-
474The Validity of the Argument from Inductive RiskCanadian Journal of Philosophy 53 (2): 187-190. 2023.Havstad (2022) argues that the argument from inductive risk for the claim that non-epistemic values have a legitimate role to play in the internal stages of science is deductively valid. She also defends its premises and thus soundness. This is, as far as we are aware, the best reconstruction of the argument from inductive risk in the existing literature. However, there is a small flaw in this reconstruction of the argument from inductive risk which appears to render the argument invalid. This f…Read more
-
13Reply by the Author (review)Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 89 (C): 301-303. 2021.I am grateful to Joyce Havstad, Nancy McHugh, and Sarah Wieten for their thoughtful, generous, and challenging engagements with my book. It has been an honor for me to read their perspectives on my book, to learn from their reactions and concerns, and to continue the discussion. It is my hope that this dialogue will continue to push the conversation about science and values forward.
-
Matthew Brown : against expertise : a lesson from Feyerabend's Science in a free society?In Karim Bschir & Jamie Shaw (eds.), Interpreting Feyerabend: Critical Essays, Cambridge University Press. 2021.
-
86The Descriptive, the Normative, and the Entanglement of Values in ScienceIn Heather Douglas & Ted Richards (eds.), Science, Values, and Democracy: The 2016 Descartes Lectures, Consortium For Science, Policy & Outcomes, Arizona State University. pp. 51-65. 2021.Heather Douglas has helped to set the standard for twenty-first century discussions in philosophy of science on the topics of values in science and science in democracy. Douglas’s work has been part of a movement to bring the question of values in science back to center of the field and to focus especially on policy-relevant science. This first chapter, on the pervasive entanglement of science and values, includes an improved and definitive statement of the argument from inductive risk, which sh…Read more
-
27Mary Parker Follett as Integrative Public PhilosopherHypatia 36 (2): 425-436. 2021.Mary Parker Follett was a feminist-pragmatist American philosopher, a social-settlement worker, a founding figure in the community centers movement, a mediator of labor disputes, and a theorist of political and social organization and management. I argue that she is a model for a certain kind of public philosopher, and I unpack the respects in which she serves as such a model. I emphasize both her virtues as a public thinker and the role played in her work by the process of integration and the c…Read more
-
16Philosophical Pragmatism and International Relations: Essays for a Bold New WorldLexington Books. 2013.Philosophical Pragmatism and International Relations bridges the gap between philosophical pragmatism and international relations, two disciplinary perspectives that together shed light on how to advance the study and conduct of foreign affairs. Authors in this collection discuss a broad range of issues, from policy relevance to peacekeeping operations, with an eye to understanding how this distinctly American philosophy, pragmatism, can improve both international relations research and foreign …Read more
-
68Science and Moral Imagination: A New Ideal for Values in ScienceUniversity of Pittsburgh Press. 2020.The idea that science is or should be value-free, and that values are or should be formed independently of science, has been under fire by philosophers of science for decades. Science and Moral Imagination directly challenges the idea that science and values cannot and should not influence each other. Matthew J. Brown argues that science and values mutually influence and implicate one another, that the influence of values on science is pervasive and must be responsibly managed, and that science …Read more
-
20Guiding Engineering Student Teams’ Ethics Discussions with Peer AdvisingScience and Engineering Ethics 26 (3): 1743-1769. 2020.This study explores how peer advising affects student project teams’ discussions of engineering ethics. Peer ethics advisors from non-engineering disciplines are expected to provide diverse perspectives and to help engineering student teams engage and sustain ethics discussions. To investigate how peer advising helps engineering student teams’ ethics discussions, three student teams in different peer advising conditions were closely observed: without any advisor, with a single volunteer advisor,…Read more
-
38Pluralism and Perspectivism in the American Pragmatist TraditionIn Michela Massimi (ed.), Knowledge From a Human Point of View, Springer Verlag. 2019.This chapter explores perspectivism in the American Pragmatist tradition. On the one hand, the thematization of perspectivism in contemporary epistemology and philosophy of science can benefit from resources in the American Pragmatist philosophical tradition. On the other hand, the Pragmatists have interesting and innovative, pluralistic views that can be illuminated through the lens of perspectivism. I pursue this inquiry primarily through examining relevant sources from the Pragmatist traditio…Read more
-
51Models and perspectives on stage: remarks on Giere’s Scientific perspectivismStudies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 40 (2): 213-220. 2009.Ron Giere’s recent book Scientific perspectivism sets out an account of science that attempts to forge a via media between two popular extremes: absolutist, objectivist realism on the one hand, and social constructivism or skeptical anti-realism on the other. The key for Giere is to treat both scientific observation and scientific theories as perspectives, which are limited, partial, contingent, context-, agent- and purpose-dependent, and pluralism-friendly, while nonetheless world-oriented and …Read more
-
547Weaving Value Judgment into the Tapestry of SciencePhilosophy, Theory, and Practice in Biology 10 (10). 2018.I critically analyze Kevin Elliott’s A Tapestry of Values in order to tease out his views on the nature and status of values or value judgments in the text. I show there is a tension in Elliott’s view that is closely connected to a major lacuna in the philosophical literature on values in science: the need for a better theory of values.
