New APPS: Art, Politics, Philosophy, Science

A Capella Science explains string theory via Bohemian Rhapsody

The State of Nature and Emendation in Seneca (and Spinoza, and Adam Smith)

No man has ever been so advanced by Fortune that she not threaten him as greatly as she had previously indulged him. Do not trust her seeming calm; in a moment the sea is moved to its depths.—Seneca, Letter 4. 

In context, Seneca’s acceptance of epistemic uncertainty (or here) is as much about natural events (the sea) as political events—in the previous line we’re reminded of the fates of Pompey, Crassus, and Lepidus. Political mastery does not guarantee immunity against a violent end. Seneca is not blind to the probable destination of his political fall. More important, the violent underpinning of Roman political institutions means that nobody is truly master [dominus] in their “own homes” [domesticis]: “just as many have been killed by angry slaves as by angry kings.” Somebody that “scorns his own life” [vitam suam contemptsit] will not be afraid to die, in order to kill. Seneca offers a veritable picture of a state of nature under the rule of law: “every one possesses the power which you fear.”*

One might think that Seneca is anticipating Spinoza: the state of nature is never fully absent in civil society. But Seneca’s position here is compatible with a more optimistic possibility: if one can remove the sources of anger and scorn of self, one might have a more secure and, perhaps, even less uncertain environment. One may not be able to calms the sea, but the ship of state might be made more even-keeled. It is an open question if Seneca’s proposed emendation of minds [emendato animo] is strictly limited to a kind of enjoyable [freuris] self-help (recall), or (if we cheating-ly glace ahead toward Letter 7) also by way of improved state institutions and social norms.   

Speaking of Hoaxes

This is funny. [HT Steffen Ducheyne on FB]

A footnote to the Sokal Hoax

Let's stipulate that there is genuine bullshit (see Frankfurt 1986). Let's also stipulate there is bullshit in the Humanities, even in philosophy.

A lot of people I know in philosophy are pretty confident that much of what passes in Literary Theory and the philosophies that influence(d) it is bullshit. I have seen testimony people that ardently defend this view who have studied quite a bit of, say, Continental philosophy and reached this conclusion. (Of course, in reality, a lot more folk are dismissive on the basis of extremely slender personal, intellectual investment.)  When pressed for evidence, the Sokal Hoax is trotted out as exhibit A. It made a great splash inside the academy and the popular media that covers it. Rather than interpreting the case as an instance of bad refereeing, editorial misjudgment, whole areas of thought got written off by quite a few people.

I just learned that a paper was retracted from Journal of Physics D: Applied Physics--a very fine physics journal published by a reputable institute. It frankly reports, "The Editorial Board has investigated this and found that the XPS spectra shown in figure 3 all exhibit an identical noise pattern that is unphysical." [HT Retractionwatch] In other words, the journal published artfully presented bullshit. (It recently announced that it "is now using ScholarOne Manuscripts for submission and peer-review management.") Undoubtedly, this incident is unpleasant for all the parties involved, but nobody in their right mind will draw any inferences about physics from it.

The moral: very good journals can publish bullshit, and the refereeing institutions of all disciplines need constant maintenance.

I would cry "shame!" if I thought it would do any good

Death of an adjunct:

Meanwhile, I called Adult Protective Services right after talking to Margaret Mary, and I explained the situation. I said that she had just been let go from her job as a professor at Duquesne, that she was given no severance or retirement benefits, and that the reason she was having trouble taking care of herself was because she was living in extreme poverty. The caseworker paused and asked with incredulity, "She was a professor?" I said yes. The case- worker was shocked; this was not the usual type of person for whom she was called in to help.

Of course, what the case-worker didn't understand was that Margaret Mary was an adjunct professor, meaning that, unlike a well-paid tenured professor, Margaret Mary worked on a contract basis from semester to semester, with no job security, no benefits and with a salary of between $3,000 and just over $3,500 per three-credit course....

The transformative power of social media?

Last week, Neil Sinhababu had a great post here at New APPS picking up on an attempted explanation for why members of the so-called Generation Y seem so dissatisfied with their lives (if indeed they are). This latter post has been receiving a fair share of attention at the usual places (Facebook, Twitter), and though admittedly funny, it seems to suffer precisely from the limitation pointed out by Neil; it treats the problem mostly as a psychological problem pertaining to the individual sphere (including of course the parents component, as any good Freudian would have it), thus disregarding the significant economic changes that took place in recent decades. However, I do want to disagree with Neil’s quick dismissal of the non-negligible role that the article claims for new technologies such as Facebook and social media in general in the phenomenon. Neil says: 

And I'm suspicious of explanations in terms of the special properties of social media -- mostly it gives you a new way to do kinds of social interaction that have been around forever.

