The failure to consider the Sokal affair in light of other, related episodes has contributed to a wholesale misreading of its significance. The episode has often been offered as evidence for the bankruptcy of a broad and diverse collection offields, variously referred to as cultural studies of science, sociology of science, history of science, and science and technology studies. However, when viewed in context, the Sokal affair illustrates pre cisely why social scientific and humanistic studies of science are necessary. To (...) develop this argument, the author explicitly compares Alan Sokal's experiment with a similar experiment, performed by William M. Epstein and published in this very journal. Comparing the research questions, methods, ethics, and reception of these two experi ments not only reveals the limitations of Sokal's critique but also shows that Sokal has unwittingly endorsed one of the central lines of research in science and technology studies. (shrink)

In the life sciences and beyond, new developments in science and technology and the creation of new social orders go hand in hand. In short, science and society are simultaneously and reciprocally coproduced and changed. Scientific research not only produces new knowledge and technological systems but also constitutes new forms of expertise and contributes to the emergence of new modes of living, at times empowering and at times disempowering citizens. These dynamic processes are tightly connected to significant redistributions of wealth (...) and power, and they sometimes threaten and sometimes enhance democracy. Understanding this phenomenon poses important intellectual and normative challenges: neither traditional social sciences nor prevailing modes of democratic governance have fully grappled with the deep and growing significance of knowledge-making in twenty-first century politics. Building on new work in science and technology studies (STS), this book advances the systematic analysis of the coproduction of knowledge and power in contemporary societies. Using case studies in the new life sciences, supplemented with cases on informatics and other topics such as climate science, this book presents a theoretical framing of coproduction processes while also providing detailed empirical analyses and nuanced comparative work. It will be interesting for students of sociology, science and technology studies, the history of science, genetics, political science and public administration. (shrink)

Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte, Volume 45, Issue 3, Page 428-433, September 2022.

Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte, Volume 45, Issue 3, Page 428-433, September 2022.

ArgumentSociologists and historians of science, such as Richard Whitley and Stephen Hilgartner, identified a culturally dominant discourse of science popularization in the broader society. In this dominant view, a clear distinction is maintained between scientific knowledge and popularized knowledge. Popularization of science is seen as the process of transmitting real science to a lay public. This discourse on science popularization was criticized by Whitley and Hilgartner as an inadequate simplification. Yet, the battered traditional model of popularization remains (...) remarkably resistant to these theoretical attacks. In this paper I will argue, based on research of the output of the Belgian economist Gustave de Molinari, and more specifically, his opinion on the role of government in economic life, that the boundary between science and popularization in political economy is not clear and that the status of scientists fluctuates over time and in different contexts. It is therefore impossible for historians or economists to distinguish science from popularization based on the essential characteristics or intrinsic quality of the work. De Molinari's ideas are followed through the different media of science and journalism. Although de Molinari himself differentiated between his scientific and “popular” work, the boundary between science and popularization proves to be highly permeable, in both directions. (shrink)

Prominent views about representation share a premise: that mathematical communication theory is blind to representational content. Here I challenge that premise by rejecting two common misconceptions: that Claude Shannon said that the meanings of signals are irrelevant for communication theory (he didn't and they aren't), and that since correlational measures can't distinguish representations from natural signs, communication theory can't distinguish them either (the premise is true but the conclusion is false; no valid argument can link them).

A Brief History of Time: From the Big Bang to Black Holes is a popular-science book on cosmology (the study of the origin and evolution of the universe) by British physicist Stephen Hawking. It was first published in 1988. Hawking wrote the book for readers who have no prior knowledge of the universe and people who are interested in learning.

Daniel Whiting’s excellent new book, The Range of Reasons (2022), makes a number of noteworthy contributions to the philosophical literature on reasons and normativity. A good deal has been written on normative reasons, and it is no easy thing to make novel and promising arguments. Yet, this is what Whiting manages to do. We are sympathetic to some of his ideas and critical of others. It makes sense for us to focus on the first half of his book, where Whiting (...) presents two accounts of normative reasons (the first superseded by, although possibly also compatible with, the second). We welcome this opportunity to clarify our own current views on the nature of normative reasons by contrasting them with Whiting’s views. (shrink)

