Several interesting things have been happening online over the last week. First, there is a new philosophy of science group blog: It's Only a Theory. Posts so far have mostly been about the nature of scientific theories and specifically about the semantic view of theories. The blog seems to be an offshoot of a discussion from the HOPOS list that was started by Gabriele Contessa and then moved over to the blog. I think it is a great idea and I look forward to the extension of the discussion into other areas of philosophy of science.
The next exciting development is the launch of an online research engine for philosophy papers. We have David Bourget and David Chalmers of the Centre for Consciousness at the Australian National University to thank for this development. I am thrilled. I particularly like the feature that allows one to browse the latest philosophy journals. Particularly for someone who is not at an institution with deep journal resources this is a wonderful feature. One might quibble with the categories that they are using, but first, they are very self-aware about their choices and acknowledge that other interests might produce a different categorization, and second, they are open to suggestions and this feature is likely to rapidly evolve. It also has this wonderful, self-correcting feature that allows one to upload papers that the search engine might have missed or works in progress. I will post some thoughts on this in relation to feminist philosophy in another post (soon).
Finally, at Lemmings, Brit Brogaard raises the question of why there are so few female speakers at conferences (Female speakers: a rarity). There is one comment that reinforces one of her hypotheses: there just aren't that many women in the conference field (in this case, philosophy of mind). A quick reminder about the numbers of women in philosophy (check out Knowledge and Experience for the a good account of current numbers - left hand column of the blog) also helps with part of the explanation. There is more to fill out however. The lower numbers of women means that it is less likely that there are going to be women organizing the conferences, it means that the men organizing the conferences are going to be less likely to think of women to invite, and so on. The aggregation of these small effects perpetuates the absence of women on these programs and their inclusion in the subsequent published volumes and so on. But wait! Here are some conferences that don't seem to have that problem. Check out the webpages for FEAST, SAF (Society for Analytical Feminism), and the interdisciplinary group FEMMSS. One might argue that the problem is that women are only liberally included (in fact, they dominate) when the topics are explicitly feminist. That, in itself, does not seem all that surprising but when you put together that information with the point that women seem to be so poorly represented in other venues, I think it is clear that there is a problem.
Update: I just noticed that I had missed another reference to women and conferences at Feminist Philosophers.
Showing posts with label philosophy of science. Show all posts
Showing posts with label philosophy of science. Show all posts
06 February 2009
23 March 2008
My Pacific APA
Last week the Pacific Division of the APA met. For a very brief, visual summary, see this post at Feminist Philosophers. I found the meeting truly interesting for a change. It wasn’t so much the sessions, though there were good sessions, but rather the professional dynamics that were visible in more informal interactions, though these “informal interactions” were fueled by the sessions. Here are my “highlights”, though some of them might be more appropriately referred to as “lowlights”. I acknowledge that this report on my Pacific APA may bear little or no resemblance to your APA!
- A P-SWIP/BayFAP reception where I had several fascinating conversations. One was about the question of wanting to live a life that addresses issues of social relevance and doing philosophy of science. Are these different impulses? If not, how do we integrate them and yet still do work that is judged to be good by the standards of the field. This conversation was followed by another about the ongoing and so little changed sexism that female graduate experience. The latter was particularly disconcerting to me. I left graduate school 28 years ago and the stories that I was hearing were too similar to my own experience. The reports that male graduate students (at least some) truly believe that female graduate students get all the jobs was particularly worrying.
- A Routledge Companion to the Philosophy of Science that had 55 articles only 5 of which were by female philosophers and two of those were co-authored with males. More disturbing is that there was only one article discussing feminist philosophy of science (by Cassandra Pinnick) and the theme of that article was that there was nothing of value that it had to offer and that feminist should stay out of science and stick to politics!
- A memorial session for Richard Rorty which reminded me of the startling experience of the meta-philosophical critique, a possibility that had not yet occurred to me when I read it as I finished graduate school and something that the experience above remind me is so sorely needed.
- A mini-conference on Making Philosophy of Science More Socially Relevant organized by Nancy Cartwright, Sophia Efstathiou, Helen Longino, Katie Plaisance. These sessions were an example of where one might go if one engages in such a critique and a hopeful sign that at least some philosophers are interested in integrating all the aspects of their lives as philosophers and participants in their social and political life.
