Empirical Philosophy

Criticisms of Karl Popper’s critical rationalist epistemology are often confused and misleading. In part that is due to Popper’s somewhat lax use of language, in which technical terms are used in more than one sense. I attempt to clarify Popper’s views by regimenting his terminology. The result is offered as a clear and concise exposition of the main points of Popper’s epistemology.

Abstract: Parent–offspring conflict theory hypothesizes that interests of  offspring and parents are asymmetrical in key contexts including the offspring’s mating strategies and mate preferences. Evidence supports this hypothesis and documents these asymmetries in humans. However, offspring in East Asia have mate preferences and mating strategies that are in significantly greater harmony with their parents’ preferences about their mating choices as compared with offspring elsewhere in the world. The paper hypothesizes that the Confucian virtue of filial piety (xiao 孝) was designed and  disseminated in order to benefit parents by enabling them successfully to extract more resources out of their offspring than is expected given either data from parent–offspring conflict theory or data from cross-cultural studies of mate preferences and mating strategies. The results of this project mark an early step in building a stable interdisciplinary platform from which to more accurately observe and appraise the unappreciated, awe-inspiring influence of Confucianism.

The ethnographic field guide was a short-lived genre in the annals of anthropology. In this chapter I experimentally attempt to revive it. The original guides provided the ethnographer with a set of practical pointers on how to organise fieldwork, set up camp, maintain relations, and negotiate access in a particular geographical region of the world. The present field guide attempts to do so while entertaining (and eventually discarding) the idea that the World Wide Web has similar areal qualities and constitutes a field in which the techno-anthropologist can go to do work. It is not a straightforward analogy, and although a guide turns out to be somewhat impossible the attempt at writing it casts of all kinds of interesting contradictions. What is highlighted in the process is that the Web is distinctly spatial in ways that must be taken seriously, that it is home to a very special breed of digital natives, and that maintaining relations with these natives presents a challenge of its own. I argue that these challenges must be taken seriously, and that techno-anthropology could be ideally suited to do just that.

This book deals with the implicit epistemological, ontological and methodological commitments underlying the legal philosophy of H.L.A. Hart (1907-1992). The author seeks to answer the view, voiced in recent years, that Hart might not have been influenced in the long run by ordinary language philosophy – in particular that of the “later” Wittgenstein and J.L. Austin.
This issue is addressed by bringing to light a corpus of (vastly overlooked) "early work" in general philosophy which Hart published over the course of the seven year period before he in was elected to the chair of jurisprudence. These articles reveal that Hart fully participated at this stage in the ordinary language philosophy movement, and that was active in the epistemological debate opposing the Oxford philosophers and the British representatives of logical atomism and logical empiricism. This book claims that this early work in general philosophy is crucial to understand some of the positions which underly, but remain implicit, in his legal philosophy. Not only are his early philosophical positions carried over into his first jurisprudential writings, they remain an important part of his mature jurisprudence as set forth in The Concept of Law (1961).
Shedding light on the philosophical foundations of Hart’s legal theory paves the way for a fuller understanding of the contrast between his own “analytical positivism” and Continental forms of positivism, such as Hans Kelsen’s normativism or Scandinavian legal realism. It will also allows us to draw unsuspected parallels between Hartian theory and the logical jurisprudence of the francophone philosopher Chaïm Perelman.

The Twin Earth scenario assumes reference to natural kinds is unique and never changes (rigid designation), and that we can give justice to the intuition of reference-permanence and things having a deep structure only by pushing meaning outside the brain or mind (semantic externalism). This, I'll show, doesn't follow. Besides, the intuition itself is misconstrued here. To say the term “water” expressed a thought or concept or belief denoting H2O before its actual discovery around 1750, is to make a claim without real content and be guilty of after-the-fact rationalizing. If anything, Twin Earth undercuts the theory of semantic externalism and its core-notion of rigid designation. A pluralized, descriptivist model of reference, I claim, is a better fit for our scientific data and ordinary intuitions either way.

