Reconfiguring the Realm

True Enough ◽  
2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Catherine Z. Elgin
Keyword(s):  
Thought Experiments ◽  
Scientific Models ◽  
Epistemic Normativity ◽  
Epistemic Agency ◽  
Science And Art ◽  
Works Of Art

Here Elgin sketches the main themes of True Enough. Although effective scientific models and thought experiments are not true, they embody a genuine understanding of the phenomena they concern. Works of art do the same. To accommodate the epistemic contributions of science and art, epistemic normativity cannot be grounded in reliability or truth-conduciveness. Rather it emerges from responsible epistemic agency.

Literature and Knowledge

Philosophy ◽  
1983 ◽  
Vol 58 (226) ◽  
pp. 489-496 ◽  
Author(s):  
Catherine Wilson
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Art ◽  
Complete Understanding ◽  
Cognitive Value ◽  
Science And Art ◽  
Works Of Art ◽  
The Universe

There is probably no subject in the philosophy of art which has prompted more impassioned theorizing than the question of the ‘cognitive value’ of works of art. ‘In the end’, one influential critic has stated, ‘I do not distinguish between science and art except as regards method. Both provide us with a view of reality and both are indispensable to a complete understanding of the universe.’ If a man is not prepared to distinguish between science and art one may well wonder what he is prepared to distinguish between, but in all fairness it should be pointed out that the writings of anti-cognitivists contain equally strenuous statements of doctrine. For I. A. Richards, poetry consists of ‘pseudo-statements’ which are ‘true’ if they ‘suit and serve some attitude or link together attitudes which on other grounds are desirable’.

Louis Pasteur's three artist compatriots—Henner, Pointelin, and Perraud: A story of friendship, science, and art in the 1870s and 1880s

2016 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 18-27 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bert Hansen ◽  
Richard E Weisberg
Keyword(s):  
Social Life ◽  
Fine Arts ◽  
Medical Science ◽  
Working Relationship ◽  
Research Project ◽  
Science And Art ◽  
Work Habits ◽  
Works Of Art ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Home Region

Biographers have largely ignored Louis Pasteur's many and varied connections with art and artists. This article is the second in a series of the authors' studies of Pasteur's friendships with artists. This research project has uncovered data that enlarge the great medical chemist's biography, throwing new light on a variety of topics including his work habits, his social life, his artistic sensibilities, his efforts to lobby on behalf of his artist friends, his relationships to their patrons and to his own patrons, and his use of works of art to foster his reputation as a leader in French medical science. In a prior article, the authors examined his unique working relationship with the Finnish painter Albert Edelfelt and the creation of the famous portrait of Pasteur in his laboratory in the mid-1880s. The present study documents his especially warm friendship with three French artists who came from Pasteur's home region, the Jura, or from neighboring Alsace. A forthcoming study gives an account of his friendships with Max Claudet and Paul Dubois, both of whom made important images of Pasteur, and it offers further illustrations of his devotion to the fine arts.

Knowing Full Well

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ernest Sosa
Keyword(s):  
Risk Assessment ◽  
Virtue Epistemology ◽  
True Belief ◽  
Epistemic Normativity ◽  
Epistemic Circularity ◽  
Good Judgment ◽  
Epistemic Agency ◽  
First Order ◽  
Knowledge Norm ◽  
Epistemic Competence

This book explains the nature of knowledge through an approach originated by the author years ago, known as virtue epistemology. The book provides a comprehensive account of the author's views on epistemic normativity as a form of performance normativity on two levels. On a first level is found the normativity of the apt performance, whose success manifests the performer's competence. On a higher level is found the normativity of the meta-apt performance, which manifests not necessarily first-order skill or competence but rather the reflective good judgment required for proper risk assessment. The book develops this bi-level account in multiple ways, by applying it to issues much disputed in recent epistemology: epistemic agency, how knowledge is normatively related to action, the knowledge norm of assertion, and the Meno problem as to how knowledge exceeds merely true belief. A full chapter is devoted to how experience should be understood if it is to figure in the epistemic competence that must be manifest in the truth of any belief apt enough to constitute knowledge. Another takes up the epistemology of testimony from the performance–theoretic perspective. Two other chapters are dedicated to comparisons with ostensibly rival views, such as classical internalist foundationalism, a knowledge-first view, and attributor contextualism. The book concludes with a defense of the epistemic circularity inherent in meta-aptness and thereby in the full aptness of knowing full well.