Grand Unified Theory of Pixar (condensed)

Anyone whose watched all these movies with their children will find Jon Negroni's Grand Unified Theory of Pixar (HERE) well worth reading. Negroni shows how all of the Pixar movies describe different points of history in a pretty horrifyingly dystopian world (which may in fact be identical with our own).

I hate to manifest my inner Simpsons Comic Books guy by noting this, but. . . Readers of the early days of this blog will realize that I beat Negroni to the punch by two years, when I established that the Cars universe was the result of a successful genocide against humans [HERE]. Negroni misses some of the important anthropological details I adduce that would make his case stronger, but does manage to update (without citation) my theory by noting that the Acadian Catastrophe/Trail of Tears/Armenian Genocide type genocide by removal (Negroni doesn't call it this) led to the few survivors being the people on the spaceship in Wall E. This connection to the Wall E movie is Negroni's only advance over my theory, but humility forces me to admit that it is a substantial one.

Anyhow, it's good stuff; Joe Bob says check it out.

On Refereeing a book ms.

[Rachel McKinnon solicited this post from me. She should be blamed for any insights.--ES]

Refereeing a book manuscript for a university press can be a daunting enterprise. If you don't watch out, it can be very time-consuming (some of us should be kept off the streets--you know who you are). Crucially, the norms that apply are not entirely clear. For example, if you find an invalid argument on p. 275, it might, after all, be worth repairing given all the other riches. But what if you find lots of problems (lack of citations, garden path arguments, etc), yet judge that the book will make a major contribution? Now, book-refereeing is rarely masked--referees nearly always know the identity of the author. Is there something to be gained to see the -- let's stipulate, dead-wrong -- views of, say, an influential PhD supervisor in print, rather than propogated in the works of the students?

More subtly, the interests of presses and the discipline do not coincide. Here's a concrete example: whatever you think of the substance of Nagel's Mind and Cosmos, it is undeniable that it could have benefitted from more exacting refereeing. Leaving aside his engagement with the (philosophy of) sciences, it is undeniable that  if Nagel had engaged with more recent analytic metaphysics he could have given a far better and more favorable account of the nature of the problem-space.  But, of course, if it had been seriously revised in light of serious refereeing it would have been almost certainly less readable and, perhaps, less controversial; it might also not have read anymore as Nagel's last will to the profession.

Here follow some de-feasible considerations that might inform book refereeing:

1. [A] Your main job as a referee is to help an editor -- almost never a professional philosopher -- figure out the significance of the book and anticipate how people in the field might respond to it. [Bl Your duty to the profession is to uphold scholarly standards (quality, citation practices, etc.).

PHILOSOPHER'S CARNIVAL #155

is HERE.

[For the homepage of the carnival, with partially completed archives as well as instructions about how to submit pages and be a host go HERE.]

"I'm a professor." "Oh, you mean you're a content provider to the knowledge industry."

We know that when we publish with commercial presses (and we should include most university presses here, IMO) we are content providers in the knowledge industry. Let's follow the trail with a simple example. 

1) Routledge prices their Philosophy of Race collection at $1185. 
2) Routledge is part of Taylor & Francis. 
3) Taylor & Francis is owned by Informa, "one of the world’s leading knowledge providers. We create and deliver highly specialised information through publishing, events, training, market intelligence and expertise, providing valuable knowledge to individuals, businesses and organisations around the world." BTW, should you wish to invest in Informa, here's their current stock price.

All that by way of saying I really need to read this book.

Recycling Sexist Stereotypes in Philosophy of Science.

These are all general merits of the book, which make it refreshing, stimulating, and well worth the reading time of Joe the Philosopher of Science (not to mention Joe the Doctor). In addition, the prose is clear and lively.--Alex Broadbent, Philosophy of Science, Vol. 80, No. 1 (January 2013), pp. 165-6.

I am all for clear and lively prose, especially in reviews. But  "Joe the Philosopher of Science" and "Joe the Doctor" is inappropriate language for a professional review in a leading journal. It recycles stereotypes (cf. stereotype  threat) without any philosophical benefit, or economy of prose.

