Pub Date : 2022-04-30DOI: 10.1177/00483931221096388
Nimrod Bar‐Am, J. Shearmur
{"title":"Joseph Agassi’s Contribution to Philosophy","authors":"Nimrod Bar‐Am, J. Shearmur","doi":"10.1177/00483931221096388","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00483931221096388","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":46776,"journal":{"name":"Philosophy of the Social Sciences","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2022-04-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42249453","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-04-13DOI: 10.1177/00483931221090381
{"title":"CORRIGENDUM to Mathematical Models and Robustness Analysis in Epistemic Democracy: A Systematic Review of Diversity Trumps Ability Theorem Models","authors":"","doi":"10.1177/00483931221090381","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00483931221090381","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":46776,"journal":{"name":"Philosophy of the Social Sciences","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2022-04-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42988330","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-04-06DOI: 10.1177/00483931221081068
William T. Lynch
My argument inMinority Report: Dissent and Diversity in Science is that Imre Lakatos and Paul Feyerabend reconciled historicist and normative philosophy of science in ways that suggest a productive path forward for Science and Technology Studies (STS) and history and philosophy of science today. Though their influence on philosophy of science is generally considered significant, their approaches have been curiously neglected and misunderstood. Key to understanding their philosophies is to appreciate their shared, conscious adoption of a dialectical approach to science (Hacking 1981; Larvor 1998; Kadvany 2001). Their shared dialectical approach put change over time as central and focused on the production and transformation of theories and research programs, rather than an alleged correspondence between theories and the world, something that was simply a non-starter in the context of their post-Kantian Central European cultural inheritance. By contrast, we tend to remember Lakatos as a rearguard defender of reason against an emerging sociological approach and Feyerabend as a relativist who famously rejected any rules for science.
{"title":"Dissent and Diversity in Science and Technology Studies: Reply to Fuller, Kasavin and Shipovalova, and Turner","authors":"William T. Lynch","doi":"10.1177/00483931221081068","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00483931221081068","url":null,"abstract":"My argument inMinority Report: Dissent and Diversity in Science is that Imre Lakatos and Paul Feyerabend reconciled historicist and normative philosophy of science in ways that suggest a productive path forward for Science and Technology Studies (STS) and history and philosophy of science today. Though their influence on philosophy of science is generally considered significant, their approaches have been curiously neglected and misunderstood. Key to understanding their philosophies is to appreciate their shared, conscious adoption of a dialectical approach to science (Hacking 1981; Larvor 1998; Kadvany 2001). Their shared dialectical approach put change over time as central and focused on the production and transformation of theories and research programs, rather than an alleged correspondence between theories and the world, something that was simply a non-starter in the context of their post-Kantian Central European cultural inheritance. By contrast, we tend to remember Lakatos as a rearguard defender of reason against an emerging sociological approach and Feyerabend as a relativist who famously rejected any rules for science.","PeriodicalId":46776,"journal":{"name":"Philosophy of the Social Sciences","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2022-04-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48391939","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-03-30DOI: 10.1177/00483931211072470
M. Hammersley
An influential strand within Science and Technology Studies (STS) rejects the idea that science produces representations referring to objects or processes that exist independently of it. This radical ‘turn’ has been framed as ‘constructionist’, ‘nominalist’, and more recently as ‘ontological’. Its central argument is that science constructs or enacts rather than represents. Since most practitioners of science believe that it involves representation, an implication of the radical turn must be that ‘representation’ is a folk concept; perhaps even a myth or an ideology. This paper explores this anti-representationalism and its implications for the relationship between STS and mainstream social science, in part through drawing parallels with ethnomethodology. 1
