Pub Date : 2020-07-20DOI: 10.4454/PHILINQ.V8I2.303
P. Barrotta
Following the philosophy of John Dewey, language is a form of technology. In this essay I will illustrate this idea through what can be called “transactional realism”: scientists do not perform the task of “copying” an existing reality, since they also transform it, and this, at least in some cases, brings about value issues into the language of science. I believe that transactional realism has significant consequences in the way public interests and values enter the subject-matter and procedures of scientific inquiry. Along with the rejection of the ideal of value-free science, transactional realism leads scientists to significantly change the perception of their work. Public interests and social values do not concern scientists only when the policy maker requests their assistance as experts, since they enter the very same ontology of science. This, as we will see, without foregoing realism.
{"title":"Pragmatism and transactional realism","authors":"P. Barrotta","doi":"10.4454/PHILINQ.V8I2.303","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4454/PHILINQ.V8I2.303","url":null,"abstract":"Following the philosophy of John Dewey, language is a form of technology. In this essay I will illustrate this idea through what can be called “transactional realism”: scientists do not perform the task of “copying” an existing reality, since they also transform it, and this, at least in some cases, brings about value issues into the language of science. I believe that transactional realism has significant consequences in the way public interests and values enter the subject-matter and procedures of scientific inquiry. Along with the rejection of the ideal of value-free science, transactional realism leads scientists to significantly change the perception of their work. Public interests and social values do not concern scientists only when the policy maker requests their assistance as experts, since they enter the very same ontology of science. This, as we will see, without foregoing realism.","PeriodicalId":41386,"journal":{"name":"Philosophical Inquiries","volume":"174 1","pages":"111-128"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2020-07-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"73528094","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-07-20DOI: 10.4454/PHILINQ.V8I2.302
R. Gronda
Scientific expertise is a most distinguishing feature of contemporary societies. There is likely not a single relevant problem affecting our communities that does not present some sort of entanglement between societal and scientific or technological components. The enormous complexity of public problems requires that all the best knowledge available be gathered and used in making decisions about which policy is preferable. Accordingly, the role of scientific experts comes to the fore, alongside the concerns that the extensive reliance on expertise may conflict with democratic principles and values. Though in recent years the problem of scientific expertise has received considerable attention from sociologists, political scientists, and communication scholars, the philosophy of scientific expertise is still a relatively inchoate field of inquiry. The present issue aims to develop some conceptual tools for analyzing and clarifying the notion of scientific expertise, as well as for understanding the role of scientific experts within the processes of democratic deliberation and the relationships between scientists, scientific experts and citizens. The four essays presented here differ in many respects, but they share a commitment to pragmatism as an approach to social epistemology and philosophy of science. Pragmatism is less a set of substantive ideas than a method for reformulating philosophical problems. The insistence on the centrality of the category of practice; the primacy of context over philosophical abstraction; the semantic function of the pragmatic maxim; the rejection of the fact-value distinction; the adoption of a transactional perspective on epistemological and ontological questions; these are the pillars of the pragmatist philosophical methodology. The Focus originates from an international workshop on the philosophy of expertise held in Pisa on November 29, 2019, with participants coming from Europe and the US. The articles selected for this Focus were originally presented at the workshop, and then further elaborated in the light of the subsequent discussion. I hope that the essays here collected may help to contribute to the ongoing debate over the notion of scientific expertise, so as to establish pragmatist philosophy of scientific expertise as a distinctive and easily recognizable line of thought.
