Stephen Jay Gould is rightly remembered for many different kinds of contributions to our intellectual life. I focus on his criticisms of uses of evolutionary ideas to defend inegalitarian doctrines and on his attempts to expand the framework of Darwinian evolutionary theory. I argue that his important successes in the former sphere are applications of the idea of local critique, grounded in careful attention to the details of the inegalitarian proposals. As he became more concerned with the second project, Gould (...) was inclined to suggest that the abuses of evolutionary ideas rested on an insufficiently expanded Darwinism. I suggest that what is valuable in Gould's contribution to general evolutionary theory is the original claim about punctuated equilibrium (advanced, with Niles Eldredge in1972), and the careful defense of that claim through the accumulation of paleontological evidence. I try to show that the more ambitious program of a hierarchical expansion of neo-Darwinism is misguided, and that the endeavor to go beyond local critique fails. (shrink)

To whom, if anyone, are the writings of philosophers of science relevant? There are three potential groups of people: Philosophers, Scientists, and Interested Citizens, within and beyond the academy. I argue that our discipline is potentially relevant to all three, but I particularly press the claims of the Interested Citizens. My essay is in dialogue with a characteristically insightful lecture given thirty years ago by Arthur Fine. Addressing the Philosophy of Science Association as its president, Fine argued that general (...) philosophy of science was dead, and that all the action lay in the philosophy of the special sciences. I try to identify what was correct about Fine’s diagnosis, while supplementing his message by describing fruitful projects that have since emerged. I also hope to share his subversive spirit. (shrink)

Philip Kitcher and I agree that cognitive values are not only intelligible but play an important role in scientific inquiry. We also agree that the importance of authority is critical to understanding the social dimension of such inquiry. We disagree rather deeply concerning what the roles of cognitive goals and the social dimension are.

Philosophy is often conceived in the Anglophone world today as a subject that focuses on questions in particular ‘‘core areas,’’ pre-eminently epistemology and metaphysics. This article argues that the contemporary conception is a new version of the scholastic ‘‘self-indulgence for the few’’ of which Dewey complained nearly a century ago. Philosophical questions evolve, and a first task for philosophers is to address issues that arise for their own times. The article suggests that a renewal of philosophy today should turn the (...) contemporary conception inside out, attending to and developing further the valuable work being done on the supposed ‘‘periphery’’ and attending to the ‘‘core areas’’ only insofar as is necessary to address genuinely significant questions. (shrink)

Striving to boldly redirect the philosophy of science, this book by renowned philosopher Philip Kitcher examines the heated debate surrounding the role of science in shaping our lives. Kitcher explores the sharp divide between those who believe that the pursuit of scientific knowledge is always valuable and necessary--the purists--and those who believe that it invariably serves the interests of people in positions of power. In a daring turn, he rejects both perspectives, working out a more realistic image (...) of the sciences--one that allows for the possibility of scientific truth, but nonetheless permits social consensus to determine which avenues to investigate. He then proposes a democratic and deliberative framework for responsible scientists to follow. Controversial, powerful, yet engaging, this volume will appeal to a wide range of readers. Kitcher's nuanced analysis and authorititative conclusion will interest countless scientists as well as all readers of science--scholars and laypersons alike. (shrink)

In this short, elegant book, Philip Kitcher distills the case for Darwinian evolutionary theory and its implications in a clear and forceful way. Kitcher shows how the alleged rivals to Darwinism, like Intelligent Design, are essentially scientifically bankrupt - and that scientific discoveries, including Darwin's, pose a genuine problem for religious faith, one that neither Darwin's opponents nor his militant defenders have satisfactorily resolved.

During the last three decades, reflections on the growth of scientific knowledge have inspired historians, sociologists, and some philosophers to contend that scientific objectivity is a myth. In this book, Kitcher attempts to resurrect the notions of objectivity and progress in science by identifying both the limitations of idealized treatments of growth of knowledge and the overreactions to philosophical idealizations. Recognizing that science is done not by logically omniscient subjects working in isolation, but by people with a variety of (...) personal and social interests, who cooperate and compete with one another, he argues that, nonetheless, we may conceive the growth of science as a process in which both our vision of nature and our ways of learning more about nature improve. Offering a detailed picture of the advancement of science, he sets a new agenda for the philosophy of science and for other "science studies" disciplines. (shrink)

Studdert-Kennedy, Gerald, Evidence and Explanation in Social Science. ... Kauffman, Stuart, "Articulation of Parts Explanation in Biology and the Rational ...

