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441A Diagrammatic Notation for Visualizing Epistemic Entities and RelationsScientonomy 4. 2021.This paper presents a diagrammatic notation for visualizing epistemic entities and relations. The notation was created during the Visualizing Worldviews project funded by the University of Toronto’s Jackman Humanities Institute and has been further developed by the scholars participating in the university’s Research Opportunity Program. Since any systematic diagrammatic notation should be based on a solid ontology of the respective domain, we first outline the current state of the scientonomic o…Read more
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112Was Feyerabend an anarchist? The structure(s) of ‘anything goes’Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 64 11-21. 2017.
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106On the very idea of pursuitworthinessStudies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 91 (C): 103-112. 2022.Recent philosophical literature has turned its attention towards assessments of how to judge scientific proposals as worthy of further inquiry. Previous work, as well as papers contained within this special issue, propose criteria for pursuitworthiness (Achinstein, 1993; Whitt, 1992; DiMarco & Khalifa, 2019; Laudan, 1977; Shan, 2020; Šešelja et al., 2012). The purpose of this paper is to assess the grounds on which pursuitworthiness demands can be legitimately made. To do this, I propose a chall…Read more
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95Values, Pluralism, and Pragmatism: Themes from the Work of Matthew J. Brown (edited book)Boston Studies in the Philosophy and History of Science. Springer. forthcoming.This book (edited by Jonathan Y. Tsou, Jamie Shaw, and Carla Fehr) offers eighteen original historical and philosophical essays focused on values in science, scientific pluralism, and pragmatism. These themes have been central in the work of Matthew J. Brown, and the book frames these topics through an engagement with Brown’s broadly ranging work on values in science. The themes of this book are integrated and unified in the pragmatic and value-laden ideal of science defended by Professor Brown …Read more
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94The Problem of the Empirical Basis in the Popperian Tradition: Popper, Bartley, and FeyerabendHopos: The Journal of the International Society for the History of Philosophy of Science 10 (2): 524-561. 2020.The problem of the empirical basis is one of the most prominent difficulties within the Popperian tradition. Some claim that Popper’s anti-inductivism and antipsychologism lead to the concession that science has no empirical basis. Recent commentators have focused on this problem in Popper’s methodology. However, the problem also arises in a peculiar way in the thought of two underdiscussed members of the Popperian tradition: William Bartley and Paul Feyerabend. In this article, I aim to accompl…Read more
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89Conditions for understanding the meaning of a sentence: The nyāya and the advaita vedānta (review)Journal of Indian Philosophy 28 (3): 273-293. 2000.
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87Universal sentences: Russell, Wittgenstein, prior, and the nyāya (review)Journal of Indian Philosophy 19 (2): 103-119. 1991.
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85The revolt against rationalism: Feyerabend's critical philosophyStudies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 80 110-122. 2020.
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82Knowledge transfer in theoretical ecology: Implications for incommensurability, voluntarism, and pluralismStudies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 77 11-20. 2019.Well-known epistemologies of science have implications for how best to understand knowledge transfer (KT). Yet, to date, no serious attempt has been made explicate these particular implications. This paper infers views about KT from two popular epistemologies; what we characterize as incommensurabilitist views (after Devitt 2001; Bird 2002, 2008; Sankey and Hoyningen-Huene 2013) and voluntarist views (after van Fraassen 1984; Dupré 2001; Chakravartty 2015). We argue views of the former sort defi…Read more
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80The nyāya on existence, knowability and nameabilityJournal of Indian Philosophy 5 (3): 255-266. 1977.One of the aims of this paper is to discuss the different senses of the term 'existence' as used by the nyaya philosophers. this discussion leads us to a discussion on absence or negation and its role in logic. a discussion on empty terms has also been introduced in this context. according to the nyaya, existence, knowability and nameability are considered as universal properties. the distinction between these universal properties has been discussed in this context. i have also discussed the que…Read more
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74Feyerabend, funding, and the freedom of science: the case of traditional Chinese medicineEuropean Journal for Philosophy of Science 11 (2): 1-27. 2021.From the 1970s onwards, Feyerabend argues against the freedom of science. This will seem strange to some, as his epistemological anarchism is often taken to suggest that scientists should be free of even the most basic and obvious norms of science. His argument against the freedom of science is heavily influenced by his case study of the interference of Chinese communists in mainland China during the 1950s wherein the government forced local universities to continue researching traditional Chine…Read more