{"title":"Focus Introduction. Pragmatism and the philosophy of expertise","authors":"R. Gronda","doi":"10.4454/PHILINQ.V8I2.302","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4454/PHILINQ.V8I2.302","url":null,"abstract":"Scientific expertise is a most distinguishing feature of contemporary societies. There is likely not a single relevant problem affecting our communities that does not present some sort of entanglement between societal and scientific or technological components. The enormous complexity of public problems requires that all the best knowledge available be gathered and used in making decisions about which policy is preferable. Accordingly, the role of scientific experts comes to the fore, alongside the concerns that the extensive reliance on expertise may conflict with democratic principles and values. Though in recent years the problem of scientific expertise has received considerable attention from sociologists, political scientists, and communication scholars, the philosophy of scientific expertise is still a relatively inchoate field of inquiry. The present issue aims to develop some conceptual tools for analyzing and clarifying the notion of scientific expertise, as well as for understanding the role of scientific experts within the processes of democratic deliberation and the relationships between scientists, scientific experts and citizens. The four essays presented here differ in many respects, but they share a commitment to pragmatism as an approach to social epistemology and philosophy of science. Pragmatism is less a set of substantive ideas than a method for reformulating philosophical problems. The insistence on the centrality of the category of practice; the primacy of context over philosophical abstraction; the semantic function of the pragmatic maxim; the rejection of the fact-value distinction; the adoption of a transactional perspective on epistemological and ontological questions; these are the pillars of the pragmatist philosophical methodology. The Focus originates from an international workshop on the philosophy of expertise held in Pisa on November 29, 2019, with participants coming from Europe and the US. The articles selected for this Focus were originally presented at the workshop, and then further elaborated in the light of the subsequent discussion. I hope that the essays here collected may help to contribute to the ongoing debate over the notion of scientific expertise, so as to establish pragmatist philosophy of scientific expertise as a distinctive and easily recognizable line of thought.","PeriodicalId":41386,"journal":{"name":"Philosophical Inquiries","volume":"19 1","pages":"109-110"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2020-07-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"87468022","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-07-20DOI: 10.4454/PHILINQ.V8I2.256
Dario Cecchini
Moral particularism, in its extreme version, is the theory that argues that there are no invariant context-independent moral reasons. It states also that moral knowledge is not constituted by principles and that these are useless or harmful in practice. In this paper, I intend to argue that this position takes context-sensitiveness of reasons too seriously and has to face many philosophical problems—mainly because its most important argument (the argument from holism of reasons) is not convincing but also because a pluralist generalist account is preferable both from metaethical and normative points of view.
{"title":"Problems for hard moral particularism: Can we really dismiss general reasons?","authors":"Dario Cecchini","doi":"10.4454/PHILINQ.V8I2.256","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4454/PHILINQ.V8I2.256","url":null,"abstract":"Moral particularism, in its extreme version, is the theory that argues that there are no invariant context-independent moral reasons. It states also that moral knowledge is not constituted by principles and that these are useless or harmful in practice. In this paper, I intend to argue that this position takes context-sensitiveness of reasons too seriously and has to face many philosophical problems—mainly because its most important argument (the argument from holism of reasons) is not convincing but also because a pluralist generalist account is preferable both from metaethical and normative points of view.","PeriodicalId":41386,"journal":{"name":"Philosophical Inquiries","volume":"14 1","pages":"31-46"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2020-07-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"84869873","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-07-20DOI: 10.4454/PHILINQ.V8I2.257
N. Piras
Boundaries are the outermost parts of objects, with a twofold function: dividing objects from their environment and allowing objects to touch each other. The task of this paper is to classify and describe the human dependent boundaries, i.e., the so-called fiat boundaries, on the basis of the seminal work by Smith and Varzi. Roughly, a fiat boundary is a marker of discontinuity between two or more objects which relies on a human function assignment, usually called ‘fiat act’. In what follow I outline the different ways in which human beings make fiat boundaries out of nature. Along the way I shall give evidence that a theory of fiat boundaries can be useful to take up as a starting point for doing metaphysics and for giving an account of the ontology of both the material and the social world. The chief goal is to shed a light on how some objects depend upon human beings: either in a deliberative or non-deliberative way; either a priori or a posteriori; by means of individual or collective act; by modal strength, namely possible and necessary boundaries.
