STEM faculty are encouraged to incorporate ethical, social, and historical content into their undergraduate STEM courses. This is a challenge, for there is more than enough foundational material, and interdisciplinary content can introduce a steep learning curve for students and faculty. As part of the NSF-funded Fall 2020 STEM Futures Education Project (https://serc.carleton.edu/stemfutures/about.html), we presented a plan for developing 1–2-day ethics modules that STEM faculty can easily incorporate into their courses and that STEM departments can use to craft ethics credentials (...) that suit their purposes. Each module would have a materials list with readings, videos, and podcasts; a series of discussion questions; 2–3 interactive small group activities; and a list of prompts for an essay assignment. Some modules would have suggestions for community-based and project-based learning, and all would employ learner-centered and inclusive pedagogies to create a more inclusive and ethical culture in STEM undergraduate education. The modules empower STEM faculty with limited expertise in the humanities to deliver this new content responsibly, especially at 2- and 4-year institutions that need more resources to support team teaching. (shrink)

Philosophy of science is a challenging course to teach. This paper offers suggestions for early-, middle- and late-career professors who teach philosophy of science at the undergraduate or graduate level. The advantages and disadvantages of four different course designs are discussed, and a list of possible syllabus topics is presented. The paper encourages a thoroughgoing approach to inclusive pedagogy: it recommends that we look for ways to highlight a range of underrepresented voices throughout the semester, instead of tacking on one (...) or two feminist readings at the end of a course. The author reports success with two forms of student assessment, in particular: a peer participation grade and a series of short critical response papers. Also covered are learning goals, textbook selection, and faculty assessment. (shrink)

When read as a theory that is supposed to mirror, represent or fit some collection of historical data, critics argue that Kuhn’s theory of paradigm shift in Structure of Scientific Revolutions fails by cherry-picking and underdetermination. When read as the ground for a socio-epistemological conception of rationality, critics argue that Kuhn’s theory fails by either the naturalistic fallacy or underarticulation. This paper suggests that we need not view Structure as a historian’s attempt to accurately depict scientific theory change or a (...) philosopher’s attempt to suggest, more normatively, the factors we ought to consider in theory choice. Instead, we might use Kuhn’s theory as a metaphilosophical frame through which to better understand the limits of otherwise intractable philosophical debates. We can focus on Kuhn’s theory not as a proposition or model to confirm, but as something we might use as a tool for understanding. Philosophers have discussed the justice and care orientations in ethics as two theories for which there will be some common, constraining set of intuitions to confirm one theory over the other, to demonstrate that protecting rights is fundamentally more valuable that fulfilling needs or that fulfilling needs is fundamentally more valuable that protecting rights. Instead of conceptualizing this conversation as a choice between two theories, this paper looks to Ian Hacking’s interpretation of Kuhn’s paradigm concept to suggest that working in the world of justice is very different than working in the world of care, as each orientation is a paradigm with its own cognitive and contextual standards of theory assessment. To start, after Larry Laudan, each has its own ontology, methodology, aims and values. But moreover, after Ian Hacking, each has an even larger, entrenched collection of projectible predicates. Though Carol Gilligan herself uses the metaphor of gestalt shift in a few places to characterize the move from the justice to the care perspective, the insight—that what many assume to be a standard exercise in theory choice is really more of a paradigm shift—has been under theorized by ethicists and ignored by philosophers of science. This paper brings the full resources of Structure and its secondary literature to this metaethical issue, while making the larger point that Structure has an important pragmatic role to play, when it comes to the understanding philosophical debates, even if we cannot secure the truth of Kuhn’s theory. (shrink)

When read as a theory that is supposed to mirror, represent or fit some collection of historical data, critics argue that Kuhn’s theory of paradigm shift in Structure of Scientific Revolutions fails by cherry-picking and underdetermination. When read as the ground for a socio-epistemological conception of rationality, critics argue that Kuhn’s theory fails by either the naturalistic fallacy or underarticulation. This paper suggests that we need not view Structure as a historian’s attempt to accurately depict scientific theory change or a (...) philosopher’s attempt to suggest, more normatively, the factors we ought to consider in theory choice. Instead, we might use Kuhn’s theory as a metaphilosophical frame through which to better understand the limits of otherwise intractable philosophical debates. We can focus on Kuhn’s theory not as a proposition or model to confirm, but as something we might use as a tool for understanding. Philosophers have discussed the justice and care orientations in ethics as two theories for which there will be some common, constraining set of intuitions to confirm one theory over the other, to demonstrate that protecting rights is fundamentally more valuable that fulfilling needs or that fulfilling needs is fundamentally more valuable that protecting rights. Instead of conceptualizing this conversation as a choice between two theories, this paper looks to Ian Hacking’s interpretation of Kuhn’s paradigm concept to suggest that working in the world of justice is very different than working in the world of care, as each orientation is a paradigm with its own cognitive and contextual standards of theory assessment. To start, after Larry Laudan, each has its own ontology, methodology, aims and values. But moreover, after Ian Hacking, each has an even larger, entrenched collection of projectible predicates. Though Carol Gilligan herself uses the metaphor of gestalt shift in a few places to characterize the move from the justice to the care perspective, the insight—that what many assume to be a standard exercise in theory choice is really more of a paradigm shift—has been under theorized by ethicists and ignored by philosophers of science. This paper brings the full resources of Structure and its secondary literature to this metaethical issue, while making the larger point that Structure has an important pragmatic role to play, when it comes to the understanding philosophical debates, even if we cannot secure the truth of Kuhn’s theory. (shrink)

