Online research in philosophy

The existence of “grandmother” cells clashes with the model of the brain as a distributive system and is implausible because such neurons would have powers of representation across visuals angles and contexts. Nevertheless, Kreiman, Koch and others have offered experimental evidence that such neurons do exist. I agree that neurons may indeed fire when the subject looks at a variety of pictures, drawings, etc. of one particular person. I argue, however, that such a “grandmother” cell is nothing but the single-neuron (...) output stage of a neural network trained to recognize that person. The so-called “grandmother cell” does not have any extraordinary binding properties: They are properties of the neural network instead. I will thus offer a distributive explanation of grandmother cells. (shrink)

This stimulating collection is devoted to the life and work of the most flamboyant of twentieth-century philosophers, Paul Feyerabend. Feyerabend's radical epistemological claims, and his stunning argument that there is no such thing as scientific method, were highly influential during his life and have only gained attention since his death in 1994. The essays that make up this volume, written by some of today's most respected philosophers of science, many of whom knew Feyerabend as students and colleagues, cover the diverse (...) themes in his extensive body of work and present a personal account of this fascinating thinker. (shrink)

This stimulating collection is devoted to the life and work of the most flamboyant of twentieth-century philosophers, Paul Feyerabend. Feyerabend's radical epistemological claims, and his stunning argument that there is no such thing as scientific method, were highly influential during his life and have only gained attention since his death in 1994. The essays that make up this volume, written by some of today's most respected philosophers of science, many of whom knew Feyerabend as students and colleagues, cover the diverse (...) themes in his extensive body of work and present a personal account of this fascinating thinker. (shrink)

Sandra Harding's work on race and gender has been hailed as a shining example of the new directions that feminism offers to the philosophy of science. Unfortunately her "new direction" consists of a poor rehash of arguments for pluralism and of a confused view she calls "strong objectivity," which she proposes as a solution to the problem of reflexivity. Her proposal, however, not only fails to solve the problem but is motivated by a false dilemma. Moreover, her extension of her (...) feminist views to "race issues" is condescending and racist. (shrink)

Science is a social expression of intelligence. As such, science can be explained as a product of our natural history. This naturalistic account of science leads to a social conception of scientific rationality, according to which rationality is a structural property of science as a whole, not to be ascribed to the behavior of individual scientists. This new conception of rationality embedded in a straightforward biological epistemology solves the problem of the rationality of science.