New APPS: Art, Politics, Philosophy, Science

Philosophy in the age of Trump: Threats to science, threats to the environment

by Roberta L Millstein

It's been a long time (too long) since I've blogged here, and now, with the political situation in such turmoil, it's hard to think about anything else.  And one wonders what place philosophy has in all of this.  But it occurs to me to share two blog posts I've written recently-ish elsewhere, both of which I think are relevant.

One is The PSA Women’s Caucus - 10 Years On, posted on the Science Visions blog.  It contains my reflections as I finished my 4-year stint as Senior Co-chair of the PSA Women's Caucus.  Science is under attack from the Trump Administration, as are, I think, women in science especially, given Trump's derogatory remarks towards women (emboldening the likes of Milo Y.).  We need groups like the Caucus to support the work of women in science and of women who think and write about science. 

The second is How the Struggle for Existence Became an Environmental Ethic for Our Lifetime, posted on the Center for Humans and Nature blog (@humansandnature).  The environment is also under attack from the Trump Administration.  Thus, it becomes ever more important for philosophers to reach out to the general public and make our case, to explain why environmental issues should be front and center, to show how even "survival of the fittest" does not undermine (but rather reinforces) our duties to the environment.

#resist

PSA-WC's Highlighted PhilosopHer of Science: Merrilee Salmon

The PSA Women's Caucus is delighted to announce its first Highlighted PhilosopHer of Science, Merrilee Salmon. You can read about Merrilee's many-splendored career over at Science Visions. Congratulations, Merrilee!

Unhealthy Skepticism: Foregone Conclusions and Bernie Sanders

By Roberta Millstein

Philosophers, and many thoughtful people more generally, pride themselves on having a healthy skepticism toward claims made by the media, by politicians, by scientists – by pretty much anyone. And rightly so. Many issues are complex and have not just two sides, but multiple sides. One ought not accept proffered claims without examining all of the evidence and without thinking about whether the evidence supports the claims being made. But are there times when a healthy skepticism becomes unhealthy?

In my field, philosophy of science, we often have meta-discussions about the extent to which we should accept scientific findings or question them. But even the most naturalistic philosopher of science thinks that we ought to be skeptical of scientific findings at least some of the time and under some circumstances.

In politics, some claim that we are starting to see a surge from U.S. Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders. But some are skeptical. Some think that Sanders doesn't actually have a chance of winning the Democratic nomination or the U.S. Presidency. Should we be skeptical, too – would that be a healthy skepticism?

I don't think it is. I don't think we should have the same skepticism toward towards claims about future political outcomes as we have towards scientific claims. The reason is simple: in evaluating scientific claims, we are evaluating existing evidence. As new evidence comes in, we might change our evaluation, but our beliefs, whether in favor or against a given claim, are not affecting the evidence or the truth of the claim itself.

But when evaluating claims about future political events, the situation is different. To see this, let's suppose that Jane Voter likes Sanders's platform, agrees with his values and proposals, but, being of skeptical bent, Jane decides that Sanders is too much of a long shot and doesn't really have a chance. This belief leads her not to support Sanders's campaign; it also leads her to suggest to her friends and and family that it would be a waste of time to do so.

The more Janes there are in the world, the more they can convince their friends and family, the more their beliefs become a foregone conclusion. That is, unlike like beliefs about scientific claims, beliefs about political outcomes actually change the outcomes. The skepticism becomes unhealthy.

We should act to bring about the outcomes that we find desirable, not sabotage those outcomes while brandishing the banner of skepticism.

Nominations for PSA-WC Highlighted PhilosopHer

By Roberta Millstein

Nominations are OPEN for the PSA Women's Caucus new Highlighted PhilosopHer feature, recognizing the work of the Caucus's membership. Nominations need not be from Caucus members (although nominees do), so this is your chance to crow about some of your outstanding colleagues!  Maybe you saw a great talk from a woman philosopher of science during this summer conference season?

The nomination form is here.  Highlighted PhilosopHers will be featured on the Caucus's blog, Science Visions.

 

Demographics of PSA Membership

By Roberta Millstein

Miriam Solomon has a post over at Science Visions, the blog of the PSA Women's Caucus, giving a summary of PSA demographics that she has been tracking since the Women’s Caucus began in 2006.  The full text of the reports is linked to from the post.

