bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Cognitive pluralism
Authors: Ramsey William
Published: September 2018

Cognitive pluralism refers to the very different ways in which people engage in cognitive activity in general, and reasoning in particular. Cognitive pluralism does not focus upon differences in belief systems or cultural attitudes; instead, it refers to the different ways in which cognitive agents process information, engage in problem solving and form and update their beliefs. It is about differences in how people think, not what they think (though these two are often closely related).

There are a variety of ways in which cognitive pluralism can be articulated. Broadly speaking, it is commonly divided into the categories of descriptive pluralism and prescriptive or normative pluralism. Descriptive pluralism involves the empirical claim that differences in reasoning strategies exist between different cognitive agents or systems, while normative pluralism involves the evaluative claim that there are different good ways to go about the business of reasoning. Both sorts of pluralism can be contrasted with cognitive monisms that claim, descriptively, there is little diversity in reasoning strategies, or, prescriptively, that only one type of reasoning strategy is optimal. As might be expected, the difference between pluralistic and monistic views varies along a continuum, depending upon the amount of pluralism promoted or denied.
Knowledge and justification, coherence theory of
Authors: Bonjour Laurence
Published: September 2018

Coherence theories of justification represent one main alternative to foundationalist theories of justification. If, as has usually been thought, possessing epistemic justification is one necessary condition (along with truth and perhaps others) for a belief to constitute knowledge, then a coherence theory of justification would also provide the basis for a coherence theory of knowledge. While some proponents of coherence theories have restricted the scope of the theory to empirical justification, others have applied it to all varieties of epistemic justification. (There are also coherence theories of meaning and of truth, as well as coherence theories of ethical or moral justification.)

The initial contrast between coherence theories and foundationalist theories arises in the context of the epistemic regress problem. It is obvious that the justification of some beliefs derives from their inferential relations to other, putatively justified beliefs, and that the justification of these other beliefs may depend on inferential relations to still further beliefs, and so on, so that a potential regress of epistemic justification looms, with scepticism as the threatened outcome. The foundationalist solution to this problem is that one arrives sooner or later at basic or foundational beliefs: beliefs that are epistemically justified, but whose justification does not derive from inferential relations to any further beliefs and so brings the regress to an end. The defining tenet of a coherence theory of justification is the rejection of this foundationalist solution, the coherentist insisting that any belief (of the kinds to which the theory is applied) depends for its justification on inferential relations to other beliefs and eventually to the overall system of beliefs held by the believer in question. According to the coherentist, the justification of this system of beliefs is logically prior to that of its component beliefs and derives ultimately from the coherence of the system, where coherence is a matter of how tightly unified or interconnected the system is by virtue of inferential connections (including explanatory connections) between its members.

Contrary to what this might seem to suggest, coherence theories do not deny that sensory observation or perception plays an important role in justification. What they deny is that this role should be construed in a foundationalist way, insisting instead that the justification of observational beliefs ultimately derives also from considerations of coherence. Specific coherence theories may also add other requirements for justification, thereby departing from a pure coherentism, while still avoiding foundationalism.

While the idea of a coherence theory has often played the role of a dialectical foil, developed theories of this kind are relatively rare and are often in serious disagreement among themselves. In this way, coherentism is much less a unified view with standard, generally accepted features, than is foundationalism.
Criteria
Authors: McGinn Marie
Published: September 2018

The concept of criteria has been interpreted as the central notion in the later Wittgenstein’s account of how language functions, in contrast to the realist semantics of the Tractatus. According to this later account, a concept possesses a sense in so far as there are conditions that constitute non-inductive evidence for its application in a particular case. This condition on a concept’s possessing a sense has been thought to enable Wittgenstein to refute both solipsism and scepticism about other minds. There are powerful objections to this conception of criteria, which have led some philosophers to look for an alternative account of the role of criteria in Wittgenstein’s later philosophy.
Deductive closure principle
Authors: Becker Kelly
Published: September 2018

The deductive closure principle is based on the thought that one straightforward way to extend one’s knowledge is to competently deduce some proposition from one or more propositions that one already knows. G.E. Moore (1939) appears to presume this in his proof of an external world. Updating Moore’s proof to incorporate the more recent rhetorical device of a brain-in-a-vat (BIV), from his putative knowledge that he has hands and his knowledge that his having hands entails that he is not merely a BIV being fed experiences, through electrodes, of having hands, Moore deduces and therefore claims to know that he is not a BIV. A natural sceptical reply also exploits the idea that one can extend one’s knowledge through deduction. The sceptic will say, for example, that Moore does not know that he is not a brain-in-a-vat (BIV), for if he were his experience would be no different to what it actually is. Moore does know, however, that if he has hands then he is not (just) a BIV. Therefore, Moore does not even know that he has hands, for if he did, he could deduce and come to know that he is not a BIV, but that is not something he can know because, again, his vat experiences would be indistinguishable from normal ones.

