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May 16, 2013

Science and Reason – Part 2: Pessimism and the Myth of Progress (by Henrik Lagerlund)

von Wright

 

We are beginning to realize that we
are more lost than we previously thought.
-Harry Martinson, Aniara 13.

 

It is somewhat surprising that two of my favorite books, one being von Wright’s Vetenskapen och förnuftet and the other the Nobel laureate Harry Martinson’s Aniara, both have a very negative view of the future of humankind. Aniara is a poem in 103 verses about a space ship originally destined for Mars with colonists from the destroyed planet earth. En route the ship malfunctions and is set on a course to nowhere into empty space. It is a colorful and striking metaphor of humankind’s existential situation.

Von Wright has called the view that he ends up with “a provocative pessimism”. In the last chapter of Vetenskapen och förnuftet, he asks: “What forces might break or essentially change the trends I see developing in the future? One perspective that I think is not unrealistic is that humankind is heading towards extinction as a zoological species. This perspective has often in times of despair and change upset people. But I think it has more foundation in reality now than before. For my own part, I don’t find it particularly upsetting. At one time, humankind will most certainly cease to exist as a species, and if this happens in a few hundred thousand years or in a few millennia is in a cosmic perspective not important (in Swedish: en pipa snus).” The hope he says he has for humanity, he attributes to reason and that the form of rationality that became dominant with modern science undergoes change or is replaced by a form of rationality that is healthier for humankind.

How did he end up in this conclusion? The second part of the book draws out the influences of the form of rationality he has established as representative of the moderns scientific world-view. He does this by pointing to some key turning points in human history. An important step towards the industrial changes in the 19th century was the merging of science and technology. Human technology and ingenuity was already impressive long before the birth of modern science, but science and technology together created a revolutionary mix. It is the technological innovations made possible by modern science that radically changed our living conditions. Perhaps the first really important such development was the scientific discovery of electricity and the technological innovations it made possible. Science and technology continue to change our world and our living conditions in a way and in a pace that is hard to keep up with. Computers, tablets, smart phones, not to mention medical progress, and all kinds of techniques now available through genetic manipulation, have made the world of my generation almost impossible to compare to the world of my mother and father.

No other philosopher has described the changing conditions for humanity after the industrial revolution better than Karl Marx, but also Albert Einstein early expressed his concern when he said: “The tragedy of modern human being is, generally speaking, that she has created living conditions for herself that she, because of her phylogenetic development, isn’t ready for.” Perhaps adapting to new living conditions does not need genetic change, but the point is that there is no time to adapt. Change is happening too fast. For example, our modern democratic governance and personal freedom that has developed in Europe and North America has two presuppositions. One is that the average citizen can form their own view about questions that will affect their lives. The other is that she can grasp the consequences of her actions so that she can take responsibility for how to use her freedom. When a government grows too big and too complicated, when the distance between the power and the average citizen becomes too great, and when government becomes dependent on experts, democracy becomes problematic. Von Wright sees this development as an enormous threat to democracy. The industrial and technological society is becoming so complicated that public decision-making becomes an empty formality as either an agreement or a protest. Individual freedom becomes more and more limited, which again becomes something we silently agree to or develops into violence and terrorism. It seems to me that we will likely have more of both in the future.

Science and technology also generate other more direct threats. Ever since the end of the Second World War humankind has lived under the threat of weapons of mass destruction and now we are trying to face up to the changes to the world’s climate that human-made pollution is bringing about. Our major contribution to climate change started with the industrial revolution, which was the first major change due to science and technology, and now the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere is higher than it has ever have been in human history. Although we can see how science and technology are sources to many of our greatest problems, we nevertheless turn to science and technology to deliver our salvation. Governments spend billions on science research in order for new technologies and innovations to boost the economy and create job opportunities. The political involvement in research poses a new problem and looking to science to solve the problems it was part of creating is also problematic. Von Wright worries that this locks us into one form of rationality and any deviation from it will not be tolerated and cast aside as irrationality.

Even though the picture of our future painted in this book is rather negative, von Wright still sees changes or challenges to this form of rationality from within science itself. These have through history presented themselves as problems science has with living up to the demands on intelligibility it puts on itself. The first pressing problem appeared already in the early days and was posed by Newton’s famous law of universal gravitation. The law says that two bodies attract each other with a force that is proportional to their mass and indirectly proportional to the square of the distance between them. The effects these bodies have on each other happen instantly across any distance. How is this possible? The second major problem of intelligibility had to do with the nature of light, which according to experiments from the early 20th century seemed to behave as both a particle and a wave. This result was later generalized to all the smallest basic particles of matter. How can it be both? The third problem is perhaps the most famous. It is the discovery of Heisenberg’s uncertainty relation, which popularly expressed is that it is impossible to measure experimentally both the speed and the position of an electron at a given time, since the observation itself effects the measurement. How are we to understand this? Is it a limit on the possibility to know where a body is and how it is moving (the epistemic interpretation) or is it the case that the electron does not have a determinate location and speed (the ontic interpretation)? All three of these cases represent challenges to the intelligibility of science, and sit uneasily in the overall form of rationality underlying it. Scientists and philosophers have made great efforts in recent times to explain these problems and present a more consistent picture of physics.

The greatest challenge to the dominant form of rationality von Wright sees coming from biology. He, however, thinks biology will have to develop in a very specific way for this to happen, but if the mereological view of physics could be replaced by the more holistic view of biology, then perhaps a new form of rationality could develop. Such a view could explain parts from the perspective of the whole and the laws for the organization of the whole might involve interactions with other wholes. He calls this system thinking. On such a view our attitude to the problems posed by climate change would be completely different, but it is not clear that such a form of rationality would ever become dominant. For this and other reasons von Wright remains a pessimist about the future.

I find myself deeply impressed by von Wright’s arguments and the book still after so many years is able to invoke the feeling of making philosophy important. I see my own work in some ways having developed out of von Wright’s book. My work as a historian of philosophy has partly been focused on trying to understand the historical background to mind-body dualism and more recently I have been looking into the historical background to early modern mereology and mechanism (see the Mechanism Project http://www.rotman.uwo.ca/what-we-do/projects/the-mechanization-of-philosophy-between-1300-1700/?tab=1). I have not been thinking about Vetenskapen och förnuftet for many years, but it seems to have had a deeper influence on me than I previously thought. It has also become even clearer to me after having reread the book that the world needs institutes like the Rotman Institute of Philosophy where the impact of science and technology on the world can be discussed critically in all its complications and details.

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May 14, 2013

Science and Reason – Part 1: The Rationality of Modern Science (by Henrik Lagerlund)

Von Wright (right) with Wittgenstein.

Von Wright (right) with Wittgenstein.