An excerpt from Solomon's post:

It is encouraging to see that the percentage of women in PSA is higher among more junior members, reflecting trends in other fields of philosophy and in academia generally. I am surprised, however, that there has been no statistically significant increase in the percentage of women in PSA over the last 8 years.

Space and Time after Quantum Gravity

Nick Huggett and Christian Wüthrich are happy to announce the award of a major grant from the John Templeton Foundation to fund a three year investigation into the philosophical implications of theories of quantum gravity, "Space and Time after Quantum Gravity." The work, which will be divided between the University of Illinois at Chicago and the University of Geneva, continues their "Beyond Spacetime" project. The premise of the project is that scientific research programs in quantum gravity simultaneously demand philosophical, conceptual investigation for their progress, and raise profound questions about fundamental philosophical assumptions resting on a non-quantum understanding of space and time. How physics thus ‘meets philosophy at the Planck scale’ has been explored so far in the various publications and meetings coming out of the project.

The new grant, supplemented with funds from UIC and Geneva, will fund postdocs and predocs in the research groups at both institutions; regular speakers and visitors to the groups; essay competitions; a summer school at Chicago in 2016; a conference at Geneva in 2017; edited volumes; and a course of video lectures for non-specialists. Many of these activities will be made publicly available on video. For more information you can subscribe to the project blog at beyondspacetime.net or look out for calls for participation.

GMOs and the thing I should have said (or, why not all scientific expertise is created equal)

By Roberta Millstein

I'm sure we've all had the experience of committing to the final version of an article, only to think of that one more thing you should have said. Yeah, that just happened to me. Just the nature of the beast, I guess.

My recent instance has to do with an article concerning GMOs I wrote for The Common Reader, an article aimed at a general educated audience. In the article, one of the claims I defend is that a critique of GMOs is not anti-science, and I note in particular that a critique of GMOs is not the same as a critique of evolution or climate change. (Comments welcome on the article, by the way).

I was OK with my argument, although I knew that with more space I would have elaborated more than I did. But then I read this from Mark Lynas:

Lewontin's revisition of the Spandrels paper with D.S. Wilson

By Roberta Millstein

About a month ago, David Sloan Wilson posted a transcript of a wonderful phone conversation that he had with Richard Lewontin concerning the (in)famous paper that Lewontin co-authored in 1979 with Stephen Jay Gould, The Spandrels of San Marco and the Panglossian Paradigm: A Critique of the Adaptationist Programme, a paper that attracted a lot of attention from biologists but also from philosophers of biology (too many to cite here). The attention was, and continues to be, both positive and negative, i.e., the paper is a bit of a lightning rod.

I recommend the interview in full, as it has a lot of wonderful nuggets in it, but here are the things that stood out to me:

New PSA Women's Caucus blog - Science Visions

By Roberta Millstein

Science Visions is the new internet home for news from the Philosophy of Science Association Women’s Caucus, and its editors are already hard at work collecting their thoughts on philosophy, science, gender, academia, and university life to share with you.

Just as Donna Haraway’s Primate Visions sought to expand our view of women and primate research, Science Visions seeks to expand our view of women in philosophy of science.  The goal is to gather the best of the web on issues of interest to its readers, from research and teaching issues in philosophy of science and the experience of minorities in the academy to conference announcements, news briefs, and career advice. Its editors will draw on their own perspectives and interests and those of their peers to lend philosophy of science a new set of voices. It will host their original content, as well as items of interest to our readers from elsewhere on the web, calls for fellowships and conferences, and other special features.

Check out Science Vision's first editorial, from editor Soazig Le Bihan, who argues that our moral obligation towards our students goes beyond providing them with good critical and analytical skills.  (And while you're there, there's some other good stuff posted, so please browse around!)

UPDATE: And check out our a second editorial from Gillian Barker about a philosophy of science collaboration that seeks to change the world, called the Geo-Functions project.

[Full disclosure: I am a co-chair of the PSA Women's Caucus, together with Julia Bursten].

Why is this philosophy? redux

By Roberta Millstein

It's been a little over a week since I posted my Why is this philosophy? reflections, and I find myself still puzzling over a common sort of reaction that I got to the post. The common reaction seemed to be that other areas of philosophy are subject to similar challenges, and/or that philosophers in other areas are subject to similar difficulties on the job market, etc. And so (the implication seemed to be), what was my point?