The idea that knowledge can always be extended through competent deduction from known premises – which implies that knowledge is deductively closed under known entailment – raises at least three philosophical questions. First, what general principle best captures this phenomenon? Due primarily to risk arising from the fallibility of belief-forming processes including deduction, there is reason to question even the most plausible formulations of closure. Second, are there any counterexamples to the principle or constraints on its application? Some philosophers claim that a properly formulated closure principle admits of exceptions, even if deduction is assumed to be infallible. Third, how might a theory of knowledge that upholds a robust (exceptionless) closure principle achieve anti-sceptical results?.
Empiricism
Authors: Alston William P.
Published: September 2018

In all its forms, empiricism stresses the fundamental role of experience. As a doctrine in epistemology it holds that all knowledge is ultimately based on experience. Likewise an empirical theory of meaning or of thought holds that the meaning of words or our concepts are derivative from experience. This entry is restricted to epistemological empiricism. It is difficult to give an illuminating analysis of ‘experience’. Let us say that it includes any mode of consciousness in which something seems to be presented to the subject, as contrasted with the mental activity of thinking about things. Experience, so understood, has a variety of modes – sensory, aesthetic, moral, religious and so on – but empiricists usually concentrate on sense experience, the modes of consciousness that result from the stimulation of the five senses.

It is obvious that not all knowledge stems directly from experience. Hence empiricism always assumes a stratified form, in which the lowest level issues directly from experience, and higher levels are based on lower levels. It has most commonly been thought by empiricists that beliefs at the lowest level simply ‘read off’ what is presented in experience. If a tree is visually presented to me as green I simply ‘register’ this appearance in forming the belief that the tree is green. Most of our beliefs – general beliefs for example – do not have this status but, according to empiricism, are supported by other beliefs in ways that eventually trace back to experience. Thus the belief that maple trees are bare in winter is supported by particular perceptual beliefs to the effect that this maple tree is bare and it is winter.

Empiricism comes in many versions. A major difference concerns the base on which each rests. A public version takes beliefs about what we perceive in the physical environment to be directly supported by experience. A phenomenalist version supposes that only beliefs about one’s own sensory experience are directly supported, taking perceptual beliefs about the environment to get their support from the former sort of beliefs. The main difficulties for a global empiricism (all knowledge is based on experience) come from types of knowledge it is difficult to construe in this way, such as mathematical knowledge.
Feminist epistemology
Authors: Code Lorraine
Published: September 2018

The impact of feminism on epistemology has been to move the question ‘Whose knowledge are we talking about?’ to a central place in epistemological inquiry. Hence feminist epistemologists are producing conceptions of knowledge that are quite specifically contextualized and situated, and of socially responsible epistemic agency. They have elaborated genealogical/interpretive methods, have advocated reconstructions of empiricism, have articulated standpoint positions and have demonstrated the potential of psychosocial and post-structural analyses to counter the hegemony of epistemological master narratives. In these reconfigured epistemologies, feminists have argued that the cognitive status and circumstances of the knower(s) are central among conditions for the possibility of knowledge. They have demonstrated the salience, in evaluating any epistemic event, of the social arrangements of power and privilege by which it is legitimated or discredited.

Feminists are engaged at once in critical projects of demonstrating the privilege-sustaining, androcentric character of ‘the epistemological project’ in most of its received forms, and in transformative projects of reconstructing methodologies and justificatory procedures so as to eradicate their oppressive, exclusionary effects. They have shown that, in late-twentieth-century western philosophy, the circumstances of mature white men continue to generate prevailing ideals and norms of ‘human nature’, while the ideals of reason, objectivity and value-neutrality around which most mainstream theories of knowledge are constructed, like the knowledge they legitimate, tacitly validate affluent male experiences and values. Scientific knowledge, which is still an overwhelmingly male preserve, stands as the regulative model of objective epistemic authority; and the experiences and values of non-male, non-white and otherwise differently placed knowers typically have to accommodate themselves, Procrustean-style, to an idealized scientific and implicitly masculine norm, or risk dismissal as inconsequential, aberrant, mere opinion.

