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STS Research Seminar: Retooling the Epistemology of Measurement

20 October 2021, 4:30 pm–6:00 pm

Join this STS Research Seminar with Kareem Khalifa (Middlebury)

This event is free.

Event Information

Open to

UCL staff | UCL students

Availability

Yes

Cost

Free

Organiser

Department of Science and Technology Studies

Retooling the Epistemology of Measurement 

Recent philosophical work on measurement has had a decidedly coherentist orientation. Using the measurement of mouse aggression as an illustration, we present two foundationalist concepts that also play a role in the epistemology of measurement. The first, reliable perceptual foundations, plays its most prominent role when scientific measurement is in its early stages, and addresses an important conceptual gap in “epistemic iteration,” the diachronic process of incrementally improving measurement procedures. The second, functional foundations, are the default assumptions that one scientific field may enjoy in virtue of “epistemically outsourcing” their justification to another field. Functional foundations highlight important social-epistemological dimensions of the calibration process. While foundationalism and coherentism have traditionally been treated as competing epistemological positions, our integrated or “mosaic” account of metrological justification entails that coherence, reliable perceptual foundations, and functional foundations work in concert.  (In collaboration with Sandy Goldberg, Northwestern University)

About the Speaker

Kareem Khalifa

Professor of Philosophy at Middlebury College, Vermont

More about Kareem Khalifa