{"title":"Is ‘Representation’ a Folk Term? Some Thoughts on a Theme in Science Studies","authors":"M. Hammersley","doi":"10.1177/00483931211072470","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00483931211072470","url":null,"abstract":"An influential strand within Science and Technology Studies (STS) rejects the idea that science produces representations referring to objects or processes that exist independently of it. This radical ‘turn’ has been framed as ‘constructionist’, ‘nominalist’, and more recently as ‘ontological’. Its central argument is that science constructs or enacts rather than represents. Since most practitioners of science believe that it involves representation, an implication of the radical turn must be that ‘representation’ is a folk concept; perhaps even a myth or an ideology. This paper explores this anti-representationalism and its implications for the relationship between STS and mainstream social science, in part through drawing parallels with ethnomethodology. 1","PeriodicalId":46776,"journal":{"name":"Philosophy of the Social Sciences","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2022-03-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"65134200","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-03-27DOI: 10.1177/00483931221081018
S. Fuller
William Lynch’s Minority Report is the most comprehensive and fair-minded attempt to give epistemic dissent its due in science that has appeared in recent times. Nevertheless, it remains too beholden to the scientific establishment as its epistemic benchmark. The sophistication of Lynch’s argument lies in the trading of counterfactual intuitions about whether suppressed dissenters would scientifically flourish even given an appropriate level of exposure. Here, he attempts to strike a balance between Lakatos’ instinctive conservatism and Feyerabend’s instinctive radicalism. I argue that Lynch needs to turn the dial more toward Feyerabend, in that science is more authoritarian than he thinks and restricts more than it should. However, the value of Lynch’s book lies in demonstrating that calls for increased openness now (i.e., allowing more dissent) are related to its closure to alternatives in the past. In short, if science is authoritarian now, then it has been so before – and the question is for a how long and to what extent.
{"title":"The Social Epistemology of Scientific Dissent: Responding to William Lynch’s Minority Report","authors":"S. Fuller","doi":"10.1177/00483931221081018","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00483931221081018","url":null,"abstract":"William Lynch’s Minority Report is the most comprehensive and fair-minded attempt to give epistemic dissent its due in science that has appeared in recent times. Nevertheless, it remains too beholden to the scientific establishment as its epistemic benchmark. The sophistication of Lynch’s argument lies in the trading of counterfactual intuitions about whether suppressed dissenters would scientifically flourish even given an appropriate level of exposure. Here, he attempts to strike a balance between Lakatos’ instinctive conservatism and Feyerabend’s instinctive radicalism. I argue that Lynch needs to turn the dial more toward Feyerabend, in that science is more authoritarian than he thinks and restricts more than it should. However, the value of Lynch’s book lies in demonstrating that calls for increased openness now (i.e., allowing more dissent) are related to its closure to alternatives in the past. In short, if science is authoritarian now, then it has been so before – and the question is for a how long and to what extent.","PeriodicalId":46776,"journal":{"name":"Philosophy of the Social Sciences","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2022-03-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47947252","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-03-12DOI: 10.1177/00483931221081020
I. Kasavin, L. Shipovalova
Disputes in the field of science and technology studies (STS) demonstrate its topicality as they elucidate the prospects for a postmodern world, and William Lynch in his book, in search of a constructive solution to current controversies, employs the dialectical approach of Lakatos and Feyerabend. Lynch takes a bold step to present an apparently “degenerated scientific research program” as a competitive alternative to the established and “progressive” mainstream. The book offers not only a theoretical justification for this “minority report,” but also its empirical confirmation, as well as the possibility of practical and socio-political application. We believe that Lynch’s book actualizes the discussion about the nature of sociality as related to scientific cognition, as well as provokes the question of the possibility of specific ontology of scientific knowledge. However, the internal heterogeneity of the sociology of scientific knowledge seems to be slightly underestimated, which sometimes prevents Lynch recognizing his real allies and opponents in modern STS. Lynch’s approach to analyzing scientific alternatives to dominant paradigms and to science communication practices helps problematize current controversies through demonstrating their incommensurability not incomparability. Hopefully this will increase their mutual understanding and collaboration.