In engaging with these issues, most feminists – like many other participants in ‘successor epistemology’ projects – retain a realist commitment to empirical evidence, while denying that facts or experiences ‘speak for themselves’ and maintaining that most truths are as artefactual as they are factual. Questions of cognitive authority and answerability thus figure as prominently as issues of epistemic warrant in these projects, where feminists are concentrating less on formal, universal conditions for making and justifying knowledge ‘in general’ than on the specificities of knowledge construction. Hence these inquiries are often interdisciplinary, producing detailed analyses of everyday knowledge-making and of scientific or social scientific inquiry; drawing out their gendered and other locational implications. In these projects feminists are showing that avowedly engaged, politically committed investigations can yield well-warranted conclusions.
Induction, epistemic issues in
Authors: Kaplan Mark
Published: September 2018

Consider the following:

- (1) Emeralds have been regularly dug up and observed for centuries; while there are still emeralds yet to be observed, every one observed so far has been green.

It is easy to see why we regard (1) as evidence, if true, that:

- (2) Every emerald observed up until 100 years ago was green.

(1) logically implies (2): there is no way (1) could be true without (2) being true as well. It is less easy to see why we should think that (1), if true, is any evidence at all that:

- (3) All hitherto unobserved emeralds are green as well.

(1) does not logically imply (3): it is consistent with (1) that (3) be false – that the string of exclusively green emeralds is about to come to an end. None the less, we do regard (1) as evidence, if true, that (3). What, if anything, justifies our doing so?

To answer this question would be to take a first step towards solving what is known as the ‘problem of induction’. But only a first step. There is, at least on the surface, a wide variety of arguments that share the salient features of the argument from (1) to (3): their premises do not logically imply their conclusions, yet we think that their premises, if true, constitute at least some evidence that their conclusions are true. A fully fledged solution to the problem of induction would have to tell us, for each of these arguments, what justifies our regarding its premises as evidence that its conclusion is true. Still, the question as to how this step might be taken has been the focus of intense philosophical scrutiny, and the approaches outlined in this entry have been among the most important.
Information theory and epistemology
Authors: Dretske Fred
Published: September 2018

The mathematical theory of information (also called communication theory) defines a quantity called mutual information that exists between a source, s, and receiver, r. Mutual information is a statistical construct, a quantity defined in terms of conditional probabilities between the events occurring at r and s. If what happens at r depends on what happens at s to some degree, then there is a communication ‘channel’ between r and s, and mutual information at r about s. If, on the other hand, the events at two points are statistically independent, there is zero mutual information.

Philosophers and psychologists are attracted to information theory because of its potential as a useful tool in describing an organism’s cognitive relations to the world. The attractions are especially great for those who seek a naturalistic account of knowledge, an account that avoids normative – and, therefore, scientifically unusable – ideas such as rational warrant, sufficient reason and adequate justification. According to this approach, philosophically problematic notions like evidence, knowledge, recognition and perception – perhaps even meaning – can be understood in communication terms. Perceptual knowledge, for instance, might best be rendered in terms of a brain (r) receiving mutual information about a worldly source (s) via sensory channels. When incoming signals carry appropriate information, suitably equipped brains ‘decode’ these signals, extract information and thereby come to know what is happening in the outside world. Perception becomes information-produced belief.
Internalism and externalism in epistemology
Authors: Vahid Hamid
Published: September 2018

The internalism/externalism debate in epistemology is primarily concerned with the conditions or factors by virtue of which beliefs acquire the status of being epistemically justified. Internalism holds that these justification-conferring factors must all be ‘internal’ to the subject’s perspective on the world. However, depending on how the notion of internal is understood, internalism ap-pears in different forms. Access internalism, the most common form of internalism, holds that the justification-conferring factors must be reflectively accessible to the subject, such that he is able to find, with regard to the beliefs he holds, whether they are justified. Internalism captures the pre-theoretic intuition that having justification for a belief is a matter of having good reasons for that belief. It also treats the problem of scepticism seriously and explains why it has its source in internalism. Internalism has, however, faced two important objections: (1) it has been objected that internalism fails to deliver a genuinely truth-conducive conception of justification; and (2) that no available account of the access requirement could provide it with a viable basis to realize its aspirations.

In an externalist account of justification, some justification-conferring factors of a belief are per-mitted to fall outside the subject’s ken and beyond the reach of the subject’s reflective access. Externalism can plausibly explain why justified beliefs are likely to be true; but by losing sight of the subject’s perspective, externalism fails to appreciate the force of the sceptical challenge. Ex-ternalists have had a hard time explaining the widely shared intuition that beliefs formed in de-mon world scenarios enjoy as much justification as they do when formed in (phenomenologically identical) normal circumstances. In the face of such challenges, both the internalist and external-ist accounts have made significant compromises, in view of which a pluralistic approach to the question of epistemic justification has become a live option.
Memory, epistemology of
Authors: Conee Earl
Published: September 2018

Memory appears to preserve knowledge, but there are epistemic questions about how this could be. Memory is fallible, and empirical research has identified various ways in which people systematically misremember. Even wholesale error seems possible: Russell (1927) proposed that it is logically possible for the world to have sprung into existence five minutes ago, complete with spurious ostensible memories of earlier times. In light of such possibilities, some sceptics argue that memory cannot yield knowledge.

