovery of Pluto.Overall this is a highly engaging story, well told and based on good sources. One would hope that it may follow Longitude into film, at least a documentary, and that other authors and publishers will recognize the market for such exciting stories from the history of science. (shrink)

In this paper, we set out a basic approach to the modeling of narrative in interactive virtual worlds. This approach adopts a bipartite model taken from narrative theory, in which narrative is composed ofstoryanddiscourse. In our approach, story elements — plot and character — are defined in terms of plans that drive the dynamics of a virtual environment. Discourse elements — the narrative’s communicative actions — are defined in terms of discourse plans whose communicative goals include conveying the (...) class='Hi'>story world plan’s structure. To ground the model in computational terms, we provide examples from research under way in the Liquid Narrative Group involving the design of the Mimesis system, an architecture for intelligent interactive narrative incorporating concepts from artificial intelligence, narrative theory, cognitive psychology and computational linguistics. (shrink)

In this paper, we set out a basic approach to the modeling of narrative in interactive virtual worlds. This approach adopts a bipartite model taken from narrative theory, in which narrative is composed of story and discourse. In our approach, story elements — plot and character — are defined in terms of plans that drive the dynamics of a virtual environment. Discourse elements — the narrative’s communicative actions — are defined in terms of discourse plans whose communicative goals (...) include conveying the story world plan’s structure. To ground the model in computational terms, we provide examples from research under way in the Liquid Narrative Group involving the design of the Mimesis system, an architecture for intelligent interactive narrative incorporating concepts from artificial intelligence, narrative theory, cognitive psychology and computational linguistics. (shrink)

A recent paper by David Lewis, "Causation as Influence", proposes a new theory of causation. I argue against the theory, maintaining that (a) the relation asserted by a claim of the form "C was a cause of E" is distinct from the relation of causal influence, (b) the former relation depends very much, contra Lewis, on the individuation conditions for the event E, and (c) Lewis's account is unsatisfactory as an analysis of either kind of relation. The counterexamples presented here (...) provide, I suggest, some insight into the reasons for the failure of counterfactual accounts of causal relations. (shrink)

In this paper, we set out a basic approach to the modeling of narrative in interactive virtual worlds. This approach adopts a bipartite model taken from narrative theory, in which narrative is composed ofstoryanddiscourse. In our approach, story elements — plot and character — are defined in terms of plans that drive the dynamics of a virtual environment. Discourse elements — the narrative’s communicative actions — are defined in terms of discourse plans whose communicative goals include conveying the (...) class='Hi'>story world plan’s structure. To ground the model in computational terms, we provide examples from research under way in the Liquid Narrative Group involving the design of the Mimesis system, an architecture for intelligent interactive narrative incorporating concepts from artificial intelligence, narrative theory, cognitive psychology and computational linguistics. (shrink)

This essay returns to Of Grammatology, Derrida’s seminal work of 1967, in order to demonstrate the key role played by the category of interiority in that work and in deconstruction more generally. The essay show how Derrida traces the values associated with interiority in his readings of Plato, Rousseau, and Levi-Strauss in order to argue that the opposition between interiority and exteriority is not one philosophical opposition among others but the single most powerful and persistent opposition in Western philosophy, organizing (...) everything from the relationship between speech and writing to that between presence and absence, essence and accident, even life and death. We thus come to see through a reading of this early work of Derrida’s that deconstruction will have been from its very inception a deconstruction of any claims to an inside that would come before or exclude its outside, that is, a deconstruction of every phantasm of interiority. (shrink)

I discuss two claims defended in Fischer’s recent work. The first is the default status of compatibilism. This is part of a conception of our agency and moral responsibility as being independent of the truth or the falsity of the thesis of determinism. I try to further bolster Fischer’s arguments in favor of this position. The second is Fischer’s defense of the narrative conception of moral responsibility, according to which the value of self-expression supports and explicates the value of being (...) morally responsible. I argue that the cases and insights taken to support the idea that our lives have a distinctive kind of narrative value are best accounted for in other terms. (shrink)

It is only the story... that saves our progeny from blundering like blind beggars into the spikes of the cactus fence. The story is our escort. Without we are blind. -Chinua Achebe, Anthills of the Savannah.

Scientists tell a story of 2,000 years of stellar magnitude research that traces back to Hipparchus. This story of continuity in practices serves an important role in scientific education and outreach. STS scholars point out many ways that stories of continuity, like many narratives about science, are disconnected from practices. Yet the story of continuity in stellar magnitude is a powerful scientific achievement precisely because of its connection to practice. The historical development of star catalogues shows how (...) specific recording practices connected past and present in a useful way. The narrative of continuity in stellar magnitude, however else it might be subject to STS critique of narrative, maintains its power because of its connection to practice. I suggest that more attention be paid to connections between practice and narrative in STS, and in particular to the ways that historical practices sustain narratives by connecting past and present.Keywords: Astronomy; Narrative; Practice; Constitutive; Credibility. (shrink)

A Choice Outstanding Academic Title for 1999 Academic debates about pluralism and truth have become increasingly polarized in recent years. One side embraces extreme relativism, deeming any talk of objective truth as philosophically naïve. The opposition, frequently arguing that any sort of relativism leads to nihilism, insists on an objective notion of truth according to which there is only one true story of the world. Both sides agree that there is no middle path. In Truth in Context, Michael (...) Lynch argues that there is a middle path, one where metaphysical pluralism is consistent with a robust realism about truth. Drawing on the work of Hilary Putnam, W.V.O. Quine, and Ludwig Wittgenstein, among others, Lynch develops an original version of metaphysical pluralism, which he calls relativistic Kantianism. He argues that one can take facts and propositions as relative without implying that our ordinary concept of truth is a relative, epistemic, or "soft" concept. The truths may be relative, but our concept of truth need not be. (shrink)

When we define argumentation as a communicative activity aimed at convincing a reasona-ble critic of the acceptability of a standpoint by putting forward information justifying or refuting this standpoint, it is clear that elements of this information can be brought forward in other than verbal modes. An important question is then whether visually presented information needs to be translatable into a set of propositions as traditional definitions require. The answer is: not always.