Download or read book Philosophy Expertise and the Myth of Neutrality written by Mirko Farina and published by . This book was released on 2024 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This volume offers a new framework for understanding expertise. It proposes a reconceptualization of the traditional notion of expertise and calls for the development of a new contextual and action-oriented notion of expertise, which is attentive to axiological values, intellectual virtues, and moral qualities. Experts are usually called upon, especially during times of emergency, either as decision makers or as advisors in formulating policies that often have a significant impact on society. And yet, for certain types of choices, there is a growing tension between experts' recommendations and alternative views. The chapters in this volume critically assess the idea of whether possessing epistemic authority can automatically make someone's assertions necessarily more grounded than others. They evaluate not only the epistemological implications of this idea, but also reflect on its ethical, socio-cultural, and political consequences. The interdisciplinary framework advanced across the chapters seeks to overcome certain limitations that underlie current models of expertise by adopting more inclusive and representative decisions that can improve the perceived neutrality of experts' decisions. Increasing neutrality means reducing cases in which an unidentified bias-be it a scientific one or not-puts any of the individuals involved in a specific public choice at a systematic disadvantage. Philosophy, Expertise, and the Myth of Neutrality will appeal to scholars and advanced students working in epistemology, philosophy of science, philosophy of the social sciences, public policy, and sociology"--

Download or read book Philosophy Expertise and the Myth of Neutrality written by Mirko Farina and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2024-03-29 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume offers a new framework for understanding expertise. It proposes a reconceptualization of the traditional notion of expertise and calls for the development of a new contextual and action-oriented notion of expertise, which is attentive to axiological values, intellectual virtues, and moral qualities. Experts are usually called upon, especially during times of emergency, either as decision-makers or as advisors in formulating policies that often have a significant impact on society. And yet, for certain types of choices, there is a growing tension between experts’ recommendations and alternative views. The chapters in this volume critically assess the idea of whether possessing epistemic authority can automatically make someone’s assertions necessarily more grounded than others. They not only evaluate the epistemological implications of this idea but also reflect on its ethical, socio-cultural, and political consequences. The interdisciplinary framework advanced across the chapters seeks to overcome certain limitations that underlie current models of expertise by adopting more inclusive and representative decisions that can improve the perceived neutrality of experts’ decisions. Increasing neutrality means reducing cases in which an unidentified bias – be it a scientific one or not – puts any of the individuals involved in a specific public choice at a systematic disadvantage. Philosophy, Expertise, and the Myth of Neutrality will appeal to scholars and advanced students working in epistemology, philosophy of science, philosophy of the social sciences, public policy, and sociology.

Download or read book Expertise written by and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2024-06-06 with total page 303 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book offers a collective study of issues to do with experts and expertise, a topic of tremendous contemporary significance. The perspectives are philosophical but draw on relevant work from the sciences and social sciences. In addition, in keeping with other volumes in Oxford University Press's Engaging Philosophy series, many of the papers in the volume have an applied dimension, in that they examine the issues in practical settings. The questions discussed include the following: What is an expert? Who decides who the experts are? Should we always defer to experts? How should expertise inform public policy? What happens when the experts disagree? Must experts be unbiased? Should all experts be treated the same, or does it matter what the source of the expertise is? How should the testimony of experts be reported by the media? The chapters in the volume are organized into six sections: expertise and trust; situated and group expertise; expertise and public policy; expertise and virtue; expertise about value; and new directions. This volume will be of interest to scholars in such fields as philosophy, sociology, political theory, psychology, cognitive science, and bioethics. It will also be of relevance to policy-makers interested in the role that expertise plays in public policy.

Download or read book Maintenance and Philosophy of Technology written by Mark Thomas Young and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2024-03-18 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What can we learn about the nature of technology by studying practices of maintenance and repair? This volume addresses this question by bringing together scholarship from philosophers of technology working at the forefront of this emerging and exciting topic. The chapters in this volume explore how attending to maintenance and repair can challenge and complement existing ways of thinking about technology focused on use and design and introduce new philosophical perspectives on the relationship between technology, time and human practice. They examine the significance of maintenance and repair practices at different scales in relation to a diverse range of philosophical traditions and a wide variety of technologies, from urban infrastructure such as bridges and buildings to data technologies such as servers and software systems. Together, the contributions highlight common themes in the philosophical study of maintenance, including the role of skill, the significance of social values and the potential of these practices to transform the technologies to which they are applied. By reflecting on the different ways in which we keep technologies going, from the devices we use in our homes to the large technical systems which surround us, this volume reveals the philosophical significance of practices of maintenance, not only as a source of new insights but also as a resource for enriching our understanding of a variety of existing topics in philosophy. Maintenance and Philosophy of Technology will appeal to scholars and advanced students working in philosophy of technology, philosophy of engineering and science & technology studies. Chapter 9 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