Assuming that memory provides knowledge, there are serious epistemic issues about how it does this. For instance, does some introspectible quality of remembering provide distinctive evidence for what is remembered, or is it some other feature of memory that secures the epistemic justification needed for knowledge? How readily recollectible must a proposition be in order for it to be known while it is not being recalled? Does a full retention in memory of a previous basis for knowing something assure continuing knowledge of it? Does forgetting an original basis for knowing without replacing it imply a loss of knowledge?
Phenomenalism
Authors: Fumerton Richard
Published: September 2018

On its most common interpretation, phenomenalism maintains that statements asserting the existence of physical objects are equivalent in meaning to statements describing sensations. More specifically, the phenomenalist claims that to say that a physical object exists is to say that someone would have certain sequences of sensations were they to have certain others. For example, to say that there is something round and red behind me might be to say, in part, that if I were to have the visual, tactile and kinaesthetic (movement) sensations of turning my head I would seem to see something round and red. If I were to have the sensations of seeming to reach out and touch that thing, those sensations would be followed by the familiar tactile sensations associated with touching something round.

Rather than talk about the meanings of statements, phenomenalists might hold that the fact that something red and round exists just is the fact that a subject would have certain sequences of sensations following certain others. The phenomenalist’s primary motivation is a desire to avoid scepticism with respect to the physical world. Because many philosophers tied the meaningfulness of statements to their being potentially verifiable, some phenomenalists further argued that it is only by reducing claims about the physical world to claims about possible sensations that we can preserve the very intelligibility of talk about the physical world.

There are very few contemporary philosophers who embrace phenomenalism. Many reject the foundationalist epistemological framework which makes it so difficult to avoid scepticism without phenomenalism. But the historical rejection of the view had more to do with the difficulty of carrying out the promised programme of translation.
Reliabilism
Authors: Goldman Alvin I.
Published: September 2018

Reliabilism is an approach to the nature of knowledge and of justified belief. Reliabilism about justification, in its simplest form, says that a belief is justified if and only if it is produced by a reliable psychological process, meaning a process that produces a high proportion of true beliefs. A justified belief may itself be false, but its mode of acquisition (or the way it is subsequently sustained) must be of a kind that typically yields truths. Since random guessing, for example, does not systematically yield truths, beliefs acquired by guesswork are not justified. By contrast, identifying middle-sized physical objects by visual observation is presumably pretty reliable, so beliefs produced in this manner are justified. Reliabilism does not require that the possessor of a justified belief should know that it was reliably produced. Knowledge of reliability is necessary for knowing that a belief is justified, but the belief can be justified without the agent knowing that it is.

A similar reliabilist account is offered for knowledge, except that two further conditions are added. First, the target belief must be true and, second, its mode of acquisition must rule out all serious or ‘relevant’ alternatives in which the belief would be false. Even an accurate visual identification of Judy does not constitute knowledge unless it is acute enough to exclude the possibility that it is her twin sister Trudy instead.

One major virtue of reliabilism is its ability to secure knowledge against threats of scepticism. In place of excessive requirements often proposed by sceptics, reliabilism substitutes more moderate conditions. People do not need infallible or certainty-producing processes to have justified beliefs, according to reliabilism, only fairly reliable ones. Processes need not exclude radical alternatives like Descartes’ evil demon in order to generate knowledge; they need only exclude realistic possibilities like the presence of an identical twin.
Social epistemology
Authors: Schmitt Frederick F.
Published: September 2018

Social epistemology is the conceptual and normative study of the relevance to knowledge of social relations, interests and institutions. It is thus to be distinguished from the sociology of knowledge, which is an empirical study of the contingent social conditions or causes of what is commonly taken to be knowledge. Social epistemology revolves around the question of whether knowledge is to be understood individualistically or socially.

Epistemology has traditionally ascribed a secondary status to beliefs indebted to social relations – to testimony, expert authority, consensus, common sense and received wisdom. Such beliefs could attain the status of knowledge, if at all, only by being based on first-hand knowledge – that is, knowledge justified by the experience or reason of the individual knower.

