Science is replete with falsehoods that epistemically facilitate understanding by virtue of being the very falsehoods they are. In view of this puzzling fact, some have relaxed the truth requirement on understanding. I offer a factive view of understanding that fully accommodates the puzzling fact in four steps: (i) I argue that the question how these falsehoods are related to the phenomenon to be understood and the question how they figure into the content of understanding it are independent. (ii) I (...) argue that the falsehoods do not figure into the understanding’s content by being elements of its periphery or core. (iii) Drawing lessons from case studies, I argue that the falsehoods merely enable understanding. When working with such falsehoods, only the truths we extract from them are elements of the content of our understanding. (iv) I argue that the extraction view is compatible with the thesis that falsehoods can have an epistemic value by virtue of being the very falsehoods they are. (shrink)

Is there progress in philosophy? If so, how much? Philosophers have recently argued for a wide range of answers to these questions, from the view that there is no progress whatsoever to the view that philosophy has provided answers to all the big philosophical questions. However, these views are difficult to compare and evaluate, because they rest on very different assumptions about the conditions under which philosophy would make progress. This paper looks to the comparatively mature debate about scientific progress (...) for inspiration on how to formulate four distinct accounts of philosophical progress, in terms of truthlikeness, problem-solving, knowledge, and understanding. Equally importantly, the paper outlines a common framework for how to understand and evaluate these accounts. We distill a series of lessons from this exercise, to help pave the way for a more fruitful discussion about philosophical progress in the future. (shrink)

This volume brings together leading scholars working on understanding and representation in philosophy of science. It features a critical conversation format between contributors that advances debates concerning scientific understanding, scientific representation, and their delicate interplay.

In recent years, several philosophers have argued that their discipline makes no progress (or not enough in comparison to the “hard sciences”). A key argument for this pessimistic position appeals to the purported fact that philosophers widely and systematically disagree on most major philosophical issues. In this paper, we take a step back from the debate about progress in philosophy specifically and consider the general question: How (if at all) would disagreement within a discipline undermine that discipline’s progress? We reject (...) two arguments from disagreement to a lack of progress, and spell out two accounts of progress on which progress is compatible with disagreements that persist or increase over time. However, we also argue that disagreement can undermine our ability to tell which developments are progressive (and to what degree). So, while disagreement can indeed be a threat to progress, the precise nature of the threat has not been appreciated. (shrink)

What is it for philosophy to make progress? While various putative forms of philosophical progress have been explored in some depth, this overarching question is rarely addressed explicitly, perhaps because it has been assumed to be intractable or unlikely to have a single, unified answer. In this paper, we aim to show that the question is tractable, that it does admit of a single, unified answer, and that one such answer is plausible. This answer is, roughly, that philosophical progress consists (...) in putting people in a position to increase their understanding, where 'increased understanding' is a matter of better representing the network of dependence relations between phenomena. After identifying four desiderata for an account of philosophical progress, we argue that our account meets the desiderata in a particularly satisfying way. Among other things, the account explains how various other achievements, such as philosophical arguments, counterexamples, and distinctions, may contribute to progress. Finally, we consider the implications of our account for the pressing and contentious question of how much progress has been made in philosophy. (shrink)

Intuitively, science progresses from truth to truth. A glance at history quickly reveals that this idea is mistaken. We often learn from scientific theories that turned out to be false. This chapter focuses on a different challenge: Idealisations are deliberately and ubiquitously used in science. Scientists thus work with assumptions that are known to be false. Any account of scientific progress needs to account for this widely accepted scientific practice. It is examined how the four dominant accounts—the problem-solving account, the (...) truthlikeness account, the epistemic account, and the noetic account—can cope with the challenge from idealisation, with an eye on indispensable idealisations. One upshot is that, on all accounts, idealisations can promote progress. Only some accounts allow them to constitute progress. (shrink)

Duncan Pritchard argues that a feature that sets understanding-why apart from knowledge-why is that whereas (I) understanding-why is a kind of cognitive achievement in a strong sense, (II) knowledge-why is not such a kind. I argue that (I) is false and that (II) is true. (I) is false because understanding-why featuring rudimentary explanations and understanding-why concerning very simple causal connections are not cognitive achievements in a strong sense. Knowledge-why is not a kind of cognitive achievement in a strong sense for (...) the same reason knowledge-that is not. The latter thesis requires showing that having (p because q) information is not equivalent to having information about facts or principles that establish the explanatory connections between the phenomena in question. I make a positive case for this claim and defend it against objections. Based on this argument, I identify an alternative feature that sets understanding-why apart from knowledge-why: The minimal condition for understanding-why and knowledge-why with respect to their contents is not identical. Knowing why p merely requires information that some explanatorily relevant dependency obtains. Understanding why p additionally requires information about facts or principles that establish the explanatory connections between the phenomena in question. (shrink)

Paulina Sliwa (2015) argues that knowing why p is necessary and sufficient for understanding why p. She tries to rebut recent attacks against the necessity and sufficiency claims, and explains the gradability of understanding why in terms of knowledge. I argue that her attempts do not succeed, but I indicate more promising ways to defend reductionism about understanding why throughout the discussion.

