Beyond Realism and Moralism: A Defense of Political Minimalism

What is the relationship between morals and politics? What is the relationship between moral philosophy and political philosophy? Defenders of political moralism postulate moral aims or constraints for politics, and hence they see political philosophy as a chapter of moral philosophy. Contrastingly, advocates of political realism describe politics as an independent endeavor aiming at providing order and security, and conceive of political philosophy as an autonomous discipline. This article claims that political moralism and political realism share the mistake of assuming that politics has substantial, permanent goals or constraints. After criticizing political substantialism, the article explains the main ingredients of its alternative, political minimalism: (1) the idea that politics, understood as collective instrumental rationality, aims at providing adequate means for the accomplishment of people's goals, whatever these are; and (2) the conception of the relationship between morality and politics as one of “reciprocal containment.” Finally, it addresses some foreseeable criticisms of political minimalism.     

Nietzsche,science, and philosophical nihilism

Abstract

Nietzsche offers us a critique of modern culture as threatened by a nihilistic crisis in values. Philosophy is specifically incorporated into Nietzsche’s critique, resulting in the claim that modern philosophy, as well as modern culture, is nihilistic. But why should contemporary philosophers give this view credence? In this paper, I put forward some reasons to take Nietzsche’s view seriously, focusing on the relationship between science and philosophy. I suggest that modern philosophy still tends to idealise science as an exemplar of objectivity, particularly as this relates to judgement, even despite widespread acknowledgement that science is not value-free. I therefore argue that Nietzsche’s critique is valuable in two respects: first, it calls the notion of a scientific ideal grounding objective, cross-cultural, judgement into question, and second, it facilitates a distinction between this scientific ideal and science itself.     

Feminist philosophy of science: history,contributions, and challenges

Feminist philosophy of science has led to improvements in the practices and products of scientific knowledge-making, and in this way it exemplifies socially relevant philosophy of science. It has also yielded important insights and original research questions for philosophy. Feminist scholarship on science thus presents a worthy thought-model for considering how we might build a more socially relevant philosophy of science—the question posed by the editors of this special issue. In this analysis of the history, contributions, and challenges faced by feminist philosophy of science, I argue that engaged case study work and interdisciplinarity have been central to the success of feminist philosophy of science in producing socially relevant scholarship, and that its future lies in the continued development of robust and dynamic philosophical frameworks for modeling social values in science. Feminist philosophers of science, however, have often encountered marginalization and persistent misunderstandings, challenges that must be addressed within the institutional and intellectual culture of American philosophy.     

The Political Philosophy of Science and the Problem of Rationality

The present article offers an introductory vision to the political philosophy of science. The political philosophy of science is a new field of study where the philosophy of science and political philosophy converge. We will see the main contents of this field. We will also note that it depends on the construction of a model of rationality where science and politics can meet each other. Finally, the article tries to outline such a model of rationality. In order to do so, we will review the relationship between Karl Popper’s scientific and political philosophy. I suggest to read Popper’s critical rationalism in terms of a kind of prudential rationality.     

A feminist naturalized philosophy of science

Building on developments in feminist science scholarship and the philosophy of science, I advocate two methodological principles as elements of a naturalized philosophy of science. One principle incorporates a holistic account of evidence inclusive of claims and theories informed by and/or expressive of politics and non-constitutive values; the second takes communities, rather than individual scientists, to be the primary loci of scientific knowledge. I use case studies to demonstrate that these methodological principles satisfy three criteria for naturalization accepted in naturalized philosophy of science, and allow for the differential assessment of episodes in which values and sociopolitical factors inform, or contribute to the adoption of, theories for which there is sufficient evidential warrant — and episodes in which such factors inform, or contribute to the adoption of, theories for which there is not. I contend that in terms of their empirical and normative import, these principles constitute a further naturalization of the philosophy of science.I am grateful to Richmond Campbell, Ingvar Johansson, Hildur Kalman, Peter Machamer, James Maffie, Jack Nelson, Elizabeth Potter, Phyllis Rooney, Joseph Rouse, and Nancy Tuana for constructive criticisms of earlier drafts. An earlier version was presented to the Nordiskt Nätverk för Feministisk Epistemologioch Feministisk Vetenskapsteorito, and the Institutionen för Filosfi och Vetenskapsteorito at Umeå Universitet, in October 1994. I am grateful to members of these audiences for challenging and insightful criticisms.     