The epistemic and aesthetic dimensions of taste are always inscribed in conceptions of the social order that the discourse on taste simultaneously enacts and rationalizes, while veiling the logics of difference and power it thereby affirms and reproduces. This article illustrates the entanglement of social and intellectual hierarchies that anchors the resolution of the problem of taste in the mechanisms of social distinction and erasure. It does so by examining four socio-epistemic configurations in the history of Western knowledge. The first vignette contextualizes the original devaluation of taste in the competition between the Socratic philosophers and epistemic labourers whose elevation of taste disrupted the Athenian aristocratic order. The second vignette explores the entanglement of humoural theory with the racial and religious orders of the premodern age, as imperial encounters threatened European identity brought into contact with the tastes of others. The third vignette examines how the epistemic status of gustatory taste became anchored in the hierarchy of cultural taste within British empirical philosophy. Finally, the paper tracks new forms of social distinction in the resistance to the globalization of food systems and to the democratization of culinary tastes, as manifested in the constitution of an exclusivist 'standard of taste' for wine appreciation.

This paper examines the ontological premises, ideational debates, and intellectual history of empiricism. It looks at the construct's applications in sociopolitical theory as well as its basis in ancient, medieval, as well as early and late modern philosophy. The work was originally proposed as an article for the Encyclopedia of Political Thought but was, ultimately, rejected from publication consideration.

This essay argues that acknowledging the existence of mind-independent facts is a matter of vital importance, in that acquiescence before the layout of the world is something demanded of knowing agents from the most elementary empirical deliverance to the most abstract construct. Building on the idea that normativity requires the presence of more than one option to choose from, the essay shows how the cessation of one's life is the disjunctive alternative of any experiential episode. This much has been missed, it argues, because of a generalized failure to appreciate how even the simplest atomic contents embroil their subjects in acts of assent. Its account thus casts a new light on relativism and skepticism, revealing them to be provisional luxuries supported only by the cognitive labor of others.

Some birth scholars (Melissa Cheyney, Robbie Davis-Floyd, and Elizabeth Davis) have argued that there are two models of birth that value different kinds of knowledge. They assert that the "technocratic" model has been adopted by "mainstream" culture, which values reason and scientific knowledge. Meanwhile, the "countercultural" birth subculture, which has adopted a "holistic" model, values intuition and "body knowledge" instead. However, my research does not support this argument. Rather, the 119 birth stories I analyzed suggest that, even if the birth subculture rhetoric supports those scholars' dichotomies, their birth experiences do not. Neither group appears to uniformly hold their respective values, thus weakening the original dichotomy between the "mainstream" group and the "countercultural" group. Moreover, I demonstrate how the dichotomy between reason and scientific knowledge on the one hand, and intuition and "body knowledge" on the other, is also inaccurate. Feminist epistemology also warns that this dichotomization undercuts a diversity of thinking styles by limiting them to just two.

The paper tentatively develops a genealogical interpretation of Early Confucian moral psychology by informing close readings of Early Confucian texts, in particular Mencius and Analects, with research in the mind sciences. This includes examinations of the discussions of emotions and their morality in Analects and Mencius. The paper first analyzes the relationship between Confucian filial piety, genetic kinship and moral emotions. Then the paper analyzes the relationship between Early Confucian ethical principles for interaction with non-kin, empathy, and reciprocal altruism. The paper frames those two issues around a description of the variance between the (high) usage and importance of emotions in the moral philosophy of Early Confucianism and the (low) usage and importance of emotions in the moral philosophy of competing Western moral theories.

We investigate how individuals’ evolutionary ancestry, religious affiliation and cultural membership differentially influence moral appraisals of them and their actions by determining how the context of an agent and action covaries with the moral condemnation of the agent and action by a third party. We hypothesized that religious membership would not yield reductions in the attribution of wrongness and blame, and that evolutionary ancestry would not yield increases in attribution of wrongness and blame. Study 1 (N=91) uses a between-subjects design to present participants with one of four vignettes (control, evolutionary influence, religious influence, cultural influence) each of which describes a wrongdoer who has committed adultery. Study 2 (N=233) was identical to Study 1 but for an additional explanatory sentence making more salient the influence of the wrongdoer’s social context to the wrongdoer’s action. Hypotheses were confirmed. Data also reveal features of systemic discrimination against atheists and the non-religious.

