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49Review of Dimitri Ginev, The Tenets of Cognitive Existentialism. (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews (2012.04.23). 2012.Review of: Dimitri Ginev (2011), The Tenets of Cognitive Existentialism (Athens: Ohio University Press).
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155Realism, Reliabilism, and the 'Strong Programme' in the Sociology of Scientific KnowledgeInternational Studies in the Philosophy of Science 22 (1). 2008.In this essay, I respond to Tim Lewens's proposal that realists and Strong Programme theorists can find common ground in reliabilism. I agree with Lewens, but point to difficulties in his argument. Chief among these is his assumption that reliabilism is incompatible with the Strong Programme's principle of symmetry. I argue that the two are, in fact, compatible, and that Lewens misses this fact because he wrongly supposes that reliabilism entails naturalism. The Strong Programme can fully accomm…Read more
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186Husserl and the Phenomenology of ScienceStudies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 42 (3): 467-471. 2011.This article critically reviews an outstanding collection of new essays addressing Edmund Husserl’s Crisis of European Sciences. In Science and the Life-World (Stanford, 2010), David Hyder and Hans-Jörg Rheinberger bring together an impressive range of first-rate philosophers and historians. The collection explicates key concepts in Husserl’s often obscure work, compares Husserl’s phenomenology of science to the parallel tradition of historical epistemology, and provocatively challenges Husserl’…Read more
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53The Eggs Speak Up: Review of Fuller's Knowledge (review)Metascience 25 (1). 2016.Contribution to a book symposium on Steve Fuller's _Knowledge: The Philosophical Quest in History_ (Routledge, 2015). The title reproduces the title of an essay by Hannah Arendt. Fuller uses the idea of theodicy to promote a creationist philosophy of science, according to which one is justified in breaking eggs in order to produce a divine omelette of technologically orchestrated human transcendence. The review nods to Arendt's essay, and a short story by Ursula LeGuin, in challenging this propo…Read more
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496Circles of Scientific Practice: Regressus, Mathēsis, DenkstilIn Dimitri Ginev (ed.), Critical Science Studies after Ludwik Fleck, St. Kliment Ohridski University Press. pp. 83-99. 2015.Hermeneutic studies of science locate a circle at the heart of scientific practice: scientists only gain knowledge of what they, in some sense, already know. This may seem to threaten the rational validity of science, but one can argue that this circle is a virtuous rather than a vicious one. A virtuous circle is one in which research conclusions are already present in the premises, but only in an indeterminate and underdeveloped way. In order to defend the validity of science, the hermeneuticis…Read more
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93The Exception Makes the Rule: Reply to HowsonInternational Studies in the Philosophy of Science 23 (2): 213-216. 2009.Colin Howson argues that (1) my sociologistic reliabilism sheds no light on the objectivity of epistemic content, and that (2) sorites does not threaten the reliability of modus ponens . I reply that argument (1) misrepresents my position, and that argument (2) is beside the point.
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885Putting a Spin on Circulating Reference, or How to Rediscover the Scientific SubjectStudies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 49 103-107. 2015.Bruno Latour claims to have shown that a Kantian model of knowledge, which he describes as seeking to unite a disembodied transcendental subject with an inaccessible thing-in-itself, is dramatically falsified by empirical studies of science in action. Instead, Latour puts central emphasis on scientific practice, and replaces this Kantian model with a model of “circulating reference.” Unfortunately, Latour's alternative schematic leaves out the scientific subject. I repair this oversight through …Read more
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109Review of Finn Collin, Science Studies as Naturalized Philosophy (review)International Studies in the Philosophy of Science 26 (1): 121-124. 2012.Review of: Finn Collin (2011), Science Studies as Naturalized Philosophy (Dordecht: Springer).
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