 


 

Most of my intellectual development growing up was through books. I read basically anything I could get my hands on. Books were more important to me than school and I never paid much attention to school until I arrived at Uppsala University in 1992. I was there, after considerable disagreement with my parents and an engineering degree in electronics, to study literature. I, however, also took introduction to philosophy. The professor was a philosopher of science and on the syllabus he had included a book by the Finnish philosopher Georg Henrik von Wright published in Swedish in 1986 called Vetenskapen och förnuftet (in English: Science and Reason).

Von Wright was, although he is less of an influence on philosophy now, a very important and highly influential 20th century philosopher. He was called very young to Cambridge to replace Wittgenstein as the chair of philosophy. He wrote many books, but perhaps Norm and Action and Varieties of Goodness, which were based on his Gifford Lectures from 1958-60, are the most important. He also contributed to the early development of modal, foremost deontic, logic. (For more on von Wright see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georg_Henrik_von_Wright.)

It was largely the 1986 book on science and reason that made me want to continue my studies in philosophy and hence made me want to become a philosopher myself. Having been involved in a leading role with the development of the Rotman Institute of Philosophy since it was founded in 2008, I have come to return to von Wright’s book and to the ideas in it. His motivations for writing the book both squarely fall under the mandate of the Institute. He writes: “There are two reasons behind this book. One is the desire to understand the basis of the world-view that modern science has given us. The other is a desire to evaluate the influences on life that science has had through technology and industrial production forms.”

The development of modern science is in many ways a miracle and without a doubt the most important achievement of the human mind. Understanding the rationality behind it and the world-view that it gave rise to is one of the most important tasks of an intellectual historian. Von Wright outlines three aspects of the form of rationality exhibited by the modern scientific world-view.

The first has to do with the relationship between human beings and nature that is embedded in the modern world-view. Von Wright sees this as the development of a new concept of nature; a concept where humans are subjects and nature an object. We are outside nature as observers, manipulating it. Descartes dualism is a perfect example of this view. By objectifying nature a sharp distinction between fact and value, what is described and prescribed, is also created. Values or norms are subjective and cannot be found by studying nature.

The second aspect of this new way of thinking has to do with how wholes are related to their parts. Both material bodies and events in nature can be analyzed and divided up into its most elementary parts, which determine the whole. The whole must be understood from its parts. Hence, this is a mereological world-view. It can also be described as an atomistic view of nature where there are some smallest units that are the elements of causal interaction.

This way of reasoning about nature is also codified in early modern discussions of method. To divide something into its parts is called analysis and the construction of the whole from parts is called synthesis. Both Descartes and Galileo gave descriptions of the two methods. Galileo, for example, talks about a metodo risolutivo and a metodo compositivo. A famous example is the throwing of a stone, which if it is thrown straight up, it climbs with decreasing speed until a certain point at which it starts to fall. The actual motion upwards can be seen as a synthesis of two independent motions, namely one upwards uniform motion and a downwards accelerating motion. If you know the laws for falling objects and uniform motion, then you can calculate how the stone will move, that is, how high it will climb, when it starts to fall, etc.

The third main aspect of the form of rationality, that von Wright identifies, is the role experiment plays in the attempts to understand nature. In an experiment, the scientist isolates a part of nature that she can control and manipulate. It is an ‘artificial nature’ that she can overview and where the results are repeatable and predictable. The experiment is the manifestation of a manipulative attitude to nature. This view is utterly foreign to ancient thought and is instead related to magic and alchemy. Hannah Arendt’s notion of homo faber or humankind as creator also fits well into this perspective.

One aim of the new science was to make humans masters of nature, both Descartes and Bacon testify to this. To quote Bacon: science will create a “dominion of man over the universe”. By coupling this form of rationality with the Judeo-Christian view of human beings as created in the image of God with the right to rule over nature and all other living creatures, the foundation was laid for an enormously successful and dominant world-view.  Foremost due to technology, which was early associated with the new science, this form of rationality completely dominates our way of thinking even now, but although it has created prosperity in certain parts of the world never before seen in human history, it has not only been beneficial and many contemporary problems have their source in this very form of thinking. The second part of von Wright’s book deals with the influences of modern science on the world.

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May 14, 2013

Schedule for Annual Western Philosophy of Physics Conference

Here is the schedule for the Annual Western Philosophy of Physics Conference:

Friday, May17th in Stevnson Hall 1145

 

 

9:30 a.m

Jill North (Cornell University)

“The Structure of Spacetime: A New Approach to the Spacetime Ontology Debate”

 

11:00

Erik Curiel (University of Western Ontario, Rotman Institute of Philosophy)

“On the Existence of Spacetime Structure”

 

12:30

Lunch

2:00

Christian Wüthrich (University of California – San Diego)

“The problem of space in quantum gravity”

 

3:30

James Owen Weatherall (University of California – Irvine)

“Against Dogma: On Superluminal Propagation in Classical Electromagnetism”

 

 

 

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May 13, 2013

Logic, Math and Physics Conferences this weekend!

Join us on May 18-19, 2013 for the thirteenth annual Philosophy of Logic, Math and Physics (LMP13) graduate student conference in philosophy at Western University in London, Ontario, Canada.

LMP13 will bring together philosophers of logic, mathematics and physics for two days of presentations and discussions with some of the leaders in these fields. We are pleased to announce our keynote speaker, Hans Halvorson from Princeton University.

 

For more information visit http://logicmathphysics.ca/

 

This conference is done in conjunction with Western’s annual Philosophy of Physics Conference, which takes place on Friday May 17th.

 

For more information visit http://logicmathphysics.ca/philosophy-physics-conference/

 

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May 13, 2013

Neurophilosophy Speaker Series, Alfonso Caramazza: converging concerns of science and philosophy (by Frédéric-Ismaël Banville & Jessey Wright)

On May 1st 2013, Professor Alfonso Caramazza (Harvard University) gave the second lecture in the Neurophilosophy Speaker Series, which is jointly sponsored by Western’s Rotman Institute of Philosophy and the Brain and Mind Institute. Caramazza is a professor of Psychology, Director of the Cognitive Neuroscience Laboratory at Harvard University and the Directory of the Center for Mind/Brain Sciences at the University of Trento in Italy. While he may not identify himself as a philosopher, it was exciting to hear a working scientist engage with some tough philosophical questions relating to his field. His talk identified several points of contact between philosophy and neuroscience.

Caramazza’s talk, titled “Levels of Representation in the Mind/Brain: What good are sensory-motor representations?”, was aimed at the role of representations in the mind/brain sciences. He raised several pressing concerns with a view he called “embodied cognition”. The research program he was concerned about emphasized the role of sensory-motor systems, and in particular sensory-motor representations, in retrieval of semantic knowledge. He raises challenges for views of embodied cognition which claim that this process (of semantic retrieval) requires the brain to simulate, or re-enact stored memories in order to access modality-specific information. It should be noted that “embodied cognition” – as we use it here – refers to the view Caramazza discussed (outlined above), and not to the family of philosophical theories that go by the same name. These theories, while interesting in their own right, advance theses that, while somewhat related to the view Caramazza argues against, are importantly different.