-
220Picky eating is a moral failingIn Dave Monroe & Fritz Allhoff (eds.), Food & Philosophy: Eat, Think, and Be Merry, Blackwell. 2007.Common wisdom includes expressions such as “there is no accounting for taste'’ that express a widely-accepted subjectivism about taste. We commonly say things like “I can’t stand anything with onions in it'’ or “Oh, I’d never eat sushi,'’ and we accept such from our friends and associates. It is the position of this essay that much of this language is actually quite unacceptable. Without appealing to complete objectivism about taste, I will argue that there are good reasons to think that there w…Read more
-
114Introduction: Reappraising Paul FeyerabendStudies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 57 1-8. 2016.This volume is devoted to a reappraisal of the philosophy of Paul Feyerabend. It has four aims. The first is to reassess his already well-known work from the 1960s and 1970s in light of contemporary developments in the history and philosophy of science. The second is to explore themes in his neglected later work, including recently published and previously unavailable writings. The third is to assess the contributions that Feyerabend can make to contemporary debate, on topics such as perspectivi…Read more
-
127n 1909, the 50th anniversary of both the publication of Origin of the Species and his own birth, John Dewey published "The Influence of Darwin on Philosophy." This optimistic essay saw Darwin's advance not only as one of empirical or theoretical biology, but a logical and conceptual revolution that would shake every corner of philosophy. Dewey tells us less about the influence that Darwin exerted over philosophy over the past 50 years and instead prophesied the influence it would take in the fut…Read more
-
431The Disconnect Problem, Scientific Authority, and Climate PolicyPerspectives on Science 25 (1): 67-94. 2017.The disconnect problem arises wherever there is ongoing and severe discordance between the scientific assessment of a politically relevant issue, and the politics and legislation of said issue. Here, we focus on the disconnect problem as it arises in the case of climate change, diagnosing a failure to respect the necessary tradeoff between authority and autonomy within a public institution like science. After assessing the problematic deployment of scientific authority in this arena, we offer su…Read more
-
84Quantum framesStudies in History and Philosophy of Science Part B: Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 45 1-10. 2014.The framework of quantum frames can help unravel some of the interpretive difficulties i the foundation of quantum mechanics. In this paper, I begin by tracing the origins of this concept in Bohr's discussion of quantum theory and his theory of complementarity. Engaging with various interpreters and followers of Bohr, I argue that the correct account of quantum frames must be extended beyond literal space–time reference frames to frames defined by relations between a quantum system and the exosy…Read more
-
27
-
37The Roles of Implicit Understanding of Engineering Ethics in Student Teams’ DiscussionScience and Engineering Ethics 23 (6): 1755-1774. 2017.Following previous work that shows engineering students possess different levels of understanding of ethics—implicit and explicit—this study focuses on how students’ implicit understanding of engineering ethics influences their team discussion process, in cases where there is significant divergence between their explicit and implicit understanding. We observed student teams during group discussions of the ethical issues involved in their engineering design projects. Through the micro-scale disco…Read more
-
97Genuine Problems and the Significance of ScienceContemporary Pragmatism 7 (2): 131-153. 2010.This paper addresses the political constraints on science through a pragmatist critique of Philip Kitcher’s account of “well-ordered science.” A central part of Kitcher’s account is his analysis of the significance of items of scientific research: contextual and purpose-relative scientific significance replaces mere truth as the aim of inquiry. I raise problems for Kitcher’s account and argue for an alternative, drawing on Peirce’s and Dewey’s theories of problem-solving inquiry. I conclude by s…Read more
-
131John Dewey's pragmatist alternative to the belief-acceptance dichotomyStudies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 53 62-70. 2015.Defenders of value-free science appeal to cognitive attitudes as part of a wedge strategy, to mark a distinction between science proper and the uses of science for decision-making, policy, etc. Distinctions between attitudes like belief and acceptance have played an important role in defending the value-free ideal. In this paper, I will explore John Dewey's pragmatist philosophy of science as an alternative to the philosophical framework the wedge strategy rests on. Dewey does draw significant a…Read more