Download or read book The Rhetoricity of Philosophy written by Blake D. Scott and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2024-08-02 with total page 327 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book aims to recast the way that philosophers understand rhetoric. Rather than follow most philosophers in conceiving rhetoric as a specific way of speaking or writing, it shows that rhetoric is better understood as a dimension of all human discourse and action—what the author calls “rhetoricity”. This book provides the first philosophical treatment of rhetoricity. It is motivated by two ongoing developments. The first is the debate between Alain Badiou and Barbara Cassin about philosophy’s relation to rhetoric. Both Badiou and Cassin are critical of rhetoric, albeit for different reasons. Second, there has been a growing resurgence of interest in rhetoric considering the recent rise in authoritarian politics as well as new forms of propaganda driven by “persuasive technologies”. This book identifies the common target of Badiou’s and Cassin’s otherwise incompatible critiques: rhetoric’s conception of audience. It offers a fresh take on the “new rhetoric” project of Chaïm Perelman and Lucie Olbrechts-Tyteca, putting their work into conversation with the Badiou-Cassin debate. The book then turns to the hermeneutic philosophy of Paul Ricoeur in search of an expanded conception of audience. It shows that Ricoeur’s hermeneutic philosophy allows us to extend Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca’s psychological notion of audience to texts themselves and to argue that human beings have a rhetorical capacity to reflect on audiences in search of what is potentially persuasive. The Rhetoricity of Philosophy will be of interest to scholars and advanced students working in contemporary European philosophy, rhetoric, argumentation studies, and social theory.

Download or read book Cross Tradition Engagement on the Laws of Logic written by Bo Mou and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2024-06-14 with total page 270 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book demonstrates how, through cross-tradition engagement, insights and engaging treatments from the Chinese philosophical tradition can work with relevant resources from modern logic and contemporary philosophy to enhance our understanding of two basic principles of logic: the law of identity and the law of non-contradiction. The law of identity and the law of non-contradiction are widely accepted principles in logic and other intellectual pursuits. However, there are disagreements as to how to understand and treat the genuine structures and contents of these two basic principles. This book provides a holistic inquiry into these principles for the sake of enhancing our understanding and treatment of them from the vantage point of cross-tradition engagement. It begins by offering a philosophical interpretation of three classical texts in Chinese philosophy in their respective contexts: the “Bai-Ma-Lun” in Gongsun Long’s texts, the “Xiao-Qu” in the Later Mohist texts, and Lao Zi’s Dao-De-Jing in classical Daoism. The author explains an innovative dual-track characterization of relative identity that is informed by relevant resources from these texts as well as Western philosophical traditions. He shows how this cross-tradition engaging approach can make constructive and significant contributions to the jointly concerned fundamental issues of identity and reference in logic, philosophy of logic and language, metaphysics, as well as philosophy more generally. Cross-Tradition Engagement on the Laws of Logic will appeal to scholars and advanced students working in philosophy of logic, philosophy of language, Chinese philosophy, and comparative philosophy.

Download or read book New Perspectives on the Ontology of Social Identities written by Alejandro Arango and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2024-06-03 with total page 215 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Hope and Horror of Physicalism written by Christopher Devlin Brown and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2024-06-14 with total page 147 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book assesses the existentially relevant consequences of physicalism. It argues that accepting physicalism is the healthiest stance we can take in the face of an account of the self and world which offers no metaphysical assurances. Why should we care about physicalism? On one hand, the view seems to be inconsistent with things that many people find valuable, such as the existence of free will, God, the immortal soul, ultimate purpose, and natural laws like karma. On the other hand, physicalism seems to have positive existential implications such as supporting the unlimited potential of scientific understanding or the attitude that we need not fear supernatural powers or forces because they don’t exist. This book argues that physicalism has several consequences that are of existential import. It begins by outlining the history of physicalism and explaining two popular ways of understanding it: the via negativa approach and the theory-based approach. The rest of Part 1 explores the existential consequences of these two versions of physicalism. Part 2 draws on Nietzsche to construct an argument about what attitude we ought to adopt toward physicalism. It argues that we ought to avoid nihilism and despair even when being confronted with a picture of the universe which offers no metaphysical assurances. Finally, Part 3 is dedicated to how well physicalism deals with the hard problem of consciousness, mental causation, and multiple realization. The Hope and Horror of Physicalism will appeal to anyone interested in a contemporary approach to existential philosophy, as well as scholars and advanced students working in the fields of philosophy of mind and metaphysics.