- Blogging connects you to people! Several people came up to me and recognized my name from blogging both on Knowledge and Experience and here. I also got to know some of the bloggers who contribute regularly to the blogs that I read.
18 February 2008
On Objectivity
While this post is on objectivity more generally it is specifically about Objectivity by Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison.
There are three main points that I took away from the book, though there is much more there that others might be interested in. The first is that objectivity is not a univocal concept. This isn't a particularly surprising point for those who are familiar with philosophical literature on objectivity. Lisa Lloyd, Heather Douglas, and Marianne Janack has all written articles in which they have identified a variety of senses of "objectivity". But the way in which Daston and Galison identify the various different concepts of objectivity is different. Rather than looking at one moment, an abstract philosophical "now", they examine what they take to be concepts of objectivity that emerge at different moments in the history of science. They do this through an examination of the use of images in science (atlases which are used in a variety of ways to inform our and the experts' understanding of the phenomena). Their contention is that these images track different epistemic virtues, which they identify as both virtues of science and of those that do science.
This leads to the second key idea, that "objectivity" can function as a stand-in for a slew of epistemic virtues rather than the pre-eminent virtue that it sometimes taken to be. This reminds me of Alison Wylie's idea about how to reconceive objectivity. She too takes objectivity to be a shorthand for set of epistemic virtues, while also pointing out that at any given time we may not be able to maximize all these virtues. In fact, they frequently compete with each other and a judgment is made about which are more important in the particular context. While the list of epistemic virtues that Wylie has in mind is something like simplicity, conservativeness, empirical adequacy, maybe fecundity (some variation on a list that Kuhn and others have proposed), Daston and Galison are looking at three (actually four) different sets of virtues proposed in the different periods that they examine.
The third idea follows from the historical approach that they take. It is that the concept of objectivity can change. Changing, or reconfiguring a concept of objectivity that is useful for feminist philosophy of science has been a project that a number of feminist philosophers have been involved in and so the approach that book offers lends support to that project.
There are some questions that the book raises for me however. Virtues are virtues in relation to a particular goal. It would seem that if what are taken to be virtues change there are at least two ways in which this can happen. Virtues can change because the idea of how to achieve a goal changes or they can change because the goal changes. So, for instance, at one time chastity might be considered a virtue of women. It is a virtue because women are to be mothers of the children in a patriarchy and their chastity helps to ensure that the children they bear will indeed be the children of the appropriate father. But chastity might cease to be a virtue (as perhaps it has) and there are at least two ways in which this might happen. It might be the case that patriarchy ceases to have the hold on society that it once did and so the importance of linking a child to a particular father is diminished in society. This would be a case where the goal has changed. It also can turn out that the method for obtaining the goal might not work any longer in which case the virtue also ceases to be a virtue. So, if birth control is effective, chastity is no longer necessary.
So how does this work in the case of objectivity? What goals changed or was it that methods failed to work? Daston and Galison talk about the goals for which objectivity is a virtue in terms of the fears that people had of various ways in which we might fail to attain knowledge. As they see it, the different types of objectivity are each aimed at addressing these fears and the fears change. So, they begin by describing an ideal that they call "truth to nature". With truth to nature the goal is to capture the real natures of the things that are being depicted. The fear is that the variations that individual examples of those things might exhibit will prevent us from seeing their true natures. After a while, a new ideal of objectivity emerges. This is what they call mechanical objectivity. This idea (the only one that they consistently refer to as "objectivity") involves avoiding interpretation and mechanically reproducing nature (think of photography). The fear here is that we insert ourselves into understanding nature and we rather need to record what is actually happening. The interpretation is seen as a distortion. Which of the two ways that a characteristic can cease to be a virtue is happening in this account? For Daston and Galison it isn't clear whether the goal has changed or the change has to do with a change in ideas on how to achieve the goal. I think that minimally understanding objectivity requires investigating what kind a virtue we think it is and this means being clear on what goals we are trying to achieve. Daston and Galison have a very interesting way of telling the story that they choose to tell but in the end I am not sure to what extent it illuminates the kinds of questions that are currently raised about scientific objectivity, particularly those that have to do with science and values.