The kind of empathy that is communicated through expressions like “I feel your pain” or “I share your sadness” is important, but peculiar. For it seems to require something perplexing and elusive: sharing another’s experience. It’s not clear how this is possible. We each experience the world from our own point of view, which no one else occupies. It’s also unclear exactly why it is so important that we share others' pains. If you are in pain, then why should it (...) matter, and be a good thing, that I am also in the same pain? Our goal in this paper is to address these questions. Specifically, our goal is to clarify how empathy, in the regimented sense of sharing another’s pain, is possible and why it is important. Central to our account is the concept of being acquainted with—that is, directly aware of—pain. When I feel my own pain, and am acquainted with it, I want the pain to stop, and I’m moved—sometimes compelled—to stop it. My acquaintance with the pain is what reveals that it is no good, to be gotten rid of, and to be avoided in the future. Acquaintance also appears to be implicated in our understanding of, and motivation to relieve, others’ pains. When I say “I feel your pain” I express an awareness of your pain, a direct appreciation of its noxious qualities, and, as with my own pain, an understanding of why it ought to be eased. Explaining how empathy is both possible and important therefore involves clarifying the nature of acquaintance: its limits, epistemic role, and motivational significance. What our analysis reveals is that agents have both epistemic and moral reasons to share other people’s pain because pain-sharing is the source of a species of character-building knowledge that we have no other way of accessing except through direct acquaintance with pain. (shrink)

I address an apparent conflict between Spinoza’s concepts of immanent causation and acting/doing [agere]. Spinoza apparently holds that an immanent cause undergoes [patitur] whatever it does. Yet according to his stated definition of acting and undergoing in the Ethics, this is impossible; to act is to be an adequate cause, while to undergo is to be merely a partial cause. Spinoza also seems committed to God’s being the adequate cause of all things, and, in a well-known passage, appears to deny (...) categorically that God is capable of undergoing. How then can God also be the immanent cause of all things, as Spinoza claims? On the basis of a close reading of the passage in question, I argue that Spinoza actually distinguishes between two senses of undergoing. An immanent cause undergoes not by being a partial cause but rather by being the metaphysical subject of its effect. While this sense of undergoing has its roots in scholasticism, Spinoza’s willingness to attribute such a capacity to undergo to God is idiosyncratic and reveals important ways in which his understanding of essence, perfection, and causation differs from the scholastic model. (shrink)

Mimesis is one of the oldest, most fundamental concepts in Western aesthetics. This book offers a new, searching treatment of its long history at the center of theories of representational art: above all, in the highly influential writings of Plato and Aristotle, but also in later Greco-Roman philosophy and criticism, and subsequently in many areas of aesthetic controversy from the Renaissance to the twentieth century. Combining classical scholarship, philosophical analysis, and the history of ideas--and ranging across discussion of poetry, painting, (...) and music--Stephen Halliwell shows with a wealth of detail how mimesis, at all stages of its evolution, has been a more complex, variable concept than its conventional translation of "imitation" can now convey. Far from providing a static model of artistic representation, mimesis has generated many different models of art, encompassing a spectrum of positions from realism to idealism. Under the influence of Platonist and Aristotelian paradigms, mimesis has been a crux of debate between proponents of what Halliwell calls "world-reflecting" and "world-simulating" theories of representation in both the visual and musico-poetic arts. This debate is about not only the fraught relationship between art and reality but also the psychology and ethics of how we experience and are affected by mimetic art. Moving expertly between ancient and modern traditions, Halliwell contends that the history of mimesis hinges on problems that continue to be of urgent concern for contemporary aesthetics. (shrink)

In light of many recent critiques of Western modernity and its conceptual foundations, the problem of adequately justifying our most basic moral and political values looms large. Without recourse to traditional ontological or metaphysical foundations, how can one affirm — or sustain — a commitment to fundamentals? The answer, according to Stephen White, lies in a turn to “weak” ontology, an approach that allows for ultimate commitments but at the same time acknowledges their historical, contestable character. This turn, White (...) suggests, is already underway. His book traces its emergence in a variety of quarters in political thought today and offers a clear and compelling account of what this might mean for our late modern self-understanding. (shrink)

To what extent should parents be allowed to use reproductive technologies to determine the characteristics of their future children? Is there something morally wrong with choosing what their sex will be, or with trying to 'screen out' as much disease and disability as possible before birth? Stephen Wilkinson offers answers to such questions.