Let me first clarify that I certainly never meant to imply – and looking back over the post, do not see where I said – that philosophy of science or philosophers of science have it worse than anyone else. I do not take that to be the case. I know that there are certain areas of philosophy that are quite marginalized, causing practitioners in those areas to struggle at various points in their careers. So, why speak about philosophy of science? Well, philosophy of science is what I do, and so the particular criticisms of it are in my face more so than criticisms of other areas. I encourage others to speak out about challenges in their own areas, challenges that I am not in a position to speak to. But let's be clear that the challenges in area X, even if worse than the challenges in philosophy of science, don't make the challenges in philosophy of science go away or unworthy of discussion.

So, what are the particular criticisms that can make doing philosophy of science challenging?

Why is this philosophy?

By Roberta Millstein

Most philosophers of science have been on the receiving end of this question at one time or another. A friend of mine recently called it a type of hate speech. I think my friend was joking. But maybe not. Philosophers of science struggle to get into grad programs, to obtain jobs, to earn promotion and tenure, to be perceived as "central" and important figures in the field, all because their work is not seen as philosophical. So, while it may not be hate speech, it is speech that does genuine harm.

This isn't a new issue and it's one that others have touched before. But a number of recent events have brought the issue to mind for me and emphasized the importance of continuing to discuss it. One in particular was a conversation with a colleague whose opinion I value and whose good faith I have utter confidence in. And yet this colleague had doubts about an essay being philosophical even as I could see that it fell squarely within the domain of philosophy of science. The colleague was willing to take my word for it, but the fact that such a well meaning person had doubts really brought home to me the fact that this is (at least in some case) simply a lack of awareness about philosophy of science. Thus this post. I can't hope to fully convince anyone in a blog post length entry, but I can at least point to some of the other events that have got me thinking about this topic again.

The second event was the excellent essay "Philosophical Enough" by Subrena Smith, a recent Featured Philosop-her. Smith rightly points out:

The Philosophical Education of Scientists

By: Samir Chopra

Yesterday, in my Twentieth Century Philosophy class, we worked our way through Bertrand Russell's essay on "Appearance and Reality" (excerpted, along with "The Value of Philosophy" and "Knowledge by Acquaintance and Knowledge by Description" from Russell's 'popular' work The Problems of Philosophy.) I introduced the class to Russell's notion of physical objects being inferences from sense-data, and then went on to his discussions of idealism, materialism, and realism as metaphysical responses to the epistemological problems created by such an understanding of objects. This discussion led to the epistemological stances--rationalism and empiricism--that these metaphysical positions might generate. (There was also a digression into the distinction between necessary and contingent truths.)

At one point, shortly after I had made a statement to the effect that science could be seen as informed by materialist, realist, and empiricist conceptions of its metaphysical and epistemological presuppositions, I blurted out, "Really, scientists who think philosophy is useless and irrelevant to their work are stupid and ungrateful."  This was an embarrassingly intemperate remark to have made in a classroom, and sure enough, it provoked some amused twittering from my students, waking up many who were only paying partial attention at that time to my ramblings.

Conceptual genealogy for analytic philosophy - Part II.2: Canguilhem on genealogy of scientific concepts

By Catarina Dutilh Novaes

This is the third installment of my series of posts with different sections of the paper on conceptual genealogy that I am working on. Part I is here; Part II.1 is here; a tentative abstract of 2 years ago, detailing the motivation for the project, is here. 

I now turn to Canguilhem as an author exemplifying the kind of approach I have in mind when I speak of 'conceptual genealogy'. The main difference is that Canguilhem focused on scientific concepts (especially from biology and medicine), whereas I am articulating a methodology for the investigation of philosophical concepts (though of course, often the line between the two groups will be rather blurry). The same caveat of the previous installment on Nietzsche applies: this is a very brief and inevitably superficial discussion of Canguilhem's ideas, on which there is obviously much more to say.

-----------------------------------------

The thesis of the relevance of historical analysis for philosophical theorizing rests crucially on a historicist conception of philosophical concepts, namely that they are not (or do not correspond to) a-historical essences or natural kinds. However, ‘historicism’ can have different meanings (Beiser 2011, Introduction), so let me now spell out in more detail in what sense I defend a historicist conception of philosophical concepts.