There are three main points that I took away from the book, though there is much more there that others might be interested in. The first is that objectivity is not a univocal concept. This isn't a particularly surprising point for those who are familiar with philosophical literature on objectivity. Lisa Lloyd, Heather Douglas, and Marianne Janack has all written articles in which they have identified a variety of senses of "objectivity". But the way in which Daston and Galison identify the various different concepts of objectivity is different. Rather than looking at one moment, an abstract philosophical "now", they examine what they take to be concepts of objectivity that emerge at different moments in the history of science. They do this through an examination of the use of images in science (atlases which are used in a variety of ways to inform our and the experts' understanding of the phenomena). Their contention is that these images track different epistemic virtues, which they identify as both virtues of science and of those that do science.
This leads to the second key idea, that "objectivity" can function as a stand-in for a slew of epistemic virtues rather than the pre-eminent virtue that it sometimes taken to be. This reminds me of Alison Wylie's idea about how to reconceive objectivity. She too takes objectivity to be a shorthand for set of epistemic virtues, while also pointing out that at any given time we may not be able to maximize all these virtues. In fact, they frequently compete with each other and a judgment is made about which are more important in the particular context. While the list of epistemic virtues that Wylie has in mind is something like simplicity, conservativeness, empirical adequacy, maybe fecundity (some variation on a list that Kuhn and others have proposed), Daston and Galison are looking at three (actually four) different sets of virtues proposed in the different periods that they examine.
The third idea follows from the historical approach that they take. It is that the concept of objectivity can change. Changing, or reconfiguring a concept of objectivity that is useful for feminist philosophy of science has been a project that a number of feminist philosophers have been involved in and so the approach that book offers lends support to that project.
There are some questions that the book raises for me however. Virtues are virtues in relation to a particular goal. It would seem that if what are taken to be virtues change there are at least two ways in which this can happen. Virtues can change because the idea of how to achieve a goal changes or they can change because the goal changes. So, for instance, at one time chastity might be considered a virtue of women. It is a virtue because women are to be mothers of the children in a patriarchy and their chastity helps to ensure that the children they bear will indeed be the children of the appropriate father. But chastity might cease to be a virtue (as perhaps it has) and there are at least two ways in which this might happen. It might be the case that patriarchy ceases to have the hold on society that it once did and so the importance of linking a child to a particular father is diminished in society. This would be a case where the goal has changed. It also can turn out that the method for obtaining the goal might not work any longer in which case the virtue also ceases to be a virtue. So, if birth control is effective, chastity is no longer necessary.
So how does this work in the case of objectivity? What goals changed or was it that methods failed to work? Daston and Galison talk about the goals for which objectivity is a virtue in terms of the fears that people had of various ways in which we might fail to attain knowledge. As they see it, the different types of objectivity are each aimed at addressing these fears and the fears change. So, they begin by describing an ideal that they call "truth to nature". With truth to nature the goal is to capture the real natures of the things that are being depicted. The fear is that the variations that individual examples of those things might exhibit will prevent us from seeing their true natures. After a while, a new ideal of objectivity emerges. This is what they call mechanical objectivity. This idea (the only one that they consistently refer to as "objectivity") involves avoiding interpretation and mechanically reproducing nature (think of photography). The fear here is that we insert ourselves into understanding nature and we rather need to record what is actually happening. The interpretation is seen as a distortion. Which of the two ways that a characteristic can cease to be a virtue is happening in this account? For Daston and Galison it isn't clear whether the goal has changed or the change has to do with a change in ideas on how to achieve the goal. I think that minimally understanding objectivity requires investigating what kind a virtue we think it is and this means being clear on what goals we are trying to achieve. Daston and Galison have a very interesting way of telling the story that they choose to tell but in the end I am not sure to what extent it illuminates the kinds of questions that are currently raised about scientific objectivity, particularly those that have to do with science and values.
27 December 2007
Articles in Philosophy of Science: Models and Representation
For a treat during winter break, I am reading back issues of Philosophy of Science and have been pleasantly surprised that there are articles that I am actually interested in reading! Vol. 74 (2007) has a number of articles that are not so terribly specialized as POS articles have sometimes been in the past. This is not to say that there are no super specialized articles, for those of you who are fans of such, just that there were several articles that were more like the articles that I enjoy reading.