Folk psychology as science

There is a long-standing debate in the philosophy of action and the philosophy of science over folk psychological explanations of human action: do the (perhaps implicit) generalizations that underwrite such explanations purport to state contingent, empirically established connections between beliefs, desires, and actions, or do such generalizations serve rather to define, at least in part, what it is to have a belief or desire, or perform an action? This question has proven important because of certain traditional assumptions made about the role of law-statements in scientific explanations. According to this tradition, law-statements take the form of generalizations, and the laws we find in well-established sciences are contingent and empirical; as such, if the kinds of generalizations at work in folk psychological explanations of human action act like definitions, or state conceptual connections, then such generalizations could not play the kind of explanatory role we find in mature sciences. This paper argues that the aforementioned way of framing the debate reflects a still powerful but impoverished conception of the role laws play in scientific explanations, a conception that, moreover, cannot be reconciled with a good deal of actual scientific practice. When we update the philosophy of science, we find the concerns that are raised for folk psychological explanations largely evaporate or are found not to be specific to such explanations.     

A new direction for science and values

The controversy over the old ideal of “value-free science” has cooled significantly over the past decade. Many philosophers of science now agree that even ethical and political values may play a substantial role in all aspects of scientific inquiry. Consequently, in the last few years, work in science and values has become more specific: Which values may influence science, and in which ways? Or, how do we distinguish illegitimate from illegitimate kinds of influence? In this paper, I argue that this problem requires philosophers of science to take a new direction. I present two case studies in the influence of values on scientific inquiry: feminist values in archaeology and commercial values in pharmaceutical research. I offer a preliminary assessment of these cases, that the influence of values was legitimate in the feminist case, but not in the pharmaceutical case. I then turn to three major approaches to distinguish legitimate from illegitimate influences of values, including the distinction between epistemic and non-epistemic values and Heather Douglas’ distinction between direct and indirect roles for values. I argue that none of these three approaches gives an adequate analysis of the two cases. In the concluding section, I briefly sketch my own approach, which draws more heavily on ethics than the others, and is more promising as a solution to the current problem. This is the new direction in which I think science and values should move.     

How Inclusive Is European Philosophy of Science?

The main question of this article is given by its title: how inclusive is European philosophy of science? Phrased in this way, the question presupposes that, as a mature discipline, philosophy of science should provide an inclusive account of its subject area. I first provide an explanation of the notion of an inclusive (in contrast to a restricted) philosophy of science. This notion of an inclusive philosophy of science is specified by discussing three general topics that seem to be missing from, or are quite marginal in, restricted philosophy of science. These topics are the philosophy of historical inquiry, the role of technology in science, and the socio-political and moral dimensions of science. On this basis, I address the question whether European philosophy of science qualifies as more inclusive as compared with Anglo-American philosophy of science.     

The Poetry of Genetics: On the Pitfalls of Popularizing Science

The role genetic inheritance plays in the way human beings look and behave is a question about the biology of human sexual reproduction, one that scientists connected with the Human Genome Project dashed to answer before the close of the twentieth century. This is also a question about politics, and, it turns out, poetry, because, as the example of Lucretius shows, poetry is an ancient tool for the popularization of science. “Popularization” is a good word for successful efforts to communicate elite science to non‐scientists in non‐technical languages and media. According to prominent sociobiologist E. O. Wilson, “sexual dominance is a human universal.” He meant, of course, that men dominate women. Like sociobiology, genetic science is freighted with politics, including gender politics. Scientists have gender perspectives that may color what they “see” in nature. As the late Susan Okin Miller suggested in an unpublished paper tracing the detrimental impact of Aristotle's teleology on Western thought, scientists accustomed to thinking that men naturally dominate women might interpret genetic discoveries accordingly. Biologists have good, scientific reasons to fight the effects of bias. One must be critical of how scientists and popularizers of science, like Genome author Matt Ridley, frame truth and theory. Ridley's “battle of the sexes” metaphor and others have a doubtful place in serious explanations of science.     

