For a long time, emotions were seen as incompatible with rationality and objectivity of science, and so were a marginal topic in the philosophy of science. This trend has changed progressively since it was determined that objectivity is much linked to social factors while rationality can’t do without emotions. As a result, emotions are now slowly finding their way into our understanding of what science is. Here, I make an overview of some aspects of science where emotions and scientific reasoning (...) seem to come into tight contact. For my survey, I will consider such themes as scientific motivation, scientific evaluations, scientific explanations, scientific understanding, scientific imagination, and coherence in science. Using these examples, I discuss the epistemic role of emotions in scientific progress. In conclusion, I advocate for a nuanced view of emotions in science as values that contribute to both epistemic and humanistic dimensions of science. (shrink)

Stuart Kauffman has, in recent writings, developed a thought-provoking and influential argument for strong emergence. The outcome is his Theory of the Adjacent Possible (TAP). According to TAP, the biosphere constitutes a non-physical domain qualitatively distinct from the physical domain. The biosphere exhibits strongly emergent properties such as agency, meaning, value and creativity that cannot, in principle, be reduced to the physical. In this paper, I argue that TAP includes various (explicit or implicit) metaphysical commitments: commitments to (1) scientific realism, (...) (2) downward causation and teleology, and (3) modal realism. If TAP is to hang together as the kind of robust philosophical thesis it evidently aspires to be, it needs an account – an account that is currently absent – of its metaphysical commitments. It is however unclear how such an account can be developed since various dilemmas present themselves when one explores how subscribers to TAP might do so. (shrink)

There are various conceptions of objectivity, a characteristic of the scientific enterprise, the most fundamental being objectivity as faithfulness to facts. A brute fact, which happens independently from us, becomes a scientific fact once we take cognisance of it through the means made available to us by science. Because of the complex, reciprocal relationship between scientific facts and scientific theory, the concept of objectivity as faithfulness to facts does not hold in the strict sense of an aperspectival faithfulness to brute (...) facts. Nevertheless, it holds in the large sense of an underdetermined faithfulness to scientific facts, as long as we keep in mind the complexity of the notion of scientific fact (as theory-laden), and the role of non-factual elements in theory choice (as underdetermined by facts). Science remains our best way to separate our factual beliefs from our other kinds of beliefs. (shrink)