{"title":"Fiat boundaries: how to fictionally carve nature at its joints","authors":"N. Piras","doi":"10.4454/PHILINQ.V8I2.257","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4454/PHILINQ.V8I2.257","url":null,"abstract":"Boundaries are the outermost parts of objects, with a twofold function: dividing objects from their environment and allowing objects to touch each other. The task of this paper is to classify and describe the human dependent boundaries, i.e., the so-called fiat boundaries, on the basis of the seminal work by Smith and Varzi. Roughly, a fiat boundary is a marker of discontinuity between two or more objects which relies on a human function assignment, usually called ‘fiat act’. In what follow I outline the different ways in which human beings make fiat boundaries out of nature. Along the way I shall give evidence that a theory of fiat boundaries can be useful to take up as a starting point for doing metaphysics and for giving an account of the ontology of both the material and the social world. The chief goal is to shed a light on how some objects depend upon human beings: either in a deliberative or non-deliberative way; either a priori or a posteriori; by means of individual or collective act; by modal strength, namely possible and necessary boundaries.","PeriodicalId":41386,"journal":{"name":"Philosophical Inquiries","volume":"36 1","pages":"85-106"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2020-07-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"75733135","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-07-20DOI: 10.4454/PHILINQ.V8I2.274
G. D. Biase
Feminist scholars deny that Locke attributed women a level of rationality identical to that of men; Nancy Hirschmann agrees with this claim, yet she insists that Locke did not conceive of this difference as natural but rather as artificially constructed through the sexual division of labour. This paper contends that sound evidence in Locke’s works suggests that the opposite was true: in Some Thoughts concerning Education he criticized mothers’ irrationality, and elsewhere he described women as easy prey for vehement passions, which could hardly be reconciled with rational behaviour. As a physician, Locke fully agreed with the medical literature of his time, which viewed women’s rational ability as naturally inferior to men’s because of their weak physical constitution.
{"title":"Locke on women's rationality","authors":"G. D. Biase","doi":"10.4454/PHILINQ.V8I2.274","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4454/PHILINQ.V8I2.274","url":null,"abstract":"Feminist scholars deny that Locke attributed women a level of rationality identical to that of men; Nancy Hirschmann agrees with this claim, yet she insists that Locke did not conceive of this difference as natural but rather as artificially constructed through the sexual division of labour. This paper contends that sound evidence in Locke’s works suggests that the opposite was true: in Some Thoughts concerning Education he criticized mothers’ irrationality, and elsewhere he described women as easy prey for vehement passions, which could hardly be reconciled with rational behaviour. As a physician, Locke fully agreed with the medical literature of his time, which viewed women’s rational ability as naturally inferior to men’s because of their weak physical constitution.","PeriodicalId":41386,"journal":{"name":"Philosophical Inquiries","volume":"13 1","pages":"9-30"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2020-07-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"87551204","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-07-20DOI: 10.4454/PHILINQ.V8I2.307
M. Filoni
{"title":"“Man is action, not being” Hegel contra Heidegger in an unpublished essay by Kojève","authors":"M. Filoni","doi":"10.4454/PHILINQ.V8I2.307","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4454/PHILINQ.V8I2.307","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":41386,"journal":{"name":"Philosophical Inquiries","volume":"50 1","pages":"203-208"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2020-07-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"81457067","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-07-20DOI: 10.4454/PHILINQ.V8I2.305
Mathias Girel
A common objection to a pragmatist perspective on scientific expertise is that, while there is a well-known pragmatist theory of inquiry, which was formulated first by Peirce, then refined by Dewey and others, this theory cannot provide a clear-cut account of scientific expertise. In this paper, after addressing this objection in the second section, I claim that, on the contrary, pragmatism offers robust tools to think scientific expertise. In Sections 3 to 7, I present five important insights that one can derive from a pragmatist epistemology when responding to contemporary problems posed by expertise: about science and scientific expertise in a legal context (sections 3 and 4), about collective expertise (sections 5 and 6), and even about expertise on ignorance (section 7).
