Margins and monsters: How some micro cases lead to macro claims

ABSTRACTHow do micro cases lead us to surprising macro claims? Historians often say that the micro level casts light on the macro level. This metaphor of “casting light” suggests that the micro does not illuminate the macro straightforwardly; such light needs to be interpreted. In this essay, I propose and clarify six interpretive norms to guide micro‐to‐macro inferences.I focus on marginal groups and monsters. These are popular cases in social and cultural histories, and yet seem to be unpromising candidates for generalization. Marginal groups are dismissed by the majority as inferior or ill‐fitting; their lives seem intelligible but negligible. Monsters, on the other hand, are somehow incomprehensible to society and treated as such. First, I show that, by looking at how a society identifies a marginal group and interacts with it, we can draw surprising inferences about that society's self‐image and situation. By making sense of a monster's life, we can draw inferences about its society's mentality and intelligibility. These will contest our conception of a macro claim. Second, I identify four risks in making such inferences — and clarify how norms of coherence, challenge, restraint, connection, provocation, and contextualization can manage those risks.My strategy is to analyze two case studies, by Richard Cobb, about a band of violent bandits and a semi‐literate provincial terrorist in revolutionary France. Published in 1972, these studies show Cobb to be an inventive and idiosyncratic historian, who created new angles for studying the micro level and complicated them with his autobiography. They illustrate how a historian's autobiographical, literary, and historiographical interests can mix into a risky, and often rewarding, style

Subliming and subverting: an impasse on the contingency of scientific rationality

What is special about the philosophy of history when the history is about science? I shall focus on an impasse between two perspectives — one seeking an ideal of rationality to guide scientific practices, and one stressing the contingency of the practices. They disagree on what this contingency means for scientific norms. Their impasse underlies some fractious relations within History and Philosophy of Science. Since the late 1960s, this interdisciplinary field has been described, variously, as an “intimate relationship or marriage of convenience”, a “marriage for the sake of reason”, a “troubling interaction ”, a “precarious relationship”, or one at risk of “ epistemological derangement”. -/- My paper has three aims. First, I characterise two idealised perspectives in this impasse: the sublimers and subversives. Then I describe a curious dynamic in which each perspective accuses the other of, simultaneously, claiming too little and too much. Subliming is dismissed for being scholastic, and condemned for being imperialist. Subverting is disparaged for being merely sociological, then criticised for being irrational or relativist. Here I draw on and extend the analyses of science studies in Kitcher, Zammito and others. Second, I argue that sublimers and subversives often talk past each other. Their mutual dismissals and condemnations arise partly because each perspective misconstrues the other’s claims. Each fails to see that the other is interested in different problems and interprets concepts differently. Third, I suggest that my analysis clarifies some current disagreements and old debates about contingency in science. It may also apply to debates on the contingency of norms in non- scientific realms

Precarious work and its complicit network

How does precarious work entail social vulnerabilities and moral complicities? Theorists of precarity pose two challenges for analysing labour conditions in Asia. Their first challenge is to distinguish the new kinds of social vulnerability which constitute precarious work. The second is to assign moral responsibility in the social network that produces vulnerability in depoliticised and morally detached ways. In this article, the social and normative dimensions of precarious work are connected through a conceptual investigation into how Singapore allocates responsibility for managing temporary migrant labour. First, it analyses how various management strategies, driven by globalisation and government deregulation, increase worker vulnerabilities. These strategies intensify relations of dependence, disempowerment and discrimination, which the workers may accommodate or resist in limited ways. Second, it assesses why the strategies leave the state, employers, agents and others complicit in producing the vulnerabilities. These actors enable, collaborate with, or condone the production of precarity. Their complicity is complicated by varying support or resistance to reforms. The result is a novel conceptual scheme for analysing the complicit network behind precarious work, which can be used in other sites of precarity where some are complicit in the vulnerability of others

Borderline consciousness, phenomenal consciousness, and artificial consciousness: a unified approach