By considering several experiments Caramazza aimed to intuitively establish that we don’t really know what perception means or what concepts are, let alone have evidence for the claim that concepts can be reduced to sensory-motor representations. That claim is based on evidence from behavioural tasks and neurophysiological data that shows sensory-motor areas of the brain are active during semantic retrieval. Caramazza argued that these studies do not provide an indication of the direction of the effect observed. It is unclear if the interaction is the result of representing concepts via the sensory-motor system or the result of a conceptual representation influencing the perception and motor processing of the brain. Essentially, if the brain is engaged in the representation of semantic information, then we have not yet answered how it does so and, more importantly, where that representation occurs in the brain.

There is no evidence that the motor cortex processes semantic information, as activation during behavioural tasks is inconclusive. The real problem here, Caramazza argued, is that we do not know what ‘perception’ or ‘concept’ means, and yet theories of embodied cognition invoke these notions and trade on their ambiguity. To illustrate this kind of reasoning he appealed to the notion of ‘visual neurons’, which are defined as neurons in the visual cortex. Of course, this definition does not satisfactorily answer the question ‘what are visual neurons?’, since the only requirement they have to meet, outside of being located in an area that is involved in visual processing, is that they have historically been involved in visual processing (in the sense of being active during visual processing). Assuming the importance of network-level coupling of functional areas for semantic processing, which is supported by some of the results discussed, historical involvement is not a sufficient requirement for cells to be functionally specialized in the way the type of embodied view he argues against require them to be.

In sum, there is a serious problem with attempting to reduce conceptual representations and semantic processing to sensory-motor processes: it ignores the high level of connectivity involved in higher-level cognitive processing.

It is interesting that Caramazza’s talk highlights this issue, as it converges with very current concerns in the philosophy of neuroscience. Understanding what good explanations in neuroscience are like is a current and popular project in the field. Recently some philosophers have proposed that explanation in neuroscience is mechanistic. That is, neuroscientists are not looking for general laws, but rather for the mechanisms responsible for the phenomena they wish to explain. Such an approach is rather common in biology, and recently philosophers such as William Bechtel (2008) and Carl Craver (2009; see also Machamer, Darden & Craver, 2000) have offered detailed accounts of how mechanistic explanation proceeds in neuroscience. This topic is of particular interest as mechanistic explanation was the focus of a graduate seminar in philosophy of neuroscience taught by Professor Jacqueline Sullivan this winter.

One advantage of thinking about explanation this way is that it emphasizes the fact that neuroscientists must delineate the phenomena they are interested in and, crucially, must, make certain simplifying assumptions about their object of study. The brain is immensely complex, and so it has to be “broken down”. This has been done in numerous ways, from identifying differences in the cellular composition of the different cortical areas so as to provide a “map” of the brain (Brodmann, 1909) to focusing on the functional specialization of certain areas. Obviously, different disciplines will use different ways of decomposing the brain. Neurobiology studies cells and cell networks, while cognitive neuroscience, which sits at the intersection of psychology and neuroscience, is concerned with higher-level structures, often specific cortical areas involved in cognitive processes such as visual perception and semantic processing.

The mapping of the brain by functional areas is difficult to do, because some anatomical regions may be involved in different cognitive processes or may even be performing only part of the process of interest. For example, when Pierre Paul Broca noticed, in 1863, that two of his patients had lost the ability to speak after suffering lesions to the inferior frontal gyrus of the brain, he hypothesized that the faculty of language was localized in that area. Since then, we have learned that what has come to be known as Broca’s area was in fact (largely) responsible for speech-related motor functions, and that language comprehension occurred in other parts of the brain located in the temporal lobe — although Broca’s area is also involved. This example shows, first, that localization of functions to any one specific part of the cerebral cortex is rarely, if ever, correct and that oftentimes the processes we are interested in are carried out by a network of areas rather than a single area.

Nevertheless, there is still, as Caramazza’s talk indicates, a tendency to infer the localization of a function when a given region is found to be heavily involved in carrying out the task of interest. Translating this into the vocabulary of mechanistic explanation we get the following: there is a tendency to treat areas of the brain as self-contained mechanisms responsible for a certain phenomenon. The reason for this may simply be that it has historically been beneficial to make such assumptions, and no doubt it will continue to be so. However, the sort of work that Caramazza presented, which undermines such assumptions, has a very important role to play.

From the perspective of mechanistic explanation, the problem that Caramazza identified with the embodied cognition view is that it fails to delineate the mechanism responsible for semantic processing correctly. The localization of some lower-level processes in fairly circumscribed cortical regions is well documented (an example of this is the localization of edge detection in the primary visual cortex). However, higher-level processing, involving multiple operations and, presumably, levels of processing are likely to be carried out by networks of areas, and in such cases it becomes difficult to figure out which area does what. In the case of semantic processing and conceptual representations, the fact that sensory-motor areas are involved along with the usual temporal lobe areas involved in language processing, does not (as Caramazza notes) necessarily suggest that semantic retrieval and conceptual processing are rooted in sensory-motor processes. It does, however, suggest that neuroscientists should be concerned with networks of areas rather than single areas. This is also something Caramazza insists on when discussing how pre-existing couplings between brain areas may influence the development of category-specific regions in the inferior temporal lobe, which is responsible for, among other things, category-based object identification (Mahon & Caramazza, 2011). The importance of network-level interactions is also emphasized by other researchers, such as Melvyn Goodale (who heads the Brain and Mind Institute at Western) and David Milner, who identified two functionally specialized streams that constitute, to put it simply, two visual systems (Goodale & Milner, 1995; 2005).

This implication of Caramazza’s work is very interesting. It suggests that neuroscientists should reconsider one of their basic assumptions regarding the adequate level of decomposition for the study of the brain. From the standpoint of mechanistic explanation, it is a real-world instance of researchers realizing that one of their assumptions was wrong and that their object of study was not decomposed appropriately. Decomposing the brain is a difficult task, and one of the main reasons for this is that it is not composed of self-contained mechanisms. Functional areas are in constant interaction, and while we may sometimes ignore this fact for reasons of simplification, decomposing the brain into networks rather than regions may yield interesting avenues for research.

In this sense, Caramazza’s talk was of particular interest philosophically. It is rare that the convergence between the interests of scientists and philosophers of science happens so clearly and easily.

