Subscribe to get Parts 1 and 2 ad-free, plus a supporter exclusive Part 3, which you can preview. Continuing from part one on "Epistemology Naturalized" (1969), we work further through the text, getting into what this new psychology-rooted epistemology might look like. Quine remains an empiricist in that he agrees that whatever evidence there is for science must be Continue Reading …
Ep. 294: Quine on Science vs. Epistemology (Part Three for Supporters)
Concluding on W.V.O. Quine's "Epistemology Naturalized" (1969), featuring Mark, Wes, and Seth. Start with part one. We take one more stab at making sense of the indeterminacy of translation that is part of Quine's holism about linguistic meaning. Then we turn to more implications about Quine's attempt to turn epistemology into psychology. Is Quine a behaviorist? (Was Continue Reading …
Ep. 294: Quine on Science vs. Epistemology (Part One)
Subscribe to get parts 1 and 2 of this now, ad-free, plus a supporter-only part 3. On W.V.O. Quine's "Epistemology Naturalized" (1969), featuring Mark, Wes, and Seth. What justifies scientific theory? The classical epistemological project found in figures like Descartes and Locke seeks to find basic, indubitable premises that serve to ground the rest of our theorizing. Continue Reading …
Ep. 294: Quine on Science vs. Epistemology (Part Two for Supporters)
Continuing from part one on "Epistemology Naturalized" (1969), we work further through the text, getting into what this new psychology-rooted epistemology might look like. Quine remains an empiricist in that he agrees that whatever evidence there is for science must be sensory, and that we learn language through the medium of our senses (i.e. no innate knowledge). However, this Continue Reading …
Ep. 294: Quine on Science vs. Epistemology (Part One for Supporters)
On W.V.O. Quine's "Epistemology Naturalized" (1969), featuring Mark, Wes, and Seth. What justifies scientific theory? The classical epistemological project found in figures like Descartes and Locke seeks to find basic, indubitable premises that serve to ground the rest of our theorizing. Quine begins by considering Hume's attempt to do this by claiming that all we ever Continue Reading …
Ep. 293: Donna Haraway on Feminist Science (Part One)
Subscribe to get Part 2 of this episode. Listen to a preview. Hear this part ad-free. On "Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective" (1988), "A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century" (1985), "A Game of Cat’s Cradle: Science Studies, Feminist Theory, Cultural Studies" Continue Reading …
Ep. 293: Donna Haraway on Feminist Science (Part Two for Supporters)
Continuing from part one on "Situated Knowledges" and other essays with guest Lynda Olman. We try to get at the practical import of Olman's scheme and get further into her use of metaphors and what those mean for her critical stance. We also touch on how metaphors relate to myths, feminist sci-fi, how causal and networking language fits into all this, and more. There's Continue Reading …
Ep. 293: Donna Haraway on Feminist Science (Part One for Supporters)
On "Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective" (1988), "A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century" (1985), "A Game of Cat’s Cradle: Science Studies, Feminist Theory, Cultural Studies" (1994), and "Anthropocene, Capitalocene, Plantationocene, Chthulucene: Making Kin" (2015). Continue Reading …
Ep. 281: Paul Feyerabend’s Anarchist Philosophy of Science (Part One)
Subscribe to get Part 2 of this episode. Listen to a preview. Hear this part ad-free. On Against Method (1975), the introduction through ch. 5 and ch. 15-16, featuring Dylan, Wes, and Seth. This book that began as a joint call-and-response project with our last author Imre Lakatos, but then Lakatos died and couldn't respond to what Feyerabend explicitly wrote roughly in Continue Reading …
Ep. 281: Paul Feyerabend’s Anarchist Philosophy of Science (Part Two for Supporters)
Continuing from Part One on Against Method (1975). Given that according to F., epistemological conformity (getting with the scientific program) can't proceed by an unambiguous appeal to reason, how does it proceed? Through indoctrination, propaganda, and coercion. Even when we want a free, rational society, we don't get this through reasoning with children and then citizens, Continue Reading …
Ep. 281: Paul Feyerabend’s Anarchist Philosophy of Science (Part One for Supporters)