A New “Essential Tension” for Rationality and Culture. What Happens if Politics Tries to Encounter Science Again

My intention is not to get into specific, detailed historical observation about the ways that led the term ‘democracy’ to take on its current meaning, in science as much as in politics, but rather to establish a comparison between the models that political science proposes and interprets as important for the existence of democracy and those that science illustrates as indicators of scientific knowledge constructed in a democratic form. The debate about the contemporary meaning of democracy has generated an extraordinary diversification of models of democracy: from technocratic conceptions of government to conceptions of social life that include widespread political participation. And it is exactly for this reason that the assumption of a specific point of view on the question we are dealing with inevitably brings with it the choice of a model suitable to describe democratic form as a form of politics without further explanation, that is, as a political system with which science measures itself as a cultural category. In this sense, we can consider the passage from the concept of democracy to that of politics and generally of science to be a peaceful one, since politics has been appointed with that set of behaviours and democratic practices (including science) that political culture demands for the social benefit. This demand can be met only on condition that structural obstacles are removed and new cultural and epistemological mediators are introduced.     

The source and status of values for socially responsible science

Philosophy of Science After Feminism is an important contribution to philosophy of science, in that it argues for the central relevance of advances from previous work in feminist philosophy of science and articulates a new vision for philosophy of science going in to the future. Kourany’s vision of philosophy of science’s future as “socially engaged and socially responsible” and addressing questions of the social responsibility of science itself has much to recommend it. I focus the book articulation of an ethical-epistemic ideal for science, the Ideal of Socially Responsible Science, compare it to recent work in the same vein by Heather Douglas, and argue for some advantages of Kourany’s approach. I then ask some critical question about the view, particularly with respect to the source of values that are to be integrated into science and the status of values that are to be so integrated. I argue that Kourany is too sanguine about where the values that inquirers will use come from and that these values seem to be accorded too fixed a status in her account.     

Democratic Moral Education and the Gifts of the Holy Spirit

How far is Thomas Aquinas available for current discussions in political philosophy? While there are certainly things to be learned from him about our political preoccupations, the pedagogy of his moral teaching typically resists our familiar questions. This holds even when the question is put in terms that Thomas should recognize—say, as a question about the virtues appropriate for a democracy. Thomas not only gives different meanings to these terms, he moves political topics away from the center of theological attention and so organizes them very differently. A reader can notice these differences at many points but perhaps especially in the attention that Thomas gives in the Summa to the gifts of the Holy Spirit. His account of these gifts qualifies significantly what he says of virtue and suggests large limits on human agency, whether in ethics or in politics.     

关于另类科学哲学的思考

A prominent phenomenon in contemporary philosophy of science has been the unexpected rise of alternative philosophers of science. This article analyses in depth such alternative philosophers of science as Paul Feyerabend, Richard Rorty, and Michel Foucault, summarizing the similarities and differences between alternative philosophies of science and traditional philosophy of science so as to unveil the trends in contemporary philosophy of science. With its different principles and foundation, alternative philosophy of science has made breakthroughs in terms of its field of vision, scope, and methodology, and its relationship with science has become more humanistic and pluralistic. Attention should be given to alternative perspectives in the contemporary philosophy of science, and research should be expanded into the fields of the epistemology of science and cognitive science, the sociology of scientific knowledge and scientific anthropology, the scientific cultural philosophy, and scientific ethics.     

Theory flexibility and inconsistency in science

For several decades now philosophers have discussed apparent examples of internally inconsistent scientific theories. However, there is still much controversy over how exactly we should conceive of scientific theories in the first place. Here I argue for a new approach, whereby all of the truly important questions about inconsistency in science can be asked and answered without disagreements about theories and theory-content getting in the way. Three examples commonly described as ‘internally inconsistent theories’ are analysed in the light of this approach. In the process, the question ‘Is the theory inconsistent or not?’ is identified as a bad, or at least unimportant, question.     