{"title":"Five pragmatist insights on scientific expertise","authors":"Mathias Girel","doi":"10.4454/PHILINQ.V8I2.305","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4454/PHILINQ.V8I2.305","url":null,"abstract":"A common objection to a pragmatist perspective on scientific expertise is that, while there is a well-known pragmatist theory of inquiry, which was formulated first by Peirce, then refined by Dewey and others, this theory cannot provide a clear-cut account of scientific expertise. In this paper, after addressing this objection in the second section, I claim that, on the contrary, pragmatism offers robust tools to think scientific expertise. In Sections 3 to 7, I present five important insights that one can derive from a pragmatist epistemology when responding to contemporary problems posed by expertise: about science and scientific expertise in a legal context (sections 3 and 4), about collective expertise (sections 5 and 6), and even about expertise on ignorance (section 7).","PeriodicalId":41386,"journal":{"name":"Philosophical Inquiries","volume":"9 1","pages":"151-176"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2020-07-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"89601376","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-07-01DOI: 10.4454/PHILINQ.V8I2.306
Antje Gimmler
Expertise is much contested in modern democracies. In this article I shall investigate whether Dewey’s understanding of science and expertise provides us with some answers about the interplay between science, the public and society. Decisive for Dewey’s vision of the relation of democracy and science is that epistemic qualities and what he calls “organized intelligence” should contribute to find the best solutions for human wellbeing and growth. Science and expertise that can live up to this purpose are relevant from a pragmatic viewpoint. I shall suggest a reading of Peirce’s pragmatic maxim as a test for relevance that can be used to conceptualize a pragmatic version of science and expertise in the public interest.
{"title":"Expertise that matters. On Dewey’s understanding of relevant science","authors":"Antje Gimmler","doi":"10.4454/PHILINQ.V8I2.306","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4454/PHILINQ.V8I2.306","url":null,"abstract":"Expertise is much contested in modern democracies. In this article I shall investigate whether Dewey’s understanding of science and expertise provides us with some answers about the interplay between science, the public and society. Decisive for Dewey’s vision of the relation of democracy and science is that epistemic qualities and what he calls “organized intelligence” should contribute to find the best solutions for human wellbeing and growth. Science and expertise that can live up to this purpose are relevant from a pragmatic viewpoint. I shall suggest a reading of Peirce’s pragmatic maxim as a test for relevance that can be used to conceptualize a pragmatic version of science and expertise in the public interest.","PeriodicalId":41386,"journal":{"name":"Philosophical Inquiries","volume":"1 1","pages":"177-200"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2020-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"89902202","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-03-31DOI: 10.4454/PHILINQ.V8I1.287
G. Tassinari
{"title":"Florence Burgat, Être le bien d’un autre","authors":"G. Tassinari","doi":"10.4454/PHILINQ.V8I1.287","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4454/PHILINQ.V8I1.287","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":41386,"journal":{"name":"Philosophical Inquiries","volume":"68 1","pages":"12-17"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2020-03-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"74515090","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-03-31DOI: 10.4454/PHILINQ.V8I1.275
A. Borghini, L. Azzano
This focus of Philosophical Inquiries is devoted to Barbara Vetter’s Potentiality: From Dispositions to Modality (Oxford University Press, 2015). In her book, Vetter offers an account of (certain) modalities in terms of the dispositions of certain entities; examples of these dispositions are a glass’ fragility, or a rubber band’s elasticity. More specifically, Vetter’s account aims to explain metaphysical possibility and necessity in terms of a generalized notion of dispositionality. She refers to such notion as potentiality.
{"title":"Essays on Barbara Vetter’s Potentiality: Introduction","authors":"A. Borghini, L. Azzano","doi":"10.4454/PHILINQ.V8I1.275","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4454/PHILINQ.V8I1.275","url":null,"abstract":"This focus of Philosophical Inquiries is devoted to Barbara Vetter’s Potentiality: From Dispositions to Modality (Oxford University Press, 2015). In her book, Vetter offers an account of (certain) modalities in terms of the dispositions of certain entities; examples of these dispositions are a glass’ fragility, or a rubber band’s elasticity. More specifically, Vetter’s account aims to explain metaphysical possibility and necessity in terms of a generalized notion of dispositionality. She refers to such notion as potentiality.","PeriodicalId":41386,"journal":{"name":"Philosophical Inquiries","volume":"12 1","pages":"71-82"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2020-03-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"85175927","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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