 

Works Cited

Bechtel, W. (2008). Mental Mechanisms: Philosophical Perspectives on Cognitive Neuroscience. CRC Press.
Broca, P. P. (1863). Localisations des fonctions cérébrales. Siège de la faculté du langage articulé. Bulletin de la Société d’Anthropologie, 4, 200–208.
Brodmann, K. (1909). Vergleichende Lokalisationslehre der Grosshirnrinde in ihren Prinzipien dargestellt auf Grund des Zellenbaues. Leipzig: Johann Ambrosius Barth.
Craver, C. F. (2009). Explaining the Brain. OUP Oxford.
Goodale, M A, & Milner, A. D. (1992). Separate visual pathways for perception and action. Trends in neurosciences,15(1), 20–25.
Goodale, Melvyn A., & Milner, A. D. (2005). Sight Unseen: An Exploration of Conscious and Unconscious Vision (1st ed.). Oxford University Press, USA.
Machamer, P. K., Darden, L., & Craver, C. F. (2000). Thinking About Mechanisms. Philosophy Of Science, 67(1), 1–25.
Mahon, B. Z., & Caramazza, A. (2011). What drives the organization of object knowledge in the brain? Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 15(3), 97–103. doi:10.1016/j.tics.2011.01.004

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May 7, 2013

Special Lecturer in Philosophy of Biology: Gregory M. Mikkelson on “Unity in Diversity: Richness Theory in Environmental Ethics” (By Justin J. Bzovy and Antoine C. Dussault)

On April 19th, 2013 Gregory M. Mikkelson from McGill University visited as a special lecturer in the philosophy of biology, which was co-organized by the Rotman Institute and the Biology Department’s Friday Philosophicals.  Mikkelson’s main research interests are in environmental ethics, ecology and economics.  His talk at Western prompted a very fruitful discussion, some of which is captured in what follows.

In environmental ethics, positions can largely be classed as either holistic or individualistic.  Some classic holistic views are Leopold’s (1949) ‘Land Ethic’, and Naess’ (1984) deep ecology. Examples of individualistic environmental ethics are found in Taylor’s (1986) Kantian biocentrism, Singer’s (1975) utilitarian zoocentrism, and what Mikkelson calls Norton’s (1984) ‘stubborn anthropocentrism.’ Mikkelson (2011) supports a holistic approach, which he calls ‘richness theory’, and argues against individualistic approaches.

Richness theory owes its historical origins to Aristotle, Aquinas and Leibniz, but Mikkelson is working in the more recent tradition of Peter Miller (1982) and Chris Kelly (2003). His account of richness theory is inspired by Miller (1982), who argued that intrinsic value could be elucidated in terms of the natural property of richness, defined as (i) how internally diverse (heterogeneous, or varied) an entity is, and (ii) how unified (coherent, integrated, or harmonious) it is. On Mikkelson’s account, the intrinsic value of an organism is measured by its degree of richness as defined by Miller.  For Mikkelson, richness also accounts for the contributory value of organisms, that is, their contribution to the overall richness of the entities they are part of, e.g., ecosystems, communities, the biosphere, the world. Mikkelson’s account is also inspired by Kelly (2003) who attempts to explain the value of art, knowledge, satisfaction of desire, life, persons, ecosystems, etc., in terms of richness; and further to explain away the alleged intrinsic value of pleasure and disvalue of pain.

Richness theory, in Mikkelson’s view, reconciles four intuitions, which seem contradictory, or at the very least difficult to capture under the usual ethical theories:

  1. 1. Humans have the greatest intrinsic value (more or less), when compared with other species.
  3. 2. An Earth with lots of biodiversity would be better than an Earth without biodiversity.
  5. 3. The non-human part of life as a whole has a greater intrinsic worth than the human part of life.
  7. 4. An Earth with lots of biodiversity with a moderate human economy would be best.


Individualistic ethics, like those mentioned above, cannot reconcile these four intuitions.

Mikkelson applies what he calls a reduction ad extinctum to individualistic ethics.  The idea is that, on these accounts, gaining three billion more humans outweighs losing tens of billions of wild vertebrates. The data to support this example is based on the living planet index of wild vertebrates. He also offers a standard objection to individualistic approaches to environmental ethics, by emphasizing that they equally value a single bacterium and a human life, which seems wrong.  But, one may respond here that the comparison need not be made in these terms. We should compare bacteria not with humans, but with the cells that compose a human being, and with their respective life-spans. This might be right, but would already conflict with Taylor’s (1986) standard approach to individualistic environmental ethics, which assigns intrinsic value to organisms themselves, and not to their cells taken individually.

Diminishing returns can explain the way in which variety and harmony is important to developing richness.  This leads one to consider higher-level interactions, e.g., resources devoted to a particular species and the intrinsic value of that species.  The idea is that integrated wholes are more valuable than the sum of their parts. On Mikkelson’s account of richness theory the contributory value for a group of organisms goes down, not the intrinsic value of each organism (this remains constant) according to diminishing return.  He avails himself of the following equation for the intrinsic value of an ecosystem,

Where EQ refers to the encephalization quotient (relative brain size),  represents diminishing returns, and D captures diversity.

Many people had questions about his use of EQ during the discussion period. To use brain size as a criterion seems too anthropocentric, using something that is distinctively high in humans as a standard for all species.  One might prefer to use sentience, à la Singer, and compare differences in pain and pleasure.  But, the problem is that sentience isn’t quantifiable in the way that relative brain size is. Sure, the pain that a fly experiences is different than that which a human experiences, but how? Also, not all living entities experience pain, and therefore sentience could not be a measure of all instances of richness in the natural world.

One questioner suggested using something like a criterion of phylogenetic diversity rather than EQ.  The idea here is that species within a less speciose monophyletic group are more valuable, than those within a more speciose group, because they’re preserving an evolutionary history that is in danger. But, the problem with this criterion, as Mikkelson noted, is that these sorts of properties are relational properties and not intrinsic properties to the organisms themselves. Such rejection of relational properties as measures of an entity’ contribution to richness seems also in tension with Mikkelson’s focus on the contributory value of organisms, as portrayed in the above formula. If the value of organisms decreases with their rarity, then rarity, a relational property, is, in final analysis, what determines their value in Mikkelson’s formula. Moreover, one might capture the phylogenetic diversity intuition, by proposing that something like DNA or some other genetic material might be the measure of an organism’s contribution to richness, while avoiding the pitfalls of relational properties. Mikkelson admits that EQ is not ideal, and has himself has also toyed with the idea of using cell-diversity as an alternate criterion (2011).