True Enough

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Catherine Z. Elgin
Keyword(s):  
Good Reason ◽  
Thought Experiments ◽  
Epistemic Community ◽  
Works Of Art ◽  
Holistic Epistemology

Epistemology standardly holds that there can be no epistemically good reason to accept a known falsehood or to accept a mode of justification that is not truth-conducive. Such a stance cannot accommodate science, for science unabashedly relies on models, idealizations, and thought experiments which are known not to be true. We ought not assume that the inaccuracy of such devices is a sign of their inadequacy. When effective, they are felicitous falsehoods that exemplify features they share with the phenomena they bear on. Inasmuch as works of art also deploy felicitous falsehoods, they too advance understanding. True Enough develops a holistic epistemology that focuses on the understanding of broad ranges of phenomena rather than on knowledge of individual facts. Epistemic acceptability on this account is not a matter of truth or truth-conduciveness, but of what would be reflectively endorsed by members of an idealized epistemic community – a quasi-Kantian realm of epistemic ends.

scholarly journals Hume’s and Kant’s understanding of epistemic normativity

2021 ◽  
Vol 64 (3) ◽  
pp. 91-112
Author(s):  
Petar Nurkic
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
A Priori ◽  
Thought Experiments ◽  
Empirical Approach ◽  
The Other ◽  
Epistemic Normativity ◽  
Doxastic Voluntarism ◽  
Treatise Of Human Nature ◽  
General Rules ◽  
As If

Question (d) how do we form beliefs?, implies descriptive answers. On the other hand, the question (n) how should we form beliefs?, implies normative answers. Can we provide answers to (n) questions without answering (d) questions? This (n) - (d) relation can be characterized as epistemic normativity. Hume and Kant provide answers to both questions. Hume is more inclined to psychologize these answers through an empirical approach to questions related to beliefs. While Kant is more inclined to consider a priori conditions of our reasoning. Through general rules and epistemic maxims, Hume and Kant provide normative guidelines in accordance which we should form beliefs. However, in order to be able to talk about normativity, at all, we need to answer questions related to doxastic voluntarism. For Kant, the question of freedom is, to some extent, an obvious precondition for his critiques (especially of the practical mind). While with Hume, precisely because of his empirical approach to beliefs and desires, the matter is more obscure, and it seems as if Hume advocates doxastic involuntarism. In this paper, I will try to present the similarities between Hume and Kant in terms of epistemic normativity. Where it seems as if their views are incompatible, I will try to examine why this is the case. I will focus on Hume?s Treatise of Human Nature and Kant?s Second Analogy. In the end, I will present a couple of thought experiments and try to ?test? Hume and Kant. If I manage to confirm the initial hypotheses, then this paper will be a successful epistemic endeavor. However, if I fail to find the expected similarities between Hume?s and Kant?s understanding of epistemic normativity, then this work can be characterized as a historical approach to the normative framework of ?dogmatic slumber?.

Epistemic Agency

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ernest Sosa
Keyword(s):  
Epistemic Normativity ◽  
Epistemic Agency ◽  
Special Case ◽  
A Performance

This chapter takes up ways in which the epistemic realm admits a kind of agency and how this bears on the performance normativity proper to that realm. It argues that epistemic normativity is just the special case of AAA (accurate, adroit, apt) normativity where the performances are epistemic performances, mainly beliefs. Performances with an aim fall under this AAA structure, according to which a performance will be accurate or successful only if it attains its aim. There must hence be such a thing as the aim of a performance. Performances of interest will then be restricted to those with an essential aim—the aim that defines a given performance as a particular endeavoring.