{"title":"Proliferation Update. Testing the Science and Technology Studies Mainstream Through Current Science’s Controversies","authors":"I. Kasavin, L. Shipovalova","doi":"10.1177/00483931221081020","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00483931221081020","url":null,"abstract":"Disputes in the field of science and technology studies (STS) demonstrate its topicality as they elucidate the prospects for a postmodern world, and William Lynch in his book, in search of a constructive solution to current controversies, employs the dialectical approach of Lakatos and Feyerabend. Lynch takes a bold step to present an apparently “degenerated scientific research program” as a competitive alternative to the established and “progressive” mainstream. The book offers not only a theoretical justification for this “minority report,” but also its empirical confirmation, as well as the possibility of practical and socio-political application. We believe that Lynch’s book actualizes the discussion about the nature of sociality as related to scientific cognition, as well as provokes the question of the possibility of specific ontology of scientific knowledge. However, the internal heterogeneity of the sociology of scientific knowledge seems to be slightly underestimated, which sometimes prevents Lynch recognizing his real allies and opponents in modern STS. Lynch’s approach to analyzing scientific alternatives to dominant paradigms and to science communication practices helps problematize current controversies through demonstrating their incommensurability not incomparability. Hopefully this will increase their mutual understanding and collaboration.","PeriodicalId":46776,"journal":{"name":"Philosophy of the Social Sciences","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2022-03-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42645899","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-03-11DOI: 10.1177/00483931221081066
S. Turner
This is a commentary on William Lynch’s Minority Report, which is a synthesis of the last 75 years of STS writings with philosophical themes from Lakatos, Feyerabend, and others. The comment questions the continued relevance of older ideas of scientific opinion which rested on the supposed autonomy of scientists in the face of the present grant system and the bureaucracy of peer review. The magnitude of the funding of science, and its apparent biases, call the whole of the inherited view of science into question.
{"title":"Science without the Romance","authors":"S. Turner","doi":"10.1177/00483931221081066","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00483931221081066","url":null,"abstract":"This is a commentary on William Lynch’s Minority Report, which is a synthesis of the last 75 years of STS writings with philosophical themes from Lakatos, Feyerabend, and others. The comment questions the continued relevance of older ideas of scientific opinion which rested on the supposed autonomy of scientists in the face of the present grant system and the bureaucracy of peer review. The magnitude of the funding of science, and its apparent biases, call the whole of the inherited view of science into question.","PeriodicalId":46776,"journal":{"name":"Philosophy of the Social Sciences","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2022-03-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49413077","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-03-01DOI: 10.1177/00483931211070772
J. Ahlskog
This article offers a reassessment of the main import of Peter Winch’s philosophy of the social sciences. Critics argue that Winch presented a flawed methodology for the social sciences, while his supporters deny that Winch’s work is about methodology at all. Contrary to both, the author argues that Winch deals with fundamental questions about methodology, and that there is something substantial to learn from his account. Winch engages methodological questions without being committed to social ontology. Instead, Winch’s work on methodology is best described as a descriptive metaphysics of social inquiry. This alternative reading clarifies the close link between Winch’s argument for the autonomy of the social sciences and R. G. Collingwood’s philosophy of history.
{"title":"Peter Winch and the Autonomy of the Social Sciences","authors":"J. Ahlskog","doi":"10.1177/00483931211070772","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00483931211070772","url":null,"abstract":"This article offers a reassessment of the main import of Peter Winch’s philosophy of the social sciences. Critics argue that Winch presented a flawed methodology for the social sciences, while his supporters deny that Winch’s work is about methodology at all. Contrary to both, the author argues that Winch deals with fundamental questions about methodology, and that there is something substantial to learn from his account. Winch engages methodological questions without being committed to social ontology. Instead, Winch’s work on methodology is best described as a descriptive metaphysics of social inquiry. This alternative reading clarifies the close link between Winch’s argument for the autonomy of the social sciences and R. G. Collingwood’s philosophy of history.","PeriodicalId":46776,"journal":{"name":"Philosophy of the Social Sciences","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2022-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41335281","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-02-24DOI: 10.1177/00483931221081001
D. Galbraith
Charles Pigden’s 1995 article “Popper Revisited, or What is Wrong with Conspiracy Theories?” stimulated what is today a fertile sub-field of philosophical enquiry into conspiracy theories. In his article, Pigden identifies Karl Popper as the originator of the philosophical argument that it is naïve to believe in any conspiracy theory. But Popper was not criticizing belief in conspiracy theories at all, as Pigden defined them or as they have usually come to be understood since about the 1960s. Pigden has therefore fundamentally and anachronistically misinterpreted Popper. The object of Popper’s criticism was, rather, the inadequate approach to social science that is limited to the discovery of human intentions, including conspiracies, in particular the will of Great Men. Popper’s critique of the conspiracy theory of society was correct and should be rehabilitated. Pigden is correct only insofar as he concludes that we should not dismiss conspiracy theories without critical evaluation, a proposition with which Popper would likely have wholeheartedly agreed.
