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60Experimental Reproducibility and the Experimenters' RegressPSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association 1992. 1992.In his influential book, "Changing Order", H.M. Collins puts forward the following three claims concerning experimental replication. (i) Replication is rarely practiced by experimentalists; (ii) replication cannot be used as an objective test of scientific knowledge claims, because of the occurrence of the so-called experimenters' regress; and (iii) stopping this regress at some point depends upon the enculturation in a local community of practitioners, who tacitly learn the relevant skills. In …Read more
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99Critical philosophy of technology: The basic issuesSocial Epistemology 22 (1). 2008.This paper proposes a framework for a critical philosophy of technology by discussing its practical, theoretical, empirical, normative and political dimensions. I put forward a general account of technology, which includes both similarities and dissimilarities to Andrew Feenberg's instrumentalization theory. This account characterizes a technology as a "(type of) artefactual, functional system with a certain degree of stability and reproducibility". A discussion of how such technologies may be r…Read more
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16The Commodification of Academic Research: Science and the Modern University (edited book)University of Pittsburgh Press. 2010.Selling science has become a common practice in contemporary universities. This commodification of academia pervades many aspects of higher education, including research, teaching, and administration. As such, it raises significant philosophical, political, and moral challenges. This volume offers the first book-length analysis of this disturbing trend from a philosophical perspective and presents views by scholars of philosophy of science, social and political philosophy, and research ethics. T…Read more
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62Pragmatism, Ethics, and TechnologyTechné: Research in Philosophy and Technology 7 (3): 10-18. 2004.
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45How Concepts Both Structure the World and Abstract from ItReview of Metaphysics 55 (3). 2002.TWO OPPOSING VIEWS ABOUT THE RELATIONSHIP between concepts and the world can be found in the history of philosophy. One view—deriving from Immanuel Kant and endorsed by Karl Popper, among many others—claims that in forming and using concepts we structure the world. Concepts produce or increase order. Hence, the world, insofar as it is knowable by human beings, is necessarily a conceptually structured world. The second, still older view—represented by the Aristotelian tradition and by John Locke,…Read more
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60Exploiting abstract possibilities: A critique of the concept and practice of product patenting (review)Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics 17 (3): 275-291. 2004.Developments in biotechnology and genomics have moved the issue of patenting scientific and technological inventions toward the center of interest. In particular, the patentability of genes of plants, animals, or humans and of genetically modified (parts of) living organisms has been discussed, and questioned, from various normative perspectives. This paper aims to contribute to this debate. For this purpose, it first explains a number of relevant aspects of the theory and practice of patenting.…Read more
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103Accardi on quantum theory and the "fifth axiom" of probabilityPhilosophy of Science 57 (1): 149-157. 1990.In this paper we investigate Accardi's claim that the "quantum paradoxes" have their roots in probability theory and that, in particular, they can be evaded by giving up Bayes' rule, concerning the relation between composite and conditional probabilities. We reach the conclusion that, although it may be possible to give up Bayes' rule and define conditional probabilities differently, this contributes nothing to solving the philosophical problems which surround quantum mechanics
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42An immanent criticism of Lakatos' account of the 'degenerating phase' of Bohr's atomic theoryJournal for General Philosophy of Science / Zeitschrift für Allgemeine Wissenschaftstheorie 13 (1): 99-109. 1982.Summary This paper presents an immanent criticism of Lakatos' reconstruction of the degenerating phase of Bohr's atomic theory. That is to say, the historiographical methods used are exclusively of a Lakatosian kind. Such a closer Lakatosian look at the historical episode in question shows that Lakatos' own reconstruction is incorrect on three essential points. These are the role of the correspondence principle, the position of the hard core in Bohr's programme, and the presence of important nov…Read more
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Kanttekeningen bij de filosofie van het wetenschappelijk experimenterenAlgemeen Nederlands Tijdschrift voor Wijsbegeerte 95 (3): 221-224. 2003.
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21De cognitieve drie-eenheid: realiseren, interpreteren en abstraherenAlgemeen Nederlands Tijdschrift voor Wijsbegeerte 106 (1): 3-36. 2014.The article consists of three main sections, in which I successively discuss the nature and role of realization, interpretation and abstraction in experimental and observational processes. In this way, these sections address several fundamental problems in philosophy of science, ontology and epistemology, and philosophy of language. Section 1 introduces the notion of realization processes, and argues that successful realization requires causal judgments. The second section discusses the role of …Read more
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32How Inclusive Is European Philosophy of Science?International Studies in the Philosophy of Science 29 (2): 149-165. 2015.The main question of this article is given by its title: how inclusive is European philosophy of science? Phrased in this way, the question presupposes that, as a mature discipline, philosophy of science should provide an inclusive account of its subject area. I first provide an explanation of the notion of an inclusive philosophy of science. This notion of an inclusive philosophy of science is specified by discussing three general topics that seem to be missing from, or are quite marginal in, r…Read more
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Experimenting in the natural sciencesIn Jed Z. Buchwald (ed.), Scientific practice: theories and stories of doing physics, University of Chicago Press. 1995.
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14Conceptual and connectionist analyses of observation: a critical evaluationStudies in History and Philosophy of Science 30 455-477. 1999.
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15The Philosophy of Scientific Experimentation (edited book)University of Pittsburgh Press. 2003.Since the late 1980s, the neglect of experiment by philosophers and historians of science has been replaced by a keen interest in the subject. In this volume, a number of prominent philosophers of experiment directly address basic theoretical questions, develop existing philosophical accounts, and offer novel perspectives on the subject, rather than rely exclusively on historical cases of experimental practice. Each essay examines one or more of six interconnected themes that run throughout the …Read more
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15Universities are occupied by Management, a regime obsessed with ‘accountability' through measurement, increased competition, efficiency, ‘excellence', and misconceived economic salvation. Given the occupation's absurd side-effects, we ask ourselves how Management has succeeded in taking over our precious universities. An alternative vision for the academic future consists of a public university, more akin to a socially engaged knowledge commons than to a corporation. We suggest some provocative …Read more
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41Science, realization and reality: The fundamental issuesStudies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 24 (3): 327-349. 1993.
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13Lawrence Busch. Standards: Recipes for Reality. xii + 390 pp., illus., tables, bibl., index. Cambridge, Mass./London: MIT Press, 2011. $35 (review)Isis 103 (4): 762-763. 2012.
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61What Prospects for a General Philosophy of Science?Journal for General Philosophy of Science / Zeitschrift für Allgemeine Wissenschaftstheorie 43 (1): 89-92. 2012.
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