Philosophy of Science, History of the Philosophy of Sceince, Epistemology of Experimentation, History of the Human sciences

Tales of the Barbarians: Ethnography and Empire in the Roman West

by Greg Woolf

I can't get no (epistemic) satisfaction: Why the hard problem of consciousness entails a hard problem of explanation

by Brian Earp

Earp, B. D. (2012). I can’t get no (epistemic) satisfaction: Why the hard problem of consciousness entails a hard problem of explanation. Dialogues in Philosophy, Mental and Neuro Sciences, in press.

Daniel Dennett (1996) has disputed David Chalmers’ (1995) assertion that there is a “hard problem of consciousness”... more Daniel Dennett (1996) has disputed David Chalmers’ (1995) assertion that there is a “hard problem of consciousness” worth solving in the philosophy of mind. In this paper I defend Chalmers against Dennett on this point: I argue that there is a hard problem of consciousness, that it is distinct in kind from the so-called easy problems, and that it is vital for the sake of honest and productive research in the cognitive sciences to be clear about the difference. But I have my own rebuke for Chalmers on the point of explanation. Chalmers (1995, 1996) proposes to “solve” the hard problem of consciousness by positing qualia as fundamental features of the universe, alongside such ontological basics as mass and space-time. But this is an inadequate solution: to posit, I will urge, is not to explain. To bolster this view, I borrow from an account of explanation by which it must provide “epistemic satisfaction” to be considered successful (Rowlands, 2001; Campbell, 2009), and show that Chalmers’ proposal fails on this account. I conclude that research in the science of consciousness cannot move forward without greater conceptual clarity in the field.

L. Magnani (2012), Scientific Models Are Not Fictions. Model-Based Science as Epistemic Warfare

by Lorenzo Magnani

In L. Magnani and P. Li (eds.), Philosophy and Cognitive Science, Western and Eastern Studies, Springer, Heidelberg/Berlin, 2012, pp. 1-38.

In the current epistemological debate scientific models are not only considered as useful devices for explaining facts... more In the current epistemological debate scientific models are not only considered as useful devices for explaining facts or discovering new entities, laws, and theories, but also rubricated under various new labels: from the classical ones, as abstract entities and idealizations, to the more recent, as fictions, surrogates, credible worlds, missing systems, make-believe, parables, functional, epistemic actions, revealing capacities. The paper discusses these approaches showing some of their epistemological inadequacies, also taking advantage of recent results in cognitive science. The main aim is to revise and criticize fictionalism, also reframing the received idea of abstractness and ideality of models with the help of recent results coming from the area of distributed cognition (common coding) and abductive cognition (manipulative). The article also illustrates how scientific modeling activity can be better described taking advantage of the concept of “epistemic warfare”, which sees scientific enterprise as a complicated struggle for rational knowledge in which it is crucial to distinguish epistemic (for example scientific models) from non epistemic (for example fictions, falsities, propaganda) weapons. Finally I will illustrate that it is misleading to analyze models in science by adopting a confounding mixture of static and dynamic aspects of the scientific enterprise. Scientific models in a static perspective (for example when inserted in a textbook) certainly appear fictional to the epistemologist, but their fictional character disappears in case a dynamic perspective is adopted. A reference to the originative role of thought experiment in Galileo’s discoveries and to usefulness of Feyerabend’s counterinduction in criticizing the role of resemblance in model-based cognition is also provided, to further corroborate the thesis indicated by the article title

Kant and the foundations of the human sciences

by Bernward Grünewald

Mediating the Publics of Public Participation Experiments

by Nick Mahony

Conclusion: Rethinking the Public: innovations in research, theory and politics

by Nick Mahony

The microscopic glance: Spiritual exercises, the microscope and the practice of wonder in early modern science

by Claude-Olivier Doron

Draft, to be published in Vasalou, Sophia  (dir.), Practices of Wonder, Wipf and Stock, 2012

I argue in this essay that microscope was used in many texts from the end of the XVIIth century until at least the... more I argue in this essay that microscope was used in many texts from the end of the XVIIth century until at least the middle of the XVIIIth, as a kind of apparatus to practice and exercise wonderment. Wonderment is not here to be defined as an immediate emotion that arises from strange or exceptional phenomena as extraordinary wonders or miracles; it is a complex emotion that is produced through a disciplined experience, that requires practice and sometimes efforts, has to be kept alive, and that is extracted from the very ordinary objects of the world, even the most despised as insects or small things like needles, rain drops, etc. I argue that the microscope served as a way to give access to a certain kind of experience of wonderment, what I call an “objective mystical experience” that was supposed to produce an inner transformation of the observer, with ethical as well as cognitive dimensions.  It can be read as a specific technique of the self, blurring the usual frontier between the scientific and the religious self, and as a spiritual exercise in the very strict meaning Ignatius de Loyola gave to the concept: exercises like humiliating human pride, exposing its pretensions, plunging him into astonishment and discovering its nullity, like celebrating God’s almighty wisdom in each element of the World, meditating on order or on celestial life, etc. And in each of these exercises, the production of wonderment appears as the key element