Instead of conceiving ethical commands as divine revelations or as the discoveries of brilliant thinkers, we should see our ethical practices as evolving over tens of thousands of years, as members of our species have worked out how to live together and prosper. Here, Kitcher elaborates his radical vision of this millennia-long ethical project.

When reading John Stuart Mill, it's easy to have a sense of "déja vu all over again." At first sight, his ideas seem completely familiar, well understood, and thoroughly absorbed in the way we live now. Do we need him to explain the advantages of free speech and open debate? Or to emphasize attending to the consequences of actions? To protect differences that don't harm others, and to plead for equality of opportunity? Even if he once counted as "dangerous" or (...) "subversive", he can appear all too tame today. On John Stuart Mill aims to approach him differently - not by rehearsing his (considerable) contributions to contemporary attitudes, but by starting just where the ideas he has bequeathed to us seem most problematic. Our own political debates hardly approximate the conditions envisaged in the famous defense of free speech. If we read more closely - and more widely - it becomes evident that he was already aware of the problem, and that he struggled to reconcile the claims of democracy with the importance of expertise. Those struggles can help us as we wrestle with kindred difficulties. In this extended, and beautifully written, essay, Kitcher develops some of Mill's ideas in the context of contemporary ethical, social, and political issues and debates, and what he would have made of them. These debates--such as those around government mandated Covid-19 masks and vaccines, Second Amendment worship, income inequality, gay marriage, and climate change--involve questions of individual freedom, free speech, equality, and utilitarianism, all of which are central to Mill's project. In doing so, Kitcher draws primarily, though not exclusively, on the three works by Mill (sometimes in close collaboration with Harriet Taylor) that typically feature on the Contemporary Civilization syllabus: On Liberty, Utilitarianism, and The Subjection of Women. He also discusses Mill's Principles of Political Economy. By focusing on questions that are salient today, he hopes to capture the tone of exploratory conversations at which Contemporary Civilization aims. (shrink)

What's the Use of Philosophy? aims to answer the question posed in its title, whether the questioner intends to dismiss philosophy, or seeks a positive answer. The first three chapters explore the grounds for dismissal. Chapter 1 expresses skepticism about the value of much professional Anglophone philosophy, while recognizing virtues in work often viewed as peripheral. Chapter 2 studies a philosophical subfield, the philosophy of science, arguing that, while its condition may be better than the norm, it is far from (...) perfect. In Chapter 3, a more systematic critique is offered, in the form of a pathology report. Its diagnosis identifies six justifiable philosophical impulses that, when pursued obsessively, generate distortions and diseases: clarity becomes a fetish, formalism becomes obfuscation, "intuition" is given burdens it cannot bear, appeals to the a priori sprinkle fairy dust on controversial claims, ideas grabbed from other fields are used in cartoon forms, and questions no longer relevant are treated as if they were "timeless." Chapter 4 attempts to identify the legitimate goals of philosophy. It sees value in attempts to respond to questions arising from the difficulties of the age, in attempts to reform methods of inquiry, and, above all, in the construction of syntheses capable of helping people as they struggle to make sense of their lives. Philosophy is renewed when these traditional goals once again become central to its discussions. The final chapter responds to a frequently voiced worry in a letter to young philosophers who wonder how they can align their aspirations with the hyper-professionalism expected of them. (shrink)

Over the course of a decade or so, Philip Kitcher has gradually come to embrace classical pragmatism, particularly John Dewey’s iteration of it, hailing it in his latest volume, Preludes to Pragmatism: Towards a Reconstruction of Philosophy, as “not only America’s most important contribution to philosophy, but also one of the most significant developments in the history of the subject, comparable in its potential for intellectual change to the celebrated turning points in the seventeenth century and in the (...) wake of Kant” (Kitcher 2012, xi). By Kitcher’s own account, this represents quite a turnabout, and so it is unsurprising that some have viewed Kitcher’s transformation warily. Philosophers are not immune to.. (shrink)

a priori. Since I ended up defending an unpopular answer to this question—"No"—it’s hardly surprising that people have scrutinized the account, or that many have concluded that I stacked the deck in the first place. Of course, this was not my view of the matter. My own judgment was that I’d uncovered the tacit commitments of mathematical apriorists and that the widespread acceptance of mathematical apriorism rested on failure to ask what was needed for knowledge to be a priori . (...) Nevertheless, my critics have raised important challenges, and have offered rival conceptions that are less demanding. I want to examine their objections to my explication of a priori knowledge, and to explore whether the weaker alternatives succeed in preserving traditional philosophical claims. What follows is a mixture of penitence and intransigence. (shrink)