In particular, Margaret Morrison has an article in which she suggests that the recent interests that many philosophers of science have developed in models has wrongly led to ignoring theory (Number 2, April 2007, 195-228). She argues that there is still an important role for theory in philosophy of science and sketches an account of the relationship between theory, model, and the world that shows this. Her account of models differs from the semantic view, which identifies theory as a family of models.
Gabriele Contessa also has an article on models, but his focus is more squarely on the question of how models represent the systems they are models of (Number 1, January 2007. 48-68). Since I am currently working on a paper that deals with representation, I found this article particularly intriguing and so I am raising some questions about it here.
Contessa argues that it is possible to give necessary and sufficient conditions for a model representing a system. He contrasts this view to that of Mauricio Suarez, who denies that this can be done. Contessa's argument rests on several distinctions and is worth reading the paper, even if only for an overview of several of the key positions that are currently being defended in this discussion. I won't go into detail about these distinctions but will focus on the one at the core of Contessa's account of representation.
Contessa claims that much of the confusion over representation comes from a failure to distinguish between representing and representing faithfully. If we (wrongly) think that representation requires faithful or even partially faithful representation we are likely to draw the conclusion that Suarez does. Contessa makes the case that in order for a vehicle to represent a target it need not be a faithful representation. Of course, we are interested in what makes a representation faithful and he acknowledges that a full account of representation would include an account of faithful representation. What he does in this paper is give necessary and sufficient conditions for representation simpliciter (what else is required for faithful representation will have to wait, he notes at the end of the paper). In order to represent, the vehicle must be used by someone as an interpretation of the target system. (I am not doing full justice to the account because I haven't discussed his definition of interpretation and its connection to surrogative reasoning, a notion that he takes from Chris Swoyer (1991).)
The account that Contessa gives solves several problem and has some intuitively compelling features. However, what may not be quite so intuitive is that at first blush the account seems to commit Contessa to the view that it is possible for anything to represent anything else. There do not seem to be any inherent constraints on what the features objects that become models must have in order to be used as interpretations. On the one hand, this makes sense. Suarez's point that there isn't anything that we can point to in the model that would give us the necessary and sufficient conditions for it to function as a representation is vindicated. But Contessa asks us to look more closely at the use of the model to understand what it is to represent. On the other hand, I feel uncomfortable about the idea that a model that is not at all (even partially) faithful could be meaningfully said to represent a system because a user's interpretation turns it into a model of that system. Why am I uncomfortable with this? Is it because I am confusing faithful representation with representation as Contessa contends?
I am not sure, but here is my first pass at the answer. I am wondering to what extent someone can use an object (a model) as an interpretation of a particular system if there are no features of the model (object) that bear any relation to the system in some way that is independent of the user. If this is right, Contessa's account begs the question because when a model can be used as an interpretation it already requires that it have some other features in virtue of which it represents. It seems pretty clear from his article that he does not see this as being circular, so either I have not fully understood his account of interpretation, or I am slipping into that confusion of representation and faithful representation. All the force of my worries would then be addressed in the account (yet to be given) of faithful representation.
I am not sure what is going on here but this discussion reminds me of another similar one. Philip Kitcher criticized van Fraassen's pragmatic account of explanation because the way van Fraassen sets up the relevance relation between the explanandum and the explananda allows anything to be an explanation of anything else under the right circumstances (as long as the right relevance relation holds and what counts as the right relevance relation is dependent on context, so given the right context anything could be an explanation). The similarity between these two cases seems to be connected to the fact that both accounts depend on how something is used by someone. Van Fraassen did not seem to be terribly worried by Kitcher's criticism, because this was indeed what he intended. Kitcher later acknowledged that the flexibility had been intentional. (Sorry that I don't have the references here. I will fill them in later.) Another similarity between Contessa's account of reference and van Fraassen's account of explanation is that Contessa's argument precedes by asking us to draw a distinction between representing and representing faithfully. Van Fraassen's discussion depends on a similar distinction between having an explanation and having a good explanation.