Emergence of norms for biomedical research. At the origin of the Huriet law (1975-1988)

by nicolas lechopier

First paper, in 2004

The French law for the Protection of persons involved in biomedical research, known as «Loi Huriet», defines the frame... more The French law for the Protection of persons involved in biomedical research, known as «Loi Huriet», defines the frame in which biomedical experimentations on human subjects can take place. Insisting on the emergent character of the norms (laws, scientific standards…) for clinical research in France, this paper presents the general context in which such a law was promulgated. It gives an historical focus on its principal dispositions and underlines the conceptual issues raised by the public acknowledgment of the existence of scientific investigations on humans. This paper contributes to the debate on the meaning of the main notions of the French normative system applying to biomedical researches (protection of the person, individual direct benefice…)

Strategies of empirical justification in experimental science

by Tudor Baetu

Freedom and the Human Sciences: Hume’s Science of Man versus Kant’s Pragmatic Anthropology

by Thomas Sturm

Published in: Kant Yearbook 3 (2011: Anthropology), pp. 23-42.

In his Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View, Kant formulates the idea of the empirical investigation of the... more In his Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View, Kant formulates the idea of the empirical investigation of the human being as a free agent. The notion is puzzling: Does Kant not often claim that, from an empirical point of view, human beings cannot be considered as free? What sense would it make anyway to include the notion of freedom in science? The answer to these questions lies in Kant’s notion of character. While probably all concepts of character are involved in the description and explanation of human action, Kant develops a specific notion of character by distinguishing character as a “mode of thought” (Denkungsart) from character as a “mode of sensing” (Sinnesart). The former notion is distinctively Kantian. Only mode of thought reveals itself in human action such that actions can be seen as linked to an agent’s first-person perspective and the capacity to rationally reflect one’s own intentions and desires. By reference to this concept human actions can be empirically explained qua free actions. The point of this paper is not only to rule out the interpretation that Kant is an incompatibilist concerning the dilemma of freedom and causal determinism. It is also argued that Kant defends a version of soft determinism which is more sophisticated and more adequate for the human sciences than Hume’s.

Organizational Inquiry As a Rhetorical Process: The Role of Tropes In Organizational Theory and Methods

by sandy green

Green, S, Alpalan M., and Mitroff, I. “Organizational Inquiry as a Rhetorical Process Organizational Theory and Methods” The Electronic Journal of Business Research Methods Volume 8 Issue 1 2010, (pp.25 - 41), available online at www.ejbrm.com

We develop a discursive understanding of organizational inquiry in order to challenge the status quo characterized by... more We develop a discursive understanding of organizational inquiry in order to challenge the status quo characterized by a positivistic approach to organizational inquiry. Specifically, we re-conceptualize organizational science as an inherently rhetorical process. We propose that the language of theories and methods used within a particular paradigm move from figurative to literal and back to figurative, following a distinctive tropological sequence from metaphor to metonymy to synecdoche to irony. We also link the researchers‟ use of four master tropes to particular types of scientific reasoning as well as to particular types of scientific tools. We discuss the research implications of the rhetorical model of organizational science.

Expérimentation et clinique électroencéphalographiques entre physiologie, neurologie et psychiatrie (Suisse, 1935-1965)

by Vincent Pidoux

published in "Revue d'histoire des sciences", 2010/2 (Tome 63)

The electroencephalogram (EEG), invented by the German psychiatrist Hans Berger in 1924, reached the... more The electroencephalogram (EEG), invented by the German psychiatrist Hans Berger in 1924, reached the neurophysiological laboratories and several clinical contexts in the mid-30s. In Switzerland, some skeptical physiologists and enthusiastic psychiatrists paved the way for its integration, but it was only after the Second World War that an emerging field of epileptology became part of a process of technological and epistemological innovation which raised great expectations and produced a large body of research at the crossroads of physiology, neurology and psychiatry. An informal network was created, characterized by clinical, scientific and local institutional cultures. The EEG also made it possible to detect some clinical entities, not however without transforming them, as in the case of epilepsy. Some attempts to probe psychiatric diseases and subjects with the EEG are described as negotiated relationships between clinical observations, subjective manifestations or symptoms and inscriptions of a spontaneous or elicited electrical brain activity. These attempts shape a clinical and experimental cerebral subject, which is analyzed in this article from the point of view of its technical aspects and the concrete procedures on which it depends.