An intuitive argument for scientific realism suggests that our successes in predicting and intervening would be inexplicable if the theories that generate them were not approximate y true. This argument faces many objections, some of which are briefly addressed in this paper, and one of which is treated in more detail. The focal criticism alleges that appeals to success cannot deliver conclusions that parts of science are true in the sense of truth-as-correspondence that realists prefer. The paper responds to that (...) criticism, in versions proposed by Michael Williams, Michael Levin, and, especiaIly, Paul Horwich, by arguing that critics typically stop at a shallow level of psychological explanation. If we probe more deeply we discover a genuine explanatory role for correspondence truth. (shrink)

This book argues against the view that mathematical knowledge is a priori,contending that mathematics is an empirical science and develops historically,just as ...

Philip Kitcher is one of the leading figures in the philosophy of science today. Here he collects, for the first time, many of his published articles on the philosophy of biology, spanning from the mid-1980's to the present. The book's title refers to Gregor Mendel, an Augustinian monk who was one of the first scientists to develop a theory of heredity. Mendel's work has been deeply influential to our understanding of our selves and our world, just as the (...) study of genetics today will have a profound and long-term impact on future scientific research. Kitcher's articles cover a broad range of topics with similar philosophical and social significance: sociobiology, evolutionary psychology, species, race, altruism, genetic determinism, and the rebirth of creationism in Intelligent Design. Kitcher's work on the intersection of biology and the philosophy of science is both unprecedented and wide-ranging, and will appeal not only to philosophers of science, but to scholars and students across disciplines. (shrink)

"The overall aim of this book is to understand the character of moral progress, so that making moral progress may become more systematic and secure, less chancy and less bloody. Drawing on three historical examples - the abolition of chattel slavery, the expansion of opportunities for women, and the increasing acceptance of same-sex love - it asks how those changes were brought about, and seeks a methodology for streamlining the kinds of developments that occurred. Moral progress is conceived as pragmatic (...) progress, progress from rather than progress to, achieved by overcoming the problems and limits of the current situation. Two kinds of problems are distinguished: problems of exclusion, found when the complaints of some people are ignored; and problems of false consciousness, present when the oppressed adopt judgments from the ambient society and do not protest their condition. The proposed methodology advocates procedures for listening to voiced complaints and for systematically reviewing the way in which particular self-conceptions, ideals and identities are taken to be appropriate for various groups of people. Through outlining a picture of moral practice, at both the individual and the societal levels, the book seeks to orient moral philosophy away from metaethical questions of realism and towards moral methodology"--. (shrink)

In these essays, distinguished philosopher Philip Kitcher argues for a reconstruction of philosophy along the lines of classical Pragmatism.

Published in 1913, Thomas Mann's _Death in Venic_e is one of the most widely read novellas in any language. In the 1970s, Benjamin Britten adapted it into an opera, and Luchino Visconti turned it into a successful film. Reading these works from a philosophical perspective, Philip Kitcher connects the predicament of the novella's central character to Western thought's most compelling questions. In Mann's story, the author Gustav von Aschenbach becomes captivated by an adolescent boy, first seen on the (...) lido in Venice, the eventual site of Aschenbach's own death. Mann works through central concerns about how to live, explored with equal intensity by his German predecessors, Schopenhauer and Nietzsche. Kitcher considers how Mann's, Britten's, and Visconti's treatments illuminate the tension between social and ethical values and an artist's sensitivity to beauty. Each work asks whether a life devoted to self-sacrifice in the pursuit of lasting achievements can be sustained and whether the breakdown of discipline undercuts its worth. Haunted by the prospect of his death, Aschenbach also helps us reflect on whether it is possible to achieve anything in full awareness of our finitude and in knowing our successes are always incomplete. (shrink)

Perhaps, the best way to approach a book with as broad a scope and as great an ambition as Philip Kitcher’s The Advancement of Science is to think about its main goal. What vision is it trying to convey? Is it a worthy vision? Later one can ask how well it was done.