This is all very incomplete, but I offer a final thought here. Could it be that the ambiguity is in "use"? To use and to use successfully are different are different in the same way as the other two concepts vary. It seems to me that making this distinction can only be done as a matter of degree however. There is some point when it no longer makes sense to describe what is going on as using A in order to do B. So, for instance, I can use a hammer to remove a screw, in the sense that I can pick the hammer up with the intention of taking out the screw with it. I can take the hammer and touch the screw with it and so on, but I cannot remove the screw with it. So I cannot successfully use the hammer to remove the screw. I think it would be reasonable for someone to describe what is happening in the following way: "She thought that she could use the hammer to remove the screw but in fact she cannot use it that way." It is not just that I was using it and failed, but rather that I wasn't really using it though I believed that I was. In a similar vein, I might think that I can use Newtonian physics to explain iridescence, but in fact, all explanations that I give in this way will be bad. So am I explaining? I may believe that I am but I will be wrong and since I can only be wrong we might reasonably say, at least at some point during my attempts, that I am not explaining at all, not just that I am explaining badly. Finally, to come back to representing, I might use the salt and pepper shakers on the table to represent the structure of the atom. This would mean, according to Contessa, that I am interpreting the salt and pepper shakers as a representation of the atom. The problem here is that I do not know how I would determine what sorts of things might appropriately represent others, that is, whether it is even plausible to claim that I or anyone else could use these objects in this way. Of course, how I do use any of these things in each of these examples (as a tool, as an explanation, as a representation, via using it as an interpretation) depends on background knowledge and so perhaps my worry about whether it is possible to make a distinction between something being a good tool, good explanation, or faithful representation and being simply a tool, an explanation, or a representation respectively can be resolved by specifying that all judgments about use are relative to background knowledge. But doesn't this just push the issue of the distinction between a good x and an x into background knowledge and so not eliminate the problem just move it around?
Well, these are some of the puzzles that I have had while thinking about Contessa's account of representation. I worry that it may be circular and so wonder if it gets us anywhere, but I like that it is so based in use. I hope to have more to say about this as I get clearer on what I want to do with the issue.
Swoyer, Chris (1991), "Structural Representation and Surrogative Reasoning," Synthese 87: 449-508.
In particular, Margaret Morrison has an article in which she suggests that the recent interests that many philosophers of science have developed in models has wrongly led to ignoring theory (Number 2, April 2007, 195-228). She argues that there is still an important role for theory in philosophy of science and sketches an account of the relationship between theory, model, and the world that shows this. Her account of models differs from the semantic view, which identifies theory as a family of models.
Gabriele Contessa also has an article on models, but his focus is more squarely on the question of how models represent the systems they are models of (Number 1, January 2007. 48-68). Since I am currently working on a paper that deals with representation, I found this article particularly intriguing and so I am raising some questions about it here.
Contessa argues that it is possible to give necessary and sufficient conditions for a model representing a system. He contrasts this view to that of Mauricio Suarez, who denies that this can be done. Contessa's argument rests on several distinctions and is worth reading the paper, even if only for an overview of several of the key positions that are currently being defended in this discussion. I won't go into detail about these distinctions but will focus on the one at the core of Contessa's account of representation.
Contessa claims that much of the confusion over representation comes from a failure to distinguish between representing and representing faithfully. If we (wrongly) think that representation requires faithful or even partially faithful representation we are likely to draw the conclusion that Suarez does. Contessa makes the case that in order for a vehicle to represent a target it need not be a faithful representation. Of course, we are interested in what makes a representation faithful and he acknowledges that a full account of representation would include an account of faithful representation. What he does in this paper is give necessary and sufficient conditions for representation simpliciter (what else is required for faithful representation will have to wait, he notes at the end of the paper). In order to represent, the vehicle must be used by someone as an interpretation of the target system. (I am not doing full justice to the account because I haven't discussed his definition of interpretation and its connection to surrogative reasoning, a notion that he takes from Chris Swoyer (1991).)
