Scientific Research and Human Rights: A Response to Kitcher on the Limitations of Inquiry

In his recent work exploring the role of science in democratic societies Kitcher (Science in a democratic society. Prometheus Books, New York, 2011) claims that scientists ought to have a prominent role in setting the agenda for and limits to research. Against the backdrop of the claim that the proper limits of scientific inquiry is John Stuart Mill’s Harm Principle (Kitcher in Science, truth, and democracy. Oxford University Press, New York, 2001), he identifies the limits of inquiry as the point where the outcomes of research could cause harm to already vulnerable populations. Nonetheless, Kitcher argues against explicit limitations on unscrupulous research on the grounds that restrictions would exacerbate underlying social problems. I show that Kitcher’s argument in favor of dissuading inquiry through conventional standards is problematic and falls prey to the same critique he offers in opposition to official bans. I expand the conversation of limiting scientific research by recognizing that the actions that count as ‘science’ are located in the space between ‘thinking’ and ‘doing’. In this space, we often attempt to balance freedom of research, as scientific speech, against the disparate impact citizens might experience in light of such research. I end by exploring if such disparate impact justifies limiting research, within the context of the United States, under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 or under international human rights standards more generally.     

Language as a Global Public Good

Language use is a public good. Those using a common language receive benefits that are non-excludable and non-rival. And as more people speak the same language, the greater these benefits are. Sometimes individuals make a conscious decision to learn a language other than their native language in order to receive these benefits, and thereby incur costs. This paper is an attempt to determine how we should share the costs among all beneficiaries. I argue against Van Parijs’s (Linguistic justice for Europe and for the world, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2011a) proposal for this, and instead argue that an approach found in the work of Gauthier (Morals by agreement, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1986) is preferable. A general lesson to be drawn from this paper is that the correct principle for distributing the costs of (global) public goods will depend on whether we think the good in question is required by justice or not. Where Van Parijs went wrong, I claim, was in thinking that a cross-border common language is required by justice.     

Hermeneutics in science and medicine: A thesis understated

Drew Leder's “Clinical Interpretation: The Hermeneutics of Medicine” [1] is an essay which understates its case and thereby opens itself to misinterpretation. This response to Leder argues for a more thorough-going hermeneutic for both medicine and science. At the conceptual as well as the practical level, modern medicine and its scientific foundations are hermeneutic enterprises. The purpose of this essay is to argue that we should not back away from this more radical thesis. Embracing it will result in less alienation of physicians from patients, and of physicians from the tasks of medicine.     

Hegel,the Trinity,and the ‘I’

The main goal of this paper is to argue the relevance of Hegel’s notion of the Trinity with respect to two aspects of Hegel’s idealism: the overcoming of subjectivism and his conception of the ‘I’. I contend that these two aspects are interconnected and that the Trinity is important to Hegel’s strategy for addressing these questions. I first address the problem of subjectivism by considering Hegel’s thought against the background of modern philosophy. I argue that the recognitive structure of Hegel’s idealism led him to give the Trinity a decisive role in his philosophical account. Next, I discuss the Trinity by analysing the three divine persons. This analysis paves the way for the conclusion, where I argue that the Trinity represents a model for re-thinking the ‘I’ in a way that overcomes a ‘naïve realist’ and a ‘subjective’ account of the self. I suggest that Hegel’s absolute idealism can be conceived as an approach to the ‘I’ that considers the role of acts of mutual recognition for the genesis of self-conscious thought, and that the Trinity is the Darstellung of the relational and recognitive structure of the ‘I’.     

Appraisal of Research Depends Upon its Conceptualization

Smedslund and Ross (2014) have offered us an interesting opinion article concerning the usefulness of empirical research for psychological practice. Appraisal of research is obviously contingent upon the way it is conceptualized and although the authors are involved with rather different kinds of practical problems they nevertheless conceptualize research in exactly the same way. This entails a possible mismatch between questions asked and methods used to answer them. I will try to add to the discussion by examining more closely how the authors conceptualize research and discuss the problems of mismatch between questions, methods, methodology, and epistemology. I claim that the authors’ view of research misses some important aspects of scientific reasoning and follows an unjustified epistemological position. Part of the arising controversy is a rather natural consequence of this but could be overcome by reconsidering the aims of science and getting epistemology, methodology and questions in line. Although I focus on the specific article and the authors’ positions, I hold that the issues discussed are common and general.     

Duhem and Koyré on Domingo de Soto

Galileo's view of science is indebted to the teaching of the Jesuit professors at the Collegio Romano, but Galileo's concept of mathematical physics also corresponds to that of Giovan Battista Benedetti. Lacking documentary evidence that would connect Benedetti directly with the Jesuits, or the Jesuits with Benedetti, I infer a common source: the Spanish connection, that is, Domingo de Soto. I then give indications that the fourteenth-century work at Oxford and Paris on calculationes was transmitted via Spain and Portugal to Rome and other centers where Jesuits had colleges, and figured in the rise of mathematical physics at the beginning of the seventeenth century. A result of these researches is their vindication of Duhem, as contrasted with Koyré, on the origins of modern mechanics.     