Since the work of the common sense Scottish philosopher Thomas Reid in the mid-eighteenth century, epistemologists have from time to time taken seriously the idea that beliefs indebted to social relations have a primary and not merely secondary epistemic status. The bulk of work in social epistemology has, however, been done since Thomas Kuhn depicted scientific revolutions as involving social changes in science. Work on the subject since 1980 has been inspired by the ‘strong programme’ in the sociology of science, by feminist epistemology and by the naturalistic epistemology of W.V. Quine. These influences have inspired epistemologists to rethink the role of social relations – especially testimony – in knowledge. The subject that has emerged may be divided into three branches: the place of social factors in the knowledge possessed by individuals; the organization of individuals’ cognitive labour; and the nature of collective knowledge, including common sense, consensus and common, group, communal and impersonal knowledge.
Theoretical (epistemic) virtues
Authors: Lycan William G.
Published: September 2018

When two competing theories or hypotheses explain or accommodate just the same data (and both are unrefuted), which should be preferred? According to a classical, purely formal confirmation theory, neither – each is confirmed to the same degree, and so the two hypotheses are precisely equal in epistemic status, warrant or credibility. Yet in real life, one of the two may be preferred very strongly, for any of a number of pragmatic reasons: it may be simpler, more readily testable, more fruitful or less at odds with what we already believe. The philosophical question is whether such pragmatic virtues are of no specifically epistemic, truth-conducing value, or are instead genuine reasons for accepting a theory as more likely to be true than is a competitor that lacks them.
Wisdom
Authors: Smith Nicholas D.
Published: September 2018

In ancient times, wisdom was thought of as the type of knowledge needed to discern the good and live the good life. Philosophy takes its name from it (philosophía means love of wisdom). But wisdom is little evident as a subject of contemporary philosophical discussion. It is interesting to ask how the concept of wisdom has come to vanish almost entirely from the philosophical map.
Virtue epistemology
Authors: Zagzebski Linda
Published: September 2018

‘Virtue epistemology’ is the name of a class of theories that focus epistemic evaluation on good epistemic properties of persons rather than on properties of beliefs. The former or some interesting subset of the former are called intellectual virtues. Some of these theories propose that the traditional concepts of justification or knowledge can be analysed in terms of intellectual virtue, whereas others maintain that these traditional concepts are defective or uninteresting and it is desirable to replace them with the notion of an intellectual virtue. In all these theories, epistemic evaluation rests on some virtuous quality of persons that enables them to act in a cognitively effective and commendable way. Simple reliabilism may be treated either as a precursor to virtue epistemology or as an early form of it. Later versions add requirements for virtue intended to capture the idea that it is a quality which makes an epistemic agent subjectively responsible as well as objectively reliable.

Proponents of virtue epistemology claim a number of advantages. It is said to bypass disputes between foundationalists and coherentists on proper cognitive structure, to avoid sceptical worries, to avoid the impasse between internalism and externalism and to broaden the range of epistemological enquiry to include such neglected epistemic values as understanding and wisdom. Some theorists argue that the real virtue of virtue epistemology is the way it permits us to redefine the central questions of epistemology. In addition, since virtue epistemology can be blended with virtue ethics, it holds out the promise of a unified theory of value.
Experimental philosophy
Authors: Mallon Ron , Nichols Shaun , Wysocki Tomasz
Published: September 2018

Experimental philosophy is not a philosophy; it is a method that is supposed to contribute to philosophical inquiry. Characteristically, experimental philosophers use empirical techniques to investigate philosophically significant intuitions about hypothetical and actual cases. An intuition, in this context, is normally understood as a spontaneous judgment about the case. Like noninferential perceptual judgments, they simply occur rather than being a product of conscious reasoning to the conclusion.

Intuitions play a key role in much philosophical theorizing. The attempt to provide a conceptual analysis or definition for important philosophical concepts, e.g. knowledge, meaning, responsibility, has long been a major theoretical concern in philosophy. One prominent philosophical view holds that the meaning of our concepts is given by the folk theory (or set of common-sense beliefs) in which the concepts are embedded. Intuitions about cases are thought to reveal the contours of the folk theory and the meaning of the concept. As a result, in pursuing conceptual analyses, many philosophers rely on intuitions about cases to descry the folk theories in which those concepts are embedded.

In addition to their role in conceptual analysis, philosophers invoke intuitions as evidence for substantive philosophical claims, perhaps in much the same way as empirical scientists invoke observation as evidence. For instance, the intuition that it is wrong to push one man in front of a speeding trolley to save five others is invoked as evidence that utilitarianism does not give the right theory of how we ought to act. Similarly, intuitions are used to support substantive claims about knowledge, meaning and responsibility.

When philosophers use intuitions - whether in the service of conceptual analysis or in the effort to establish a more substantive philosophical claim - the traditional methodology looks a priori. That is, one arrives at one’s judgments without relying on evidence from sensory perception. For instance, to analyze the concept intentional a philosopher might consult their intuitions about whether the concept applies in various actual and possible circumstances, and a condition of adequacy upon the definition is that it best conforms to these intuitions. In contrast, experimental philosophers use experimental techniques to study intuitions about philosophically important concepts.
Ignorance
Authors: Peels Rik
Published: September 2018

Until recently, epistemology has largely neglected ignorance, focusing on knowledge and what is necessary for knowledge, such as epistemic justification. However, over the last 20 years or so the tendency to neglect ignorance has changed, especially in several debates at the intersection of ethics and epistemology. This may come as a surprise, as one might think that ignorance is simply the absence of knowledge and that since the philosophical literature displays an extensive discussion on knowledge, ignorance does not deserve significant philosophical attention. However, it turns out to be philosophically challenging to spell out exactly what ignorance is and that even if it is absence of knowledge, ignorance merits philosophical attention of its own in a wide variety of philosophical debates.

Ignorance is an important concept in at least four different philosophical areas. First, in epistemology, the core questions regarding ignorance are what the nature of ignorance is, what varieties of ignorance there are, and whether ignorance has any epistemic value. Several issues in the philosophy of religion, such as negative theology, which says that we are inevitably ignorant of the divine, also touch on ignorance.

Second, there are moral dimensions to ignorance. Some philosophers have argued that certain moral virtues, such as modesty, entail ignorance. Ignorance can be a moral excuse. And the fact that ignorance itself sometimes excuses one for one’s ignorance leads to the so-called tracing problem (see §4 below).

Third, the concept of ignorance plays a significant role both in criminal and civil law and, as a result of that, in the philosophy of law. Ignorance can provide a legal exculpation: because one was ignorant, one did not commit a crime in the first place. Ignorance can be a legal excuse: one did commit a crime, but one is not guilty for it because one was ignorant. And ignorance can count as an inculpation: one is culpable for committing a crime because of one’s ignorance.

Fourth, several topics in social philosophy and the philosophy of science involve the notion of ignorance. Agnotology is the study of ignorance or doubt that is intentionally induced or maintained by the government or influential business companies. An example is the ignorance brought about by the tobacco industry about the effects of smoking. Social forces and hermeneutical frameworks make certain interpretations of and by minority groups possible or impossible and, thereby, lead people to remain ignorant about them. Debates about privacy refer to the obligation of other people to remain ignorant about certain facts about one’s personal life, especially since the considerable increase of possibilities for removing such ignorance by accessing a person’s traces in the digital world. Quite a few philosophers of technology have argued that societies should aim at collective ignorance regarding particular technologies that have been or might be developed, such as possibilities for making weapons of mass destruction, given the enormous potential social harms involved.
Copernicus, Nicolaus (1473–1543)
Authors: McMullin Ernan
Published: September 2018

Copernicus argued that the earth is a planet revolving around the sun, as well as rotating on its own axis. His work marked the culmination of a tradition of mathematical astronomy stretching back beyond Ptolemy, to the Greeks and Babylonians. Though it was associated with methods and assumptions that had been familiar for centuries, it was also revolutionary because of its implications for the relations between humankind and the universe at large.
Duhem, Pierre Maurice Marie (1861–1916)
Authors: Howard Don
Published: September 2018

Duhem was a French Catholic physicist, historian of science and philosopher of science. Champion of a programme of generalized thermodynamics as a unifying framework for physical science, he was a pioneer in the history of medieval and renaissance science, where he emphasized a continuity between medieval and early modern science. Duhem was also one of the most influential philosophers of science of his day, thanks to his opposition to mechanistic modes of explanation and his development of a holistic conception of scientific theories, according to which individual empirical propositions are not tested in isolation but only in conjunction with other theoretical claims and associated auxiliary hypotheses. Such a view of theory testing entails that there are no ‘crucial experiments’ deciding unambiguously for or against a given theory and that empirical evidence therefore underdetermines theory choice. Theory choice is thus partly a matter of convention. Duhem’s conventionalism is similar in kind to that later advocated by Otto Neurath and by W.V. Quine.
Heisenberg, Werner (1901–76)
Authors: Beller Mara
Published: September 2018

