This is the introduction to a special, guest-edited issue of Philosophy Today. It lays out the extent to which the philosophy of science has ignored science policy and argues that policy issues deserve attention in parallel with epistemological ones. It further reviews the historical development of science policy in the United States since World War II, identifies some recent contributions to critical reflection on basic science policy assumptions, and outlines a set of issues to be addressed by any (...) comprehensive philosophy of science policy. (shrink)

In this article I give an overview of some recent work in philosophy of science dedicated to analysing the scientific process in terms of (conceptual) mathematical models of theories and the various semantic relations between such models, scientific theories, and aspects of reality. In current philosophy of science, the most interesting questions centre around the ways in which writers distinguish between theories and the mathematical structures that interpret them and in which they are true, i.e. between scientific theories (...) as linguistic systems and their non-linguistic models. In philosophy of science literature there are two main approaches to the structure of scientific theories, the statement or syntactic approach -- advocated by Carnap, Hempel and Nagel -- and the non- statement or semantic approach --advocated, among others, by Suppes, the structuralists, Beth, Van Fraassen, Giere, Wojcicki. In conclusion, I briefly review some of the usual realist inspired questions about the possibility and character of relations between scientific theories and reality as implied by the various approaches I discuss in the course of the article. The models of a scientific theory should indeed be adequate to the phenomena, but if the theory is 'adequate' to (true in) its conceptual (mathematical) models as well, we have a model-theoretic realism that addresses the possible meaning and reference of 'theoretical entities' without relapsing into the metaphysics typical of the usual scientific realist approaches. (shrink)

Some Key Controversies in the Philosophy of Science Larry Laudan. the mouths of my realist, relativist, and positivist. (By contrast, there is at least one person who hews to the line I have my prag- matist defending.) But I have gone to some  ...

The Modeling of Nature provides an excellent introduction to the fundamentals of natural philosophy, psychology, logic, and epistemology.

The goal of this paper is to articulate and advocate for an enhanced role for philosophers of science in the domain of science policy as well as within the science curriculum. I argue that philosophy of science as a field can learn from the successes as well as the mistakes of bioethics and begin to develop a new model that includes robust contributions to the science classroom, research collaborations with scientists, and a role for public philosophy through involvement (...) in science policy development. Through an analysis of two case studies, I illustrate how philosophers of science can make effective and productive contributions to science education as well as to interdisciplinary scientific research, and argue for the essential role of philosophers of science in the realm of science policy. (shrink)

The relationship between machine learning and the philosophy of science can be classed as a dynamic interaction: a mutually beneficial connection between two autonomous fields that changes direction over time. I discuss the nature of this interaction and give a case study highlighting interactions between research on Bayesian networks in machine learning and research on causality and probability in the philosophy of science.

이 논문의 목표는 정밀과학에 대한 카시러의 철학을 해명하고 평가하려는 것이다. 나는 먼저 『실체와 기능』에 드러난 카시러의 철학적 문제의식을 검토하고, 그의 다양한 ‘기능’개념을 논한다. 그런 뒤 수학에 대한 카시러의 철학을 크게 기능 관점과 역사적 발전주의라는 두 가지 견해로 나누어 분석하고 평가한다. 나는 두 견해 모두 현대수학에 대한 타당한 해석이라고 주장한다. 자연과학에 대한 카시러의 견해는 거의 전적으로 수학적 인식을 모범으로 형성되었다. 따라서 나는 자연과학에 대한 카시러의 견해도 마찬가지로 기능 관점과 역사적 발전주의로 나누어 분석하고 평가한다. 나는 카시러의 기능 관점은 자연과학에 대해서도 타당하지만, 그의 (...) 역사적 발전주의는 양자역학의 발전에 비추어 타당하지 않다고 주장한다. 마지막으로 나는 카시러의 선험 개념에 대한 최근의 학술적 논쟁을 비판적으로 검토한다. (shrink)

The rise of cognitive science in the last half-century has been accompanied by a considerable amount of philosophical activity. No other area within analytic philosophy in the second half of that period has attracted more attention or produced more publications. Philosophical work relevant to cognitive science has become a sprawling field (extending beyond analytic philosophy) which no one can fully master, although some try and keep abreast of the philosophical literature and of the essential scientific developments. Due to (...) the particular nature of its subject, it touches on a multitude of distinct special branches in philosophy and in science. It has also become quite a difficult, complicated and technical field, to the point of being nearly impenetrable for philosophers or scientists coming from other fields or traditions. Finally, it is contentious: Cognitive science is far from having reached stability, it is still widely regarded with suspicion, philosophers working within its confine have sharp disagreements amongst themselves, and philosophers standing outside, especially (but not only) of non-analytic persuasion, are often inclined to see both cognitive science and its accompanying philosophy as more or less confused or even deeply flawed. The sensible way to go under the circumstances, or so one might judge, would be to pick a sample of salient topics, in the present case, philosophical discussions of some central foundational issues, in the hope thereby of giving the reader a sense of what the field is about. This however is not the path I propose to take. There are two reasons for choosing another tack. The negative reason is that there is now available a plethora of excellent expositions, of any length one might desire, from one-page summaries to chapter- or volume-length introductions, of central topics in philosophy of mind (which constitutes in turn the core of what most philosophers think of as philosophy of cognitive science: more on this in a moment)1.. (shrink)