Download or read book Intentionality as Constitution written by Alberto Voltolini and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2024-06-28 with total page 239 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book develops a novel theory of intentionality. It argues that intentionality is an internal essential relation of constitution between an intentional state and an object, or between such a state and a possible state of affairs as subsisting. The author’s main claim is that intentionality is a fundamentally modal property, hence a non (scientifically) natural property in that it does not supervene, either locally or globally, on its nonmodal physical basis. This is the property, primarily for an intentional mental state, to be constituted by the entities it is about. In the case of intentionality of reference, such constituents are objects, in the sense of individuals; in the case of intentionality of content, such constituents are possible states of affairs as subsisting. Constitution is meant in a mereologically literal sense: those constituents are essential parts of the relevant states. As a result, the theory claims not only that intentionality is relational but also that it is an internal, essential relation holding between an intentional state and its object or proposition-like content. Intentionality as Constitution will be of interest to scholars and advanced students working in philosophy of mind, philosophy of language, metaphysics, and cognitive science.

Download or read book Descent of the Dialectic written by Michael J. Thompson and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2024-08-01 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book reconstructs the concept and practice of dialectics as a means of grounding a critical theory of society. At the center of this project is the thesis of phronetic criticism or a form of reason that is able to synthesize human value with objective rationality. This book argues that defects in modern forms of social reason are the result of the powers of social structure and the norms and purposes they embody. Increasingly, modern societies are driven not by substantive values concerning human good but by the technical imperatives of economic management, leading to a cultural condition of nihilism that has eroded dialectical consciousness. The first half of the book demonstrates the various ways that social power erodes and undermines critical-rational forms of consciousness. The second part of the book constructs an alternative basis for critical reason by showing how it requires seeing human value as essentially ontological: that is, constituted by objective forms of sociality that either promote human freedom or pervert our capacities and drive toward pathological forms of life. The philosophical claim is that a critical theory of ethics must be rooted in these concrete forms of life and that this will serve as a critical vantage point for critical political judgment and transformational praxis. Descent of the Dialectic will be of interest to researchers working in philosophy, political theory, social theory, and critical theory.

Download or read book The Myth of Religious Neutrality written by Roy A. Clouser and published by . This book was released on 2005 with total page 424 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book offers a reinterpretation of the general relations between religion, science, and philosophy, arguing that scientific theories depend on religious commitments.

Download or read book Contemporary Dualism written by Andrea Lavazza and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-02-03 with total page 301 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ontological materialism, in its various forms, has become the orthodox view in contemporary philosophy of mind. This book provides a variety of defenses of mind-body dualism, and shows (explicitly or implicitly) that a thoroughgoing ontological materialism cannot be sustained. The contributions are intended to show that, at the very least, ontological dualism (as contrasted with a dualism that is merely linguistic or epistemic) constitutes a philosophically respectable alternative to the monistic views that currently dominate thought about the mind-body (or, perhaps more appropriately, person-body) relation.

Download or read book The Myth of the Intuitive written by Max Emil Deutsch and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2015-04-24 with total page 215 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A defense of traditional philosophical method against challenges from practitioners of “experimental philosophy.” In The Myth of the Intuitive, Max Deutsch defends the methods of analytic philosophy against a recent empirical challenge mounted by the practitioners of experimental philosophy (xphi). This challenge concerns the extent to which analytic philosophy relies on intuition—in particular, the extent to which analytic philosophers treat intuitions as evidence in arguing for philosophical conclusions. Experimental philosophers say that analytic philosophers place a great deal of evidential weight on people's intuitions about hypothetical cases and thought experiments. Deutsch argues forcefully that this view of traditional philosophical method is a myth, part of “metaphilosophical folklore,” and he supports his argument with close examinations of results from xphi and of a number of influential arguments in analytic philosophy. Analytic philosophy makes regular use of hypothetical examples and thought experiments, but, Deutsch writes, philosophers argue for their claims about what is true or not true in these examples and thought experiments. It is these arguments, not intuitions, that are treated as evidence for the claims. Deutsch discusses xphi and some recent xphi studies; critiques a variety of other metaphilosophical claims; examines such famous arguments as Gettier's refutation of the JTB (justified true belief) theory and Kripke's Gödel Case argument against descriptivism about proper names, and shows that they rely on reasoning rather than intuition; and finds existing critiques of xphi, the “Multiple Concepts” and “Expertise” replies, to be severely lacking.

