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TJ Perkins

@teejperk.bsky.social

Ph.D. Philosophy https://tjperkins09.wixsite.com/tjperkins

6 Posts112 Follower196 Folgt
David Colaço@davidcolaco.bsky.social · 3d ago

The syllabus for my course Philosophy of Scientific Communication is now available here. Please share to anyone who might be interested in teaching a course like this (and kindly give me an acknowledgment if you use it): drive.google.com/file/d/1LDKY...

Colaco Philosophy of Scientific Communication Syllabus.pdf

drive.google.com

David Colaço@davidcolaco.bsky.social · 4mo ago

Several people seemed interested in my Philosophy of Scientific Communication course, so here is my schedule of readings. Thanks to everyone for their help; I hope to get to additional topics mentioned using these as the anchors:

Asheesh Kapur Siddique@asheeshks.org · last wk.

JM Coetzee has a wonderful essay about the meaning of the "classic" that ends as follows. Possibly one downstream effect of the defunding of the humanities is that people have forgotten the function of criticism: www.scribd.com/document/814...:

Screenshot of the last two paragraphs of JM Coetzee's essay "What Is a Classic?" The screenshotted text reads: "So we arrive at a certain paradox. The classic defines itself by surviving. Therefore the interrogation of the classic, no matter how hostile, is part of the history of the classic, inevitable and even to be welcomed. For as long as the classic needs to be protected from attack, it can never prove itself classic. One might even venture further along this road that the function of criticism is defined by the classic: criticism is that which is duty-bound to interrogate the classic. Thus the fear that the classic will not survive the recentering acts of criticism may be turned on its head: rather than being the foe of the classic, criticism, and indeed criticism of the most skeptical kind, may be what the classic uses to define itself and ensure its survival. Criticism may in that sense be one of the instruments of the cunning of history."
EMILY WILSON@emilyrcwilson.bsky.social · last wk.

The oddest thing about the response to this essay is people who say it’s “personal”. You can disagree about some or all of it! I may well be wrong! But it’s not “personal” to analyze a film or other work of art, even negatively. Criticism is more than “Hurray!” or “Hiss!”

Rob Sheridan@rob-sheridan.com · 2w ago

MULDER [slapping down plane tix]: Hope you packed your rain coat, Scully. SCULLY: Seattle? Mulder it's the weekend, what- MULDER [handing her a file] Confirmed sightings, Scully. This is big SCULLY [eyes wide]: My God Mulder, what am I looking at here? MULDER: The locals are calling it.. JIMOTHY

Democracy Now!@democracynow.org · 2w ago

Nearly a thousand active wildfires continue to rage in Canada. Independent Canadian journalist Rachel Gilmore says Liberal Prime Minister Mark Carney’s policies do little to mitigate the climate crisis as he approves new oil pipelines that would operate for decades.

Nearly 1,000 Wildfires in Canada Continue to Burn as Trump & Carney Double Down on Fossil Fuels

Millions of people across North America have experienced hazardous air pollution this month as nearly a thousand active wildfires continue to rage in Canada. In addition to releasing hazardous chemica...

democracynow.org

Dr Alex Fitzpatrick@animalarchaeology.com · 2w ago

🏺 Today’s repost from the blog archives is this piece I wrote on the importance of making histories of caring for others more visible in the archaeological record. animalarchaeology.com/2021/11/09/t...

The Radical Potential of Making an Archaeology of Care Visible

What is “an archaeology of care”? Well, it can mean a few things. It has been used, for example, to describe a form of archaeological practice developed by Caraher and Rothaus (2017) in…

animalarchaeology.com

Steve Brusatte@stevebrusatte.bsky.social · 3w ago

Gus the T. rex fetched $50.1 million at auction, a new record price for a dinosaur If this is how much dinosaurs cost now, how can museums afford them? Where does that leave science & education? Will the public still have opportunities to be inspired? www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...

T rex fossil ‘Gus’ sells for $50.1m at New York auction, setting new record

Skeleton judged to be one of the largest and most complete ever unearthed was excavated on a ranch in South Dakota

theguardian.com

Mel Andrews@bayesianboy.bsky.social · last mo.

As philosophy rushes to claim expertise on AI, AI companies rush to control the philosophical narrative. Unlike other disciplines, philosophy has no standards for reporting conflicts of interest. This petition endeavors to change that: docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

Open Letter about Industry Funding and Disclosure in Philosophy

*For full list of signatories, updated every few hours, please click here.* In recent years, philosophical writing on areas such as climate change, technology, misinformation, and artificial intellige...

docs.google.com

Mel Andrews@bayesianboy.bsky.social · 2mo ago

When utilized in literature review, LLMs consistently 1. fail to mention female authors in female-led literatures, 2. insist that men are more influential or more heavily cited when this is contradicted by objective citation counts, and 3. attribute women’s work to hallucinated male scholars.

Matt Haber@profmatthaber.bsky.social · 2mo ago

"A Conventional View" is now online at B&P. We describe how pragmatic conventions help retain the utility of scientific tools when they outrun their theoretical and conceptual justifications, by unpacking what it means to treat higher taxonomic ranks as 'mere conventions'. doi.org/10.1007/s105...

A conventional view - Biology & Philosophy

A widely held view in biology is that higher Linnaean categories or ranks (genera, families, etc.) ought to be regarded as ‘mere conventions’. That is typically understood to mean that their utility and application stem from (relatively) recent conventions that have been adopted for their usage in biological classification. There are no underlying theories or robust ontological concepts of these higher ranks, in contrast to taxonomic groupings like species or populations (disputed as those underlying concepts or theories may be). Absent these conventions, the application of higher ranks are in important ways arbitrary, reflecting their lack of theoretical and conceptual grounding. Indeed, some taxonomists have argued that this lack of grounding justifies adopting rank-free taxonomies. Michael Devitt (2023a) challenges this entrenched view, calling it an exaggerated skepticism. Instead, he takes the continued use of higher Linnaean ranks as evidence that they reflect “minimal category concepts,” which do genuine theoretical and explanatory work by marking out a relative level of taxonomic hierarchy. We disagree. Here, we unpack what it means to treat Linnaean categories as mere conventions, arguing they are better understood as informational proxies for phylogenetic hierarchies. Yet, Devitt is right to focus on this case, as it provides an exemplar of how scientists retain the utility of scientific practices that outlive their underlying initial theoretical and conceptual justification. We conclude by offering an alternative explanation for this in the context of a pragmatic account of science that treats Linnaean classification as a biological formalization.

doi.org

@lastpositivist.bsky.social · 2mo ago

As I suppose is not surprising if one has followed me, I am massively pro-self-promotion for people's work. If you don't think your work is worth other people seeing it then don't do it. On the flipside if it was worth doing then it is worth trying to get people to read. So: if it exists promote it.

NERV IRB Coordinator@professormusgrave.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Yes, self promotion sucks, academics, but if you don’t do it nobody will find out about your work. The point is to publish and be read, not publish and hope you are discovered by fate, lifted out of a humble and pure obscurity so that you may be both famous and retiring

Derek D. Turner@wiserthanddt.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Excited to visit Ostrava for this upcoming conference! (Philosophers working on issues in the historical sciences might consider submitting.) #philsci

Centre for the Philosophy of Historiography@centrephilohistory.bsky.social · 2mo ago

There's now also a poster for our November conference Learning from History: The Philosophies of Historiography and the Historical Sciences. The submission deadline is in the end of August. Please spread the word, and come to Ostrava to discuss the historical sciences and their philosophy with us!