Claims that science should be more democratic than it is frequently arouse opposition. In this essay, I distinguish my own views about the democratization of science from the more ambitious theses defended by Paul Feyerabend. I argue that it is unlikely that the complexity of some scientific debates will allow for resolution according to the methodological principles of any formal confirmation theory, suggesting instead that major revolutions rest on conflicts of values. Yet these conflicts should not be dismissed as irresoluble.

Coauthored by Philip Kitcher, deals critically with the view – whose most influential proponent is Bas van Fraassen – that the traditional problems of scientific explanation can be resolved by means of pragmatic considerations alone. This approach, elaborated in 1980 in The Scientific Image, has found much favor among philosophers of science. As this chapter reveals, however, the traditional problems do not disappear when the resources of pragmatics are brought to bear. The authors show that if van Fraassen (...) introduces constraints that allow him to avoid the “anything goes” theory of explanation, then he must face what he would regard as the unacceptable supposition that there is an objective virtue of theories distinct from their saving of the phenomena. (shrink)

A landmark work of environmental philosophy that seeks to transform the debate about climate change. As the icecaps melt and the sea levels rise around the globe—threatening human existence as we know it—climate change has become one of the most urgent and controversial issues of our time. For most people, however, trying to understand the science, politics, and arguments on either side can be dizzying, leading to frustrating and unproductive debates. Now, in this groundbreaking new work, two of our most (...) renowned thinkers present the realities of global warming in the most human of terms—everyday conversation—showing us how to convince even the most stubborn of skeptics as to why we need to act now. Indeed, through compelling Socratic dialogues, Philip Kitcher and Evelyn Fox Keller tackle some of the thorniest questions facing mankind today: Is climate change real? Is climate change as urgent as the “scientists” make it out to be? How much of our current way of life should we sacrifice to help out a generation that won’t even be born for another hundred years? Who would pay for the enormous costs of making the planet "green?" What sort of global political arrangement would be needed for serious action? These crucial questions play out through familiar circumstances, from an older husband and wife considering whether they should reduce their carbon footprint, to a first date that evolves into a passionate discussion about whether one person can actually make a difference, to a breakfast that becomes an examination over whether or not global warming is really happening. Entertaining, widely accessible, and thoroughly original, the result promises to inspire dialogue in many places, while also giving us a line of reasoning that explodes the so-far impenetrable barriers of obfuscation that have surrounded the discussion. While the Paris Agreement was an historic achievement that brought solutions within the realm of possibility, The Seasons Alter is a watershed book that will show us how to make those possibilities a reality. (shrink)

Introduction -- Part 1. Overload -- Individuality -- Fulfillment -- Citizens -- Moral Development -- A Role for Religion? -- Part 2. The Natural Sciences -- The Arts -- Understanding Ourselves -- Part 3. Social Change -- Utopia?

In “Scientific Knowledge,” Philip Kitcher challenges arguments that deny the truth of the theoretical claims of science, and he attempts to discover reasons for endorsing the truth of such claims. He suggests that the discovery of such reasons might succeed if we ask why anyone thinks that the theoretical claims we accept are true and then look for answers that reconstruct actual belief‐generating processes. To this end, Kitcher presents the “homely argument” for scientific truth, which claims that (...) when a field of science is continually applied to yield precise predictions, then it is at least approximately true. He defends this approach and offers a supplementary account that gives more attention to detail. This account includes a historical aspect that must answer to skeptical challenges and a social aspect. (shrink)

Claims that science should be more democratic than it is frequently arouse opposition. In this essay, I distinguish my own views about the democratization of science from the more ambitious theses defended by Paul Feyerabend. I argue that it is unlikely that the complexity of some scientific debates will allow for resolution according to the methodological principles of any formal confirmation theory, suggesting instead that major revolutions rest on conflicts of values. Yet these conflicts should not be dismissed as irresoluble.

Ulysses is a famously difficult book. Philosophy is well-known as an abstruse subject. Yet thinking about Joyce's great novel in philosophical ways not only provides new approaches for seasoned Joyceans, but also orientation for those perplexed by Ulysses. Six eminent scholars, philosophers, and literary critics combine philosophical and literary analysis to present accessible and fresh perspectives on one of the world's literary masterpieces.