Although Ian Hacking’s meta-concept is frequently applied to historical cases, few theorists have questioned the very idea of a style of reasoning. Hacking himself considers Donald Davidson’s conceptual scheme argument to be the most formidable challenge to the style idea, but Hacking has set up a straw man in Davidson. Beyond Hacking’s own conclusion, that Davidson's narrow concern with meaning incommensurability does not apply to styles, which are not incommensurable in that way, there is the more obvious point that styles, (...) which do not organize or fit the world, are not the kind of schemes with which Davidson is concerned. In fact, Hacking agrees with Davidson, in that both propose we can argue over a topic only when we employ the same style of reasoning (a suggestion which I contend is not necessarily the case). Hacking has a more serious problem, in that he cannot remain a Kantian without justifying his style idea with a transcendental argument. But this kind of argument is only available to those who support a univocal notion of reason, which the very idea of a style seems to outlaw. He has overlooked the challenges which arise out of Arthur Fine’s NOA. Hacking’s attention to historical detail and unwillingness to employ transcendental arguments in support of his view renders him immune to Fine’s arguments against inference to the best explanation. But the list of the necessary and sufficient criteria which identify styles of reasoning cannot prevent the proliferation of (bogus) styles. Moreover, Fine’s call for openness in inquiry shifts the burden of proof against Hacking and calls for him to prove: 1) that we cannot understand the history of science without the style meta-concept and 2) that whenever we encounter a mystery, our first order of business should be to stand back and uncover the style of reasoning which makes the predicament possible, instead of getting directly to the business of solving the problem. According to Fine, some puzzles just happen. And there is no guarantee that uncovering the style, which identifies the topic as a topic, will have anything to do with solving the mystery. Not only is there no such guarantee, but Hacking’s position, if it is to sidestep Davidson’s critique, actually requires that styles play only the minimal role of identifying topics. Styles must be fairly trivial. Fine thinks it is deeply unnatural to view science as entertainment. Philosophers are not to shine their lights on the action and watch it unfold. Rather, we are all to join the performance, thereby eliminating the artificial boundary between actor and audience which we mistakenly call upon to reinforce the notion that the raw material of science constrains our reflections about it. (shrink)

Drug discovery traditionally has occurred behind closed doors in for-profit corporations hoping to develop best-selling medicines that recoup initial research investment, sustain marketing infrastructures, and pass on healthy returns to shareholders. Only corporate Pharma has the man- and purchasing-power to synthesize the thousands of molecules needed to find a new drug and to conduct the clinical trials that will make the drug legal. Against this view, individual physician-scientists have suggested that the promise of applied genomics work calls for a new (...) form of social organization in order to speed the generation and understanding of new therapeutics. Recent successes in open source drug discovery show it is possible to produce valuable, empirically adequate, and sustainable collective beliefs without secrecy, proprietary attitudes, initial cooperation from Pharma, or outsized monetary incentives. After reviewing and differentiating these successes, I diagnose the source of this healthy new epistemic strategy. (shrink)

Despite our interests in conceptual schemes, paradigms, styles of reasoning, levels of explanation, and populationist modes of theorizing, many philosophers ignore the fact that instruction occurs in situ. This paper highlights the importance of cultural location by reflecting upon the author’s experience as an instructor of modernity at Marshall University, a regional state institution in Huntington, West Virginia. For many Appalachian students, issues barely tolerated by others (as part of their required history sequence) are uniquely resonant. At the same time, (...) existing power structures—and the very real limits established by those structures—discourage Appalachian students from embracing or even entertaining the canonical themes of modernity. Immersing oneself in the regional culture, instead of bemoaning it, enables a philosophy instructor to examine modernity from both the pre- and postmodern perspectives, while also conveying to students that their education matters a great deal to the fate of the region. (shrink)

In the classroom, philosophers face not only the perennial problems of philosophy, but the problems of _teaching_ philosophy, and specifically the problems of teaching philosophy today: how to make philosophy interesting and relevant to students who are resistant to, or unfamiliar with, the discipline; how to bring classic texts to life within our current socio-cultural context; how to serve all students regardless of their abilities, backgrounds, or declared majors; how to sustain our discipline in light of support for more "vocational" (...) pursuits. In these essays, 24 of our most celebrated professors of philosophy offer perspectives on and solutions to these questions and more. Selected and introduced by three leaders in the world of philosophical education, the insights contained in this inspiring collection illuminate the challenges and possibilities of teaching the academy’s oldest discipline. (shrink)