Moreover, 'Joe the doctor' is also a terrible statistical generalization. In the US women were 47.0% of all first year medical school students in 2010-2011 and women are 45.4% of all residents/fellows. In Britain: women doctors will outnumber men by 2017. Finally, there is a very a good chance that when Prof. Broadbent needs medical care in South Africa his physician will be female. My unsolicited advise, don't call her "Joe," Prof.[*]

 

[*] My wife is a surgeon, so maybe I am not impartial observer here.  

Another ranking of journals

With interesting results. (It will give cheer to the logicians.) It's based on the so-called SJR indicator. [HT: Jean-Yves Beziau, who is the Editor-in-Chief at Logica Universalis]

Popper, Middlemarch and falsifiability

Victor Gijsbers has a nice analysis of this passage:

Doubtless a vigorous error vigorously pursued has kept the embryos of truth a-breathing: the quest of gold being at the same time a questioning of substances, the body of chemistry is prepared for its soul, and Lavoisier is born. But Mr. Casaubon's theory of the elements which made the seed of all tradition was not likely to bruise itself unawares against discoveries: it floated among flexible conjectures no more solid than those etymologies which seemed strong because of likeness in sound until it was shown that likeness in sound made them impossible: it was a method of interpretation which was not tested by the necessity of forming anything which had sharper collisions than an elaborate notion of Gog and Magog: it was as free from interruption as a plan for threading the stars together.

Philosopher defends philosophy funding by calling politician "dog-whistler"

Philosopher Paul Redding responds to pre-election public ridicule from an Austrialian politician. I quote the two concluding paragraphs of his piece first:

We sought ways around the gridlock of current debates over the role of religion in public life by examining the way an early 18th century philosopher and theologian had responded to similar circumstances by refashioning the concept of God to accommodate modern ways of thought. The Australian Research Council’s panel of experts, acting on the advice of independent specialist assessors, deemed it worth pursuing. On the basis of its title alone, however, Briggs deems it “ridiculous”.

On Representative Agents and Friendship (Seneca, Letter 3)

"Some men shrink into dark corners, to such a degree that they see darkly by day."--Pomponius, quoted by Seneca, Letter 3.

Our personality shapes, as Pomponius's maxim suggests, how we view the world. This is why any interpretation of a layered text often reveals as much about the interpreter as it does about the text. In the third letter, in the context of discussing a discussing true friendships [verae amicitiae], Seneca discusses three kinds of human types: (i) the gullible, (ii) the suspicious, and (iii) those that trust after a considered judgment (if this were a Platonic dialogue, we'd be looking for a fourth.)

Seneca does not explain much how good judgment is attained. He does exhibit a feature of it in the start of the letter:

You have sent a letter to me through the hand of a "friend" of yours, as you call him.  And in your very next sentence you warn me not to discuss with him all the matters that concern you, saying that even you yourself are not accustomed to do this; in oother words, you have in the same letter affirmed and denied that he is your friend. Now if you used this word of ours/a in the public [publico] sense, and called him "friend" in the same way in which we speak of all candidates for election as "honourable gentlemen,"...

Thus, a discerning judge pays attention to (a) the match between words and actions, and (b) does so by relying on (some) logic. More subtly, such a judge is aware that (c) the meaning of words is very context sensitive; in particular, (d) Seneca relies on a distinction between public the and private speech.* As we have seen, public speech is encountered in the market-place and politics, both the realm of uncertain uncertain and fickle popular opinion. One can have thousands of Facebook friends, but one's popularity need not imply credibility (and not all followers are steadfast).

Peter Ludlow Speaks Truth to Power in the NYT

Just as Hannah Arendt saw that the combined action of loyal managers can give rise to unspeakable systemic evil, so too generation W has seen that complicity within the surveillance state can give rise to evil as well — not the horrific evil that Eichmann’s bureaucratic efficiency brought us, but still an Orwellian future that must be avoided at all costs.--Peter Ludlow, "The Banality of Systematic Evil" in the NYT's The Stone.

The APA responds to Penn State's discriminatory violations of privacy rights

TO: David Gray, Senior Vice President for Finance and Busines

Susan Basso, Vice President for Human Resources

Penn State University, University Park, Pennsylvania

Dear Mr. Gray and Ms. Basso: 

According to an article in the 10 September Centre Daily Times and the 15 September New York Times, a health risk assessment questionnaire that is part of Penn State’s new employee wellness program asks women employees whether they plan to get pregnant in the next year. If the employee refuses to disclose this she is penalized $100 for every month she fails to yield up the information.