The term 'scientism' has not attracted consensus about its meaning or about its scope of application. In this paper, we consider Mizrahi's suggestion to distinguish 'Strong' and 'Weak' scientism, and the consequences this distinction may have for philosophical methodology. While we side with Mizrahi that his definitions help advance the debate, by avoiding verbal dispute and focussing on questions of method, we also have concerns about his proposal as it defends a hierarchy of knowledge production. Mizrahi's position is that Weak Scientism should be adopted, stating that "of all the knowledge we have, scientific knowledge is the best knowledge". This version of scientism, however, has consequences for philosophical methodology. In particular, if one conceives of philosophy as an a priori discipline and holds Weak Scientism, the introduction of empirical methods in philosophy may threaten its very essence or soul. In this chapter, we will defend the move to adopt empirical methods in philosophy and argue that, rather than threatening its essence or soul, these methods put philosophy in a better position to contribute to knowledge production, an endeavour shared with the sciences, and in a very interdisciplinary spirit. Our point of disagreement with Mizrahi is that we should avoid any hierarchy of knowledge, and instead focus on what each perspective-scientific, philosophical, historical, or other-can contribute to understanding phenomena.

In this essay, I describe some of the methodological dimensions of my ongoing research into how parents choose schools. I particularly focus on how philosophical frameworks and analytical strategies have shaped the empirical portion of my research. My
goal, in this essay, is to trace and explore the ways in which philosophy of education—as a methodological orientation—may enable researchers to be attentive to the normative dimensions of human experience. In addition, I will argue that philosophically informed empirical research offers new possibilities for making normative arguments that are closely connected to the non-ideal, complex ground of actual experience.

Introducing the practice of defining all units for all physics properties in combinations of the units of their empirical evidence. It is proposed that all properties that are inferred to exist from empirical evidence should be defined using the same terms in which that evidence is expressed. That evidence consists of patterns in changes of velocities of objects. That evidence is expressed in terms of length and time represented by their units of meters and seconds. When changes of velocities are measured with respect to time, they are called acceleration. The units of acceleration are meters/second/second . The equation f=ma  contains acceleration as its empirical evidence. The properties of force and mass are herein defined in terms of the two measured properties of acceleration. Those properties are distance and time. The units of mass are no longer the  artificially indefinable units of kilograms. Its new units are a combination of the units of its empirical evidence. Meters and seconds are the units of the empirical evidence. They are the only two naturally indefinable units. This is the case because there are no units existing before them by which they may be defined. Units for higher level properties of mechanics are definable using those of mass, distance and time. Therefore their units are now formed solely in combinations of meters and seconds. The empirical origin and meaning of mass are presented. Important properties and constants of thermodynamics are explained using mechanics. The physical meaning of Clausius’ thermodynamic entropy is derived. A unification of the two expressions of the fine structure constant is presented. The cause of acceleration due to gravity is explained. A principle of Conservation of Acceleration is proposed.

Primitivists about truth maintain that truth cannot be analysed in more fundamental terms. Defences of primitivism date back to the early years of analytic philosophy, being offered by G.E. Moore, Bertrand Russell, and Gottlob Frege. In more recent years, a number of contemporary philosophers—including Donald Davidson, Ernest Sosa, Trenton Merricks, Douglas Patterson, and Jamin Asay—have followed suit, defending their own versions of primitivism. I'll begin by offering a brief history of primitivism, situating each of these views within the landscape of primitivist truth theories and detailing some of their core motivations and apparent shortcomings. To close the discussion, I'll offer a diagnosis of the prospects of primitivism, focusing on the mystery challenge, which has loomed large throughout the history of primitivist truth theories, and the methodology that should be used in evaluating primitivist (and other) truth theories going forward.