Another problem raised in the question period is raised by the following question: ‘When biodiversity gets low, should we kill humans?’ For example, say there’s only one beetle left, and we have a trolley-problem situation, do we turn the trolley to save the beetle and kill the human?  If we are to turn the trolley, then this seems wrong. Mikkelson responded from a non-consequentialist approach, that his project is just one of value theory, that is, that the richness formula may not immediately imply what we should do. He also responded, from a consequentialist standpoint, that we could just bite the bullet here. One might also respond, as a member from the audience did, that in cases of live humans we shouldn’t turn the trolley, but in cases of future humans we should. This points to a further issue with richness theory, which is the question whether it is a theory about the intrinsic value of states of affairs which ought to be promoted, or with that of entities which ought to be respected (see Bradley 2006 on this distinction). In the latter case, one should turn the trolley regardless of whether present or future humans are at stake; whereas in the second, the fact that some entities already exist or not might make a moral difference, as presumably entities deserve respect only insofar as they exist.

An objection from one of his students concerns the late quaternary extinction (cf. Koch and Barnosky 2006). It is meant to be a counterexample to the possibility of humans living in harmony, or not too much disharmony, with nature. The thought that, despite our industrial civilization’s obvious environmental destructiveness, the human species is not inherently destructive and could adopt a more ecologically benign way of living, is often inspired by the observation that pre-industrial or pre-agricultural humans lived in better harmony with nature than we do. However, the quaternary extinction, by instantiating a pre-agricultural case of human ecological destructiveness, suggests that we have been a cancer to the Earth long before the current ecological crisis, and may just be incapable of being better-behaved ecological denizens. Mikkelson’s reply seems to appeal to the fact that there is no evidence that our ancestors who caused the quaternary extinction were trying to live in harmony with the ecological world. If they did try, then their failure may serve as a proof that human harmony with nature is impossible; but the fact that we cannot assume that they did allows us to hope that if we committed to try, there is a possibility that we would do better than them and our closer ancestors.

 

Works Cited

Bradley, Ben. 2006. “Two Concepts of Intrinsic Value.” Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 9 (2): 111 – 130.

Kelly, Chris. 2003. “A Theory of the Good”. University of Colorado.

Koch, Paul L., and Anthony D. Barnosky. 2006. “Late Quaternary Extinctions: State of the Debate.” Annual Review of Ecology, Evolution, and Systematics 37 (1): 215–250. doi:10.1146/annurev.ecolsys.34.011802.132415.

Leopold, Aldo. 1949 [1987]. A Sand County Almanac, and Sketches Here and There. New York: Oxford University Press.

Mikkelson, Gregory M. 2011. “Weighing Species.” Environmental Ethics 33 (2): 185–196.

Miller, Peter. 1982. “Value as Richness: Toward a Value Theory for the Expanded Naturalism in Environmental Ethics.” Environmental Ethics 4 (2): 101–114.

Naess, Arne. 1984. “A Defence of the Deep Ecology Movement.” Environmental Ethics 6 (3): 265–270.

Norton, Bryan G. 1984. “Environmental Ethics and Weak Anthropocentrism.” Environmental Ethics 6 (2): 131–148.

Singer, Peter. 1975. Animal Liberation: A New Ethics for Our Treatment of Animals. New York: New York Review : Distributed by Random House.

Taylor, Paul W. 1986. Respect for Nature: A Theory of Environmental Ethics. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.

 

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May 1, 2013

Women in Science, Philosophy, and Education: An Interview With Rotman Doctoral Entrance Scholar, Melissa Jacquart

hypatia

In 2012, the Rotman Institute of Philosophy provided Rotman Doctoral Entrance Scholarships, valued at $10,000, to two incoming PhD students with a proposed research focus related to philosophy of science. Rotman Doctoral Entrance Scholars are selected on the basis of exceptional academic merit, high research potential, and a record of engaging the public through service and academic outreach. Melissa Jacquart, a philosopher interested in cosmology and science education, was awarded the Rotman Doctoral Entance Scholarship last Fall. I recently spoke with Melissa about her interests and the projects she has been working on over the past year.

Andrew Peterson: Tell us about some of the work you have been doing since you took up studies at the Rotman Institute.

Melissa Jacquart: First, I’d like to thank you for taking the time to interview me. I really enjoyed reading the interviews with yourself and Yann Benétreau-Dupin last year. I thought they were a fantastic way to learn about those holding the Rotman Scholarships, and what kind of research grad students are doing here in the Rotman Institute.

As is the case with most first-year PhD students, a lot of my time has been taken up by my coursework.  This year I took courses on egalitarianism, philosophical issues regarding the nature of symmetries in physics, our first-year proseminar course, the philosophy of mathematics, the history of 20th century philosophy of science, and a philosophy of biology course focusing on determinism, chance, explanation, and reduction. There are a couple of papers I’m hoping to keep working on from these classes.  One thing I’m quite grateful for is the fact that a lot of the professors here at Western really push the graduate students to try to write term papers that could be conference presentations or worked up into something publishable. I’m also a TA for a full-year Critical Thinking course.

I’m working with the Rotman Event Planning and Outreach Committee (REPOC), along with other Rotman graduate students, to establish two types of Rotman Institute K-12 Outreach programs. One program will involve working with K-12 students through outreach activities designed and run by graduate students. The other involves working with K-12 teachers on developing strategies that they can use to promote HPS learning in the classroom.

My primary research interest is in philosophy of cosmology.  Since last summer I’ve taken part in a reading group with Prof. Chris Smeenk, two other graduate students, and a visiting scholar in which we survey various research topics in philosophy of cosmology.

 

AP: A central mandate of the Rotman Institute is to philosophically “engage the public”. As an example of this, you recently organized a Rotman event for a group of young women from a local secondary school who were interested in learning more about science and philosophy. Can you tell us more about this event, and reflect on its importance — both in terms of the Rotman mandate, and the importance of opening philosophy of science to young women?

Melissa Jacquart: I helped to organize an event with an organization called “Canadian Association for Girls in Science”, which is “for girls by girls” with chapters across Canada. Their purpose is to promote, educate, and support interest and confidence in STEM among girls ages 7-16. The London CAGIS group contacted the Rotman Institute and the philosophy department, hoping that we might organize an event for the girls to learn a bit about what philosophers of science do, and to get the girls thinking about how reasoning is used in science. We had about 12 girls attend and it was a really fun event, not only for the girls, but for myself and for the other Rotman members who helped out.  I also organized another activity back in February with a local London school’s gifted and talented program. And next academic year I hope to organize more of these outreach events.

Part of the Institute’s vision is to promote public engagement and philosophical reflection on scientific issues. The way that I want to help work towards this goal is through these types of K-12 outreach activities.  As I mentioned, I’m currently working to help create two types of Rotman Institute K-12 Outreach programs. My hope is to establish an outreach program that works with K-12 students through outreach activities designed and run by Rotman graduate students.  I’m also helping another graduate student, Yann Benétreau-Dupin, with his half of the K-12 outreach program, which is aimed at working with K-12 teachers interested in using HPS to help teach science.  Working with the teachers will be great, since that will allow for a longer, more lasting impact.