By requiring women employees to disclose information about their sex lives, Penn State violates their privacy rights and likely violates their rights under federal law (Title VII and The Pregnancy Discrimination Act, Title IX, privacy law, and equal protection). Highmark, Penn State’s health care provider, targets women employees by imposing on them a special burden of disclosure about their sexual intent. Are male employees required to disclose their intended sexual activity over the year? To avoid paying a fine, is a woman employee forced to lie? And if she has no plans but becomes pregnant accidentally, does that increase her insurance premiums?

Lehrer interviewed.

New blog, Aesthetics for Birds, has a nice interview with Keith Lehrer, although I would have liked to see a bit more critical engagement on the very notion of 'experience' that Lehrer relies on throughout the discussion (e.g, "The experience fills in the meaning of my words, I hope, adding something beyond linguistic meaning.").

We're either all imposters now, or none are...

Crookedtimber has a very good piece on a recent draft article by Anca Gheaus. I quote a sample:

One of her observations (true in my experience) is feeling like an imposters is often underlain by the assumption (which, if you reflected on it in the light of the evidence you would find ludicrous) that the pre-tokenistic method of selecting participants is purely meritocratic.

starring NATHAN WIND as COCHESE

Paul Gottfried has some interesting things to say about how one should approach Straussians at the American Conservative HERE.

One should probably always take it with a grain of salt when someone's complaint is partly based on the fact that their own work is not cited, but Gottfried's description of his own book is pretty interesting. After citing the common critiques that Straussian's read canonical texts in "utterly arbitrary" ways and that they function as a cult that only read and discuss one another and approved books, Gottfried writes of his own book:

Sider on thinking the limits of the Linguistic Turn.

The reader may have a sense that we have gone off  the rails. To be honest, I share that sense. The claim that the category of sentence carves at the joints, for example...strains to the breaking-point my intuitive grip on the notion of joint carving...[I]t's evident from examples that there just is a metaphysically significant notion of saturation. I invite the skeptical reader not to simply dismiss the issue, but rather to join my struggle to make sense of this notion, and perhaps come up with something better. T.Sider, Writing the Book of the World (257) [emphasis in original--ES.]

An uncharitable -- not to be confused with the "skeptical" -- reader might interpret the passage above as a rhetorical way to dismiss an important worry (recall my earlier post). But this would miss what is at stake here;  Sider here recognizes (to speak pompously) the crucial, world-historical significance of his project, which madly pursues the 'linguistic turn' to its near-breaking point within analytical metaphysics. For, with 'saturation' Sider makes clear how his knee-jerk realism and his embrace of the method of final (or fundamental) language come together: the world consists of joints and these correspond to "a linguistic category: that of the complete sentence in a fundamental language. In a fundamental language, a language in which the category of sentence carves at the joints, sentences are always "metaphysically complete"--saturated." (254)

Now, this is not the place to offer Sider's ingenuous and persuasive argument for his idea that "there's something metaphysically distinctive...abut all parameters being filled. When all parameters are filled, we can call the result a [metaphysical] fact." (252). Let's accept that a fully regimented fundamental language contains a primitive operator that attaches to a dummy sentence-variable. We have here a way of thinking about submission to fact (recall and here) that is internally satisfying (and consistent). To put Sider's insight more informally, but it in the spirit of Sider, "when God created the world" she needed sentences to write the book of the world.

Sider's picture comes attractively close to offering a metaphysical bedrock that dispenses with the Principle of Sufficient Reason (and, thus, exorcise the ghost of Bradley's infinite regress that has haunted analytical philosophy since inception).

I got yer "perpetual peace" right here, buddy!*

MOSCOW – An argument in southern Russia over philosopher Immanuel Kant, the author of “Critique of Pure Reason,” devolved into pure mayhem when one debater shot the other.

The state news agency RIA Novosti on Monday cited police in the city of Rostov-on-Don as saying the argument took place in a small store and deteriorated into a fistfight. One participant pulled out a small nonlethal pistol and fired repeatedly.

The victim was hospitalized with injuries that were not life-threatening. The weapon fired plastic bullets or blanks. Neither person was identified. It was not clear which of Kant’s ideas may have triggered the violence.

How to become Canonical

Why write at all if one respects the authority of canonical texts?