The account that Contessa gives solves several problem and has some intuitively compelling features. However, what may not be quite so intuitive is that at first blush the account seems to commit Contessa to the view that it is possible for anything to represent anything else. There do not seem to be any inherent constraints on what the features objects that become models must have in order to be used as interpretations. On the one hand, this makes sense. Suarez's point that there isn't anything that we can point to in the model that would give us the necessary and sufficient conditions for it to function as a representation is vindicated. But Contessa asks us to look more closely at the use of the model to understand what it is to represent. On the other hand, I feel uncomfortable about the idea that a model that is not at all (even partially) faithful could be meaningfully said to represent a system because a user's interpretation turns it into a model of that system. Why am I uncomfortable with this? Is it because I am confusing faithful representation with representation as Contessa contends?
I am not sure, but here is my first pass at the answer. I am wondering to what extent someone can use an object (a model) as an interpretation of a particular system if there are no features of the model (object) that bear any relation to the system in some way that is independent of the user. If this is right, Contessa's account begs the question because when a model can be used as an interpretation it already requires that it have some other features in virtue of which it represents. It seems pretty clear from his article that he does not see this as being circular, so either I have not fully understood his account of interpretation, or I am slipping into that confusion of representation and faithful representation. All the force of my worries would then be addressed in the account (yet to be given) of faithful representation.
I am not sure what is going on here but this discussion reminds me of another similar one. Philip Kitcher criticized van Fraassen's pragmatic account of explanation because the way van Fraassen sets up the relevance relation between the explanandum and the explananda allows anything to be an explanation of anything else under the right circumstances (as long as the right relevance relation holds and what counts as the right relevance relation is dependent on context, so given the right context anything could be an explanation). The similarity between these two cases seems to be connected to the fact that both accounts depend on how something is used by someone. Van Fraassen did not seem to be terribly worried by Kitcher's criticism, because this was indeed what he intended. Kitcher later acknowledged that the flexibility had been intentional. (Sorry that I don't have the references here. I will fill them in later.) Another similarity between Contessa's account of reference and van Fraassen's account of explanation is that Contessa's argument precedes by asking us to draw a distinction between representing and representing faithfully. Van Fraassen's discussion depends on a similar distinction between having an explanation and having a good explanation.
This is all very incomplete, but I offer a final thought here. Could it be that the ambiguity is in "use"? To use and to use successfully are different are different in the same way as the other two concepts vary. It seems to me that making this distinction can only be done as a matter of degree however. There is some point when it no longer makes sense to describe what is going on as using A in order to do B. So, for instance, I can use a hammer to remove a screw, in the sense that I can pick the hammer up with the intention of taking out the screw with it. I can take the hammer and touch the screw with it and so on, but I cannot remove the screw with it. So I cannot successfully use the hammer to remove the screw. I think it would be reasonable for someone to describe what is happening in the following way: "She thought that she could use the hammer to remove the screw but in fact she cannot use it that way." It is not just that I was using it and failed, but rather that I wasn't really using it though I believed that I was. In a similar vein, I might think that I can use Newtonian physics to explain iridescence, but in fact, all explanations that I give in this way will be bad. So am I explaining? I may believe that I am but I will be wrong and since I can only be wrong we might reasonably say, at least at some point during my attempts, that I am not explaining at all, not just that I am explaining badly. Finally, to come back to representing, I might use the salt and pepper shakers on the table to represent the structure of the atom. This would mean, according to Contessa, that I am interpreting the salt and pepper shakers as a representation of the atom. The problem here is that I do not know how I would determine what sorts of things might appropriately represent others, that is, whether it is even plausible to claim that I or anyone else could use these objects in this way. Of course, how I do use any of these things in each of these examples (as a tool, as an explanation, as a representation, via using it as an interpretation) depends on background knowledge and so perhaps my worry about whether it is possible to make a distinction between something being a good tool, good explanation, or faithful representation and being simply a tool, an explanation, or a representation respectively can be resolved by specifying that all judgments about use are relative to background knowledge. But doesn't this just push the issue of the distinction between a good x and an x into background knowledge and so not eliminate the problem just move it around?
Well, these are some of the puzzles that I have had while thinking about Contessa's account of representation. I worry that it may be circular and so wonder if it gets us anywhere, but I like that it is so based in use. I hope to have more to say about this as I get clearer on what I want to do with the issue.
Swoyer, Chris (1991), "Structural Representation and Surrogative Reasoning," Synthese 87: 449-508.
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