A new resource for those interested in graduate programs in philosophy of biology

By Roberta Millstein

A graduate student in my department, Shawn Miller, has created a wiki for graduate programs having faculty who specialize in philosophy of biology: philbio.net It gives an at-a-glance overview of schools and faculty, with links to websites, CVs, and PhilPapers profiles for individual faculty. The wiki thus serves as an excellent springboard for those who are researching graduate programs in philosophy of biology, both Ph.D. and terminal M.A. As the wiki notes, "The primary intended audience is prospective or current graduate students with interests in philosophy of biology who want to get the lay of the land by seeing who works where, and on what."

Some important features of the site:

• Anyone can edit the wiki, with or without an account. Faculty and students are encouraged to add listings and update listings.
• The criterion for program inclusion is just that a philosophy (or a history and philosophy of science) Ph.D. program have at least one full-time faculty member who self-identifies as a philosopher of biology.
• On the main page, faculty specializations can be listed and willingness to work with new students can be indicated. Programs can also create a separate page that lists further information about the program, such as lab groups (see UC Davis's entry for an example).

I would encourage others to update this site and help make it a useful resource, and to recommend the site to prospective graduate students with interests in philosophy of biology. I would further encourage those who work in other areas of philosophy to create similar sites to facilitate prospective graduate students in doing the sort of deep research that an important decision like applying to graduate school calls for.

Eighty-three people show up for the PSA Women's Caucus Breakfast - and other news from the PSA

By  Roberta Millstein

I just got back from the Philosophy of Science Association meeting in Chicago, held in conjunction with the History of Science Society.  My co-chair Holly Andersen and I knew we had better-than-ever attendance for the 5th PSA Women's Caucus Breakfast, but after counting the names on the sign-in sheet, I can report that we had 83 attendees! (mostly women, plus a few welcome supporters).  We didn't get to all of the items on our packed agenda, but there was some serious energy in the room, and hopefully we can really get things done in the next two years.  Thanks again to the Minnesota Center for the Philosophy of Science and individual donors for sponsoring.

I don't know if anyone else noticed (and maybe I shouldn't point it out), but Saturday was a good day for philosophy of biology.  Helen Longino is finishing her term as PSA President, to be succeeded by Ken Waters; Helen also won the PSA Women's Caucus Prize for Feminist Philosophy for her recent book, Studying Human Behavior: How Scientists Investigate Aggression and Sexuality, while Elliott Sober won the Hempel Award.  Congrats to all.

My own session, "Beyond the Lab Experiment," with Sharon Crasnow, Eric Desjardins, and Emily Parke (ably chaired by Chris Eliot) was one of the best I've ever participated in.  At the end of it, I realized that all four papers sought to make positive contributions; none was a critique (not that I am against critique -- I think critique is important and have done it myself -- but sometimes it's nice to make forward progress without having to trash what came before).  We had a half hour at the end for general discussion, and the audience used it appropriately, probing connections between the four talks that I was certainly too bleary-eyed to see.  And speakers responded thoughtfully and openly to suggestions.  It was a really positive experience and I got a lot out of it.

It was also announced that this was the largest PSA meeting ever.  I think we still have work to do to increase the diversity of topics and attendees, but I know that work has been done in that area and that more is planned.  The PSA is looking healthy.

Concerning events at the journal Science

By Roberta Millstein

My friend Vassiliki Betty Smocovitis, a historian of science at the University of Florida, has drawn my attention to a number of concerning events at the eminent journal Science.

One was an appalling magazine cover, for which they were roundly and rightly criticized. The Editor-in-Chief issued a non-apology for the cover, saying that she is "truly sorry for any discomfort that this cover may have caused anyone" and promising "that we will strive to do much better in the future to be sensitive to all groups and not assume that context and intent will speak for themselves." 

A second recent development is the shortening of book reviews to 600 words, with an increased focus on popular books and fewer reviews coming from scholars in the history and philosophy of science as compared to the past. This is an unfortunate loss of an important perspective from Science.

Now, a blog post from Michael Balter, who has been with the journal for over 21 years, talks about some of the behind-the-scenes troubles at Science and its publishing organization, the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). These include the recent dismissal of four women in the art and production departments, with essentially no notice in three cases and very little notice in the fourth case, and the absence of any serious response to the concerns expressed by the overwhelming majority of Science's news staff about the way these dismissals were handled.