Our reading habits reveal our minds; reciprocally, the way and what we read can also shape, even nourish our minds. The words we read are not merely, as the saying goes, food for thought (and sometimes, thus, the semblance of thought), or trusted friends, but they can even be medicine of the mind. Seneca's second letter thus, takes for granted that words can impact us greatly. (The letter -- a compact 321 words -- turns on a series of equations among words, potions, nourishment, friendship, and location.) As we have already seen, this fact is crucial to the very possibility of escaping the ordinary exchange economy.

In the second letter, Seneca distinguishes sharply between unsteady, wandering minds and firmer ones. Now, it is possible that these are so by nature. But even the better sort of minds need cultivation; Seneca suggests that one can copy better readers (like him) and by imitating these good habits improve our minds. The better sort of readers have a limited set of enduring [certis] books that through repeated rediscovery nourish. By example Seneca shows that the better sort of reader is willing to be critical of such, canonical works--he makes a point of criticizing Epicurus. It's not that he disagrees with what Epicurus wishes to convey -- the opinion of the market-place can be wrong in rejecting all what it takes to be poverty --, but Seneca also criticizes Epicurus, in part, for embracing the axiology and conceptual apparatus of the market-place: Epicurus mistakenly treats poverty as something substantial that can be the subject of predication (such that there can be contented and miserable forms of poverty). Famously, Seneca insists that if one is cheerful, that is self-sufficient (i.e., one's needs do not go beyond one's possessions), one cannot be poor [Illa vero non est paupertas, si laeta est.], a position he already announces in his first letter.

Don't Blame Generation Y For The Horrible Economy

Some of my friends in academia like this blog post explaining the unhappiness of Generation Y kids in terms of how they think they're special and they're so entitled and they use social media. Who knows? That might be part of the story. But kids with an excessive sense of entitlement have been around since the Joffrey Lannisters of our world were claiming the divine right of kings. And I'm suspicious of explanations in terms of the special properties of social media -- mostly it gives you a new way to do kinds of social interaction that have been around forever. I'm sure explanations involving overly entitled kids resonate with my fellow teachers who are frustrated with students who complain about the bad grades they earned through their own laziness. But I'd like to see some real evidence that this generation is different.

The provable difference between this generation's situation and previous ones is that today's kids are looking for jobs in a terrible economy. Here's the US unemployment rate:

The debt - joy connection

Some public HE students go into debt in part in order to participate in collective joy and thereby compensate for the negative affects of indebted life. 

Let me explain, and in so doing tie some things together in and around some favorite themes: student debt as feature of neoliberal HE, political affect, and the grotesque nature of the NCAA. 

On an alternative Political Economy (Seneca, Letter 1)

Omnia, Lucili, aliena sunt, tempus tantum nostrum est.--Seneca, Letter 1.

At 280 words -- shorter than most frivolous blog posts -- Seneca's first letter to Lucilius takes full advantage of the economy of Latin prose. Its brevity may, thus, be thought to be an exemplar of what it seems to preach (in the first sentence): not to lose time.* Economy is a major theme of the letter as it explores the nature of possession, scarcity, value, profit, and other familiar economic concepts. In fact, in the brief span of the letter Seneca introduces two conceptions of economy (or axiological frameworks): in one we exchange commodities governed by the values established in the market, that is, uncertain popular opinion; in the second necessary loss reigns.+ Given that Seneca devalues the "foolish" attachments formed in the former (and seems to embrace the latter), we ought to reconsider the idea that losing time is a problem.

In order to teach a political economy that is an alternative to the usual one, Seneca turns to a bit of metaphysics: time is our only intrinsic property--our other properties are alienable. Seneca suggests that time's supreme value is due both to this peculiar fact and the necessity of our mortality. In this first letter, Seneca does not fully explain why the time(s) of our lives is the only such intrinsic property. (One may wonder why not the space of our lives?) If we substitute dying (for time(s) of our lives), the thought presents itself that the reason why the time of our life is our only intrinsic property may be that one's death(s) is the only necessity in a life. (We can, after all, not pay our taxes.) 

Clearly, for Seneca to think or have a name is not necessary.

If time is of the essence, why write 280 words?

Faculty labor and the real public support for US university athletic programs

In discussion at LGM, this well-known "infographic" (a term I loathe, though not quite as much as "webinar" -- but I digress) about the highest-paid state employees was criticized for implying that big time university athletic coaches get paid directly from state tax monies.

Below the fold I'll discuss that criticism and show what is the true public support to college athletics we need to think about: it's not direct state funds paying salaries of coaches, but it does directly involve faculty labor.