Download or read book The Myth of Religious Neutrality Revised Edition written by Roy A. Clouser and published by University of Notre Dame Pess. This book was released on 2005-05-15 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Written for undergraduates, the educated layperson, and scholars in fields other than philosophy, The Myth of Religious Neutrality offers a radical reinterpretation of the general relations between religion, science, and philosophy. This new edition has been completely revised and updated by the author.

Download or read book Philosophical Frameworks for Understanding Information Systems written by Basden, Andrew and published by IGI Global. This book was released on 2007-11-30 with total page 412 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "There are five main areas in which humans relate to information and communications technology: the nature of computers and information, the creation of information technologies, the development of artifacts for human use, the usage of information systems, and IT as our environment. This book strives to develop philosophical frameworks for these areas"--Provided by publisher.

Download or read book What Can She Know written by Lorraine Code and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2018-09-05 with total page 367 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this lively and accessible book Lorraine Code addresses one of the most controversial questions in contemporary theory of knowledge, a question of fundamental concern for feminist theory as well: Is the sex of the knower epistemologically significant? Responding in the affirmative, Code offers a radical alterantive to mainstream philosophy's terms for what counts as knowledge and how it is to be evaluated. Code first reviews the literature of established epistemologies and unmasks the prevailing assumption in Anglo-American philosophy that "the knower" is a value-free and ideologically neutral abstraction. Approaching knowledge as a social construct produced and validated through critical dialogue, she defines the knower in light of a conception of subjectivity based on a personal relational model. Code maps out the relevance of the particular people involved in knowing: their historical specificity, the kinds of relationships they have, the effects of social position and power on those relationships, and the ways in which knowledge can change both knower and known. In an exploration of the politics of knowledge that mainstream epistemologies sustain, she examines such issues as the function of knowledge in shaping institutions and the unequal distribution of cognitive resources. What Can She Know? will raise the level of debate concerning epistemological issues among philosophers, political and social scientists, and anyone interested in feminist theory.

Download or read book The Philosophy of Expertise written by Evan Selinger and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2006 with total page 438 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the use of expert testimony in the courtroom to the advice we rely on to solve key economic, political, and social problems, expertise is an essential part of our decision-making process. However, the extent to which experts can be trusted is a subject of persistent and contentious debate. The Philosophy of Expertise is the first collection to explore the fundamental philosophical issues surrounding these authorities and their expert knowledge. Part 1 considers the problems surrounding the issue of trust and deference; part 2 launches a phenomenological clarification of expertise that pinpoints the universal structures embodied in cognition and affect; and part 3 examines the consequences of the social and technical externalization of expertise. Contributors including Edward Said, Alvin Goldman, Peter Singer, Hubert Dreyfus, Julia Annas, Harry Collins, and Don Ihde draw on a number of intellectual approaches to explore the justification of expert authority, the potentially dangerous role of expertise in a liberal democratic society, how laypeople can critique experts, and the social and ideological character of expert advice. The contributors also discuss the reasoning process of judges and juries, the ancient Greek view of moral conduct, and the incorporation of experts into governmental bureaucracy. By honestly tackling the legitimacy and consistency of various positions, this volume sheds much-needed light on the theoretical dimensions of a controversial and pervasive practice. Contributors: Alvin I. Goldman, Don Ihde, Edward Said, Evan Selinger and John Mix, Evan Selinger and Robert P. Crease, H. M. Collins and Robert Evans, Hélène Mialet, Hubert Dreyfus, John Hardwig, Julia Annas, Paul Feyerabend, Peter Singer, Scott Brewer, Steve Fuller, Steven Turner