I am not in a position to fully comment on these recent developments; I am only reporting what I have read and what I have been told. But as a member of the AAAS Section on History and Philosophy of Science (Section L) I am very concerned. Indeed, perhaps given the important role that Science plays, we should all be concerned about what what is involved with the "strategic transformation that AAAS is currently undergoing, to enhance its engagement with its members and to be in the forefront of the multimedia landscape of the future."

Transferability as the epistemic value of deliberation

By Catarina Dutilh Novaes

Today my research group in Groningen (with the illustrious online participation of Tony Booth, beaming in from the UK) held a seminar session where we discussed Fabienne Peter’s 2013 paper ‘The procedural epistemic value of deliberation’. It is a very interesting paper, which defends the view that deliberation has not only epistemic value (as opposed to ‘merely’ ethical, practical value), but also that it has procedural epistemic value (as the title suggests), as opposed to ‘merely’ instrumental value. I'll argue here that I agree with the thesis, but not for the reasons offered by Peter in her paper.

The paper begins with the following observation:

An important question one can ask about collective deliberation is whether it increases or decreases the accuracy of the beliefs of the participants. But this instrumental approach, which only looks at the outcome of deliberation, does not exhaustively account for the epistemic value that deliberation might have. (Peters 2013, 1253) 

One way to spell out this idea is the following: suppose there were two knowledge-producing procedures with the exact same accuracy, i.e. which would produce the same amount of true beliefs and avoid the same amount of false beliefs. Moreover, procedure D involves deliberation, while procedure O relies entirely on an oracle, for example. If we can show that procedure D is superior to procedure O on purely epistemic grounds, then we can establish that deliberation has procedural epistemic value, rather than merely instrumental epistemic value (i.e. increase accuracy).

Top Ten Reasons to Visit the PhilSci-Archive

(This is a companion piece to Top Ten Reasons philosophers of science should post their papers to PhilSci Archive)

10.You can be the first to know what's new in philosophy of science.

9. It's a fast way to survey recent work on any topic in philosophy of science.

8. It's a fast way to find out who is working in any topic in philosophy of science.

7. You can search on any keywords or parameters you like.

6. It's a chance to help an author with a draft before it is too late.

5. You can download complete conference proceedings.

4. It offers one stop shopping for open access journals (more coming soon).

3. It's easy to get to from anywhere.

2. It's free.

1. Not sold in stores. Available only through this exciting, time unlimited web offer.

Bonus reason: find out whether rocks think.

(Thanks to John Norton for most of this and Ken Waters for inspiration).

Top Ten Reasons philosophers of science should post their papers to PhilSci-Archive

10. You can get an accepted but-not-yet-published paper read right away, without waiting for those sometimes lengthy publication times.

9. You can increase the visibility of your work because
    a) PhilSci-Archive articles score highly in Google searches and
    b) sites like PhilPapers scan PhilSci-Archive and will include links to your papers automatically.

8. You can get feedback on a work-in-progress from a wider audience than just the couple of people you can think to email.

7. Your work can be read, for free, by anyone, even those without institutional library access.  

6. Work that was presented, but never published, can be made accessible.

5. Papers in those harder-to-obtain volumes will be more widely accessible.

4. If you are in an underrepresented area of philosophy of science or are an author in an underrepresented group in philosophy of science, you can help to increase the visibility of your area or your group.  [Right now, the papers are disproportionately in philosophy of physics – you can help change that].

3. PhilSci-Archive is a non-profit organization – like PhilPapers, but unlike, say, Academia.edu or Research Gate. You can feel good about contributing to its flourishing.

2. After posting your articles, you can linger a bit and check out some of the good work that is there already, including conference papers and (in a new venture) open source journals.  Or you can sign up for an email subscription, the Twitter feed, or the Facebook page.

1. It's cool, and all the cool kids are doing it.  You can be cool, too.

Another open access journal - αnalytica

With the successful launching of Ergo,  it seems worth highlighting a recent announcemnt of another open access journal that has arrived on the scene:  αnalytica. It is:

...an open-access, English-language electronic journal dedicated to the philosophy of science. αnalytica is edited by a younger generation of Greek philosophers of science, with the aid and support of an international advisory board. It provides a platform for peer-reviewed original contributions in philosophy of science, and is hosted by the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens.

Dare we hope that more open access philosophy journals are on the way?

More Neil deGrasse Tyson awfulness

When Tyson laughs as he dismisses philosophy as "pointless" he reminds me nothing so much as a high school bully who has just visited an indignity on his victim. And, as in high school, nobody much seems to mind.