How your failure to reply hurts the profession

As a submissions editor for a journal I am in charge of sending out requests to review submitted manuscripts to suitable reviewers. Fortunately, this is often a relatively painless process. But every so often the potential reviewer is completely unresponsive. Each time I am baffled. The requests to review contain the manuscript's title, an abstract and two links: one for accepting the invitation and one for declining. If potential reviewers are busy and can't take on the assignment, then all they need to do is click "decline invitation." Of course, it would be ideal if they also listed some alternative reviewers but in principle they only need to click on a link. It should take them no more than one minute to complete this task. Apparently, some folks are unwilling to spare one minute of their time to help the profession. Perhaps they are unaware of how much it hurts the profession when they fail to respond.

On 'postdoctoral tutors.'

I received my PhD from Columbia in June of 1950 but my education scarcely stopped there... I did not really know much about how to do any serious research and writing, since my graduate education did not involve the personal supervision of research of the kind so familiar to graduate students today. I was neither forced nor encouraged to produce early in my graduate career a publishable paper nor to because acquainted with the "how-to-do-it" aspects of research. I was, however, full of energy and brimming over with ideas. I thrashed around for a few months but fortunately I soon became acquainted with J. C. C. McKinsey, a logician who had recently joined the Department of Philosophy at Stanford. McKinsey served as my postdoctoral tutor.---Patrick Suppes.

It is (sound) conventional wisdom that one's fellow students can be as (or more) important as one's supervisors in one's education. But reading Suppes' autobiography reminded me of a bit of wisdom that my supervisor, Dan Garber, handed down to me during a 'reality-check moment' as I was contemplating a crucial career decision: if one is lucky (and wise) one's most important intellectual and professional mentors may be encountered on the job early in one's career. Much has changed since Suppes went to Stanford (and even since I obtained my first position), but Garber's point still stands. In the discipline this wisdom is obliquely recognized when people say that 'such-and-such department has a great track record hiring young people'. (I heard this a lot about Syracuse before and after I went there, but I am not impartial in this matter.) The truth would be better expressed as 'such-and-such department does a stellar job tutoring and developing recent hires.'

'What is Scientific Philosophy?'

"Scientific philosophy" as I will be using it here is an eighteenth century invention by now-forgotten philosophers (McLaurin, 's Gravesande) or not read as philosophers anymore (Euler) (and then opposed by now-canonical philosophers like Berkeley, Hume, Kant, and folk that are fun to read like Mandeville and Diderot) that, after the split between philosophy and science, was re-introduced into philosophy by people like Russell, and echoed by Carnap, and Reichenbach. Scientific philosophy has six characteristics:

1. Empirical ‘success’ trumps other (rational/methodological) claims. Given that scientific philosophers sometimes retreat to the idea that philosophy is an a priori discipline, the 'empirical' (in 1) is often re-packaged as, say, inference to the best explanation in light of a variety of enduring 'scientific virtues' (i.e., simplicity, scope, predictive power, fruitfulness, exactness, etc.) 
2. (a) Physics is the foundational science and/but it (b) has no need for ultimate foundations. While 2(a) may seem obvious (see, e.g., Ladymann & Ross) due to its universal scope, its foundational nature was contested well into the nineteenth century. One could imagine, say, the science of information taking over as the foundational science in the future.
3. Within scientific philosophy reason limits itself in various ways: in doing so (a) it avoid the fallacy of systematicity because it does not try to say everything about everything; (b) it embraces the intellectual division of labor (from 3(b)); it avoids the fallacy of (metaphysical) foundationalism because it has no need to try to to secure its practice in un-shakeable, first principles (see 2(b)). So, it is no surprise that Russell rejected the principle of sufficient reason or Bradley's regress argument. 
4. Scientific philosophy is a self-directed, autonomous practice; once one has mastered certain rigorous tools, one moves from one given experiment/solution (etc.) to the next problem. Given the emphasis on rigor, it is no surprise that:
5. Scientific philosophy is often opposed to a licentious or unintelligible alternative(s) associated with past failures, sometimes even moral. (Exhibit a.) It, thus, embraces commitments to transparency (and clarity). 
6. Scientific philosophy offers submission to the facts (recall) and is disciplined (recall) by way of a careful, painful, modest and most importantly open-ended progressive method. This entails that any scientific philosopher will enter a pre-existing, moving research trajectory and can expect to die before any destination is ever reached.