One of the most outstanding of twentieth-century physicists, Werner Heisenberg is famous for the uncertainty, or indeterminacy, principle of quantum mechanics, widely interpreted as implying an irreducibly indeterministic conception of nature. The main proponent of the Copenhagen interpretation after Bohr, Heisenberg conceived of the quantum description as referring not to objective spacetime realities, but merely to the probable outcomes of measurements. Heisenberg’s philosophy, containing contradictory positivistic and realistic strands, is best understood in the context of his creative scientific theorizing.
Hertz, Heinrich Rudolf (1857–94)
Authors: Barker Peter
Published: September 2018

Heinrich Hertz demonstrated the existence of radio waves in research between 1887 and 1888, opening the way for Marconi to develop long-distance radio communication. Hertz’s results confirmed Maxwell’s electromagnetic theory, and sealed the fate of action-at-a-distance in physics. His theoretical analysis included the famous dictum: ‘Maxwell’s theory is Maxwell’s system of equations’. Hertz also developed a new formulation of Newtonian mechanics using the concepts of mass, length and time, but not force. He presented mechanics as the axiomatic consequence of a single fundamental law: ‘every free system persists in its state of rest or of uniform motion in a straightest path’. Hertz’s ideas influenced later philosophers of science but were most important as a source for Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, which influenced logical positivism. Hertz’s proposal to eliminate the concept of force in physics was an important contribution to the twentieth-century ideal of a philosophical method that does not solve, but rather dissolves, philosophical problems.
Huxley, Thomas Henry (1825–95)
Authors: Gregorio Mario A. Di
Published: September 2018

Huxley, an English zoologist with strong philosophical interests, originally influenced by K.E. von Baer’s embryological typology, became an authority first in invertebrate zoology and then in vertebrate palaeontology. After the publication of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species, he proclaimed his acceptance of the theory of evolution, but disagreed on important points and applied common descent – but not natural selection – in his scientific works only after reading Ernst Haeckel’s Generelle Morphologie (1866). He published extensively in anthropology, ethnology, philosophy, religion, politics and ethics, and was a great popularizer of science.
Le Roy, Édouard Louis Emmanuel Julien (1870–1954)
Authors: Howard Don
Published: September 2018

Le Roy was a French mathematical physicist and Catholic modernist philosopher. Starting from a philosophy of life similar to Henri Bergson’s philosophy of creative evolution, he argued that the capacity for invention was fundamental to human existence. This led him to develop a radical form of conventionalism according to which scientific facts are created rather than discovered. Henri Poincaré attacked this view, arguing that the scientist creates only the language in which facts are expressed.
Matter
Authors: Shapere Dudley
Published: September 2018

Viewed as arising within the framework of a more general theory of substance, philosophical treatments of matter have traditionally revolved around two issues: (1) The nature of matter: what are the distinguishing characteristics of matter or material substance(s) that define it and distinguish it from other substances, if any? (2) The problem of elements: do material things consist of elementary substances, or are there always further constituents? One possible view is that there is no fundamental level – that there are always further constituents, ingredients of ingredients. However, the view most often held by both philosophers and scientists has been that there are indeed fundamental elements out of which material things are made. Once this view is adopted, the question arises as to what they are and what properties distinguish them.

These two issues were introduced, though only gradually, in ancient Greek philosophy. A significant turn came about in the seventeenth century, in which the work of Descartes and Newton led to a picture of matter as passive, inert and dead as opposed to minds and forces, both of which were conceived as being ‘active’. Many philosophical problems and doctrines have been formulated in terms of this distinction. However, later developments in science, especially in the twentieth century, have brought about such profound changes that classical concepts of matter are no longer viable. These new developments profoundly alter the statements of philosophical doctrines and problems traditionally associated with matter.
Newton, Isaac (1642–1727)
Authors: Harper William L. , Smith George E.
Published: September 2018

Newton is best known for having invented the calculus and formulated the theory of universal gravity – the latter in his Principia, the single most important work in the transformation of natural philosophy into modern physical science. Yet he also made major discoveries in optics, and put no less effort into alchemy and theology than into mathematics and physics.