I don't know why this kind of thing is so popular among physicists who don't know any post-World War II philosophy of science or any pre-World War II history of science (one could do worse than starting here). See Stephen Hawking telling Google that "philosophy is dead" and Lawrence Krauss calling David Albert a "moronic philosopher" in a manner which suggests the phrase is pleonastic for him.

It's maybe not so weird how often philosophy's enemies end up just doing bad philosophy themselves.

Anyhow, it was very nice to read Damon Linker's take-down of Tyson's philistinism here. Depending on your meta-philosophical commitments you might be tempted to split hairs with respect to Linker's epistemology-centric characterization of the philosophical tradition. But what he writes isn't implausible, and he's clearly getting a very large part of the tradition correct.

Thinking about the technological singularity

Next Saturday, the University of Leuven is hosting an outreach event called Philosophy Festival ("Feest van de Filosofie"). This year's theme is people & technology ("mens & techniek"). I was asked to join a panel discussion on the technological singularity. The introduction will be given by a computer engineer (Philip Dutré, Leuven). There will be a philosopher of technology (Peter-Paul Verbeek, Twente) and a philosopher of probability (me, Groningen); and the moderator is a philosopher, too (Filip Mattens, Leuven). So far, I have not worked on this topic, although it does combine a number of my interests: materials science, philosophy of science, and science fiction.

The idea of a technological singularity (often associated with Ray Kurzweil) originates from the observation that the rate of technological innovations seems to be speeding up. Extrapolating these past and current trends suggests that there may be a point in the future at which systems that have been built by humans (software, robots, ...) will become more intelligent than humans. This is called the technological singularity. Moreover, once there are systems that are able to develop systems that are more intelligent than systems of the previous generation, there may be an intelligence explosion. The possibilities of later generations of such systems are inconceivable to humans. (This theme has been explored in many science fiction stories, including the robot stories by Isaac Asimov (1950's and later), the television series "Battlestar Galactica" (2004-2009), and the movie "Her" (2013).)

Even this brief introduction gives us plenty of opportunity for reflection on concepts (What is intelligence?) and consequences (What will happen to humans in a post-singularity world?). I am planning to analyze a very basic assumption, by raising the following question: When are we justified to pick a particular trend that has been observed in the past (e.g., Moore's observation of an exponential increase in the number of transistors on commercial chips) and extrapolate it into the future? Viewed in this way, the current topic is an example of the general problem of induction.

The hypothesis "The observed trend will continue to hold" is only one among many. Let me offer two alternative hypotheses:

Positive interactions between scientists and philosophers

Many philosophers of science are understandably excited about Neil deGrasse Tyson's reinvorgoration of the TV show Cosmos.  After all, most of us are pretty excited about science and anything that improves the public's scientific literacy.  Thus, it is extremely disappointing to hear him articulate the comments that he does at about 1:02:46 of this video.* He says that a "philosopher is a would-be scientist without a laboratory" and that we have been "rendered essentially obsolete."  He later suggests that there is much positive work that a philosophers can do (in ethics, for example), but doesn't seem to think that there can be any good philosophy of science.  (Richard Dawkins, who is also shown in the video, seems to take a slightly more positive view of the field). 

This morning, I saw two things that shook the cobwebs: 1) Eric Winsberg's intriguing post about dark matter, and, more to the point at hand, the fact that he was at an event that involved astronmers and philosophers, and 2) with the web announcement for a “Genomics and Philosophy of Race” Conference that I am a part of, involving both biologists and philosophers (not to mention historians and sociologists).  These two events are only two of the many, many productive collaborations between scientists and philosophers of science.  We need to do a better job telling people about them, and about telling the general public what philosophers of science do.

* H/T to Lucas Matthews, graduate stuent at the University of Utah, for the pointer to the video and NdGT's attitude toward philosophy of science

as goes generalized philosophy of science?