With increasing publication and data production, scientific knowledge stands not simply as an achievement but also as a challenge. Scientific publications and data are increasingly treated as resources that need to be digitally ‘managed.’ This gives rise to scientific Knowledge Management (KM): second-order scientific work aiming to systematically collect, take care of and mobilise first-hand disciplinary knowledge and data in order to provide new first-order scientific knowledge. We follow the work of Leonelli (2014, 2016), Efstathiou (2012, 2016) and Hislop (2013) in our analysis of the use of KM in semantic systems biology. Through an empirical philosophical account of KM-enabled biological research, we argue that KM helps produce new first-order biological knowledge that did not exist before, and which could not have been produced by traditional means. KM work is enabled by conceiving of ‘knowledge’ as an object for computational science: as explicated in the text of biological articles and computable via appropriate data and metadata. However, the founded concepts enabling computational KM risk focusing on only computationally tractable data as knowledge, underestimating practice-based knowing and its significance in ensuring the validity of ‘manageable’ knowledge as knowledge.

Calculating and making public carbon footprints is becoming self-evident for multinational corporations. Drawing on ethnographic data I narrate of the calculative routine practices involved in that process. The narration shows how routine yet sophisticated mathematical transformations are involved in retrieving salient information, and second that mathematical consistency is readily interrupted by 'dirty data'. Such interruptions call for opportunistic data management in devising work-arounds, which effect enough mathematical coherence for the number to hold together. Foregrounding an episode of calculative data retrieval, interruption and work-around contrivance, I employ it to make a comparative reading of two STS analytics, arguing: whereas Callon and Law's (2005) analytic technique of qualculation reveals the episode of data management and work around contrivance as a teleologically oriented process that manages to bridge mathematical inconsistency, Verran's technique of ontologising troubles enables us to recognise how a number-as-network configures its particular kind of certainty and coherence, how it sticks.

This paper articulates two competing explanations about cognitive effects of the Lisbon earthquake of 1755 and preliminarily assesses them against historical documents. Humanities scholars' voluminous writings on the earthquake imply a Secularizing Interpretation on which the earthquake caused cognitive change across social classes and geographical regions. Results from the cognitive science of religion yield a Supernatural Punishment account denying cognitive changes implied by the Secularizing Hypothesis and instead implying people interpreted this earthquake as caused by God on purpose as a punishment on the out-group. This paper advocates the Supernatural Punishment account in two steps. A preliminary review of writings of philosophers and elites reveals little to no secularizing cognitive change. A preliminary review of writings of religious authors reveals increases in religious and Supernatural Punishment cognition after the earthquake. This project suggests interdisciplinary methods for researchers in the Humanities with which to put their interpretations to the test.

Hume's 'problem of induction' has made justifying and validating inferences from empirical observation near impossible for many years. Because the problem states that there is no universal rule that can validate observations of things being some way to the inference that things will continue to be that way, John D. Norton propose a theory of induction based, not on universal rules of inference, but rather on material facts. While I believe that Norton's theory does help empirical science escape from an almost fallacious reliance on a formal theory of induction, the necessary theories that give background justification to inferences made from our observations is ultimately normative and not empirical. If this is the case, then it seems that Norton has not come out of the shadow of Hume's skepticism.

A discussion of reason and experience as the basis of knowledge. This looks at the distinctions between a priori knowledge and a posteriori knowledge, between analytic and synthetic propositions, and necessary versus contingent truths. The paper also looks at the contrast between Continental philosophy and Anglo-American philosophy.

The DIY-CRISPR kit was introduced in 2016 by The ODIN company. This kit which includes materials and instructions required to make specific alterations to the bacterial genome at home is a product of the Do-It-Yourself biology movement. The DIYbio movement is a worldwide phenomenon in which amateurs, students, hobbyists, scientists, artists and designers are engaged in activities relating to biology and biological materials outside of scientific institutions. By addressing the question: Can DIY-CRISPR kit enrich the ethical deliberation and evaluation of CRISPR technology by stimulating imagination? If so how? in this thesis, I discern the value of the kit within the context of CRISPR related participatory technology assessments. Clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats(CRISPR), referred to as CRISPR-Cas9, is a genome-editing tool that has been gaining the attention of scientists and ethicists around the globe over the past few years as it allows making site-specific modifications to genomes of organisms in a precise and inexpensive manner. Based on an analysis of the ethical concerns raised in relation to the desirability of CRISPR, I argue that the quality of current ethical discussion on CRISPR is poor and less imaginative due to the lack of weight given to soft impacts in comparison to hard impacts. Activities under the DIYbio movement, especially bioart, according to few authors have the potential to evoke imagination and thereby, raise ethical questions that are beyond the usual risk-benefit concerns. Based on the theories in moral philosophy which hold that moral reasoning is imaginative, I formulate a set of questions that act as an evaluative criterion for assessing the imaginative potential of the kit and its use.

