Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-vdxz6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-27T04:40:15.493Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Contemporary Nativism, Scientific Texture, and the Moral Limits of Free Inquiry

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Alberto Cordero
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Some thinkers distrust Darwinist explorations of complex human behaviors, particularly investigations into possible differences in valued skills between genders, races or classes. Such projects, it is claimed, tend to have adverse effects on people who are already disadvantaged. A recent argument by Philip Kitcher both clarifies and generalizes this charge to cover a wider genre of scientific projects. In this paper I try to spell out and analyze Kitcher's argument. The argument fails, I suggest, because some of its key premises fail to convince. My analysis focuses on relevant facts about the role of inquiry in fallibilist contexts, the texture of belief in contemporary natural science, and the moral dimension of scientific research.

Type
Race and Science
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 72 , Issue 5: Proceedings of the 2004 Biennial Meeting of The Philosophy of Science Association. Part I: Contributed Papers , December 2005 , pp. 1220 - 1231
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Dennett, Daniel (1995), Darwin’s Dangerous Idea. New York: Simon and Schuster.Google Scholar
Gould, Stephen J. ([1980] 1989), “Sociobiology and the Theory of Natural Selection”. Reprint in Michel Ruse (ed.), Philosophy of Biology. London: Macmillan, 253–263.Google Scholar
Gould, Stephen J. (1981), The Mismeasure of Man. New York: Norton.Google Scholar
Kitcher, Philip (1983), “Believing Where We Cannot Prove”, in Abusing Science: The Case against Creationism. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 30–54.Google Scholar
Kitcher, Philip (1993), The Advancement of Science. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Kitcher, Philip (1997), The Lives to Come. New York: Touchstone.Google Scholar
Kitcher, Philip (2001), Science, Truth, and Democracy. New York: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lewontin, Richard C. (1975), “Genetic Aspects of Intelligence”, Genetic Aspects of Intelligence 9:387–405.Google ScholarPubMed
Richards, Janet R. (2000), Human Nature after Darwin. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Shapere, Dudley (1974), Galileo: A Philosophical Study. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Shapere, Dudley (1991), “The Universe of Modern Science and Its Philosophical Exploration”, in Agazzi, Evandro and Cordero, Alberto (eds.), Philosophy and the Origin and Evolution of the Universe. Dordrecht: Kluwer, 87–202.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sterelny, Kim, and Griffiths, Paul E. (1999), Sex and Death. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar