Epistemic Trust in Science Wilholt, Torsten
The British journal for the philosophy of science,
06/2013, Letnik:
64, Številka:
2
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Epistemic trust is crucial for science. This article aims to identify the kinds of assumptions that are involved in epistemic trust as it is required for the successful operation of science as a ...collective epistemic enterprise. The relevant kind of reliance should involve working from the assumption that the epistemic endeavors of others are appropriately geared towards the truth, but the exact content of this assumption is more difficult to analyze than it might appear. The root of the problem is that methodological decisions in science typically involve a complex trade-off between the reliability of positive results, the reliability of negative results, and the investigation's power (the rate at which it delivers definitive results). Which balance between these is the 'correct' one can only be determined in light of an evaluation of the consequences of all the different possible outcomes of the inquiry. What it means for the investigation to be 'appropriately geared towards the truth' thus depends on certain value judgments. I conclude that in the optimal case, trusting someone in her capacity as an information provider also involves a reliance on her having the right attitude towards the possible consequences of her epistemic work.
Les pensées de Gilbert Simondon et de Jacques Derrida n’ont jamais été étudiées de manière conjointe, alors même que les deux auteurs partagent un contexte historique, un milieu théorique ainsi qu’un ...ensemble de problématiques communes qui animent leurs réflexions dans le champ philosophique des années 1960. Ce livre propose de remédier à ce manque en confrontant les pensées des deux auteurs autour de trois grandes questions : celle de la métaphysique et des rapports entre philosophie et sciences, celle de l’humain et des rapports entre vie et conscience, et celle de la technique et des rapports entre mémoire et archives. Autant d’interrogations qui ressurgissent aujourd’hui, face aux menaces de l’Anthropocène et du transhumanisme. L’articulation des pensées de Simondon et de Derrida constitue ainsi une ressource fondamentale pour dépasser les oppositions entre animalité et humanité, nature et culture ou nature et technique. Elle permet de repenser les rapports entre vie, technique et esprit hors des schémas dualistes, ainsi que d’appréhender les enjeux anthropologiques des mutations technologiques contemporaines.
Natural Kindness Slater, Matthew H.
The British journal for the philosophy of science,
06/2015, Letnik:
66, Številka:
2
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Philosophers have long been interested in a series of interrelated questions about natural kinds. What are they? What role do they play in science and metaphysics? How do they contribute to our ...epistemic projects? What categories count as natural kinds? And so on. Owing, perhaps, to different starting points and emphases, we now have at hand a variety of conceptions of natural kinds—some apparently better suited than others to accommodate a particular sort of inquiry. Even if coherent, this situation isn't ideal. My goal in this article is to begin to articulate a more general account of 'natural kind phenomena'. While I do not claim that this account should satisfy everyone—it is built around a certain conception of the epistemic role of kinds and has an obvious pragmatic flavour—I believe that it has the resources to go further than extant alternatives, in particular the homeostatic property cluster view of kinds.
We show that previous results from epistemic network models by Kevin J. S. Zollman and Erich Kummerfeld showing the benefits of decreased connectivity in epistemic networks are not robust across ...changes in parameter values. Our findings motivate discussion about whether and how such models can inform real world epistemic communities.
I compare two different arguments for the importance of bringing new voices into science: arguments for increasing the representation of women, and arguments for the inclusion of the public, or for ...“citizen science”. I suggest that in each case, diversifying science can improve the quality of scientific results in three distinct ways: epistemically, ethically, and politically. In the first two respects, the mechanisms are essentially the same. In the third respect, the mechanisms are importantly different. Though this might appear to suggest a broad similarity between the cases, I show that the analysis reveals an important respect in which efforts to include the public are more complex. With citizen science programs, unlike with efforts to bring more women into science, the three types of improvement are often in conflict with one another: improvements along one dimension may come at a cost on another dimension, suggesting difficult trade-offs may need to be made.
Predictive processing (PP) approaches to the mind are increasingly popular in the cognitive sciences. This surge of interest is accompanied by a proliferation of philosophical arguments, which seek ...to either extend or oppose various aspects of the emerging framework. In particular, the question of how to position predictive processing with respect to enactive and embodied cognition has become a topic of intense debate. While these arguments are certainly of valuable scientific and philosophical merit, they risk underestimating the variety of approaches gathered under the predictive label. Here, we first present a basic review of neuroscientific, cognitive, and philosophical approaches to PP, to illustrate how these range from solidly cognitivist applications—with a firm commitment to modular, internalistic mental representation—to more moderate views emphasizing the importance of 'bodyrepresentations', and finally to those which fit comfortably with radically enactive, embodied, and dynamic theories of mind. Any nascent predictive processing theory (e.g., of attention or consciousness) must take into account this continuum of views, and associated theoretical commitments. As a final point, we illustrate how the Free Energy Principle (FEP) attempts to dissolve tension between internalist and externalist accounts of cognition, by providing a formal synthetic account of how internal 'representations' arise from autopoietic self-organization. The FEP thus furnishes empirically productive process theories (e.g., predictive processing) by which to guide discovery through the formal modelling of the embodied mind.
The free-energy principle states that all systems that minimize their free energy resist a tendency to physical disintegration. Originally proposed to account for perception, learning, and action, ...the free-energy principle has been applied to the evolution, development, morphology, anatomy and function of the brain, and has been called a
postulate
, an
unfalsifiable principle
, a
natural law
, and an
imperative
. While it might afford a theoretical foundation for understanding the relationship between environment, life, and mind, its epistemic status is unclear. Also unclear is how the free-energy principle relates to prominent theoretical approaches to life science phenomena, such as organicism and mechanism. This paper clarifies both issues, and identifies limits and prospects for the free-energy principle as a first principle in the life sciences.
It is proposed that we use the term “approximation” for inexact description of a target system and “idealization” for another system whose properties also provide an inexact description of the target ...system. Since systems generated by a limiting process can often have quite unexpected—even inconsistent—properties, familiar limit processes used in statistical physics can fail to provide idealizations but merely provide approximations.
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