Helen Longino - US grants

Gender issues relate very directly to the participation of women in science and to issues concerning the nature of modern science and technology. Prominent scholars have individually investigated and analyzed both phenomena in recent years, but there have been no opportunities for those historians, philosophers, sociologists, and anthropologists currently pursuing the social and humanistic studies of women and science, engineering, and mathematics to meet and discuss their theories and results. Dr. Sally Gregory Kohlstedt, a historian, and Dr. Helen Longino, a philosopher, are holding a workshop to bring together such researchers with the goal of improving the conversation, finding areas of agreement and contention, and publishing a result of their deliberations. The subsequent conference will allow other scholars an opportunity to present papers on related topics and a much larger audience to consider the issues and discuss the implications of research on "The Women and Science Question." The workshop and conference are being held May 10-13, 1995 at the University of Minnesota.

Contemporary public discussion of the sciences oscillates between uncritical adulation and sweeping rejection. Neither of these attitudes is appropriate for societies such as ours, which are profoundly affected by the sciences' intellectual development and technological achievements. Scholars in the social and cultural studies of science, the latest to mediate between science and society, have argued that the sciences are permeated and significantly shaped by social and cultural interests. They further argue that philosophical conceptions of reasoning and observation have no bearing on understanding scientific practice. Such arguments leave nonscientists unable to differentiate between competent and incompetent, credible and disputable, science. The PI rejects the dichotomy between the social and the cognitive that underlies both social constructivists and their philosophical opponents. Instead, she develops an analysis of scientific inquiry that both acknowledges the social dimensions of inquiry and keeps room for the normative and prescriptive concerns that have been the traditional preoccupation of philosophers. Her work will proceed through a detailed analysis of scientific papers in two areas of research, leading to a book that will examine the consequences of controversy and disunity in science for our conception of the nature of scientific inquiry.

Project Abstract
SES Proposal 0135682
Scientific Pluralism, A Workshop to be held at the University of Minnesota Oct. 10-13, 2002
C. K. Waters, University of Minnesota


This project supports a small interdisciplinary workshop entitled "Scientific Pluralism" at the University of Minnesota, October 10 - 13, 2002. The Principal Investigators are bringing together leading philosophers of science and scientists who have independently advanced views consistent with the idea that some natural phenomena cannot be fully explained by a single theory or fully investigated using a single approach. The aim of the workshop is to develop an understanding of the various forms of pluralism being advanced and to explore their philosophical implications. The goal is to determine whether a consistent philosophical account of scientific pluralism can be developed that goes beyond the mere rejection of the unity of science doctrine. This workshop brings together philosophers who have advanced pluralist solutions to puzzles encountered in their analysis of science with practicing scientists. The philosophers and scientists participating in the meeting represent a broad range of sciences including physics and mathematics, biology, and social and behavioral science. Philosophical participants are focusing their research and workshop presentations on detailed case studies that warrant pluralist interpretations. Workshop discussion includes scientists' commentaries on the detailed case studies and general discussions on the broad philosophical implications of the presented works. The Principal Investigators plan to publish results of the workshop in a volume of "Minnesota Studies in Philosophy of Science."

The project has two dimensions: a comparative epistemological analysis of four approaches in the sciences of human behavior and an analysis of the social and cultural implications of the work. The point of the epistemological analysis is to understand the kinds of knowledge of human behavior afforded by these approaches by analyzing their methods and presuppositions of inquiry. The point of the socio-cultural analysis is to understand the ways in which the scientific research is responsive to social and cultural preoccupations in the larger context and the ways in which the research is taken up in that context. The study focuses on research directed at understanding the proximate causes of individual behavior and on biological approaches or approaches that are typically contrasted or seen as in competition with biological research. Thus, this study surveys 1) behavior genetics (both classical and molecular), 2) behavioral anatomy and physiology, 3) developmental psychology, and 4) developmental and dynamic systems theories. These are the approaches most closely engaged in contemporary versions of the nature/nurture debate.

