James Robert Brown

The Natural philosophy of Leibniz

Introduction: The Natural Philosophy of Leibniz.- The Problem of Indiscernibles in Leibnizs 1671 Mechanics.- Leibniz and the Foundations of Physics: The Middle Years.- Why Motion is Only a Well-Founded Phenomenon.- Monadic Relations.- Miracles and Laws.- The Status of Scientific Laws in the Leibnizian System.- Leibniz on the Side of the Angels.- Leibniz and Kant on Mathematical and Philosophical Knowledge.- Leibnizs Theory of Time.- Leibniz and Scientific Realism.

Peeking into Plato’s Heaven

Examples of classic thought experiments are presented and some morals drawn. The views of my fellow symposiasts, Tamar Gendler, John Norton, and James McAllister, are evaluated. An account of thought experiments along a priori and Platonistic lines is given. I also cite the related example of proving theorems in mathematics with pictures and diagrams. To illustrate the power of these methods, a possible refutation of the continuum hypothesis using a thought experiment is sketched.

Politics, Method, and Medical Research

There is sufficient evidence that intellectual property rights are corrupting medical research. One could respond to this from a moral or from an epistemic point of view. I take the latter route. Often in the sciences factual discoveries lead to new methodological norms. Medical research is an example. Surprisingly, the methodological change required will involve political change. Instead of new regulations aimed at controlling the problem, the outright socialization of research seems called for, for the sake of better science. I appeal to an analogy between socialized medicine and socialized research.

What is a Definition

According to the standard view of definition, all defined terms are mere stipulations, based on a small set of primitive terms. After a brief review of the Hilbert-Frege debate, this paper goes on to challenge the standard view in a number of ways. Examples from graph theory, for example, suggest that some key definitions stem from the way graphs are presented diagramatically and do not fit the standard view. Lakatoss account is also discussed, since he provides further examples that suggest many definitions are much more than mere convenient abbreviations.

π in the Sky

Platonism, according to one unsympathetic commentator, “assimilates mathematical enquiry to the investigations of the astronomer: mathematical structures, like galaxies, exist, independently of us, in a realm of reality which we do not inhabit but which those of us who have the skill are capable of observing and reporting on.”1 I will call this the “π in the sky” view of mathematics, but not scornfully—though perhaps with touch of self-mockery—since I think it is true. Mathematics, I shall argue, is best accounted for by appeal to real platonic entities; not only do they provide the grounds for mathematical truth, but these abstract objects are also somehow or other responsible for our mathematical intuitions and insights.

Medical Market Failures and Their Remedy

There is a general consensus that market-based medical research has failed in some places, in particular, in diseases of the poor and in diseases that afflict very small numbers of people. With no profits to be made, there is no motivation for research. These are known as market failures. Advanced Market Commitments (AMCs) have been proposed as ways of coping with the former. Governments and other public agencies provide prize money and reward anyone who finds, say, a vaccine for pneumococcal disease. Similar government stimulus is called for to address the problems of so-called orphan diseases. These proposals will, if carried through, improve the current state of medical research and delivery, but they still far short on several key points. The problems are discussed and a proposal to socialize all medical research and remove intellectual property rights is explained and defended.

Introduction: The Sociological Turn

The problem we are concerned with here is just this: How should we understand science? Are we to account for scientific knowledge1 by appeal to the various social factors which may have been prevalent when the theory was being formulated? Should we, that is, appeal to the “interests” which a group of scientists may have had? Undoubtedly, social factors play some role, but are social causes totally responsible for the production of belief? Or should we take a different approach and account for scientific knowledge in a fashion which largely mirrors the very accounts that rational scientists themselves would have given to justify their theory choices? Perhaps we should be citing the “evidence” for the belief in question; perhaps we should be providing “good reasons” as part of the explanation for holding the belief. Which approach to understanding science is right?

Academic Freedom, Affirmative Action, and the Advance of Knowledge

It’s a great irony that political correctness ‐ an expression coined by feminists to poke gentle fun at themselves ‐ has become a term of abuse. Speech codes, for example, are often ridiculed as the product of political correctness and dismissed on that very ground. Affirmative action policies are also everywhere under attack, and similarly rejected for the f limsiest reasons. When arguments are given at all, they usually appeal to academic freedom or excellence, notions which are taken to be as obviously virtuous and unproble matic as political correctness is taken to be obviously silly or pernicious. But just what are they? It may turn out that on close inspection, academic freedom and excellence require something like speech codes and hiring quotas. There are several senses of academic freedom. The one which is perhaps primary (because it gives rise to the rest) has to do with the autonomy of the university ‐ we govern ourselves. Of course, we cannot overturn our teaching and research mandate (say, in favour of running a giant casino), but it is our decision how to best carry our mandate out. At least, it ought to be our decision, though our autonomy has become increasingly undermined by corporate funding, by calls to make education “relevant to the market,” and by so-called “targeted research.” Of course, this is nothing new; it is a constant struggle to keep these forces at bay. In so far as the struggle has been su ccessful, we (the university community) do indeed govern ourselves. And in exercising our power we grant certain rights to ourselves. For instance, we choose to spend some of our money on a library and we grant the right to borrow books to the professors and the students. Is this some sort of absolute right? Obviously not. Rather, it is a case of the university’s goals ‐ the acquisition and transmission of knowledge ‐ being best promoted by conventionally bestowing library rights on certain individuals.

Learning from the Past

Here is a big fact: Scientists are good at doing science. It seems a platitude, yet there are those, such as David Bloor, who would deny it.1 On the other hand, most people, including most philosophers, would agree that scientists are good at doing science; nevertheless, these same philosophers don’t seem to think this fact is in any way interesting or important. But it is. There are few facts in philosophy; let’s not let this one slip through our fingers.

Postmodernism and Science Education: An Appraisal

Over the past 50 years, postmodernism has been a progressively growing and influential intellectual movement inside and outside the academy. Postmodernism is characterised by rejection of parts or the whole of the Enlightenment project that had its roots in the birth and embrace of early modern science. While Enlightenment and ‘modernist’ ideas of universalism, of intellectual and cultural progress, of the possibility of finding truths about the natural and social world and of rejection of absolutism and authoritarianism in politics, philosophy and religion were first opposed at their birth in the eighteenth century, contemporary postmodernism sometimes appeals to (and sometimes disdains) philosophy of science in support of its rejection of modernism and the enlightenment programme.