Throughout his career, Newton maintained a sharp distinction between conjectural hypotheses and experimentally established results. This distinction was central to his claim that the method by which conclusions about forces were inferred from phenomena in the Principia made it ’possible to argue more securely concerning the physical species, physical causes, and physical proportions of these forces’. The law of universal gravity that he argued for in this way nevertheless provoked strong opposition, especially from such leading figures on the Continent as Huygens and Leibniz: they protested that Newton was invoking an occult power of action-at-a-distance insofar as he was offering no contact mechanism by means of which forces of gravity could act. This opposition led him to a tighter, more emphatic presentation of his methodology in the second edition of the Principia, published twenty-six years after the first. The opposition to the theory of gravity faded during the fifty to seventy-five years after his death as it fulfilled its promise on such issues as the non-spherical shape of the earth, the precession of the equinoxes, comet trajectories (including the return of ’Halley’s Comet’ in 1758), the vagaries of lunar motion and other deviations from Keplerian motion. During this period the point mass mechanics of the Principia was extended to rigid bodies and fluids by such figures as Euler, forming what we know as ’Newtonian’ mechanics.
Newton, Isaac (1642–1727)
Authors: Biener Zvi
Published: September 2018

Isaac Newton is best known as a mathematician and physicist. He invented the calculus, discovered universal gravitation and made significant advances in theoretical and experimental optics. His master-work on gravitation, the Principia, is often hailed as the crowning achievement of the scientific revolution. His significance for philosophers, however, extends beyond the philosophical implications of his scientific discoveries. Newton was an able and subtle philosopher, working at a time when science was not yet recognized as an activity distinct from philosophy. He engaged with the work of Rene Descartes and G.W. Leibniz, and showed sensitivity to the work of John Locke, Francis Bacon, Pierre Gassendi and Henry More, to name just a few. In his time, Newton was not perceived as a scientific outsider, but as an active and knowledgeable participant in philosophical debates.

Nevertheless, Newton’s work helped precipitate the separation of physics from philosophy. The Principia defined a programme for physical research that persists to this day, but its early reception, particularly among Cartesians and Leibnizians, was difficult. To defend this programme from criticism, Newton and his successors portrayed their work as essentially autonomous from the philosophical demands of their contemporaries, thus creating modern science.

Even without the Principia, Newton’s place in history would have been guaranteed by his work in optics and mathematics. Newton discovered that white light was composed of rays from the entire visible spectrum and ingeniously measured a microscopic property of light that he called ‘fits’, a forerunner to our ‘wavelength’. His work in pure mathematics was ground-breaking: he invented the calculus (independently of Leibniz) and advanced both algebra and analytic geometry. His overall success in natural philosophy, which in his hands was applied mathematics, was largely due to his unparalleled skill as a mathematician.

Newton also engaged in activities that belong to neither modern science nor modern philosophy. His work on biblical chronology, interpretation of ancient prophecies and alchemy took up much of his intellectual efforts, but this work was largely ignored in the century after his death by an Enlightenment ideology occupied with painting its own past. Newton was partly responsible for this historiographical blindspot. He kept most of his ‘esoteric’ beliefs, such as his rejection of the Trinity, hidden. He promoted a public image that placed him in the tradition of Galileo and Huygens, figures more narrowly focused on physico-mathematics than he was.
Observation
Authors: Kosso Peter
Published: September 2018

Observation is of undeniable importance in the empirical sciences. As the source of information from the world itself, observation has the role of both motivating and testing theories. Playing this role requires more than just opening our eyes and letting nature act upon us. It requires a careful attention to the information conveyed from the world so that an observation is meaningful. Scientific observation, in other words, is more than a physical act of sensation; it must be an epistemic act as well, with sufficient meaning and credibility to contribute to knowledge. A report of an observation, therefore, must be more than a ‘Yes, I see’. It must describe just what is seen, ‘I see that ______¯‘.

This obligation to make observation relevant to theory suggests that there is an essential influence of background theories on the observations themselves. The theories we believe or wish to test tell us which observations to make. And describing the results of observations, that is, bringing out their informational content, will always be done in the language of the conceptual and theoretical system already in place. For these reasons, observation is said to be indelibly theory-laden. And the influence of background beliefs is even greater in cases of indirect observation where machines, like microscopes and particle detectors, are used to produce images of the objects of observation. Here, the reliability of the machines, and hence the credibility of the observation, must be based on a theoretical understanding of the interactions that are the links in the chain of information.

The influence of theory on observation is often seen as a threat to the objectivity of the process of testing and verification of theories, and hence of science in general. If theories are allowed to, indeed required to, select their own evidence and then to give meaning and credibility to the observations, the testing process seems to be unavoidably circular and self-serving. Observation that is theory-laden would guarantee success. But a look at the history of science shows that it does not. There are plenty of cases of observations that are used to disconfirm theories or at least undermine the theorist’s confidence. Perhaps there is a kind of observation that is not influenced by scientific theory and can serve as a common, objective source of information to put theories to a rigorous and meaningful test. Or perhaps all scientific observation does bear the influence of background scientific theories, but not necessarily of the theory the observation is being used to test. This independence between the theories that support an observation and the theory for which the observation serves as evidence can break the circle in the process of testing and perhaps restore objectivity.