Many authors have proposed constraining the behaviour of intelligent systems with ‘machine ethics’ to ensure positive social outcomes from the development of such systems. This paper critically analyses the prospects for machine ethics, identifying several inherent limitations. While machine ethics may increase the probability of ethical behaviour in some situations, it cannot guarantee it due to the nature of ethics, the computational limitations of computational agents and the complexity of the world. In addition, machine ethics, even if it were to (...) be ‘solved’ at a technical level, would be insufficient to ensure positive social outcomes from intelligent systems. (shrink)

By their nature, the most vexing social problems reflect collisions between social and economic interests of parties with highly divergent views and perspectives on the cause and character of what is at issue and the consequences that flow from it. Conflicts around biotechnology applications are good examples of these problems. When considering the potential consequences of proposed biotechnology applications, an enormous range of perspectives arise reflecting the breadth of different and often competing interests with a stake in life's future.This essay (...) starts from an assumption that the traditional tool of cost‐benefit analysis is not adequate for adjudicating competing claims around the introduction of new biotechnology applications. It tends to require implicit simplifying assumptions that reduce or mask true underlying levels of complexity and uncertainty, and the results it produces deliver a definitive and singular answer, as opposed to a multiplicity of outcomes. In this essay, I describe some of the key elements of formal scenario planning to show how CBA could be redeployed as a supporting tool within the broader decision support methodology of formal scenario planning. (shrink)

"There is no scientist today whose books I look forward to reading with greater anticipation of enjoyment and enlightenment than Stephen Jay Gould."—Martin Gardner Among scientists who write, no one illuminates as well as Stephen Jay Gould doesthe wonderful workings of the natural world. Now in a new volume of collected essays—his sixth since Ever Since Darwin—Gould speaks of the importance of unbroken connections within our own lives and to our ancestralgenerations. Along with way, he opens to us (...) the mysteries of fish tails, frog calls, and other matters, and shows once and for all why we must take notice when a seemingly insignificant creature is threatened, like the land snail Partula from Moorea, whose extinction he movingly relates. (shrink)

Hume's Enlightenment Tract is the first full study for forty years of David Hume's Enquiry concerning Human Understanding. The Enquiry has, contrary to its author's expressed wishes, long lived in the shadow of its predecessor, A Treatise of Human Nature. Stephen Buckle presents the Enquiry in a fresh light, and aims to raise it to its rightful position in Hume's work and in the history of philosophy.

Postmodernism has evoked great controversy and it continues to do so today, as it disseminates into general discourse. Some see its principles, such as its fundamental resistance to metanarratives, as frighteningly disruptive, while a growing number are reaping the benefits of its innovative perspective. In Political Theory and Postmodernism, Stephen K. White outlines a path through the postmodern problematic by distinguishing two distinct ways of thinking about the meaning of responsibility, one prevalent in modern and the other in postmodern (...) perspectives. Using this as a guide, White explores the work of Heidegger, Foucault, Derrida, Lyotard, and Habermas, as well as 'difference' feminists, with the goal of showing how postmodernism can inform contemporary ethical-political reflection. In his concluding chapter, White examines how this revisioned postmodern perspective might bear on our thinking about justice. (shrink)

According to a natural view of instrumental normativity, if you ought to do φ, and doing ψ is a necessary means for you to do φ, then you ought to do ψ. In “Instrumental Normativity: In Defense of the Transmission Principle,” Benjamin Kiesewetter defends this principle against certain actualist-inspired counterexamples. In this article I argue that Kiesewetter’s defense of the transmission principle fails. His arguments rely on certain principles—Joint Satisfiability and Reason Transmission—which we should not accept in the unqualified forms (...) needed to establish his conclusion. (shrink)

This paper outlines and defends a notion of ‘tragic-remorse’. This moral emotion properly accompanies those actions that involve unavoidable moral wrongdoing in general and dirty hands scenarios in particular. Tragic-remorse differs both phenomenologically and conceptually from regret, agent-regret and remorse. By recognising the existence of tragic-remorse, we are better able to account for our complex moral reality which at times makes it necessary for good persons to act in ways that although justified leave the agent with a moral stain and (...) a particular emotional response. (shrink)

Habermas's paradigm of communicative action is usually taken to be pretty much dominated by consensus, "Yes-saying." What if this were a radically one-sided perception? We take up this unorthodox position by arguing that "no-saying" in this paradigm is typically overlooked and underemphasized. To demonstrate this, we consider how negativity is figured at the most basic onto-ethical level in communicative action, as well as expressed in civil disobedience, a phenomenon to which Habermas assigns the remarkable role of "touchstone" (Prufstein) of constitutional (...) democracy. Once the importance of no-saying is drawn out, the paradigm looks distinctly less hostile to dissensus and agonism in democratic life. (shrink)

