{"title":"Gift-giving as an Epistemic Virtue","authors":"O. Popova","doi":"10.5840/eps202158467","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5840/eps202158467","url":null,"abstract":"The article presents a study of gift-giving practices in the context of the development of modern biomedicine and shows their relationship to the realization of epistemic virtues. In biomedicine, the gain and production of knowledge (the gift of knowledge) is often grounded in bodily gift (sacrifice) and donor practices. The latter are associated with a number of mishaps in the history of biomedicine, reflecting the violation of moral norms in the process of obtaining scientific data and demonstrating the need for a clear differentiation of intellectual and moral virtues. An important factor in the formation of the epistemic norms of modern biomedicine has been the transformation of the values of scientific knowledge from practices of coercion to giving. As a result, the involuntary sacrifice of biomaterials to science was replaced by voluntary practices of somatic giving and informational exchange that determine the process of mutual recognition in science. It is shown that gift-giving in science is closely associated with intellectual virtues, with intellectual generosity characterizing the idea of openness in science and scientists’ intention for production and constant growth of knowledge, and can also be related to the idea of altruistic service to science, involving the exchange of received scientific data and access to free information in the network space. A number of examples of the modern digital gift ethos and the implementation of the principles of openness of knowledge and knowledge exchange in the context of the creation of biomedical expert digital platforms, the formation of social scientific networks – platforms with open access to scientific information, the development of the phenomenon of “garage” science and other “zones of exchange” experience are considered.","PeriodicalId":44031,"journal":{"name":"Epistemology & Philosophy of Science-Epistemologiya i Filosofiya Nauki","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2021-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"71005873","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Albert Einstein’s Epistemic Virtues and Vices","authors":"V. Vizgin","doi":"10.5840/eps202158468","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5840/eps202158468","url":null,"abstract":"The article is based on the concepts of epistemic virtues and epistemic vices and explores A. Einstein’s contribution to the creation of fundamental physical theories, namely the special theory of relativity and general theory of relativity, as well as to the development of a unified field theory on the basis of the geometric field program, which never led to success. Among the main epistemic virtues that led Einstein to success in the construction of the special theory of relativity are the following: a unique physical intuition based on the method of thought experiment and the need for an experimental justification of space-time concepts; striving for simplicity and elegance of theory; scientific courage, rebelliousness, signifying the readiness to engage in confrontation with scientific conventional dogmas and authorities. In the creation of general theory of relativity, another intellectual virtue was added to these virtues: the belief in the heuristic power of the mathematical aspect of physics. At the same time, he had to overcome his initial underestimation of the H. Minkowski’s four-dimensional concept of space and time, which has manifested in a distinctive flexibility of thinking typical for Einstein in his early years. The creative role of Einstein’s mistakes on the way to general relativity was emphasized. These mistakes were mostly related to the difficulties of harmonizing the mathematical and physical aspects of theory, less so to epistemic vices. The ambivalence of the concept of epistemic virtues, which can be transformed into epistemic vices, is noted. This transformation happened in the second half of Einstein’s life, when he for more than thirty years unsuccessfully tried to build a unified geometric field theory and to find an alternative to quantum mechanics with their probabilistic and Copenhagen interpretation In this case, we can talk about the following epistemic vices: the revaluation of mathematical aspect and underestimation of experimentally – empirical aspect of the theory; adopting the concepts general relativity is based on (continualism, classical causality, geometric nature of fundamental interactions) as fundamental; unprecedented persistence in defending the GFP (geometrical field program), despite its failures, and a certain loss of the flexibility of thinking. A cosmological history that is associated both with the application of GTR (general theory of relativity) to the structure of the Universe, and with the missed possibility of discovering the theory of the expanding Universe is intermediate in relation to Einstein’s epistemic virtues and vices. This opportunity was realized by A.A. Friedmann, who defeated Einstein in the dispute about if the Universe was stationary or nonstationary. In this dispute some of Einstein’s vices were revealed, which Friedman did not have. The connection between epistemic virtues and the methodological principles of physics and also with the “fallibilist” concept of scientific","PeriodicalId":44031,"journal":{"name":"Epistemology & Philosophy of Science-Epistemologiya i Filosofiya Nauki","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2021-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"71005935","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"“Vicious Minds”","authors":"Asya A. Filatova","doi":"10.5840/eps202158465","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5840/eps202158465","url":null,"abstract":"Virtue Epistemology (VE) offers a specific approach to the problem of knowledge. The condition for the possibility of knowledge is the presence of certain intellectual abilities or traits in the subject – epistemic virtues. The task of VE is to compile a list of epis - temic virtues, the development and cultivation of which should lead