Moti Mizrahi – What is the Basic Unit of Progress? A Corpus-Based Approach

Le département de philosophie de l’UQAM a le plaisir d’accueillir le professeur Moti Mizrahi (Florida Institute of Technology) qui présentera une conférence intitulée « What is the Basic Unit of Progress? A Corpus-Based Approach ».

Date : Vendredi 24 mars, de 15h à 17h

Lieu : salle W-5215 de l’UQAM

Résumé: What is the basic unit of progress in science? According to the semantic account of scientific progress, it is truth. On this view, science makes progress by approximating to the truth. According to the epistemic account of scientific progress, it is knowledge. On this view, science makes progress by accumulating knowledge. According to the noetic account of scientific progress, it is understanding. On this view, science makes progress by increasing understanding. And according to the problem-solving account of scientific progress, it is a solution to a scientific problem. On this view, science makes progress by solving scientific problems. I take an empirical, quantitative, and corpus-based approach to this question. In particular, I use the methods of text mining and analysis to find out whether scientists talk about the aims and/or goals of scientific research in terms of truth, knowledge, understanding, or solutions in their scientific publications. Overall, the results lend some empirical support to the epistemic and noetic accounts over the semantic and problem-solving accounts of scientific progress, for they suggest that scientists use the terms ‘knowledge’ and ‘understanding’ significantly more often than the terms ‘truth’ and ‘solution’ when they talk about the aims and/or goals of scientific research in their published works (although mathematics is an interesting exception). I then use the same methods to find out what is the basic unit of progress in academic philosophy.

Bio: Moti Mizrahi is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at the Florida Institute of Technology. His books include For and Against Scientism: Science, Methodology, and the Future of Philosophy (2022), The Relativity of Theory: Key Positions and Arguments in the Contemporary Scientific Realism/Antirealism Debate (2020), and The Kuhnian Image of Science: Time for a Decisive Transformation? (2018). He has published numerous articles in peer-reviewed journals such as Argumentation, British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, Erkenntnis, Philosophical Studies, Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, and Synthese. A major theme in his work has been the application of digital, statistical, and data-driven methods to problems concerning moral, philosophical, and scientific reasoning.

Pour plus d’informations, veuillez SVP contacter Mauro Rossi (UQAM) à rossi.mauro@uqam.ca.

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