Borderline conscious creatures are neither definitely conscious nor definitely not conscious. In this thesis, I explain what borderline consciousness is and why it poses a significant epistemological challenge to scientists who investigate phenomenal consciousness as a natural kind. When these scientists discover more than one overlapping kind in their samples of conscious creatures, how can they identify the kind to which all and only conscious creatures belong? After assessing three pessimistic responses, I argue that different groups of scientists can legitimately use the concept of phenomenal consciousness to refer to different kinds, in accord with their empirical interests. They can thereby resolve three related impasses on the status of borderline conscious creatures, the neural structure of phenomenal consciousness, and the possibility of artificial consciousness. The thesis has three parts: First, I analyse the concept of borderline consciousness. My analysis counters several arguments which conclude that borderline consciousness is inconceivable. Then I explain how borderline consciousness produces the multiple kinds problem in consciousness science. Second, I assess three recent philosophical responses to this problem. One response urges scientists to eliminate the concept of consciousness, while another judges them to be irremediably ignorant of the nature of consciousness. The final response concludes that scientific progress is limited by the concept's referential indeterminacy. I argue that these responses are too pessimistic, though they point to a more promising approach. Third, I propose that empirically constrained stipulation can solve the multiple kinds problem. Biologists face the same problem because of their longstanding controversy over what counts as a species. Building on new arguments for stipulating the reference of species concepts, I demonstrate that this use of stipulation in biology is neither epistemologically complacent nor metaphysically capricious; it also need not sow semantic confusion. Then I defend its use in consciousness science. My approach is shown to be consistent with our understanding of natural kinds, borderline cases, and phenomenal consciousness.</p

Models as interpreters

Most philosophical accounts of scientific models assume that models represent some aspect, or some theory, of reality. They also assume that interpretation plays only a supporting role. This paper challenges both assumptions. It proposes that models can be used in science to interpret reality. (a) I distinguish these interpretative models from representational ones. They find new meanings in a target system’s behaviour, rather than fit its parts together. They are built through idealisation, abstraction and recontextualisation. (b) To show how interpretative models work, I offer a case study on the scientific controversy over foetal pain. It highlights how pain scientists use conflicting models to interpret the human foetus and its behaviour, and thereby to support opposing claims about whether the foetus can feel pain. (c) I raise a sceptical worry and a methodological challenge for interpretative models. To address the latter, I use my case study to compare how interpretative and representational models ought to be evaluated

Borderline consciousness, phenomenal consciousness, and artificial consciousness: a unified approach

Borderline conscious creatures are neither definitely conscious nor definitely not conscious. In this thesis, I explain what borderline consciousness is and why it poses a significant epistemological challenge to scientists who investigate phenomenal consciousness as a natural kind. When these scientists discover more than one overlapping kind in their samples of conscious creatures, how can they identify the kind to which all and only conscious creatures belong? After assessing three pessimistic responses, I argue that different groups of scientists can legitimately use the concept of phenomenal consciousness to refer to different kinds, in accord with their empirical interests. They can thereby resolve three related impasses on the status of borderline conscious creatures, the neural structure of phenomenal consciousness, and the possibility of artificial consciousness. The thesis has three parts: First, I analyse the concept of borderline consciousness. My analysis counters several arguments which conclude that borderline consciousness is inconceivable. Then I explain how borderline consciousness produces the multiple kinds problem in consciousness science. Second, I assess three recent philosophical responses to this problem. One response urges scientists to eliminate the concept of consciousness, while another judges them to be irremediably ignorant of the nature of consciousness. The final response concludes that scientific progress is limited by the concept's referential indeterminacy. I argue that these responses are too pessimistic, though they point to a more promising approach. Third, I propose that empirically constrained stipulation can solve the multiple kinds problem. Biologists face the same problem because of their longstanding controversy over what counts as a species. Building on new arguments for stipulating the reference of species concepts, I demonstrate that this use of stipulation in biology is neither epistemologically complacent nor metaphysically capricious; it also need not sow semantic confusion. Then I defend its use in consciousness science. My approach is shown to be consistent with our understanding of natural kinds, borderline cases, and phenomenal consciousness.This thesis is not currently available via ORA