And the graduate student outreach group will be just as important. The natural sciences do these types of K-12 outreach activities all the time. I see these philosophy outreach activities as a means by which we can promote critical thinking skills early on in the student education experience. For a lot of people, the first time they have the opportunity to be exposed to philosophy is in university. I was lucky enough to have a “Theory of Knowledge” course my senior year of high school. By exposing them to philosophy early on, we can introduce students to the subject and get them interested in philosophical questions sooner. The earlier we can get people to realize the importance of thinking critically about their own lives as well as thinking about their relationship with science, well, I think that long-term this can lead to a more scientifically literate society. Any really, improving scientific literacy though critical thinking skills is important for everyone. I’ve written a bit on this before on the Rotman blog in a series on HPS and science education. (Anyone interested in reading more on this should definitely check out that series.)

One of the main reasons I think opening up philosophy of science to young women is so important is for similar reasons as the CAGIS group— I want to help promote, educate, and support interest in philosophy of science among girls. Philosophy, like many of the STEM fields, has an underrepresentation of women (and other minority groups).  Promoting the discipline though these types of outreach activities can help by giving them an opportunity to engage with philosophical inquiry. When you understand and can think critically about what scientists do, how they come to conclusions, and how they create and support their arguments, it also allows someone to have a sense of self-ownership of science and scientific practice.

 

AP: Indeed, scientific literacy is a central aspect of the Rotman Institute’s mandate. Our audience may not know that you also have previous experience with this while working with the US National Science Foundation. Could you tell us about this — namely, how you brought the skills cultivated at the NSF to bear on your philosophical interests?

Melissa Jacquart: Let me first say just something about the 2-year position I held. From July 2009 – July 2011 I worked at NSF for the Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences (SBE) directorate as a Science Assistant for the Ethics Education in Science and Engineering (EESE) program, Methodology, Measurement, and Statistics (MMS) program, and Science, Technology, and Society (STS) program. It was an absolutely fantastic opportunity and experience for me. As a Science Assistant, I assisted with all aspects of the grant proposal process. I worked on everything from initial intake of the proposals, assisting with proposal review panel meetings, to providing assistance to program officers and management in overseeing scientific progress on awards, and preparing highlights on completed awards. I also prepared data and outcome reports on scientific portfolios for the Foundation, for the United States Congress, and for the general public. So, clearly the experience provided me with valuable expertise for understanding of how the federal grant proposal process works.

My time at NSF helped me to truly appreciate the importance of interdisciplinary work and research, and that definitely has bearing on my current philosophical approach.  The three programs I worked for were some of the most interdisciplinary program in the Foundation. Getting to see, firsthand, all that fantastic research that comes from taking an interdisciplinary approach—bringing together the sciences, social sciences, historical, and philosophical methods—that really had an impact on me.

Working at NSF also left me with an understanding of the importance of answering the “So What?” question for my research. Why is my research, and what I’m doing important? NSF calls this the “broader impacts” criterion of a proposal.  I think it’s a fundamental question to answer not only relative to your area of philosophy, but also to other philosophers, other disciplines, and the general public to some extent. I think it’s crucial to recognize the need to go beyond just doing good research, and to be conscious of larger societal context your research fits into.

 

AP: You are also known among your colleagues as a talented philosopher of physics and cosmology. Could you briefly tell us about your research interests?

Melissa Jacquart: Much of my current research has been driven by my interest in the role of evidence in reasoning in cosmology, as well as in science more broadly. Over the last hundred years, the field of cosmology has made impressive progress as a result of the interaction between theory and observation. I think the current state of cosmology provides philosophers with a unique opportunity for investigation and research.

One topic I’ve spent some time looking at is underdetermination in cosmology, cases in which there is at least one other theory compatible with the empirical evidence.  Take, for example, how we obtained our FLRW models, which make up the standard model of Big Bang cosmology.  How did we get this model as the one that represents the structure of our universe? Well, it turns out that even if we had all possible observational data, we could not determine the structural features of our spacetime. So how did cosmologists get around this underdetermination problem? They had to make some assumptions along the way.

In order to be able to say something about the global structure of spacetime, we had to adopt a set of principles that pick out a class of models to work within. The Cosmological Principle, which assumes that the universe is homogeneous and isotropic, was selected both for historical reasons, and for the fact that it provides us with the simplest class of models to work with—the FLRW models.

The question then becomes why were the cosmologists justified in making this assumption, and how did they go about their reasoning for it? Well, in adopting the Cosmological Principle, cosmologists made theory-mediated inferences. Something similar happened when cosmologists discovered dark energy—they made theory-mediated inferences. What role evidential reasoning played in some of cosmology’s big discoveries, and how cosmologists reason in their work is something I’m interested in looking at in more detail.

I‘m also interested in looking specifically at how cosmologists use models, as well as what they think their models represent or are picking out in the actual structure of the universe. Much of the progress in cosmology relies on making assumptions, idealizations, or approximations. How cosmologists think about their models in practice, and how they use models as tools for information and understanding is something I want to look into as well.

 

AP: What are you currently reading in your field?

Melissa Jacquart: I’ve been reading a fair amount of literature on structural realism, particularly papers by Stathis Psillos and James Ladyman, as well as Christian Wüthrich’s paper “Challenging the Spacetime Structuralist”, and Christopher Pincock’s “Mathematical Structural Realism”.

I’ve also been reading papers on the role of approximations and idealizations in science—John Norton’s paper, and some of Robert Batterman’s work. I’m starting to dive into some of the modeling literature as well. Wendy Parker’s papers on modeling and computer simulations in particular have been really interesting, and I just started Models as Mediators, edited by Mary Morgan and Margaret Morrison.

 

AP: What about outside your field, for leisure?

Melissa Jacquart: My leisure readings right now are some real guilty pleasures. I’m currently working my way though the A Song of Ice and Fire series (or better known as the Game of Thrones books), and the Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season Eight comics. My academic readings require me to really focus and concentrate, so these books are a really nice brain-break. I’m also reading Tina Fey’s autobiography, Bossypants. I think Tina Fey and Amy Poehler are the best!

 

AP: Who, working in the field of Philosophy today, inspires you?

Melissa Jacquart: A lot of my inspiration comes from the female role models I’ve had in my life. As an undergrad at University of Wisconsin-Madison I had some wonderful female philosophy professors and a fantastic TA (Shannon Spaulding, now a professor at Oklahoma State University) who was quite influential in my choice to pursue a PhD in philosophy. There’s a really great group of female graduate students and faculty here in our philosophy department as well. I really respect and admire them for their intelligence, creativity, perseverance, and leadership both in the department, and in the discipline.

 

AP: Is there someone outside the field of Philosophy who similarly inspires you?

Melissa Jacquart: While at NSF I had the opportunity to work with two amazing female program officers, Cheryl Eavey (still at NSF) and Kelly Joyce (now at Drexel University). They both have accomplished so much, and are well-respected academics in their fields. I feel really lucky to have had the opportunity to work for them, and to receive their advice and guidance. My younger sister and my mom are another big sources of inspiration in my life.  They work with such diligence in everything they do.