individuals to epistemic success with a high degree of probability. The vice epistemology arises as a branch of VE, which focuses not on virtues, but on vices that hinder achievement and deserve censure. Vices can be attributed to both individuals and communities. As a rule, those who tend to question the scientific consensus are considered to be vicious knowing communities: conspiracy theorists, denialists, religious fundamentalists, etc. The article argues that the logic of imputing blame for bad epistemic traits used in vice epistemology tends to turn from an epistemological tool into an ideological and political one. Since in the logic of the vice epistemology, \"vicious minds\" pose a threat not only to themselves, but also to the health of modern democratic societies, the eradication of vices is a primary political task. Using the theoretical framework of S. Fuller's social epistemology, the author shows how the rhetoric of vice epistemology is used today in the fight against anti-intellectualism and epistemic populism.","PeriodicalId":44031,"journal":{"name":"Epistemology & Philosophy of Science-Epistemologiya i Filosofiya Nauki","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2021-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"71006071","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Wittgenstein in the Camp of Logical Positivists. Reply to Critics","authors":"K. Rodin","doi":"10.5840/EPS202158110","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5840/EPS202158110","url":null,"abstract":"<jats:p />","PeriodicalId":44031,"journal":{"name":"Epistemology & Philosophy of Science-Epistemologiya i Filosofiya Nauki","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2021-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"71003609","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Cultural-Historical Epistemology and Perspectives of the Philosophy of Science","authors":"B. Pruzhinin, T. Shchedrina","doi":"10.5840/EPS202158223","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5840/EPS202158223","url":null,"abstract":"The purpose of the article is to demonstrate the methodological effectiveness of one of the directions in developing the philosophy of science – cultural and historical epistemology. Cultural-historical epistemology does not pretend at all to be any radical epistemological originality but offers a general view of science as a part of intellectual culture, where both individual historical cases and broad sociological generalizations find their methodologically significant place. The authors believe that it is the development of methodological norms capable of determining the fundamental parameters and strategies of scientific research that is now the central task of the philosophy of science. One of the characteristic forms of organization of modern advanced science is interdisciplinary research programs that involve the joint activities of large research teams. This fact raises a critical question about the mutual understanding of specialists from different disciplines and, accordingly, about the development of methodological norms that can determine the generally accepted parameters of the reproducibility of cognition results. Thus, in the center of attention of the philosophy of science, epistemological plots are put forward, one way or another connected with a specific understanding of the phenomenon of communication in science. Moreover, according to the authors, in these philosophical and methodological searches, it is essential to overcome, on the one hand, the inclination to conceptual design that leads away from the real methodological needs of science and, on the other hand, straightforward sociologization and equally direct historicization of science. These approaches are fraught with relativization of the very idea of scientific knowledge as a rational phenomenon of culture. The authors of the article believe that in modern conceptual trends in the philosophy of science, it is necessary to accentuate quite traditional epistemological principles, which in their updated edition make it possible to activate, or, as it were, to revive the methodological functions of the philosophy of science that are partially lost today. Justifying this approach, the authors turn to the epistemological trend, which for two decades has been developed based on the traditions of Russian philosophy of the first half of the 20th century.","PeriodicalId":44031,"journal":{"name":"Epistemology & Philosophy of Science-Epistemologiya i Filosofiya Nauki","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2021-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"71003954","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Lyudmila A. Markova (12.12.1932–26.12.2020)","authors":"","doi":"10.5840/eps202158121","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5840/eps202158121","url":null,"abstract":"<jats:p />","PeriodicalId":44031,"journal":{"name":"Epistemology & Philosophy of Science-Epistemologiya i Filosofiya Nauki","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2021-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"71003993","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Owner of the Right over Nature, or Expert Mediators in the Modern Era and at Present","authors":"L. Shipovalova","doi":"10.5840/eps202158349","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5840/eps202158349","url":null,"abstract":"F. Bacon in his work New Organon proposes a project of a new science, which ensures the desire of human race “to recover its right over nature”. The article examines the work on the universal owner of “the right over nature” in two historical contexts. The first context determines the emergence of modern science. Here Bacon plays the role of an expert mediator who introduces the new scientific method in its broader social meaning. His work on the universal owner of “the right over nature” combines and intersects the cognitive and political aspects of scientific endeavor. The second context covers the present situation after the Scientific-Technical Revolution, when the use of the “right over nature” becomes actual, and not only possible. The contradictions revealed in the first context in the activities of the expert