In addition to identifying immediate social concerns implicated in this research, the study will examine how general philosophical concepts of human behavior and action are reinforced or undermined by scientific research. The empirical studies analyzed address aggression and sexual orientation. In the previous, epistemological, phase of the study, the investigator developed an analytic matrix to tabulate characteristic questions, investigative methodologies, and assumptions characterizing the different approaches. This enabled her to characterize the ways central behavioral concepts are operationalized, the different questions the approaches (can) investigate, the methods and data characteristic of each approach, the distinctive and shared assumptions that support interpretations of the data. The social and cultural analysis she plans to undertake in the second phase, consists of studying explicit and implicit valuations of the behavior and the philosophical concepts of human action and volition embedded in the research. These can be found in summations and review articles that indicate the perceived significance of the work and the presentation of behaviors as targets of control or encouragement. They are also discernable in choice of journals in which to publish and the institutions funding the work. By looking both at how the researchers represent their research to a larger public and how it is taken up, the investigator will identify 1) the social interests served by the kind of knowledge sought in the research and 2) the more general conceptions of human action and responsibility that are implied in particular ways of thinking about the behaviors studied.

A central hypothesis of this study is that the salience and the fascination of the nature-nurture debate in connection with behaviors such as those whose investigation it follows keeps attention on the etiology of individual behavior rather than on the phenomena conceived in ways that might different policy implications. This hypothesis will be investigated by examining 1) the continuity of conceptions of behavior through different discursive contexts and 2) how controversies concerning the empirical study of human behavior are represented in those contexts. By then attending to and evaluating the representations of the policy implications articulated by the authors whose work is examined, the author will bring the results of this study to bear on social and political questions concerning behavioral research.

Discordant Models of Testosterone Function

The project will study two opposing models of the nature and function of testosterone from two scientific fields (endocrinology and human performance physiology). According to the first, testosterone is thought to drop in response to training, differ sharply in levels between men and women, and to be the chief ingredient in performance; in the other, testosterone is thought to sharply rise in response to interventions, to produce highly variable effects, and to be an inadequate predictor of performance. New 'hyperandrogenism' rules draw on the first model only, though that model might not be the most relevant for the scientific questions involved.

The research is likely to contribute not only to academic debates but also influence how the public thinks about these issues, as well as help to shape organizational policies. In addition, two graduate students will be trained in qualitative data analysis.

General Audience Summary

This Postdoctoral Fellowship supports a research project focused on philosophical questions associated with neuroimaging technologies. The specific questions to be addressed include the following. How are new technologies for sharing, organizing, and analyzing data and theories changing the norms of evidence in neuroimaging research? How are these technologies bringing research communities, theories, data, and analysis techniques together in novel ways? What role do different data analysis techniques play in using data as evidence for claims about phenomena it was not produced to investigate? How does the use of new technologies change the way cognitive scientists interpret their data? The postdoctoral fellow will engage in participatory experience in the practice of neuroscience to obtain valuable insight into the use and structure of these technologies, which will then be used to address these philosophical questions. More specifically, the fellow will be situated in a neuroscience lab that uses and develops tools such as the Cognitive Atlas, a community driven-knowledge base, and OpenfMRI, a database of minimally processed neuroimaging data. The postdoc will contribute to ongoing research using these tools. He will gain participatory experience regarding their use and development, and while doing so engage in philosophical analysis to addresses his questions. The analysis will in turn serve to enhance the use and development of these technologies, as well as the practice of neuroscience. By situating the fellow, a philosopher of science, within the active community of cognitive neuroscientists, the project will provide members of that community with cross-disciplinary expertise. More broadly, the project will demonstrate the value of engaged philosophy of neuroscience for both advancing the practice of neuroscience, and improving the richness and quality of philosophical analyses that take neuroscience to be its subject.

Technical Summary

The proposed research project is focused on addressing philosophical issues in the epistemology of science, by approaching them from the perspective of the practices that give rise these issues. Over the last decade, neuroimaging research has involved new technologies and tools for sharing, organizing, and analyzing data and theories. This has gone hand in hand with two movements in cognitive neuroscience. The first is the growing pressure to make research practices reproducible and transparent, with the aim of improving the standards of evidence and quality of research. The second is the realization that newly developed analysis techniques that could be used to investigate hypotheses and theories previously beyond the scope of available evidence require large collections of organized and annotated data to produce meaningful results. The proposed project involves simultaneously engaging in the practice of using these technologies and studying how they are changing the evidential and theoretical landscape of cognitive neuroscience. The research fellow will use philosophical concepts to evaluate the strength of scientific inferences and to identify assumptions implicit in aspects of the technology. For example, he will explore the relations between concepts allowed by the Cognitive Atlas or its use, such as the decisions that are made during the analysis of data. This application of philosophical frameworks will also provide feedback on their descriptive and normative adequacy. In this way, this project will contribute to philosophical discussions about the epistemology of data-intensive science and neuroscience, and bring insight from those contributions to bear on the use and development of technologies (such as the Cognitive Atlas).