 

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April 9, 2013

An Interview with Wendy Parker

On Friday, April 5th, 2013 Dr. Wendy Parker from Ohio University visited the Rotman Institute.  Dr. Parker’s main research interests include models and computer simulation in science (especially climate modeling), science and public policy, and the history of atmospheric science and meteorology. In her Rotman Speaker Series lecture, “Beyond Prediction: The Computer as ‘Inductive Device’ in the Study of Weather and Climate,” Dr. Parker discussed the ways in which computer models and simulations can affect our scientific understanding.

Before her lecture, Dr. Parker kindly agreed to an interview with Rotman Institute graduate student, Martin Vezér.

 

Martin Vezér: What do you think the relevance is of philosophy of science for climate science, and how can philosophers contribute to discussions about climate science?

Wendy Parker: Philosophers of science can contribute by engaging with methodological questions that climate scientists themselves are thinking about. I think there is room to explore how familiar issues in general philosophy of science play out in climate science, too. But I think the real action is in rolling up one’s sleeves, getting into the science, and thinking about the methodological questions stemming from the science itself.

MV: What are some examples of the methodological questions that philosophers deal with related to climate science?

WP: Questions like: How do we determinethe quality of different computer simulation models of the climate system? How do we gauge the trustworthiness of predictions? These are epistemological questions, but they are also rooted in questions about the methodology. How are these models produced?  How did they generate the predictions?  Also, there are some interesting methodological questions related tothe production of global datasets and their relation to more traditional observational datasets.

MV: Are there certain discussions in the public sphere that deal with epistemological questions that you think philosophers can help clarify, especially with respect to the climate change?

WP: Two things that come to mind immediately are [1] discussions surrounding computer models as sources of information, and [2] discussions of evidence regarding the causes of climate change.

[1] It is sometimes suggested that if findings come from a computer model then they must not be trustworthy.   Philosophers can help explain why that’s not so, why some reasons given for doubting modeling results are not good ones, and so on.

[2] Philosophers can also help to clarify why asking whether it’s been “proven” that climate change is caused by humans is somewhat misguided—why “proof” is not the right concept here. We have evidence that climate change is caused by humans, but proof is not really the sort of thing that science can provide—about climate change or anything else—at least not proof as some people understand it. Naomi Oreskes (and a few others) have written some on this.

MV: Speaking of other sciences, do you see the issues that you are researching with respect to meteorology and climatology as being unique to those disciplines? Or are they broader issues that reach into other sciences as well?

WP: In many cases, they’re broader issues. There are questions about the epistemology of simulation that come up in any science that uses simulation. How should we think about what we’re doing when we’re simulating something, what can it really tell us, and what can it not tell us? Also, I think that the questions and challenges that arise when examining how we come to understand a complex system like the climate system also arise in other sciences that study complex systems, such as ecology and biology.

It’s always risky to claim that some problem is unique! But I think there are some special, maybe even unique issues here. Just as philosophy of physics and philosophy of biology have grappled with the basic concepts of these sciences, there are some fundamental concepts of climate science that seem to me in need of further attention. These include concepts like natural variability and even climate itself. It seems to me that some definitions of ‘climate’ are in conflict with each other, and some might not apply when a planet is undergoing strong external forcing.

MV: How have you found your experience dealing with scientists? Are they open to input from philosophers, and are they themselves engaging with these kinds of issues?

WP: My experience has been that atmospheric scientists and climate scientists are pretty welcoming of philosophers. And yes, they’re absolutely thinking about some of these issues. For instance, there is ongoing discussion of how to assess the quality of climate models (in general) and whether projections from some climate models should be given more weight than others.

MV: What advice would you give philosophy students and young scholars interested in climate science? How should they go about using their training to engage with some of these topics in philosophy of climate science?

WP: I would say to learn the science, learn as much of the science as you can and, in some sense, start from the science.  You may be tempted to start with philosophical problems you know and bring them to the science; that’s one way to approach it.  I think a better way is to start with whatever methodological and epistemological issues the climate scientists themselves are worrying about.  A third thing would be to avoid thinking that it’s your job to tell scientists what they’re “doing wrong”—that’s more likely to impede philosophers’ making contributions, in my opinion.

MV: Are there particular topics that you see as becoming more and more the focus of the philosophical side of climate science, among scientists as well as philosophers?

WP: I still think that model evaluation and questions of evidence are the really big ones. But I would add questions about the role of so-called ‘non-epistemic’ values in climate modeling: where in the modeling process do such values appropriately come into play, and how can model development be more responsive to the (value-influenced) information needs of users? Eric Winsberg already has argued that non-epistemic values influence model-based uncertainty estimates here in subtle ways.  But other questions about values in modeling are in need of attention.

MV:  Thank you, Wendy!  We very much appreciate your visiting the Rotman Institute of Philosophy and sharing your thoughts with us.

WP: You’re welcome!

[Also, thanks to Melissa Jacquart for her assistance in the initial transcription of this interview and editorial contributions.]

 

 

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April 4, 2013

The first conference of the German Society for Philosophy of Science (by Alex Manafu)

In March 2013 the German Society for Philosophy of Science/Gesellschaft für Wissenschaftsphilosophie (GWP) held its first meeting. It is somewhat of a sociological puzzle why a country with such a rich tradition in philosophy of science did not have (up until now, that is) a society dedicated to the field.

The overarching conference theme was How Much Philosophy in the Philosophy of Science? In an age of increasing specialization, the question arises as to how much philosophy of science has moved towards science, and perhaps away from the philosophical tradition, and what are the consequences of this move for traditional philosophy on the one hand, and for the practice and theory of science on another.

The conference topic is welcome, especially in the context of the questions about the relationship between philosophy and science which emerged as a result of the recent denigrations of philosophy by physicists like Hawking and Krauss.

Some of the keynote lectures engaged explicitly with questions about the relationship between science and philosophy. Peter Godfrey-Smith identified three roles for philosophy: an integrative role, whereby philosophy makes contact with other fields and attempts to answer to the question of “how things in the broadest possible sense of the term hang together in the broadest possible sense of the term.” (Sellars); an incubator role, whereby philosophy develops ideas in a speculative form, and then once the right framework is developed and the right empirical questions are being formulated it passes them on to science; and an educative role ‒ philosophy teaches skills such as  clarity, analysis, critical thinking. Godfrey-Smith defended a general view of philosophy that gives a central place to the synoptic/integrative view, and a secondary but still important place to the incubator role.

