The Center for Applied Rationality: practical techniques for overcoming biases

2023

Translation of "Rationalité scientifique, disciplinarité et interdisciplinarité", Nouvelles perspectives en sciences sociales, vol. 16, no 2, 2021, p. 201-236. Abstract This article questions the possibility of an interdisciplinarity that would be practiced outside the scientific field. To provide some answer, it shows how philosophy is intrinsically associated with subjectivity, how science progressively pulls away from philosophy, how this distancing enables the division of knowledge, how the division of knowledge calls for interdisciplinarity. Having established that, it reports some requests for an unscientific interdisciplinarity and then shows that these aspirations relate more to philosophy than interdisciplinarity.

Poiesis & Praxis, 2011

2016

In this paper, we discuss some problems and prospects of interdisciplinary encounters by focusing on philosophy of science as a case study. After introducing the case, we give an overview about the various ways in which philosophy of science can be interdisciplinary in Section 2. In Section 3, we name some general problems concerning the possible points of interaction between philosophy of science and the sciences studied. In Section 4 we compare the advantages and risks of interdisciplinarity for individual researchers and institutions. In Section 5, we discuss interdisciplinary PhD programs, in particular concerning two main problems: increased workload and the quality of supervision. In the final Section 6, we look at interdisciplinary careers beyond the PhD.

The Nature of Scientific Thinking, 2014

This essay argues for a conception of the unity of science that is of distant but distinct Kantian provenance. We first review some of the challenges that undermined two influential predecessor conceptions of the unity of science. Many of these criticisms were raised by pluralists, who found them reason enough to embrace the disunity of science. We propose an alternative response. We argue that the epistemic advantages of pluralism arise only when it is combined with a limiting constraint: when it is what we call unified pluralism. Moreover, once we accept unified pluralism, an ideal emerges of a pluralist unity of science. We argue that we have good reason to adopt this ideal as regulative of scientific inquiry, and as guiding discovery of the laws of nature when and where they exist.

Briefe Zur Interdisziplinaritat, 2014

Journal of Education Culture and Society, 2020

The article describes the role of interdisciplinarity in the process of making science. Two patterns of research and development of discipline are presented: the closed pattern which concentrates on specialization and the open pattern which fosters interdisciplinary science. The key to success is always openness for new scientific experiences and communities. The conclusion of the article is a proposal for finding new scientific communities, which could be interested in new ideas, research and thoughts where interdisciplinary analyses are not acceptable to the local scientific community.

International Journal of Anthropology and Ethnology, 2019

The article discusses the contributions of anthropology to the interdisciplinary dialogues on the scientific status of knowledge and on the relationship between the sciences. It attributes to the discipline a privileged position, founded on the distinctive character of ethnography: the development of a scientific discourse on humankind based on a personal experience. The intense involvements of the ethnographers in the research process and in the relations with their interlocutors - as well as the relativizing and cross-cultural disciplinary outlook - question the neutrality that other sciences idealize or can more easily take for granted and challenge the ideals of objectivity. The paper intends to contribute to the epistemological debate and to the understanding of the social role of science. It proposes the notion of objectivation (i.e. the study of the condition of the constitutions of scientific objects) to think the relations among the sciences and to propose a unifying perspective, albeit open, plural and contingent.

Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, 1985

STEVE FULLER JL/arry Laudan has recently argued that the demarcation of science from non-science is a pseudo-problem which should be replaced by the more modest task of determining whether and why particular beliefs are epistemically warranted or heuristically fertile. In response, Thomas Gieryn has rejected this exercise in philosophical selfrestraint, arguing that the scientific community itself takes measures to distinguish itself from others who compete for cognitive authority and its attendant political and economic benefits. As a result, rhetorical strategies develop-"boundary work" Gieryn calls them-which are proper objects of sociological study. In this paper, I shall argue that Laudan is wrong to think that there is nothing at stake in demarcating science from non-science, but I shall also argue that the importance of the demarcation problem has not been fully appreciated by Gieryn. My critique will reveal a basic con fusion that needs to be dispelled before the full significance of demarcating science from non-science can be seen: namely, the failure to distinguish the relatively constant social role played by what has been called "science" from the historically variable social practices that have played the role of science. In addition, I shall claim that this confusion is itself one of the key ways in which a social practice retains its status as science. Laudan's^ history of abortive efforts at solving the demarcation problem may be reconstructed as two general arguments for rejecting the project