James Robert Ballantyne taught oriental languages in India for sixteen years, compiling grammars of Hindi, Sanskrit and Persian, along with translations of Hindu philosophy. In 1859, for the use of Christian missionaries, he prepared a guide to Hinduism, in English and Sanskrit. Published in two volumes in 1852, Synopsis of Science was intended to introduce his Indian pupils to Western science by using the framework of Hindu Nyaya philosophy, which was familiar to them and which Ballantyne greatly respected. (...) This second volume proceeds in similar style to the first: through a series of short paragraphs, Ballantyne introduces arithmetic, algebra, calculus, chemistry, botany, zoology, anatomy, physiology, mineralogy and geology. The second part of the volume is a Sanskrit translation. Overall, the work serves as an excellent primary source on the educational aspects of British imperialism. (shrink)

Although highly disputed, critical realism (in Ian G. Barbour’s style) is widely known as a tool to relate science and religion. Sympathising with an even more stringent hermeneutical approach, Andreas Losch had argued for a modification of critical realism into the so-called constructive-critical realism to give humanities with its constructive role of the subject due weight in any discussion on how to bridge the apparent gulf between the disciplines. So far, his constructive-critical realism has mainly been developed theologically. This paper (...) will evaluate whether constructive-critical realism is suitable as a philosophy of both science and religion and an appropriate basis for the science and religion discourse. In his original account of the critical realist philosophy of science, Barbour discussed and modified agreement with data, coherence, scope and fertility as criteria for good science, and for religion as well. The article discusses each of the criteria in how far Barbour does justice to the relevant concept, both in science and religion, and it will ask how to eventually modify the criteria for a maybe more sustainable bridge between science and religion, drawing on the idea of constructive-critical realism. Niels Henrik Gregersen’s contextual coherence theory will play a significant role in this regard. The conclusion suggests a deeper meaning of the fertility criterium, embracing ethical fruitfulness as well. As constructive-critical realism fully acknowledges the importance of the role of the knower in the process of knowing, it leads us from pure epistemology into ethics.Contribution: (1) The science and religion debate, inspired by critical realism, is identified as mainly theological discourse about the influence of science on religion; (2) the analysis of truth criteria in Losch’s constructive-critical version of realism proposes an emphasis on correspondence in science and coherence in the humanities; and (3) the deeper meaning of the criterium of fertility in this philosophical stance is highlighted, including ethical fruitfulness. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to discuss a parallel in the thinking of STS scholar Sheila Jasanoff and philosopher Adam Elga. Although both subscribe to the norms of their respective discipline—Elga using a priori conceptual analysis and Jasanoff conducting empirical case studies—they both reason in similar ways regarding epistemic hierarchy in political controversy. They argue that controversial questions are enmeshed in such a way with political framework that there can be no purely epistemic evaluation of expertise. This conclusion is (...) unexpected for a parallel between STS and philosophy of science since it is not based on a normative theory of expertise. While there has been collaboration between the two fields in the wake of the so-called “third wave” movement in science studies, the parallel discussed in this paper opens up the potential for collaborative research based on a skeptical view of expertise and epistemic authority. (shrink)

Several aspects of the work of George H. Mead have attracted a rather considerable amount of attention in recent years. The attention devoted by several disciplines to the relevant aspects of his work, however, has not involved an explicit focusing upon his philosophy of science. This is deemed regrettable, at least by this writer, in view of the fact that Mead's philosophy of science appears to be a rather substantial conceptualization of the actual research process.

Although in the last decades increasingly more philosophers have paid attention to the life sciences, traditionally physics has dominated general philosophy of science. Does a focus on the life sciences and medicine produce a different philosophy of science and indeed a different conception of knowledge? Here Cristina Chimisso does not attempt to give a comprehensive answer to this question; rather, she presents a case study focussed on Georges Canguilhem. Canguilhem continued the philosophical tradition that we now call historical (...) epistemology, and always referred very closely to the philosophy of Gaston Bachelard. However, whereas Bachelard primarily studied the history of chemistry and physics, Canguilhem turned to the life sciences, medicine and psychiatry. Chimisso investigates their respective conceptions and uses of norms. Chimisso argues that some crucial differences in how they regarded norms, seldom emphasised by Canguilhem himself and indeed by critics, stem from the sciences on which they concentrated. (shrink)