mediator serve as the basis for analyzing the present situation of interaction between science and society. The author describes the expert mediator, corresponding to the modern context of uncertainty and conflict of values, through the concept of “honest broker of policy alternatives” by R. Pielke, as well as through the palette of expert knowledge types presented by the STS researchers. She shows why the presented differentiation of expert knowledge types is not enough to organize the work of an expert mediator as an “honest broker”. In conclusion, she puts forward the hypothesis about distributed expertise, which can represent contemporary work on the owner of the “right over nature” and describes some aspects of this work. The author associates the significance of the hypothesis of distributed expertise with the preservation of the openness of the project of Bacon's new science.","PeriodicalId":44031,"journal":{"name":"Epistemology & Philosophy of Science-Epistemologiya i Filosofiya Nauki","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2021-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"71004199","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Bacon’s Inductive Method and Material Form","authors":"O. Belkind","doi":"10.5840/eps202158343","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5840/eps202158343","url":null,"abstract":"This paper contends that Bacon’s inductive method depends crucially on his general account of matter. I argue that Bacon develops a dynamic form of corpuscularianism, according to which aggregates of corpuscles undergo patterns of change that derive from active inclinations and appetites. The paper claims that Bacon’s corpuscularianism provides him with a theory of material form that enables him to theorize bodily change and possible material transformations. The point of natural histories and experiments is then to find the processes of corpuscular change that correlate with making present or making absent simple natures.","PeriodicalId":44031,"journal":{"name":"Epistemology & Philosophy of Science-Epistemologiya i Filosofiya Nauki","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2021-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"71004573","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"On Veritism. Pritchard’s Defense","authors":"E. Sosa","doi":"10.5840/eps202158457","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5840/eps202158457","url":null,"abstract":"This time Pritchard is on a rescue mission. Veritism is besieged and he rises to defend it. I do agree with much in his Veritism, but I demur when he adds: “So, the goodness of all epistemic goods is understood instrumentally with regard to whether they promote truth”. If Big Brother brainwashes us to believe the full contents of The Encyclopedia Britannica, then even if we suppose those contents to be true without exception, that would not make what they do an unalloyed good thing, not even epistemically. But it does seem to promote truth. What might then diminish Big Brother’s action so much, so as to make it so deplorable epistemically after all, despite how powerfully it does instrumentally promote truth. At a minimum we need to say more about the relations between epistemic goods and truth, so as to better understand how it is that the epistemic good is made so good by what specific relation to the truth. I lay out a way to understand Veritism so that it can say more about the relations between epistemic goods and truth, thus enhancing our understanding of epistemic normativity. And in a second part I lay out a solution to Linda Zagzebski’s Swamping problem for reliabilism. I argue that it is a problem for process reliabilism, but not for a virtue epistemology that accepts a kind of reliabilism, but in an agential telic framework, and not in a process framework. So, I lay out one way to be a “veritist”, by defending explicitly its Axiological side, and by implication its Conceptual side as well. I have raised questions for Pritchard’s own defense and have offered in each case an alternative defense that I believe fits the words of his formulations, and is in their spirit as well.","PeriodicalId":44031,"journal":{"name":"Epistemology & Philosophy of Science-Epistemologiya i Filosofiya Nauki","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2021-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"71005211","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Epistemic Virtue of Wisdom and Evidentialism","authors":"K. Karpov","doi":"10.5840/eps202158469","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5840/eps202158469","url":null,"abstract":"My primary concern in this article is the connection between virtue epistemology and evidentialism. This possible connection is analyzed upon, firstly, the example of the intellectual virtue of wisdom, and, secondly, the historical case – Thomas Aquinas’ approach to virtue of wisdom as an intellectual disposition (habitus). I argue that it is possible to offer such an interpretation of ‘intellectual virtue’ that aligns with the peripatetic tradition broadly understood (to which the epistemology of virtues ascends), and on the basis of which an evidentialist theory of justification is offered. In the first part of the paper, I briefly present the main interpretations of virtue epistemology and evidentialism in the light of externalism/internalism debate. In the second part I discuss Aquinas’ understanding of intellectual virtue as a disposition (habitus). The main concern here are virtues of theoretical habitus – wisdom and (scientific) knowledge. I show that habitus in this case is understood in two ways: as an ability, inherent to human beings, and as objective knowledge. Thus, there are two understandings of wisdom – as a virtue and knowledge (scientia). Finally, in the concluding parts of the paper, I outline possible ways of solving presented in the first part challenges to evidentialism and internalism.","PeriodicalId":44031,"journal":{"name":"Epistemology & Philosophy of Science-Epistemologiya i Filosofiya Nauki","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2021-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"71005976","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}