Scientists appeal to models when explaining phenomena. Such explanations are often dubbed model explanations or model-based explanations. But what are the precise conditions for ME? Are ME special explanations? In our paper, we first rebut two definitions of ME and specify a more promising one. Based on this analysis, we single out a related conception that is concerned with explanations that are induced from working with a model. We call them ‘model-induced explanations’. Second, we study three paradigmatic cases of alleged (...) ME. We argue that all of them are MIE, upon closer examination. Third, we argue that this undermines the building consensus that model explanations are special explanations that, e.g., challenge the factivity of explanation. Instead, it suggests that what is special about models in science is the epistemology behind how models induce explanations. (shrink)

Evidence-based medicine frequently uses statistical hypothesis testing. In this paradigm, data can only disconfirm a research hypothesis’ competitors: One tests the negation of a statistical hypothesis that is supposed to correspond to the research hypothesis. In practice, these hypotheses are often misaligned. For instance, directional research hypotheses are often paired with non-directional statistical hypotheses. Prima facie, one cannot gain proper evidence for one’s research hypothesis employing a misaligned statistical hypothesis. This paper sheds lights on the nature of and the reasons (...) for such misalignments and it provides a thorough analysis of whether they pose a threat to evidence-based medicine. The upshots are that the misalignments are often hidden for clinicians and that although some cases of misalignments can be partially counterbalanced, the overall threat is non-negligible. The counterbalances either lead to methodological inadequacy, loss of statistical power, or involve a lack of information that could be crucial for decision making. This result casts doubt on various findings of medical studies in addition to issues associated with under-powered studies or the replication crisis. (shrink)

This paper is the introduction to the Special Issue “Philosophical Methods”. The Special Issue will be published by Synthese.

According to Skow (2016, 2017), correct answers to why-questions only cite causes or grounds, but not non-accidental regularities. Accounts that cite non-accidental regularities typically confuse second-level reasons with first-level reasons. Only causes and grounds are first-level reasons why. Non-accidental regularities are second-level reasons why. I first show that Skow's arguments for the accusation of confusion depend on the independent thesis that only citations of first-level reasons why are (parts of) answers to why-questions. Then, I argue that this thesis is false. (...) Consequently, the claim that correct answers to why-questions only cite causes or grounds is refuted as well. (shrink)

Humans communicate with different modalities. We offer an account of multi-modal meaning coordination, taking speech-gesture meaning coordination as a prototypical case. We argue that temporal synchrony (plus prosody) does not determine how to coordinate speech meaning and gesture meaning. Challenging cases are asynchrony and broadcasting cases, which are illustrated with empirical data. We propose that a process algebra account satisfies the desiderata. It models gesture and speech as independent but concurrent processes that can communicate flexibly with each other and exchange (...) the same information more than once. The account utilizes the ψ-calculus, allowing for agents, input-output-channels, concurrent processes, and data transport of typed λ-terms. A multi-modal meaning is produced integrating speech meaning and gesture meaning into one semantic package. Two cases of meaning coordination are handled in some detail: the asynchrony between gesture and speech, and the broadcasting of gesture meaning across several dialogue contributions. This account can be generalized to other cases of multi-modal meaning. (shrink)

This chapter gives an overview of the various themes and issues discussed in the volume. It includes summaries of all chapters and places the contributions, some of which are part of a critical conversation format, in the context of the larger literature and debates.

Review of Henk de Regt's "Understanding Scientific Understanding".