On Against Method (1975), the introduction through ch. 5 and ch. 15-16, featuring Dylan, Wes, and Seth. This book that began as a joint call-and-response project with our last author Imre Lakatos, but then Lakatos died and couldn't respond to what Feyerabend explicitly wrote roughly in the form of a series of letters to a friend. Feyerabend agreed with much of Lakatos' Continue Reading …
Ep. 280: Imre Lakatos on Scientific Progress (Part One)
Subscribe to get Part 2 of this episode. Listen to a preview. Hear this part ad-free. On "Falsification and the Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes" (1970), featuring Mark, Wes, Dylan, and Seth. In what way is scientific progress rational? To understand the state of the debate by Lakatos' time, let's run quickly through some history of the philosophy of Continue Reading …
Ep. 280: Imre Lakatos on Scientific Progress (Part Two for Supporters)
Continuing from Part One on "Falsification and the Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes" (1970). We try to clarify the difference between dogmatic falsificationism, the view commonly attributed to Karl Popper whereby a disconfirming experiment is taken to definitively refute a scientific theory, with methodological falsificationism, which is what Lakatos attributes Continue Reading …
Ep. 280: Imre Lakatos on Scientific Progress (Part One for Supporters)
On "Falsification and the Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes" (1970), featuring Mark, Wes, Dylan, and Seth. In what way is scientific progress rational? To understand the state of the debate by Lakatos' time, let's run quickly through some history of the philosophy of science: Early scientists like Francis Bacon saw science as providing certainty in the Continue Reading …
PEL Nightcap Early September 2021
Recorded 8/16/21. Seth thinks about how to continue reading Hegel and some initial political ranting about Texas and gerrymandering ensues. We think about what to read in aesthetics, philosophy of science, and philosophy of sport. (Update: the sport episode is not happening soon.) For the main event, we try to see what we can remember about the philosophy of emotions. Continue Reading …
Ep. 277: Hegel on Our Understanding of Physics (Part One)
Subscribe to get Part 2 of this episode. Listen to a preview. On The Phenomenology of Spirit (1807), ch. 3, "Force and the Understanding." What is "force" as physics describes it? And scientific law? Do these terms denote objects in the world, or models for how we describe the world? For Hegel, force is a way of talking about the metaphysical relation that one object Continue Reading …
Ep. 277: Hegel on Our Understanding of Physics (Part Two for Supporters)
Continuing from part one our close reading of The Phenomenology of Spirit (1807), ch. 3, "Force and the Understanding." We start off with the dynamic between the expressed and merely stored up aspects of force and how this relates to the forcing and the forced entities in the interaction. Which of these is the "solicitor" and which is being solicited? Either one can be seen Continue Reading …
Ep. 277: Hegel on Our Understanding of Physics (Part One for Supporters)
On The Phenomenology of Spirit (1807), ch. 3, "Force and the Understanding." What is "force" as physics describes it? And scientific law? Do these terms denote objects in the world, or models for how we describe the world? For Hegel, force is a way of talking about the metaphysical relation that one object has to other objects. Or taken from another perspective, it's the Continue Reading …
Ep. 231: Descartes’s “Discourse” on Wisdom and Certainty (Part One)
On René Descartes’s Discourse on the Method of Rightly Conducting One's Reason and of Seeking Truth in the Sciences (1637). This narrative summary of Descartes's intellectual life was his first actual publication, four years before his Meditations. Unlike the unpublished Rules for Direction of the Mind (1629), this text doesn't actually dwell on his method at length, though Continue Reading …
Myths, Miasma, and Global Warming: Follow Your Nose
Scientists today spend little time learning about prescientific or debunked scientific theories; these are studied by historians and philosophers of science and largely ignored in the hard sciences. However, in his book Is Water H20? Evidence, Realism and Pluralism philosopher of science Hasok Chang calls for a plurality in science aimed at keeping multiple systems of Continue Reading …