Leslie Stephen (1832–1904) was a writer, philosopher and literary critic whose work was published widely in the nineteenth century. As a young man Stephen was ordained deacon, but he later became agnostic and much of his work reflects his interest in challenging popular religion. This two-volume work, first published in 1876, is no exception: it focuses on the eighteenth-century deist controversy and its effects, as well as the reactions to what Stephen saw as a revolution in thought. (...) Comprehensive and full of detailed analysis, this is an important work in the history of ideas. Volume 2 focuses on eighteenth-century moral philosophy, political philosophy and literature, and on the literary and religious reactions to the revolution in thought. Utilitarianism is discussed at length, as well as the work of thinkers such as Shaftesbury, Mandeville, Burke and Adam Smith. (shrink)

This article considers some political potentialities of the post-constructivist proposal for substituting truth with traceability. Traceability is a measure of truthfulness in which the rationality of a truth-claim is found in accounting for the work done to maintain links back to an internal referent through a chain of mediations. The substitution of traceability for truth is seen as necessary to move the entire political domain towards a greater responsiveness to the events of the natural-social world. In particular, it seeks to (...) disarm the strategy of ... (shrink)

"Featuring a carefully selected collection of source documents, this tome includes traditional teaching tools from the Zen Buddhist traditions of China, Korea, and Japan, including texts created by women. The selections provide both a good feel for the varieties of Zen and an experience of its common core.... The texts are experiential teachings and include storytelling, poetry, autobiographies, catechisms, calligraphy, paintings, and koans. Contextual commentary prefaces each text. Wade-Giles transliteration is used, although Pinyin, Korean, Japanese, and Sanskrit terms are linked (...) in appendixes. An insightful introduction by Arai contributes a religious studies perspective. The bibliography references full translations of the selections. A thought-provoking discussion about the problems of translation is included.... Summing Up: Highly recommended. All levels." --_Choice_. (shrink)

We review the argument that latent image formation is a measurement in which the state vector collapses, requiring an enhanced noise parameter in objective reduction models. Tentative observation of a residual noise at this level, plus several experimental bounds, imply that the noise must be colored, and hence frame dependent and non-relativistic. Thus a relativistic objective reduction model, even if achievable in principle, would be incompatible with experiment; the best one can do is the non-relativistic CSL model. This negative conclusion (...) has a positive aspect, in that the non-relativistic CSL reduction model evades the argument leading to the Conway–Kochen “Free Will Theorem”. (shrink)

Critics often charge that agent-causal libertarianism is unintelligible due to the uniqueness of agent-causation—the sui generis causal relationship said to be involved when agents make free choices. This paper presents five objections, which are taken to be the only good objections, to agent-causal libertarianism and argues they all fail to show agent-causal libertarianism is unintelligible. The first four objections fail outright. The fifth objection fails in a special way. Naturalistic agent-causal libertarian theories succumb to this fifth objection; theistic agent-causal libertarian (...) theories do not. This entails that if agent-causal libertarianism is intelligible, then it is only so within theism. (shrink)

The first book to offer an integrated reading of ancient Greek attitudes to laughter. Taking material from various genres and contexts, the book analyses both the theory and the practice of laughter as a revealing expression of Greek values and mentalities. Greek society developed distinctive institutions for the celebration of laughter as a capacity which could bridge the gap between humans and gods; but it also feared laughter for its power to expose individuals and groups to shame and even violence. (...) Caught between ideas of pleasure and pain, friendship and enmity, laughter became a theme of recurrent interest in various contexts. Employing a sophisticated model of cultural history, Stephen Halliwell traces elaborations of the theme in a series of important texts: ranging far beyond modern accounts of 'humour', he shows how perceptions of laughter helped to shape Greek conceptions of the body, the mind and the meaning of life. (shrink)

Jurgen Habermas is unquestionably one of the foremost philosophers writing today. His notions of communicative action and rationality have exerted a profound influence within philosophy and the social sciences. This volume examines the historical and intellectual contexts out of which Habermas' work emerged, and offers an overview of his main ideas, including those in his most recent publication. Amongst the topics discussed are his relationship to the Frankfurt School of critical theory and Marx, his unique contributions to the philosophy of (...) the social sciences, the concept of 'communicative ethics', and the critique of post-modernism. New readers and non-specialists will find this the most convenient, accessible guide to Habermas currently available. Advanced students will find a conspectus of recent developments in the interpretation of Habermas. (shrink)