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74Feyerabend and manufactured disagreement: reflections on expertise, consensus, and science policySynthese 198 (Suppl 25): 6053-6084. 2020.Feyerabend is infamous for his defense of pluralism, which he extends to every topic he discusses. Disagreement, a by-product of this pluralism, becomes a sign of flourishing critical communities. In Feyerabend’s political works, he extends this pluralism from science to democratic societies and incorporates his earlier work on scientific methodology into a procedure for designing just policy. However, a description and analysis of Feyerabend’s conception of disagreement is lacking. In this pape…Read more
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63Duhem on Good Sense and Theory Pursuit: From Virtue to Social EpistemologyInternational Studies in the Philosophy of Science 33 (2): 67-85. 2020.ABSTRACT The emerging consensus in the secondary literature on Duhem is that his notion of ‘good sense’ is a virtue of individual scientists that guides them choosie between empirically equal rival theories : 149–159; Ivanova 2010. “Pierre Duhem’s Good Sense as a Guide to Theory Choice.” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 41 : 58–64; Fairweather 2011. “The Epistemic Value of Good Sense.” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 43 : 139–146; Bhakthavatsalam. “Duhemian…Read more
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63Number: From the nyāya to Frege-RussellStudia Logica 41 (2-3). 1982.The aim of this paper is to present the Nyāya concept of number in the light of contemporary philosophy and to show that the Frege-Russell concept of number does not contradict the Nyāya concept of number but rather supplements it
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61Pluralism, Pragmatism and Functional ExplanationsKairos 15 (1): 1-18. 2016.While many philosophers speak of ‘pluralism’ within philosophy of biology, there has been little said about what such pluralism amounts to or what its underlying assumptions are. This has provoked so me anxiety about whether pluralism is compatible with their commitment to naturalism. This paper surveys three prominent pluralist positions ‘integrative pluralism’, and both Peter Godfrey-Smith’s and Beth Preston’s pluralist analyses of functional explanations in evolutionary biology) and demonstra…Read more
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50A Pluralism Worth Having: Feyerabend's Well-Ordered ScienceDissertation, University of Western Ontario. 2018.The goal of this dissertation is to reconstruct, critically evaluate, and apply the pluralism of Paul Feyerabend. I conclude by suggesting future points of contact between Feyerabend’s pluralism and topics of interest in contemporary philosophy of science. I begin, in Chapter 1, by reconstructing Feyerabend’s critical philosophy. I show how his published works from 1948 until 1970 show a remarkably consistent argumentative strategy which becomes more refined and general as Feyerabend’s thought m…Read more
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50Why the Realism Debate Matters for Science Policy: The Case of the Human Brain ProjectSpontaneous Generations 9 (1): 82-98. 2018.There has been a great deal of skepticism towards the value of the realism/anti-realism debate. More specifically, many have argued that plausible formulations of realism and anti-realism do not differ substantially in any way. In this paper, I argue against this trend by demonstrating how a hypothetical resolution of the debate, through deeper engagement with the historical record, has important implications for our criterion of theory pursuit and science policy. I do this by revisiting Arthur …Read more
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49Navya-Nyāya on Subject–Predicate and Related PairsJournal of Indian Philosophy 38 (6): 625-642. 2010.This paper focuses on the relevance of Indian epistemology and the philosophy of language to contemporary Western philosophy. Hence it discusses (1) how perceptual, inferential and verbal cognitions are related to the same object, (2) how to draw the distinction in meaning between transformationally equivalent sentences, such as ‘Brutus killed Caesar’ and ‘Caesar was killed by Brutus’, and (3) why the predicate-expression is to be considered as unsaturated but the subjectexpression as saturated.…Read more
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48Bias, Lotteries, and Affirmative Action in Science Funding PolicyBritish Journal for the Philosophy of Science. forthcoming.
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47The Realistic Empiricism of Mach, James, and Russell: Neutral Monism Reconceived ERIC C. BANKS Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014; 217pp.; $95.00 (review)Dialogue 57 (3): 648-650. 2018.
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47Feyerabend’s well-ordered science: how an anarchist distributes fundsSynthese 198 (1): 419-449. 2018.To anyone vaguely aware of Feyerabend, the title of this paper would appear as an oxymoron. For Feyerabend, it is often thought, science is an anarchic practice with no discernible structure. Against this trend, I elaborate the groundwork that Feyerabend has provided for the beginnings of an approach to organizing scientific research. Specifically, I argue that Feyerabend’s pluralism, once suitably modified, provides a plausible account of how to organize science. These modifications come from C…Read more
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46Causality: SÄmkhya, Bauddha and NyÄya (review)Journal of Indian Philosophy 30 (3): 213-270. 2002.
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46Feyerabend and the Philosophy of PhysicsInternational Studies in the Philosophy of Science 35 (1): 1-4. 2022.In a reference letter for Feyerabend’s application to UC Berkeley, Carl Hempel writes that ‘Mr. Feyerabend combines a forceful and penetrating analytic mind with a remarkably thorough training and...
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45Empty terms: The Ny?ya and the Buddhists (review)Journal of Indian Philosophy 2 (3-4): 332-343. 1972.
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University of Toronto, St. George CampusInstitute for the History and Philosophy of SciencePost-doctoral Fellow
Toronto, Ontario, Canada