To what end should or do we pursue philosophy and how? Meta-philosophical questions along these lines have gained more and more interest recently. The collected volume "Erkenntnistheorie — Wie und wozu?" (Engl.: "Epistemology — How and to what end?") aspires to raise and tackle issues addressing the meta-epistemological questions "How is epistemology practiced and to what end?". Although this aim sounds like a descriptive meta-epistemological endeavor, it is not surprising that many authors rather argue for normative claims surrounding the questions (...) "How and to what end should epistemology be pursued?". This review provides an overview on the collected volume and offers a critical evaluation of its overall achievement. (shrink)

To what end should or do we pursue philosophy and how? Meta-philosophical questions along these lines have gained more and more interest recently. The collected volume ‘‘Erkenntnistheorie—Wie und wozu?’’ (Engl.: ‘‘Epistemology—How and to what end?’’) aspires to raise and tackle issues addressing the meta-epistemological questions ‘‘How is epistemology practiced and to what end?’’ (9). Although this aim sounds like a descriptive meta-epistemological endeavor, it is not surprising that many authors rather argue for normative claims surrounding the questions ‘‘How and to (...) what end should epistemology be pursued?’’. This review provides an overview on the collected volume and offers a critical evaluation of its overall achievement. (shrink)

Cloning, gene therapy, stem-cell harvesting—are we on the path to a Huxley-like Brave New World? Not really, argues political philosopher and Kass Commission member Peter Augustine Lawler in Stuck with Virtue: The American Individual and Our Biotechnological Future, even as he admits that we will likely become more obsessive and anxious and will be subjected to new forms of tyranny. Rather, he contends, human nature is such that the biotechnological world to come, despite the best efforts of its proponents, (...) will still fail to make it possible to feel good without being good. It will be harder, Lawler warns, to be virtuous in the future, because we will be more detached than ever from the natural sources of happiness. But we may take some solace in the fact that virtue will still be the best way to live well with what we really know. With irony and wit, Lawler delivers the good news about the future of the American individual: We’re going to remain free, because the modern effort to make increasingly individualistic human beings at home with themselves and their environments through technological progress cannot succeed. That is the truth and promise, concludes Lawler, of a genuinely postmodern conservatism. (shrink)

There exists a strong need for research in clinical sport psychology which does not merely gather information on prevalence rates for psychological disorders and case studies of affected athletes. Rather, research should also uncover the underlying psychological variables which increase the risk for depression and burnout in elite athletes. Many studies gather general factors (e.g. gender, injury, sport discipline) and stay on a more descriptive level. Both constructs (burnout and depression) are based on a temporal, stress-related process model assuming the (...) development of either syndrome results from unfavorable personal (e.g. dysfunctional attitudes, perfectionism, negative coping strategies) or environmental (e.g. cohesion) factors coexisting with severe stressors (i.e. chronic stress). Integrating this knowledge, we propose a shared model for depression and burnout in athletes: a sport specific diathesis-stress model. The present longitudinal study assesses data throughout one sporting season to analyze predictors for both constructs in junior elite athletes. Hierarchical multiple linear regression analyses resulted in six predictors for best model fit. The following factors demonstrated a significant impact on predicting (a) burnout or (b) depression scores at the end of the season: dysfunctional attitudes (a and b), coping strategies (a and b), perfectionism (a), recovery (b), stress (a) and the level of depression at onset (b). Variables such as cohesion or attributional style did not significantly predict depression or burnout. The study supports the structure of a process model (diathesis-stress model) for burnout and depression with the assumption of temporal progression. With some vulnerabilities and their temporal, developmental link identified, prevention can become athlete-specific, effective and economical. (shrink)

A unique multilevel perspective-structural social psychology-is explicated to help build theoretical bridges between micro and macro levels of analysis in sociology. The perspective portrays actors (human or corporate) as having minimal properties of purposiveness and responsiveness, encounters as interaction episodes between multiple actors, microstructures as local patterns of interaction emerging from and subsequently influencing encounters, and macrostructures as networks of social positions. These levels of analysis are connected via mutually contingent processes. Applying these assumptions, we illustrate the ability of the (...) framework to strengthen the macrosociological import of micro theories of power, status, and justice. We argue that structural social psychology is an important metatheoretical strategy for developing testable connections between individual and collective units of sociological analysis. (shrink)

Pope John Paul II called for an intense dialogue between science and theology, “a common interactive relationship,” in which each discipline is “open to the discoveries and insights of the other” while retaining its own integrity. This essay seeks to be responsive to that call and is an initial exploration of relationships between contemporary neuroscience and Catholic theological ethics. It examines neuroscientific data on the bicameral brain and theological ethical data on marital ethics, including divorce and remarriage, and asks what (...) insight the former might provide into both the latter and the different ethical methods that respond to marital ethics. The analysis is undertaken in the hope of illuminating a pathway that opens the insights of one way of doing theological ethics to the insights of another way, thereby eliminating the unnecessary, unhelpful, and sometimes un‐Christian polarizations that presently separate them. (shrink)

The most prolific and genuinely provocative writer in America today is James Schall. Schall tells that the Catholic Church is today about the sole source of a genuinely reasonable—meaning genuinely realistic—view of “what is.” That’s why Schall contends that political science is not a natural science; our lives as social or relational animals living together in community can’t really be understood realistically without seeing the whole truth about who each of us is.

