Yemima Ben-Menahem
Yemima Ben-Menahem (, born 23 December 1946) is a professor (Emerita) of philosophy at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Her main area of expertise is philosophy of science, in particular philosophy of modern physics. Education and career. Ben-Menahem earned a BSc in physics and mathematics in 1969 and an MSc (summa cum laude) in philosophy of science in 1972, both from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She earned her PhD in 1983 with a dissertation entitled "Paradoxes and Intuitions", under the direction of Hilary Putnam of Harvard University and Mark Steiner of the Hebrew University. In  2001, Ben-Menahem founded the Journal "Aleph: Historical Studies in Science and Judaism", which is a biannual, peer-reviewed academic publication. She served as Director of the Edelstein Center for the History and Philosophy of Science, Technology and Medicine at the Hebrew University. Since 2006, she has been member of the Academic Board of the "Einstein Papers Project". In 2007, she curated the exhibition "Newton's Secrets" at the National Library of Israel. Philosophical work. Conventionalism. Ben-Menahem devoted several papers and a book to conventionalism, a position first articulated by Henri Poincaré in the context of geometry. According to  conventionalists, many of the assertions we take to express objective truths, are in fact conventions in disguise, derived from definitions or methodological decisions that are not forced on us by logic, mathematics, or empirical fact, and about which we have discretion. Ben-Menahem reads twentieth century science and philosophy from the perspective of the impact of conventionalism on these fields. The pronounced influence of conventionalism, according to her, is manifest in the philosophy of logic and mathematics, the theory of relativity, and the writings of leading twentieth century philosophers including Carnap, Wittgenstein, Putnam, and Quine. Causation. In "Causation in Science ," Ben-Menahem offers a novel account of causation, centered on the notion of causal constraint rather than the common notion of causal relation. The book analyses the interrelations between constraints such as determinism, locality, conservation laws, and variation principles. In response to the classic problem of human freedom, Ben-Menahem expounds a concept of "lawlessness" that permits human action to be subject to causes, without being derivable from, and predictable by, laws of nature. The Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics. Ben-Menahem addresses several controversial issues in the history and philosophy of quantum mechanics. She analyses the relation between quantum nonlocality  and indeterminism, arguing that the payoff relation between these characteristics secures the compatibility of quantum mechanics with the special theory of relativity. She takes issue with the common understanding of the PBR theorem and with the received account of Schrödinger's position and the Bohr-Einstein controversy. The Philosophy of history. Ben-Menahem sees the notion of contingency as crucial to the philosophy of history and to the possibility for human beings to make a difference in the course of historical events. Her analysis of the concepts of necessity and contingency in history draws on an analogy with the notions  of stability and instability in science, where they play a prominent role in many areas, for instance, statistical mechanics and chaos theory. General Philosophy of Science. One of the most debated subjects in contemporary philosophy of science is scientific realism, a position committed to the possibility of scientific truth and scientific knowledge. Realism is commended by its proponents as the only philosophy that can explain the impressive success of science and critiqued by its opponents for disregarding the underdetermination of science as well as its numerous failures. Ben-Menahem contributions to the debate around realism include her critique of the  argument from success, her analysis of underdetermination and equivalent descriptions, her defense of the pragmatist concept of truth, and her highlighting the description-sensitivity of scientific laws. Interpretative Work. Ben-Menahem has written on (among others) Jorge Luis Borges, Donald Davidson, Michel Foucault, William James, Emil Meyerson, Henri Poincaré.