Can Science Help Construct a New Global Ethic? The Development and Implications of Moral Transformation Theory

This paper reports the results of a ten-year search for consensus among scientific findings on the nature of the origin and development of moral sensitivity and morality. Significant agreement on six underlying factors was found. Based on these foundations, a new theory of moral transformation and a scientific "global ethic" relating to the global ethic of Hans Kung and the Parliament of the World's Religions is proposed. Fields surveyed include psychology, sociology, political science, economics, history, and gender and feminist studies in social science; physics and biology in natural science; and brain research, archaeology, and both old and new evolutionary studies and theory, including chaos, self-organizing, and other nonlinear theories, in systems science.     

The primacy question in Merleau-Ponty’s existential phenomenology

This paper takes up the question as to what has primacy within Merleau-Ponty’s existential phenomenology as a way to provide insight into the relation between empirical science and transcendental philosophy within his account of embodiment. Contending that this primacy necessarily pertains to methodology, I show how Kurt Goldstein’s conception of biology provided Merleau-Ponty with a scientific model for approaching human existence holistically in which primacy pertains to the transcendental practice of productive imagination that generates the eidetic organismic Gestalt in terms of which sense is made of empirical facts. Considering the analogous role played by imagination in Merleau-Ponty’s account of perceptual synthesis in the form of what he called projection, I argue that his account of embodiment is, parallel to Goldstein, grounded methodologically on the projection of an organismic Gestalt, and that as a form of operative-intentional praxis projection is the site of primacy in his phenomenology overall. In terms of the relation between natural science and transcendental philosophy in Merleau-Ponty’s account of embodiment, while the theoretical dimension of the latter—the eidetic apriority of the organismic Gestalt—is coupled dialectically with empirical facts on an epistemically coeval basis, these are jointly subordinated to the normative commitments implied by the imaginative projection of that Gestalt. The primacy of the latter is transcendental but in a distinctly practical sense, such that any substantive discrepancy between natural science and Merleau-Pontian phenomenology reflects metaphilosophical, not theoretical, disagreement.     

Lamenting the Golden Age: Love,Labour and Loss in the Collective Memory of Scientists

Abstract

Academic science is often described as having a moral economy underpinned by curiosity, creativity and a love of the subject. It is also described as having a political economy tied to national programmes for socio-economic growth. According to many writers, in recent decades those moral and political economies have become disconnected through greater managerial, audit and commercial practices pervading the academy. Classic ideals of professional norms and ethos have been eroded in these new economically incentivised environments. Biomedical scientists working at a major UK university echoed these sentiments, lamenting a lost ‘golden age’ of science characterised by intellectual freedom, serendipitous discovery and a love of doing science. In practice, their lamentation serves as a myth and expresses a key tension in pursuing science as a job and as a vocation. Playing a performative role in scientists' own self-understanding, the myth not only underwrites scientific identity, but also supports research management by demarcating ‘science’ from the practices that manage, measure and commercialise it. The ‘golden age’ emerges as a significant explanatory narrative in contemporary science. It embodies a moral economy that is detached from its institutional contexts, and thus unable to resolve the inequalities and tensions produced through the political economy that relies on it.     

Non-reductivism and the metaphilosophy of mind

ABSTRACT

This paper discusses the metaphilosophical assumptions that have dominated analytic philosophy of mind, and how they gave rise to the central question that the best-known forms of non-reductivism available have sought to answer, namely: how can mind fit within nature? Its goal is to make room for forms of non-reductivism that have challenged the fruitfulness of this question, and which have taken a different approach to the so-called “placement” problem. Rather than trying to solve the placement problem, the forms of non-reductivism discussed in this paper have put pressure on the metaphilosophical assumptions that have given rise to the question of the place of mind in nature in the first instance.     

Philosophy of science in the Netherlands

Conditions for philosophy of science in the Netherlands are not optimal. The climate of opinion in Dutch philosophy is unsympathetic to the sciences, partly because of the influence of theology. Dutch universities offer no taught graduate programmes in philosophy of science, which would provide an entry route for science graduates. A great deal of Dutch research in philosophy of science is affected by an exegetical attitude, which fosters the interpretation and evaluation of other writers rather than the development of original theories. Doctoral candidates in particular should be trained to greater originality and assertiveness. Nonetheless, much good research in philosophy of science is conducted in the Netherlands, both in philosophy faculties and in institutes dedicated to the foundations of the special sciences. Distinguished work is done also in the neighbouring disciplines of logic, history of science, and social studies of science.