Dear all, Please join us for the CamPoS (Cambridge Philosophy of Science) seminar
Wednesday 25th February 1-2:30pm in the Deptartment of History and Philosophy of Science, Seminar Room 2 (Basement). Anna Alexandrova (Cambridge) will give a talk entitled "When Measurement is Theory-Avoidant" (Joint work with Daniel Haybron). The abstract is below. Best wishes, Christopher Abstract: Abstract: If all theories of measurement agree on a single requirement it is that a measure of a phenomenon should be informed by our best theory of this phenomenon. But what is the relevant theory when the phenomenon is well-being, or indeed any other picked out by a thick concept? On the current practice, measures of well-being are validated by checking the psychometric properties of the questionnaires, whether the results correlate well with other factors known to be relevant to well-being and whether they accord reasonably with subjects’ own understanding of what well-being is. Importantly, these measures are not checked against any robust normative theory of well-being. To anyone who takes well-being to be a value this status quo looks wrong. Indeed it looks like avoidance of relevant theory. Yet bringing in constraints on measures of well-being from philosophy raises worries: who are philosophers to tell people what their well-being is, and to tell scientists how to measure it? In this talk we first present a coherentist interpretation of the current validation procedures and, second, raise the theory-avoidance objection. Finally wereflect on how to strike the right balance between, on the one hand, acting like a philosopher-kings and, on the other, treating the scientific process uncritically. _____________________________________________________ To unsubscribe from the CamPhilEvents mailing list, or change your membership options, please visit the list information page: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEvents List archive: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEventsArchive Please note that CamPhilEvents doesn't accept email attachments. See the list information page for further details and suggested alternatives.