-
126Science, Values, and Democracy in the Global Climate Change DebateIn Shane Ralston (ed.), Philosophical Pragmatism and International Relations: Essays for a Bold New World, Lexington Books. pp. 127-158. 2013.This chapter will develop and apply ideas drawn from and inspired by Dewey’s work on science and democracy to the context of international relations (IR). I will begin with Dewey’s views on the nature of democracy, which lead us into his philosophy of science. I will show that scientific and policy inquiry are inextricably related processes, and that they both have special requirements in a democratic context. There are some challenges applying these ideas to the IR case, but these challenges ca…Read more
-
63The Functional Complexity of Scientific EvidenceMetaphilosophy 46 (1): 65-83. 2015.This article sketches the main features of traditional philosophical models of evidence, indicating idealizations in such models that it regards as doing more harm than good. It then proceeds to elaborate on an alternative model of evidence that is functionalist, complex, dynamic, and contextual, a view the author calls dynamic evidential functionalism (DEF). This alternative builds on insights from philosophy of scientific practice, Kuhnian philosophy of science, pragmatist epistemology, philos…Read more
-
317Relational quantum mechanics and the determinacy problemBritish Journal for the Philosophy of Science 60 (4): 679-695. 2009.Carlo Rovelli's relational interpretation of quantum mechanics holds that a system's states or the values of its physical quantities as normally conceived only exist relative to a cut between a system and an observer or measuring instrument. Furthermore, on Rovelli's account, the appearance of determinate observations from pure quantum superpositions happens only relative to the interaction of the system and observer. Jeffrey Barrett ([1999]) has pointed out that certain relational interpretatio…Read more
-
269John Dewey’s Logic of ScienceHopos: The Journal of the International Society for the History of Philosophy of Science 2 (2): 258-306. 2012.In recent years, pragmatism in general and John Dewey in particular have been of increasing interest to philosophers of science. Dewey's work provides an interesting alternative package of views to those which derive from the logical empiricists and their critics, on problems of both traditional and more recent vintage. Dewey's work ought to be of special interest to recent philosophers of science committed to the program of analyzing ``science in practice.'' The core of Dewey's philosophy of sc…Read more
-
138The abundant world: Paul Feyerabend's metaphysics of scienceStudies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 57 142-154. 2016.The goal of this paper is to provide an interpretation of Feyerabend's metaphysics of science as found in late works like Conquest of Abundance and Tyranny of Science. Feyerabend's late metaphysics consists of an attempt to criticize and provide a systematic alternative to traditional scientific realism, a package of views he sometimes referred to as “scientific materialism.” Scientific materialism is objectionable not only on metaphysical grounds, nor because it provides a poor ground for under…Read more
-
97Love Slaves and Wonder Women: Radical Feminism and Social Reform in the Psychology of William Moulton MarstonFeminist Philosophy Quarterly 2 (1): 1. 2016.In contemporary histories of psychology, William Moulton Marston is remembered for helping develop the lie detector test. He is better remembered in the history of popular culture for creating the comic book superhero Wonder Woman. In his time, however, he contributed to psychological research in deception, basic emotions, abnormal psychology, sexuality, and consciousness. He was also a radical feminist with connections to women's rights movements. Marston's work is an instructive case for philo…Read more
-
505Values in Science beyond Underdetermination and Inductive RiskPhilosophy of Science 80 (5): 829-839. 2013.Proponents of the value ladenness of science rely primarily on arguments from underdetermination or inductive risk, which share the premise that we should only consider values where the evidence runs out or leaves uncertainty; they adopt a criterion of lexical priority of evidence over values. The motivation behind lexical priority is to avoid reaching conclusions on the basis of wishful thinking rather than good evidence. This is a real concern, however, that giving lexical priority to evidenti…Read more