Kunstwerke als Gedankenexperimente

2012 ◽  
Vol 57 (2) ◽  
pp. 84-96
Author(s):  
Georg W. Bertram
Keyword(s):  
Thought Experiment ◽  
Thought Experiments ◽  
Work Of Art ◽  
Specific Language ◽  
Works Of Art

Sind Kunstwerke als Gedankenexperimente zu begreifen? Will man diese Frage beantworten, gilt es erst einmal einen Begriff des Gedankenexperiments zu gewinnen. Gedankenexperimente sind begrifflich ausgewertete kontrafaktische Szenarien, wobei diese Szenarien prägnant ausgearbeitet sind. Genau dies ist in Kunstwerken nicht der Fall. Sofern man bei ihnen von kontrafaktischen Szenarien sprechen kann, sind diese nicht prägnant ausgearbeitet. Dies liegt, so argumentiere ich, darin begründet, dass Kunstwerke eine spezifische Sprachlichkeit entwickeln. Dies gilt auch dort, wo sie eine sehr knappe Konstellation von Elementen präsentieren. Die spezifische Sprachlichkeit kann von Rezipierenden nicht einfach erfasst, sondern muss mimetisch nachvollzogen werden. Aus diesem Grund funktionieren Kunstwerke anders als Gedankenexperimente und sind – bei aller Verwandtschaft – letztlich nicht als Gedankenexperimente zu begreifen.<br><br>Are works of art to be conceived as thought experiments? To answer this question one has to explain what thought experiments are. I argue that thought experiments consist of contrafactual scenarios which are conceptually articulated, whereby the scenarios in question are developed in a concise way. In the case of works of art this is not so. If works of art consist of contrafactual scenarios these scenarios are not developed concisely, even if works of art present a constellation of just a few elements. The reason for this is that each work of art establishes a specific language. Such a language cannot be simply grasped, like a scenario in a thought experiment – it has to be followed mimetically by the recipients. So works of art function differently from thought experiments and are – even though closely related – not to be conceived as thought experiments.

scholarly journals “Philosophy Needs To Find A Place For Imagination Also In The Analysis Of Action”: Faculty Interview with Professor Katja Vogt

2017 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ayda Basaran
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Empirical Research ◽  
Empirical Work ◽  
Thought Experiments ◽  
Mental Simulation ◽  
Philosophical Theory ◽  
Science And Art ◽  
Recent Project ◽  
Philosophical Questions

In her recent project, Imagination and Agency, Professor Vogt addresses the gap between the philosophical theory and empirical research. I was curious  about how this project aims to incorporate  philosophical questions into an interdisciplinary debate. She explains that there is a significant body of empirical work on mental simulation and imagination as components  of agency, since philosophers have also long been interested in imagination. However, philosophers  tend to focus on what are  called “lofty domains”: thought experiments, science, and art. Vogt argues that philosophy needs to find a place for imagination also in the context of the analysis of action. She thinks that it’s a long-standing idea that, when you make a decision, you decide between options that you consider possible. This is why her project examines the modal scope, the study of ways in which propositions can be true or false, of agential thought, since decision making is concerned with what is and what is not possible. As an example, she cites Aristotle, , who argued that no one deliberates about whether to become a god, because it’s impossible to become a god.

Epistemic Normativity

True Enough ◽  
2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Catherine Z. Elgin
Keyword(s):  
Epistemic Normativity ◽  
Epistemic Norms ◽  
Epistemic Agency

Epistemic norms are norms of responsible epistemic agency. They are the norms that would emerge from the deliberations of legislating members of a quasi-Kantian realm of epistemic ends. Such legislators must be, in a political sense, free and equal in their deliberations.

How Choreostorming Informs Thinking In Molecular Genetics And Cancer Biology

Leonardo ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 1-8
Author(s):  
Jill Bargonetti
Keyword(s):  
Molecular Biology ◽  
Information Flow ◽  
Cancer Biology ◽  
Thought Experiments ◽  
College Level ◽  
Cellular Processes ◽  
Science And Art ◽  
Scientific Hypothesis ◽  
College Course ◽  
Genome Information

Abstract The medium of interpretive dance to convey basic science is well regarded but not commonplace for college level instruction or scientific hypothesis development. The molecular biology of cancer involves multiple polymer languages that coordinate genome information flow from DNA, to RNA, to proteins. The author describes a college course entitled “Choreographing Genomics” that 1) uses a non-binary art and science approach to teach the molecular biology of cancer; 2) communicates cellular processes to cancer patients in order to empower them to understand the biology of what they are experiencing; and 3) assists cancer scientists in developing hypotheses through kinesthetic and visual enactment of cellular processes. Non-trained movers and scientific thinkers together participate in “choreostorming” which is a non-binary process where all participants work as science thinkers and artists to develop, and extend, thought experiments into the movement laboratory. Choreography thus becomes a vehicle for blending science and art.

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