I had a weird visceral thought after reading two recent NDPR reviews:

• The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Physics (ed. Robert Batterman, including a cool piece by friend of the blog David Wallace), and
• Mechanism and Causality in Biology and Economics (Hsiang-Ke Chao, Szu-Ting Chen, and Roberta L. Millstein, of newapps fame)

If Plutynski and Weatherall's reviews are right (and they read wonderfully) both books in different ways seem to me to mark decisive moves away from Generalized Philosophy of Science. The very first paragraph of Weatherall's reads:

If this collection has an overarching theme, it is that the details matter. If philosophers hope to understand contemporary physics, we need to engage in depth both with the technicalities of our best physical theories and the practicalities of how those theories are applied. The authors in this volume brush aside an older tradition in the philosophy of physics -- and the philosophy of science more generally -- in which actual physics entered only to illustrate high-level accounts of theories, explanation, or reduction. Of course, by itself, dismissing this tradition is hardly worth remarking on: such an approach to philosophy of physics has been going out of fashion for decades. Taken as whole, however, this volume pushes the theme still further, in ways that mark important shifts in recent philosophy of physics.

And Plytinski's second paragraph is:

PSA Women's Caucus Prize in feminist philosophy of science

As conversations in the discipline concerning the climate for women in philosophy and the role of feminist philosopy in fostering good climate continue, it is worthwhile to pause and honor the good work in feminist philosophy that is being done in various areas in philosophy, such as philosophy of science.

Nominations are now open for the 2014 Philosophy of Science Association Women's Caucus Prize. The Prize is awarded biennially for the best book, article, or chapter published in English in the area of feminist philosophy of science within the five years prior to each PSA meeting. The winner will receive an award of $500, which will be presented to the winner at the November 2014 PSA meeting in Chicago, Illinois.

The deadline for nominations is May 1, 2014. To be considered, works must have been published between May 1, 2009 and May 1, 2014. Articles posted electronically on journal websites in final (accepted) form prior to May 1, 2014 are eligible for consideration. Self-nominations are allowed but are limited to one per person. One may nominate more than one paper by someone else.

To make a nomination, please provide information about the article, book or chapter you are nominating by clicking on the link below:
http://websurvey.sfu.ca/survey/163354447

The first Prize was awarded in November 2010 at the PSA meeting in Montreal. The co-winners were Elisabeth Lloyd, for her book The Case of the Female Orgasm: Bias in the Science of Evolution, and Sarah Richardson for her essay "Sexes, species, and genomes: Why males and females are not like humans and chimpanzees".

The 2012 Prize was awarded to Inmaculada de Melo-Martín and Kristen Intemann for their article, "Feminist Resources for Biomedical Research: Lessons from the HPV Vaccines."

In memoriam: Israel Scheffler

According to Brian Leiter, Israel Scheffler died on February 16th at the age of ninety. A very sad event. Scheffler was not a philosopher who cared much about trends. When all around him were scratching their heads about Thomas Kuhn, he wrote a pretty trenchant rejection, Science and Subjectivity (which also took on people like Feyerabend and Hanson). And his fine (but perhaps slightly too didactic) book, The Anatomy of Inquiry ,was perhaps the last good book written on the epistemology of science from an analytic perspective. His passing reminds me that there are issues about which the philosophizing of the mid-twentieth century was simple and right, and far superior to what superseded it.

Consumer Risk, Producer Risk, and the politics of commercialized science

I thought I would make my inaugural post on NewAPPS a follow-up to Roberta's post about the retraction of the article in Food and Chemical Toxicology.  I don't want to continue the debate about whether the retraction was justified; that debate can continue in the original thread.   Here, I want to discuss one of the reasons why we should be paying vigilant attention to events such as these, and why their importance transcends the narrow confines of the particular scientific hypotheses being considered in the articles in question.  What I worry most about is the extent to which pressures can be applied by commercial interests such as to shift the balance of “inductive risks” from producers to consumers by establishing conventional methodological standards in commercialized scientific research. 

Inductive risk occurs whenever we have to accept or reject a hypothesis in the absence of certainty-conferring evidence.  Suppose, for example, we have some inconclusive evidence for a hypothesis, H.  Should we accept or reject H?   Whether or not we should depends on our balance of inductive risks—on the importance we attach, in the ethical sense, of being right or wrong about H.   In simple terms, if the risk of accepting H and being wrong outweighs the risk of rejecting H and being wrong, then we should reject H.  But these risk are a function not only of the degree of belief we have in H, but also of negative utility we attach to each of those possibilities.   In the appraisal of hypotheses about the safety of drugs, foods, and other consumables, these are sometimes called “consumer risk” (the risk of saying the item is safe and being wrong) and “producer risk” (the risk of saying the item is not safe and being wrong.)