Tocqueville, the educator, employs both Christianity and aristocracy to elevate or give soulful content to the democratic personal identity, and he even presents Christianity as a kind of combination of aristocracy and democracy. The aristocratic dimension of Christianity, he says, is America’s most precious inheritance. He also says that Jesus corrected the prejudice of even the best philosophers of Greece against the possible greatness of ordinary people. Tocqueville seems most attracted to a Catholicism purged of any connection with the prejudices (...) of aristocratic injustice. That Catholicism wouldn’t be so different from the Puritanism he describes, transformed by a criticism based on both the purely Christian and aristocratic views of freedom. Tocqueville reminds us of St. Thomas Aquinas’ realistic corrections of the unjust and self-absorbed excesses of Aristotle’s magnanimous man, and he at least suggests to us the need for a kind of American Thomism. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to show that refusing to legalize the status of undocumented immigrants who have been long-term residents is a serious violation of human rights. The "right to have rights" ­ a term coined by Hannah Arendt and developed by Sheila Benhabib ­ should be construed first and foremost as the right to a legal existence. We take issue with consequentialists who warn that legalizing the status of undocumented aliens will encourage further undesirable immigration, for withholding (...) legal status in order to deter illegal newcomers is neither efficacious nor just. We conclude that "selective" as opposed to "endured" immigration policies are ethically untenable. (shrink)

It appears that there is a conflict of values running through business ethics between profits accruing to shareholders and the cost of entrepreneurial activities on wider stakeholders. In the ethics research literature, the multiplicity of normative ethical stances has resulted in much debate but little in the way of consistent policy proposals. There is, by comparison, an extensive literature in positive economics that attempts to resolve value conflicts similar to those faced by business ethicists. In this paper the adoption of (...) positive welfare statements are advocated and the value judgements implicit in economics are used as the starting point. It is argued that there is merit in expressly stating a set of value judgements to demonstrate the intractable nature of finding a social consensus without a positive social welfare function that explicitly weights the values. This paper reviews the arguments surrounding corporate objectives, particularly with regard to ethical considerations and the profit maximisation orthodoxy. This is discussed within the stakeholder‐stockholder narrative. A range of ethical positions in the management strategy literature are analysed and discussed. It is argued that the values underpinning business ethics research can be conceived of via a function of social welfare (including an ethical ‘auctioneering’ model). The paper concludes by suggesting that all ethical positions can be captured by a Bergson‐type welfare function. (shrink)

Este trabajo versa sobre la aplicación a los artefactos técnicos del enfoque filosófico propuesto por Daniel Dennett para elucidar el ámbito de las cosas artificiales. En particular, sugiere dos cosas. Por una parte, que esta aplicación no nos permite entender acabadamente la dimensión normativa que cubre la esfera práctica de nuestra producción y uso de artefactos técnicos. Por otra, que ella promueve un criterio sumamente liberal de la atribución de funciones a los artefactos técnicos que desfigura la idea misma de (...) función técnica. Este trabajo tiene tres partes. En la primera se caracteriza la hermenéutica artefactual promovida por la propuesta dennettiana. Se analizan, especialmente, las tres actitudes dennettianas, a saber, la actitud física, la actitud del diseño y la actitud intencional. Además, se considera el punto de vista de la ingeniería inversa. En la segunda parte se discute la analogía entre textos y artefactos y se reconstruye la estrategia incrustada en esta analogía. En la última parte se presenta un balance crítico de la propuesta filosófica de Dennett en su aplicación al ámbito de los artefactos técnicos. (shrink)

In Nietzsche's philosophical novel, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, the central character is the prophet Zarathustra. Zarathustra is the prophet of the yearning for going beyond our merely human selves to which our current pop culture, with its X‐Men and Marvel superheroes, appeals. The Good Place is an important component of this culture. Its main moral message is that human beings should aspire to go beyond themselves. Zarathustra proposes a theory of human history that includes a stage of animal‐like humans foraging on (...) their own, a stage involving identification with groups that think they are superior to each other, and a stage in which human equality becomes the dominant value. If Zarathustra is right, there is a greater possibility for humanity than completing the stage of equality at which we currently find ourselves. There is the stage of overcoming humanity itself, the stage of aiming at superhumanity. (shrink)