This is an introductory course centred around the concept of practice. It aims to offer a general overview of the so-called practice turn in the social sciences, compare and contrast the most important theories of practice in sociology, and examine a series of case studies in practice research informed by recent developments in cultural anthropology, ethnomethodology, discourse analysis, and science and technology studies. After an introductory session we proceed by identifying various components of practice theory as possible focus points. Each component - 'bodies', 'texts', 'materialities', 'temporalities', 'spatialities', 'ways of knowing' - is discussed in two consecutive sessions with the help of (a) classical social scientific texts and (b) specific case studies.

This article explores some aspects of what happens, and what can happen, in the complex practice we commonly refer to as “thinking.” Of all the practices involved in the messy processes we call research, “thinking” is perhaps the most pervasive and widespread. Yet, it also remains the most opaque. Thinking happens, but it is seldom spoken about. The theories we normally engage with never say how they come about. Surely, philosophers of various traditions have dedicated countless pages to the question of what thought is, and some social scientists have recently attempted to theorize “methods” of theorizing in research. Such accounts, however, tend to remain at odds with the hesitant, playful, and profoundly eventful experience of thinking-feeling in and through research. The experience, that is, that thoughts often think other thoughts, that they happen to us, and that thinking therefore involves an art of learning to confer on ideas the capacity to make us think. In this article, I seek not to make grand claims about the nature of thought, but to make perceptible the dramatic and perplexing experience that thinking can constitute. In so doing, I draw on the work of philosopher of heuristics, Judith Schlanger, whose central aim has been to come to terms with the adventure of what she terms “intellectual invention.” The task is to open up a different—if never fully transparent—conversation about how it feels to think.

Does the Ship of Theseus present a genuine puzzle about persistence due to conflicting intuitions based on “continuity of form” and “continuity of matter” pulling in opposite directions? Philosophers are divided. Some claim that it presents a genuine puzzle but disagree over whether there is a solution. Others claim that there is no puzzle at all since the case has an obvious solution. To assess these proposals, a cross-cultural study involving nearly 3,000 people across twenty-two locations, speaking eighteen different languages was conducted. The results speak against the proposal that there is no puzzle at all and against the proposal that there is a puzzle but one that has no solution. Moreover, the results also suggest that there are two criteria—“continuity of form” and “continuity of matter”—that constitute our concept of persistence and these two criteria receive different weightings in settling matters concerning persistence.

In The Metaphysics of Truth, Doug Edwards offers a sustained case against deflationism about truth and in favour of his preferred pluralist theory of truth.  Here, I take up three of the main components of that case.  The first is Edwards’ account of the distinctive metaphysical commitments of deflationism.  His views about this issue have changed over the past few years, and I detail these changes as well as a concern for the views that he develops in the book.  Second, I take up the argument that Edwards offers for thinking that deflationism is, in a certain sense, internally unstable.  I explain why this argument is inconclusive, outlining three responses to it on behalf of the deflationist.  Third, I consider Edwards’ novel argument for truth pluralism, which acts as an indirect argument against deflationism.  After sorting out some interpretive nuances related to the use of definite descriptions in this argument, I show how the deflationist can resist it.  Having responded to Edwards’ critique of deflationism, I close by briefly explaining why I take the methodology of deflationism to be especially promising, insofar as it underscores the significance of empirically-informed inquiry about truth.