The 'Art' of Economics

"An economic theorist who offers a model prepares the ground for a practitioner who should employ her judgment in using this model; but the theorist's contribution falls short of a testable prediction." (Gilboa, et. al. 11)

"Cases can never be refuted, and case-based reasoning is thus an attractive alternative to rule-based reasoning, allowing economists to work with models simple enough to be useful without worrying about refutations." (Gilboa, et. al. 27) [HT: Jong Jae Lee]

The two passages above are quoted from a paper "Economic Models as Analogies" forthcoming in the Economic Journal by a group of leading economists.* It represents part of a wider trend among economists re-interpreting their own activity (recall last week's post); in doing so, they are also making more sensible claims on behalf of economics, while trying to keep most of the economist's tool-kit intact (recall this post). Both passages reveal how thoughtful economists' are trying to come to grip not just with the charge that their models are not realistic (as noted throughout the opening sections of the paper), but with the widespread perception that their models have been refuted in the events of the last decade. While a cynic might interpret the two passages above as a belated admission that something was refuted in 2008, the significance of these passages is to be found in the renewed focus on judgment.

Orgasms and Adaptationism

If Elisabeth Lloyd’s take on the female orgasm is correct—i.e. if it is homologous to the male orgasm—then FEMALE ORGASM is not a proper evolutionary category. Homology is sameness. Hence, male and female orgasms belong to the same category. The orgasm is an adaptation, whether male or female (and Lloyd should agree). It is not a spandrel or by-product. 

I’ll get back to this in a moment, but first some background. There are five NewAPPSers who have a particular interest in the philosophy of biology. Roberta Millstein, Helen De Cruz, Catarina Dutilh Novaes, John Protevi, and myself. Aside from Roberta, each of us comes at it from a related area in which biological insight is important. For me, that area is perception. I have written quite a bit about biology, but my mind has always been at least half on the eye (and the ear, and the nose, and the tongue, . . .).

There is a divide among us with respect to a leading controversy in the field. Catarina is strongly anti-adaptationist and I am strongly adaptationist (perhaps because of my motivating interest in perception, which is exquistely adaptive).  Roberta, Helen, and John are somewhere in between, but likely closer to Catarina than to me. You can gauge where I stand when I tell you that in my view, Gould and Lewontin’s 1979 anti-adaptationist manifesto, “The Spandrels of San Marco and the Panglossian Paradigm” is one of the worst, and certainly one of the most mendacious, papers I have ever read in any field. Among the five of us, I am sure I am alone in this.

Given all of this, my take on adaptationism with regard to the orgasm may get a hotly negative response from my co-bloggers. Nevertheless, I’ll get on with it.

On the nature of fundamental and policy economics

One problem with economics is that it is necessarily focused on policy, rather than discovery of fundamentals. Nobody really cares much about economic data except as a guide to policy: economic phenomena do not have the same intrinsic fascination for us as the internal resonances of the atom or the functioning of the vesicles and other organelles of a living cell. We judge economics by what it can produce. As such, economics is rather more like engineering than physics, more practical than spiritual.--Robert J. Shiller [HT Jeff Bell]

Is the younger generation of economists like Raj skipping some of the big questions of economics because some smaller questions are easier to answer?  If so, is that optimal from the standpoint of society as a whole?--Greg Mankiw.

The character of cutting-edge, academic economics has changed during the last few decades. It is not entirely easy to characterize these changes in part because economics is a very large, fast-moving field (and, of course, I pay more attention to philosophers than economists). Even so there can be merit in this simplification: (i) between 1947 and 1970, there was a formal revolution in economics (associated with names like Samuelson, Arrow, Debreu, etc.); this revolution occurred more or less simultaneously with (ii) the development of econometrics (associated with names like Tinbergen, Koopmans, etc.)--many of the people involved interacted with each other at the Cowles Commission. Of these two developments, the first had a more theoretical ethos and the second a more policy oriented focus. (Of course, lots of fields in economics -- development, labor, forestry, agriculture, etc. -- have always been very focused on policy.) With the break-down of the Keynesian consensus in the mid-1970s, policy, "big questions of economics" returned to the center of the discipline's attention.* In the quoted passage above, Shiller's "necessarily" takes the centrality of policy for granted...so much so that most of what is published as "theory" by theoreticians in economics these days has some such policy orientation.**