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59Commentary on Alison Gopnik's "the scientist as child"Philosophy of Science 63 (4): 547-551. 1996.None
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35The whiptail lizard reconsideredPerspectives on Science 11 (3): 318-325. 2003.: Harry Collins and Trevor Pinch's introductory text, The Golem: What Everyone Should Know About Science (1993), includes a controversy about the significance of pseudosexual behavior in the parthenogenetic whiptail lizard. Collins and Pinch, basing their account on the work of Greg Myers (1990), claim that "in this area of biology, experiments are seldom possible" and that the debate has "battled to an honorable draw." I argue that a closer look at the publications of the scientists involved sh…Read more
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145Social empiricismNoûs 28 (3): 325-343. 1994.A new, social epistemology of science that addresses practical as well as theoretical concerns.
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248Norms of epistemic diversityEpisteme 3 (1-2): 23-36. 2006.Epistemic diversity is widely approved of by social epistemologists. This paper asks, more specifi cally, how much epistemic diversity, and what kinds of epistemic diversity are normatively appropriate? Both laissez-faire and highly directive approaches to epistemic diversity are rejected in favor of the claim that diversity is a blunt epistemic tool. There are typically a number of diff erent options for adequate diversifi cation. The paper focuses on scientifi c domains, with particular attent…Read more
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255Groupthink_ versus _The Wisdom of Crowds: The Social Epistemology of Deliberation and DissentSouthern Journal of Philosophy 44 (S1): 28-42. 2006.Trust in the practice of rational deliberation is widespread and largely unquestioned. This paper uses recent work from business contexts to challenge the view that rational deliberation in a group improves decisions. Pressure to reach consensus can, in fact, lead to phenomena such as groupthink and to suppression of relevant data. Aggregation of individual decisions, rather than deliberation to a consensus, surprisingly, can produce better decisions than those of either group deliberation or in…Read more
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143Consensus in ScienceThe Proceedings of the Twentieth World Congress of Philosophy 10 193-204. 2001.Because the idea of consensus in contemporary philosophy of science is typically seen as the locus of progress, rationality, and, often, truth, Mill’s views on the undesirability of consensus have been largely dismissed. The historical data, however, shows that there are many examples of scientific progress without consensus, thus refuting the notion that consensus in science has any special epistemic status for rationality, scientific progress (success), or truth. What needs to be developed ins…Read more
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83Review of Martin carrier, Don Howard, Janet Kourany (eds.), The Challenge of the Social and the Pressure of Practice: Science and Values Revisited (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2008 (6). 2008.
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24Making Medical KnowledgeOxford University Press. 2015.How is medical knowledge made? There have been radical changes in recent decades, through new methods such as consensus conferences, evidence-based medicine, translational medicine, and narrative medicine. Miriam Solomon explores their origins, aims, and epistemic strengths and weaknesses; and she offers a pluralistic approach for the future
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61Extensionality, underdetermination and indeterminacyErkenntnis 33 (2). 1990.A development of Quine's views took place between the denial of analyticity (in "Two Dogmas") and the doctrine of indeterminacy (in Word and Object). Quine argues for the inscrutability of extensional as well as intensional content. The debate with Carnap in the mid-fifties pushes Quine to argue for full indeterminacy. Quine initially resists arguing for indeterminacy because the doctrine seems to lead to general skepticism, not just to skepticism about meanings. Quine draws on Tarski's work on …Read more
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169Scientific rationality and human reasoningPhilosophy of Science 59 (3): 439-455. 1992.The work of Tversky, Kahneman and others suggests that people often make use of cognitive heuristics such as availability, salience and representativeness in their reasoning and decision making. Through use of a historical example--the recent plate tectonics revolution in geology--I argue that such heuristics play a crucial role in scientific decision making also. I suggest how these heuristics are to be considered, along with noncognitive factors (such as motivation and social structures) when …Read more
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38Norms of Epistemic DiversityEpisteme: A Journal of Social Epistemology 3 (1): 23-36. 2006.Epistemic diversity is widely approved of by social epistemologists. This paper asks, more specifically, how much epistemic diversity, and what kinds of epistemic diversity are normatively appropriate? Bothlaissez-faireand highly directive approaches to epistemic diversity are rejected in favor of the claim that diversity is a blunt epistemic tool. There are typically a number of different options for adequate diversification. The paper focuses on scientific domains, with particular attention to…Read more
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CSW Jobs for Philosophers Employment StudyApa Newsletter on Feminism and Philosophy 8 (2): 3-6. 2009.
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9The pragmatic turn in naturalist philosophy of sciencePerspectives on Science 3 (2): 206-230. 1995.Creative approaches in recent work in science studies can be usefully connected with ideas from the pragmatic tradition. This article both criticizes and builds on the contemporary pragmatic views of Hacking, Stich, and others. It selects a theme from the work of James and Dewey as a heuristic for a new, and necessary, pragmatic epistemology of science.
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70Responses to criticsPerspectives on Science 16 (3). 2008.In this paper I respond to the criticisms of Helen Longino, Alan Richardson, Naomi Oreskes and Sharyn Clough. There is discussion of the character of social knowledge, the goals of scientific inquiry, the connections between Social Empiricism and other approaches in science studies, productive and unproductive dissent, and the distinction between empirical and non-empirical decision vectors.
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39Multivariate Models of Scientific ChangePSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association 1994. 1994.Social scientists regularly make use of multivariate models to describe complex social phenomena. It is argued that this approach is useful for modelling the variety of cognitive and social factors contributing to scientific change, and superior to the integrated models of scientific change currently available. It is also argued that care needs to be taken in drawing normative conclusions: cognitive factors are not instrinsically more "rational" than social factors, nor is it likely that social …Read more
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8Frank Sulloway's Born to RebelPhilosophy of Science 65 (1): 171. 1998.Born to Rebel is an innovative and important work with much to say to philosophers of science, as well as historians and sociologists of science. Sulloway uses, successfully, quantitative statistical methods that others have despaired of using to analyze the complexities of historical change. In particular, he investigates scientific decision-making during scientific controversies with a multivariate analysis. The goal is to discern, precisely, the contribution of factors such as religious belie…Read more
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86Mechanisms, continental approaches, trials, and evolutionary medicine: New work in the philosophy of medicineTheoretical Medicine and Bioethics 32 (1): 1-4. 2011.
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