At a time where the relevance of the social sciences is under threat, this innovative book offers a speculative experimentation on the philosophy and methodology of the social sciences to rethink what 'relevance' is, and to cultivate a new ethos of knowledge-making for an eventful world. Engaging a diverse a range of thinkers including Alfred North Whitehead, Gilles Deleuze and Isabelle Stengers, as well as the American pragmatists John Dewey and William James, Martin Savransky challenges longstanding assumptions in the social sciences and argues that relevance is an event that is part and parcel of the immanent and situated processes by which things come to matter. He develops new conceptual tools for cultivating an empiricist ethos of inquiry that is attuned to the question of how things come to matter– an ethics that turns social inquiry into a veritable adventure. The result is an original and rigorous book that infuses knowledge-practices in the social sciences with new sensibilities, creative possibilities, and novel habits of thinking, knowing, and feeling.

Reviews
“This brilliant and insightfully written book might just change the social sciences and the way in which they matter to us. Martin Savransky makes a creative wager, an experimental proposition, the most convincing and the most promising one: to give the social sciences an appetite for new forms of inventiveness, to arouse the taste for transforming their inquiries into possible adventures and for taking care of their manners of knowing without giving up the obligations which constitute the value of their knowledge and practices.” (Vinciane Despret, Université de Liège, Belgium)

“Martin Savransky’s book is a very welcome contribution to a new pragmatism in social inquiry. Explicitly empiricist, and speculative, it aligns ‘early pragmatism’s’ innovative engagement with the ‘experimental method’ applied across different spheres of activity, with recent French philosophy to propose that the adventure of inquiry consists in its (re)making of worlds as it is itself (re)made through them . This is a novel and challenging work that demands our engagement.” (John Holmwood, University of Nottingham, UK)

“In an era where the social and human sciences are struggling for survival, Martin Savransky proposes a bold reconstructive agenda centred on the issue of relevance. This is not relevance in the form of a question, a demand or a judgement. For Savransky relevance is an event that belongs immanently to the world. In The Adventure of Relevance he proposes that by restoring relevance to the world real possibilities emerge for alternative knowledge practices. This is a timely and incisive intervention that locates this book as a must read for anyone passionate about the future of the social and human sciences today.” (Lisa Adkins, BHP Billiton Chair of Sociology, University of Newcastle, Australia)

“At a time when social life increasingly seems to be reduced to a matter of collecting and manipulating huge datasets, and incessantly reiterating the same  few memes, Martin Savransky recalls us to the need for practices of speculation and invention.” (Steven Shaviro, Wayne State University, USA)

Practice has become a topic of increasing empirical and conceptual concern within sociology and neighbouring fields. ‘Practice’ can refer to a location or it can refer to action. It is possible to be ‘in practice’, to ‘have a practice’ or to be ‘constituted by practice’. Practice can be a cause, an effect or an explanation. Within science and technology studies (STS), the practice orientation is simultaneously analytical – in the form of various practice theories – and empirical, in that research objects are often defined as ‘practices’. Focusing on a range of examples, especially ethnomethodological, this paper examines some implications and problems that follow when practice slides unnoticed between empirical and conceptual registers. Arguing that a reconsideration of practice thinking is important in order to retain its vigour, we outline a view of practice as a ‘factish’, at once conceptual and empirical, which facilitates analyses of practical ontologies and their transformatio...

The ethnographic field guide was a short-lived genre in the annals of anthropology. In this chapter I experimentally attempt to revive it. The original guides provided the ethnographer with a set of practical pointers on how to organise fieldwork, set up camp, maintain relations, and negotiate access in a particular geographical region of the world. The present field guide attempts to do so while entertaining (and eventually discarding) the idea that the World Wide Web has similar areal qualities and constitutes a field in which the techno-anthropologist can go to do work. It is not a straightforward analogy, and although a guide turns out to be somewhat impossible the attempt at writing it casts of all kinds of interesting contradictions. What is highlighted in the process is that the Web is distinctly spatial in ways that must be taken seriously, that it is home to a very special breed of digital natives, and that maintaining relations with these natives presents a challenge of its own. I argue that these challenges must be taken seriously, and that techno-anthropology could be ideally suited to do just that.