Browsing by Author "Parker, Wendy"
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- Data models, representation and adequacy-for-purposeBokulich, Alisa; Parker, Wendy (2021-03)We critically engage two traditional views of scientific data and outline a novel philosophical view that we call the pragmatic-representational (PR) view of data. On the PR view, data are representations that are the product of a process of inquiry, and they should be evaluated in terms of their adequacy or fitness for particular purposes. Some important implications of the PR view for data assessment, related to misrepresentation, context-sensitivity, and complementary use, are highlighted. The PR view provides insight into the common but little-discussed practices of iteratively reusing and repurposing data, which result in many datasets' having a phylogeny-an origin and complex evolutionary history-that is relevant to their evaluation and future use. We relate these insights to the open-data and data-rescue movements, and highlight several future avenues of research that build on the PR view of data.
- Making Change Intelligible: Why The Study of Human Kinds Is Just Science As UsualAli, Mohamed (Virginia Tech, 2023-05-04)This paper challenges the notion that the social sciences require a fundamentally different methodology from the natural sciences due to the interactivity of human kinds. By examining the concept of classificatory looping and its impact on human kinds, the author argues that understanding the causal pathways and utilizing behavioral science can offer reliable generalizations about human kinds. The paper presents examples such as the Buraku of Japan and African Americans to demonstrate how behavioral science can be employed to predict changes in properties of social groups. It posits that the social sciences can operate in a manner similar to the natural sciences by examining generic human tendencies that hold broadly across diverse social contexts. This exploration ultimately supports the unity thesis, emphasizing that social sciences can indeed gain a scientific understanding of human kinds comparable to the knowledge offered by natural sciences.
- Model EvaluationParker, Wendy (Routledge, 2024-09-05)The aim of model evaluation is to learn about the quality of one or more scientific models. Quality may be conceptualized as accurate and comprehensive representation, relevant similarity, fitness-for-purpose, or in some other way. The conception of quality that is adopted carries implications for the practice of model evaluation, including whether it must attend to factors other than model-target relationships. Numerous obstacles and challenges arise in model evaluation, such as limited observations of the target system, model opacity, holism in assessment, and uncertainty about how to quantify model quality. As a consequence, it is sometimes difficult to reach confident conclusions about model quality.
- Structural Injustice and the Responsibilities of the Oppressed: The Case of DenialismStocks, Dane (Virginia Tech, 2022-05-10)Leading accounts of responsibility for structural injustice endorse the idea that all members of an unjust social structure—including those who are oppressed—bear a forward-looking responsibility to help combat structural injustice. Importantly, this idea assumes that all oppressed agents are capable of consciously combating structural injustice. But there exist oppressed agents, which I term 'denialists', who deny the existence of the wrongs that they and other members of their social group(s) experience in virtue of being subject to structural injustice. Initially, it seems doubtful that a denialist can consciously combat structural injustice—what could they possibly do to consciously combat wrongs whose existence they reject? This may lead one to think that a denialist cannot be held responsible for helping combat structural injustice, so that the aforementioned accounts must be revised. In this paper, I show that such revision is not needed. Despite initial appearances, a denialist can be held responsible for helping combat structural injustice. To establish this claim, I first argue that two criteria—feasibleness and plausible effectiveness—jointly generate pro tanto responsibilities to help fix structural injustice for oppressed agents. Then, I argue that these criteria entail that a denialist has a pro tanto responsibility to listen to others' claims of wrongdoing.
- Why Are Some Statistical Generalizations Epistemically Risky?Marley, Maeve (Virginia Tech, 2023-04-20)Moral encroachment theses (MET) operate like pragmatic encroachment theses. When the stakes of belief are high, so are the standards for evidence. This means that evidence which is sufficient in a low stakes-of-belief scenario may be insufficient when the stakes are raised. Simply, METs aim to appeal to the varying moral intuitions that one may have in cases with different moral stakes and build an epistemological difference out of that moral distinction. For example, one might think that in cases of racial profiling, because the moral stakes of belief are high, what would otherwise constitute good evidence for belief is insufficient. However, most METs assume that the probabilistic evidence on which one relies to form their belief is good evidence. Instead of examining the reliability of statistical generalizations, like those used in cases of racial profiling, the moral encroacher focuses on the moral facts of the circumstance of belief formation to explain why the subsequent belief is wrong epistemically. I will focus on Sarah Moss's account because she focuses on cases in which one forms an opinion on the basis of probabilistic evidence. I use Moss's version of the MET as a target to illustrate the challenges METs face in general. Broadly, Moss holds that a judgment's moral risk bears on its epistemic status. In Section 1, I briefly outline Sarah Moss's MET and explain why it fails to identify which cases produce epistemically problematic judgments and fails to explain why those judgments are epistemically problematic. In Section 2, I offer an alternative account, which explains why statistical generalizations about marginalized social groups are likely unreliable as evidence. Thus, use of this kind of evidence leads to epistemically problematic beliefs. I conclude by introducing epistemic risk as an explanation for why the inference made in Shopper is epistemically problematic while the inference made in Fraternity Member is not.
- Why Pluralism About Epistemic Justification is the Worst of Both WorldsHirshland, Samantha Jane (Virginia Tech, 2022-07-08)Epistemologists often debate whether we ought to be internalists or externalists about epistemic justification. Internalists say that whether an agent's belief is justified depends on facts internally accessible to the agent, and externalists deny this. But what if internalists and externalists could both be right? This would be a pluralist view of epistemic justification. You might think that a pluralist view would be plausible because it would allow us to explain why we have different intuitions in different cases, and it would allow us to use different concepts for different purposes. In this paper, I argue the pluralist view has several serious flaws that make it much less plausible than it might initially seem. I show that pluralists run into even worse problems than monists when trying to vindicate intuitions about cases. They also run into problems when trying to specify a singular concept of epistemic justification to use for a certain purpose. It is therefore unclear what reason we would have to adopt a pluralist stance. I conclude that we ought to be monists about epistemic justification.