Evans on transparency: a rationalist account

Gareth Evans famously observed that he can answer the question ‘Do you think there is going to be a third world war?’ by attending to “precisely the same outward phenomena as I would attend to if I were answering the question ‘Will there be a third world war?’” (The varieties of reference, Oxford University Press, Oxford, p 225, 1982). I argue that this observation follows from two independently plausible ideas in philosophy of mind. The first is about rationality and consciousness: it is that to be rational is in part to be required to believe that you are in a conscious state if you are in one, at least if various background conditions are met. The second is about consciousness and attention: it is that consciousness in a belief state consists in its subject engaging, to a sufficient extent, in a certain sort of world-directed attention. I also argue that this suggestion is superior to others that have been made in the literature regarding Evan’s observation. 

     

Duhem–Quine virtue epistemology

The Duhem?CQuine Thesis is the claim that it is impossible to test a scientific hypothesis in isolation because any empirical test requires assuming the truth of one or more auxiliary hypotheses. This is taken by many philosophers, and is assumed here, to support the further thesis that theory choice is underdetermined by empirical evidence. This inquiry is focused strictly on the axiological commitments engendered in solutions to underdetermination, specifically those of Pierre Duhem and W. V. Quine. Duhem resolves underdetermination by appealing to a cluster of virtues called ??good sense??, and it has recently been argued by Stump (Stud Hist Philos Biol Biomed Sci, 18(1):149?C159, 2007) that good sense is a form of virtue epistemology. This paper considers whether Quine, who??s philosophy is heavily influenced by the very thesis that led Duhem to the virtues, is also led to a virtue epistemology in the face of underdetermination. Various sources of Quinian epistemic normativity are considered, and it is argued that, in conjunction with other normative commitments, Quine??s sectarian solution to underdetermination amounts to a skills based virtue epistemology. The paper also sketches formal features of the novel form of virtue epistemology common to Duhem and Quine that challenges the adequacy of epistemic value truth-monism and blocks any imperialist naturalization of virtue epistemology, as the epistemic virtues are essential to the success of the sciences themselves.     

Intentionality,Cognitive Integration and the Continuity Thesis

Naturalistic philosophers ought to think that the mind is continuous with the rest of the world and should not, therefore, be surprised by the findings of the extended mind, cognitive integration and enactivism. Not everyone is convinced that all mental phenomena are continuous with the rest of the world. For example, intentionality is often formulated in a way that makes the mind discontinuous with the rest of the world. This is a consequence of Brentano’s formulation of intentionality, I suggest, and can be overcome by revealing that the concept of intentional directedness as he receives it from the Scholastics is quite consistent with the continuity thesis. It is only when intentional directedness is conjoined with intentional inexistence that intentionality and content are consistent with a discontinuity thesis (such as Brentano’s thesis). This makes room to develop an account of intentional directedness that is consistent with the continuity thesis in the form of Peirce’s representational principle. I also argue against a form of the discontinuity thesis in the guise of the derived/underived content distinction. Having shown that intentionality is consistent with the continuity thesis I argue that we should focus on intentionality and representation as bodily enacted. I conclude that we would be better off focussing on representation and intentionality in action rather than giving abstract functional accounts of extended cognition.

Explaining and Explaining Away in Cosmology and Theology

Modern cosmology raises two significant questions that potentially relate to theology: does the universe have a beginning, and why is the universe so apparently fine tuned for life? In a significant paper, Mark McCartney and David Glass ask whether science can explain away, or at least explain away in part, such features of the universe in cosmology and other sciences that may alternatively invite a theological explanation. In this paper I argue that two proposals made by cosmologists fail to explain away the universe's beginning, and that science is powerless to explain away the more fundamental question as to why there is a universe at all. I argue similarly that scientific, or quasi-scientific, proposals such as the multiverse fail to explain away the fine tuning.     

FIRST PERSON PLURAL: SELF‐UNITY AND SELF‐MULTIPLICITY IN THEOLOGY'S DIALOGUE WITH PSYCHOLOGY

In contradistinction to the contemporary human sciences, recent theological accounts of the individual‐in‐relation continue to defend the concept of the singular continuous self. Consequently, theological anthropology and the human sciences seem to offer widely divergent accounts of the sense of self‐fragmentation that many believe pervades the modern world. There has been little constructive interdisciplinary conversation in this area. In this essay I address the damaging implications of this oversight and establish the necessary conditions for future dialogue. I have three primary objectives. First, I show how the notion of personal continuity acquires philosophical theological significance through its close association with the concept of personal particularity. Second, through a discussion of contemporary accounts of self‐multiplicity, I clarify the extent of theological anthropology's disagreement with the human sciences. Third, I draw upon narrative accounts of identity to suggest an alternative means of understanding the experiential continuity of personhood that maintains the tension between self‐plurality, unity, and particularity and thereby reconnects philosophical theological concerns with human‐scientific analyses of the human condition. Narrative approaches to personhood are ideally suited to this purpose, and, I suggest, offer an intriguing solution to understanding and resolving the problem of self‐fragmentation that has caused recent theological anthropology so much consternation.     