The Platonic chora, as the third, intermediating term, has been left in a state of virtual dereliction in the West. Its ternary logic transmutes oppositional logics of binarity, including the oppositions of interior and exterior, psyche and cosmos, human and divine. In this article I analyse the mytho-philosophical trajectory of the chora from Plato’s Timaeus, and Diotimaic love found in Plato’s Symposium. I argue that both the disruptive force of Diotimaic love, and the subversive chora with its ‘bastard reasoning’1 are (...) indicative of Plato’s efforts to resolve an internalized conflict which mirrored a larger conflict found in his cultural epoch, a time in which abstracted self-consciousness was on the horizon and chthonic-participatory consciousness was receding. In membering the chora I find a fecund space-time, an enabling field, for human participatory becoming-with the cosmos. (shrink)

With photographs by Louise Lawler On the Museum's Ruins presents Douglas Crimp's criticism of contemporary art, its institutions, and its politics alongside photographic works by the artist Louise Lawler to create a collaborative project that is itself an example of postmodern practice at its most provocative. Taking the museum as the paradigmatic institution of artistic modernism, Crimp surveys its historical origins and current transformations, from the plans for the Berlin Museum in the 1820s to reinstallations of New York's (...) Metropolitan Museum of Art and Museum of Modem Art in the 1980s. But it is the breakup of this modernist paradigm that is the central subject of On the Museum's Ruins. The new paradigm of postmodemism is elaborated through analyses of art practices broadly conceived, not only the practices of artists Robert Rauschenberg, Cindy Sherman, Marcel Broodthaers, Richard Serra, Sherrie Levine, and Robert Mapplethorpe - but those of critics and curators, of international exhibitions such as Documenta and Zeitgeist, of new or refurbished museums such as the Staatsgalerie in Stuttgart and the Martin-Gropius-Bau in Berlin. Louise Lawler's photographs expand the investigation to include private and corporate collecting, art auctions, and the banishment of objects to museum storage. Douglas Crimp is Visiting Professor of Visual and Cultural Studies at the University of Rochester and Visiting Professor of Lesbian and Gay Studies at Sarah Lawrence College. His previous books include Aids: Cultural Analysisl/Cultural Activism and AIDS Demo Graphics. The essays: Photographs at the End of Modernism. On the Museum's Ruins. The Museum's Old, the Library's New Subject. The End of Painting. The Photographic Activity of Postmodernism. Appropriating Appropriation. Redefining Site Specificity. This Is Not a Museum of Art. The Art of Exhibition. The Postmodern Museum. (shrink)

BackgroundThe present study examined the efficacy of the Michigan Model of Infant Mental Health-Home Visiting infant mental health treatment to promote the socioemotional wellbeing of infants and young children. Science illuminates the role of parental “co-regulation” of infant emotion as a pathway to young children’s capacity for self-regulation. The synchrony of parent–infant interaction begins to shape the infant’s own nascent regulatory capacities. Parents with a history of childhood adversity, such as maltreatment or witnessing family violence, and who struggle with symptoms (...) of post-traumatic stress may have greater challenges in co-regulating their infant, thus increasing the risk of their children exhibiting social and emotional problems such as anxiety, aggression, and depression. Early intervention that targets the infant–parent relationship may help buffer the effect of parental risk on child outcomes.MethodsParticipants were 58 mother–infant/toddler dyads enrolled in a longitudinal randomized control trial testing the efficacy of the relationship-based IMH-HV treatment model. Families were eligible based on child age and endorsement of at least two of four socio-demographic factors commonly endorsed in community mental health settings: elevated depression symptoms, three or more Adverse Childhood Experiences parenting stress, and/or child behavior or development concerns. This study included dyads whose children were born at the time of study enrollment and completed 12-month post-baseline follow-up visits. Parents reported on their own history of ACEs and current posttraumatic stress disorder symptoms, as well as their toddler’s socioemotional development.ResultsMaternal ACEs predicted more toddler emotional problems through their effect on maternal PTSD symptoms. Parents who received IMH-HV treatment reported more positive toddler socioemotional wellbeing at follow-up relative to the control condition. The most positive socioemotional outcomes were for toddlers of mothers with low to moderate PTSD symptoms who received IMH-HV treatment.ConclusionResults indicate the efficacy of IMH-HV services in promoting more optimal child socioemotional wellbeing even when mothers reported mild to moderate PTSD symptoms. Results also highlight the need to assess parental trauma when infants and young children present with socioemotional difficulties. (shrink)