For Margaret Morrison the answer to the question of how much philosophy in the philosophy of science depends on what we want from philosophy of science. Do we want to use science to support our favourite philosophical position? Or do we want to provide some kind of philosophical perspective (conceptual foundation or analytical framework) for understanding the philosophical problems that science raises? For Morrison, the goal determines not only how much, but what kind of philosophy is required. Morrison was sceptical that the metaphysics and epistemology of science have achieved the goal of inquiring and illuminating the philosophical foundations of particular sciences. But she recognized that scientific theories and methodologies often generate their own philosophical problems and questions; philosophy does have a role here, but she claims that it is one that must take science rather than metaphysics as its starting point.

Stephan Hartmann argued for a Scientific Philosophy ‒ a kind of philosophy that addresses philosophical problems as science addresses scientific problems, i.e., by combining together a theoretical approach (logical analysis, mathematical modeling) and an empirical one (case studies, experiments, etc). Not surprisingly, Bayesianism can play a major role in scientific philosophy, as it can be extended from old topics like scientific confirmation into new territories, e.g., reduction.

There were about 100 participants in this conference and almost 30 sessions and symposia. Of these, two sessions and one symposium were on the topic of mechanisms, two sessions on philosophy of physics, and three sessions on general philosophy of science. There was also a session on the philosophy of chemistry, a branch of philosophy of science for which Germany is known. But examples from chemistry were invoked in many other talks: Johannes Lenhard invoked computational quantum chemistry in his talk about experiments, computers and simulations, Jeff Kochan engaged critically with the work of chemist and philosopher Michael Polanyi in his talk about subjectivity in scientific research, Ramiro Glauer talked about chemistry in the context of emergence and reduction regarding the phenomena of life, and James Ladyman referred to the evolution of theories of oxidation in his argument about the retention of modal structure. Judging by the sheer number of talks in this conference which engaged with examples from chemistry, it would seem that this branch of science is being increasingly recognized as interesting and relevant by philosophers of science (especially those interested in reduction and emergence, and modeling and simulations).

The participation to the conference was clearly dominated by philosophers. Most of them were from Germany, as expected, but the international participation was pretty sizeable. There were some scientists at the conference, but their exact number or identity is difficult to find out given that the institutional affiliation of the participants was left out of the program.[1] Philosophers of science often complain that their work is not being considered by scientists. Events like this conference could provide a forum where scientists and philosophers could talk to each other. Unfortunately, all of the keynote speakers were philosophers, and the reasons for this disciplinary divide and how it could be fixed in the future were left unaddressed.

Another aspect in the organization of the conference that could benefit from future reflection is the registration fee categories. The participants and the conference registration fees are split into two categories: students and non-students, with the former having to pay less. But increasingly many participants are recent Ph.D. graduates who are on the job market. These are not students anymore, but they do not have a steady income either ‒ many of them teach part time as sessional instructors. In fact, their income is often similar to that of a graduate student, minus the certainty. Yet, the conference registration fee they have to pay is the same as that of a tenured professor. Perhaps a third category is needed for these people. This problem is not peculiar to this conference, but is a general problem shared by many other conferences.

One of the things that were laudable about this conference was a panel discussion about the problems and prospects for those desiring to embark on a career in philosophy and science. Besides university professors and a young philosopher, there were a couple of representatives from private foundations: Thomas Brunotte from the Volkswagen Foundation, and Christoph-Friedrich von Braun from the Andrea von Braun Foundation. This was a very informative plenary session in which the panelists discussed with the audience about navigating the demands of an interdisciplinary field like philosophy of science, and the hurdles and opportunities that are faced by the young people desiring a career in this field. This was a very informative session, in which the participants were extremely frank and authentic. Kudos to the organizers for such a wonderful idea, which should be replicated by similar conferences in North America and elsewhere!

Overall, the inaugural conference of the German Society for Philosophy of Science was a success. The addition of this conference to the already established PSA and EPSA is welcome not only for the philosophers of science residing in Germany or in Europe (UK and Turkey included), but also globally, for the philosophy of science community as a whole.

 

[1] At least one exception was the physicist Michael Krämer who took part in a symposium on the epistemology of the Higgs particle.

 

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April 3, 2013

Mary Domski on “Newton’s Mathematics and Empiricism”

By: Greg Horne and Melissa Jacquart

On Friday, March 22nd, Mary Domksi spoke to the Rotman Institute about one of her current research questions: how are we to understand the blending of mathematics and empiricism in Sir Isaac Newton’s Principia Mathematica (1687)? For those unfamiliar with the Principia, it is perhaps one of the most important books in the history of physics and science. In it, Newton gives us his laws of motion that form the foundation of classical mechanics, as well as his law of universal gravitation.

Principia is roughly broken up into three books (Book 1, Book 2, and Book 3) that contain both mathematical and empirical considerations. It is important to think about how Newton went about organizing the material in the Books because it may shed light on how he understood the relationship between mathematics and the empirical world.

Some scholars, such as Steffen Ducheyne, think there are two distinct stages that characterize Newton’s method in Principia. The first is mathematical, which can be seen in Book 1 and Book 2. Ducheyne thinks these books do not pertain to the real forces and motions that exist in nature, but only present an abstract mathematical system. The second stage, present in Book 3, is empirical. Ducheyne thinks this stage is an application of the mathematics from Books 1 and 2 to the real forces and motions that exist in nature based in observation and experiment.

Domski, however, thinks there is a better, alternative understanding of Newton’s methodology – that the Principia is best viewed as being “genuinely empirical from being to end”.

“Books 1 and 2 provide a mathematical treatment of forces and motions that establishes, with demonstrative certainty, how bodies must behave in empirically real form of space.

Book 3 illustrates, with inductive certainty, how the bodies that actually exist in nature behave in the empirically real form of space.”

That is to say, according to Domski’s reading, the mathematical is the empirical for Newton.

She substantiates this claim by an argument that focuses on one of Newton’s lesser known works: De Graviatione. She argues that in this work, Newton reveals that his mathematical considerations, which are also reflected in Books 1 and 2 of Principia, are constrained by empirical commitments from the ground up.

An interesting facet of her talk was the contrast she drew between how (she believes) Newton thought about the relationship between mathematics and the world, and how Descartes and Locke thought about this relationship. It is commonly accepted that Descartes and Locke saw a sharp separation between mathematics and its application to nature. Domski argued that it may be inappropriate to attribute these Cartesian and Lockean beliefs to Newton as well.  It is this attribution that may partly account for the popular belief that Newton also separated mathematics from nature.

For those interested in learning more about Newton and Principia, be sure to stay tuned for a follow-up post by Craig Fox.

Mary Domski is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of New Mexico.  Her research focuses on the interplay of philosophy, mathematics, and science in the early modern period, particularly in the work of Descartes, Newton, and Kant.  She says that when time and energy permit, she also thinks about how to integrate the history of philosophy, mathematics, and science into current debates concerning the aims of science.

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