Duhem in different contexts: Comments on Brenner and Martin

These comments consist of reflections on the papers Anastasios Brenner and R. N. D. Martin presented at the Conference on Pierre Duhem: Historian and Philosopher of Science. I argue they present nicely complementary accounts of Duhem's turn to history of science: Brenner emphasizes reasons internal to Duhem's philosophical concern with scientific methodology while Martin highlights reasons derived from the broader context of Duhem's engagement with religious controversies of his culture. I go on to suggest that seeing Duhem in this broader perspective can help us cope with the conflicts between science and religion in our own culture.     

Mandel'štam and Dante: TheDivine Comedy in Mandel'štam's poetry of the 1930s

Osip Mandel'?tam (1891–1938?) belongs among the greatest Russian poets of the twentieth century. During the thirties, when he led a tragic existence and felt a premonition of his inevitable violent death, Mandel'?tam saw in Dante not only the greatest poet, but also his own superior teacher, and his poems of that period contain a tormented meditation on the masterpiece of Dante's genius — theDivine Comedy. Epic poetry of Dante, Homer, Virgil and others was possible because the inner world of each poet was essentially at one with the ethos of the society in which he lived. Mandel'?tam's inner world was Judaeo-Christian, European, and rooted in classical and neo-Platonic philosophy, but his outer world, consisting of a new Marxist or pseudo-Marxist system, was totally at odds with it. Thus Mandel'?tam could not embody the epic impulse of the society he opposed. He was left with the tormented lyric impulse. The fundamental conflict between Mandel'?tam as a lyric poet and the society in which he had to live and work accounts for the fact that his vision of Stalinist society in a number of respects remarkably corresponds to Dante's vision of a perverted divine order in theInferno.     

Pierre Duhem's conception of natural classification

Duhem's discussion of physical theories as natural classifications is neither antithetical nor incidental to the main thrust of his philosophy of science. Contrary to what is often supposed, Duhem does not argue that theories are better thought of as economically organizing empirical laws than as providing information concerning the nature of the world. What he is primarily concerned with is the character and justification of the scientific method, not the logical status of theoretical entities. The crucial point to notice is that he took the principle of the autonomy of physics to be of paramount importance and he developed the conception of natural classification in opposition to accounts of physical theories that contravened it.I have benefited from discussions with Howard Duncan concerning Duhem's philosophy, and from Roger Ariew's and Michel Stack's criticisms of an earlier version of the paper. Also I would like to thank Ernan McMullin for his comments at the Blacksburg Conference.     

Ethics,AIDS, and community responsibility

In the discussion of the responsibilities of society to the HIV infected and uninfected, a serious question seems to have been left out of the picture: To what extent are people who are not infected, have no special relationship to the infected and have no professional responsibilities for the care of AIDS patients under an obligation to come to the aid of people with the HIV? In this paper, I shall examine our responsibilities, as members of society, for the welfare of others to whom we may or may not have a special relationship. I shall argue that those responsibilities flow from the conditions that structure our transactions with others; conditions that make such transactions possible.     

Descartes and some predecessors on the divine conservation of motion

Here I reexamine Duhem's question of the continuity between medieval dynamics and early modern conservation theories. I concentrate on the heavens. For Aristotle, the motions of the heavens are eternally constant (and thus mathematizable) because an eternally constant divine Reason is their mover. Duhem thought that impetus and conservation theories, by extending sublunar mechanics to the heavens, made a divine renewer of motion redundant. By contrast, I show how Descartes derives his law of conservation by extending Aristotelian celestial dynamics to the earth. Descartes argues that motion is intrinsically linear, not circular. But he agrees that motion is mathematically intelligible only where divine Reason moves bodies in a constant and eternal motion. Descartes strips bodies of active powers, leaving God as the only natural mover; thus both celestial and sublunar motions are constant, and uniformly mathematizable. The law of conservation of the total quantity of motion is an attempt to harmonize the constancy derived a priori with the phenomenal inconstancy of sublunar motions.I would like to thank Daniel Garber, Alison Laywine, and Ian Mueller for their comments. Since I have not seen a text of Professor Westman's remarks, either before or after he delivered them, I cannot respond to his criticisms.