{"title":"Pigden Revisited, or In Defence of Popper’s Critique of the Conspiracy Theory of Society","authors":"D. Galbraith","doi":"10.1177/00483931221081001","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00483931221081001","url":null,"abstract":"Charles Pigden’s 1995 article “Popper Revisited, or What is Wrong with Conspiracy Theories?” stimulated what is today a fertile sub-field of philosophical enquiry into conspiracy theories. In his article, Pigden identifies Karl Popper as the originator of the philosophical argument that it is naïve to believe in any conspiracy theory. But Popper was not criticizing belief in conspiracy theories at all, as Pigden defined them or as they have usually come to be understood since about the 1960s. Pigden has therefore fundamentally and anachronistically misinterpreted Popper. The object of Popper’s criticism was, rather, the inadequate approach to social science that is limited to the discovery of human intentions, including conspiracies, in particular the will of Great Men. Popper’s critique of the conspiracy theory of society was correct and should be rehabilitated. Pigden is correct only insofar as he concludes that we should not dismiss conspiracy theories without critical evaluation, a proposition with which Popper would likely have wholeheartedly agreed.","PeriodicalId":46776,"journal":{"name":"Philosophy of the Social Sciences","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2022-02-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43969702","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-02-15DOI: 10.1177/00483931221074294
Francesco Di Iorio
According to Searle’s theory of collective intentionality, the fundamental structure of any society can be accounted for in terms of cooperative mechanisms that create deontic relations. This paper criticizes Searle’s standpoint on the ground that, while his social ontology can make sense of simple systems of interaction like symphony orchestras and football teams, the whole coordinative structure of the modern market society cannot be explained solely in terms of we-intentional collaboration and deontic relations. As clarified by Hayek, because of its complexity, this society is a self-organizing system. It results not only from micro-level agreed constraints, but also from an unintended cybernetic mechanism that affects and shapes both its micro and macro dynamics via a circular causality. Searle ignores the coordination problem posed by complexity and provides strawman arguments against the theory of action underpinning the invisible hand explanation of social phenomena.
{"title":"The Structure of Complexity and the Limits of Collective Intentionality","authors":"Francesco Di Iorio","doi":"10.1177/00483931221074294","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00483931221074294","url":null,"abstract":"According to Searle’s theory of collective intentionality, the fundamental structure of any society can be accounted for in terms of cooperative mechanisms that create deontic relations. This paper criticizes Searle’s standpoint on the ground that, while his social ontology can make sense of simple systems of interaction like symphony orchestras and football teams, the whole coordinative structure of the modern market society cannot be explained solely in terms of we-intentional collaboration and deontic relations. As clarified by Hayek, because of its complexity, this society is a self-organizing system. It results not only from micro-level agreed constraints, but also from an unintended cybernetic mechanism that affects and shapes both its micro and macro dynamics via a circular causality. Searle ignores the coordination problem posed by complexity and provides strawman arguments against the theory of action underpinning the invisible hand explanation of social phenomena.","PeriodicalId":46776,"journal":{"name":"Philosophy of the Social Sciences","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2022-02-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46595507","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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