SCIENCE AND SOCIETY: ADVANCED ISSUES ON CLASSIFICATION AND SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION
PhD level (open for MA students) Instructor: Maria Kronfeldner Winter Term, AY 2022-23
PhD level course (open for MA students) Credit value: 4 credits (8 ECTS credits) Campus: Vienna
Prerequisites: Some background in philosophy of science.
Consultation: After classes, during office hours, or by appointment, see people.ceu.edu/maria_kronfeldner
BRIEF INTRODUCTION:
Science and society are connected. Which influences (should) exist is contested, be it as part of history and philosophy of science, science and technology studies, or science policy.
This course addresses advanced issues about how sciences and societies relate. Each year in which the course will be offered, a new topical focus will be set. After a short recap of basics in history, sociology, and philosophy of science as well as science policy, we will focus on one specific issue, and then broaden our horizon again by applying what we learned to concrete problems or cases, depending on research interests of students.
In the academic year 2022/23, the focus will be on issues surrounding classification and the notion of social construction. We will discuss the different ways of how science and society contribute to the social construction of what philosophers call “kinds”, and what follows from that ontologically and epistemologically. We will start with a recent philosophical monograph in the field – to have a secure and in-depth common background for the course. Students will also have to write a book review on the monograph, thereby having the opportunity to
practice a crucial academic skill. We will then select together a set of special issues, cases, and shorter readings to be discussed. That way the research interests of students (including the questions that arise for students in their own research regarding social construction and classification) can be integrated. The focus in the course will be on the social construction of human kinds (groups of humans), but that does not exclude that other examples of kinds (e.g. chemical kinds) can serve heuristic purposes (e.g., for illustrating the specificity of constructing human kinds).
The monograph we will read in the academic year 2022/23 is M. Godman's The Epistemology and Morality of Human Kinds, Routledge 2021.
The author will join us on Jan 25.
LEARNING OUTCOMES
Students will learn how to ask philosophical questions at an advanced level about a crucial topic for anyone engaged in contemporary natural and social sciences or politics (incl.
science policy and public policy). They will learn and practice how to find further material on their research focus and how to write a book review. As part of that, they will also learn that some problems are interdisciplinary, and how to deal with such a situation.
LEARNING ACTIVITIES AND TEACHING METHODS
After an introductory lecture in the first week, meetings will normally start with a short input from the instructor and then continue with input from students (short presentation), followed
2 by a structured discussion. Blended learning will also be used if possible and if necessary, and there will be a workshop on how to write a book review and one on how to do research in an interdisciplinary field like science studies. To discuss and structure the development of research ideas, we will use triadic feedback groups. If the size of the class requires, we will use fishbowl discussions.
The teaching method aims to foster dynamic learning rather than reproductive learning.
While the latter aims at transmitting know-that regarding pre-set problems, the former aims at teaching know-how. It focuses on problem (re)formulation and novel thinking.
Mandatory readings will be specified for each session and depend in the second part on choices of students. The readings will be rather short, but students need to read and analyze the mandatory material very carefully.
Class attendance is mandatory. Students will have to present course readings, participate in class discussions, and practice their research skills, by presenting research ideas, problems they have, and a draft of their term paper in the last week of the term.
ASSESSMENT:
The final grade is based on - the book review (30%), - the presentations (20%), - the final term paper (50%).
Excellent class participation can contribute up to plus one grade to the combined grade for the book review and the presentation (e.g. from B to B+ etc).
More specific guidelines for class activities and for the term papers, including assessment criteria for the latter, will be made explicit during the course. The assessment criteria will be integrated in the structured discussions in the last two weeks of the course to facilitate reflective engagement with these criteria.
General rules regarding class participation are attached.
COURSE MATERIALS
We will start with M. Godman's The Epistemology and Morality of Human Kinds, Routledge 2021. (full text access, via VPN: https://sierra.ceu.edu/record=b1429635)
Further readings will depend on interests of students and will be decided in wk 4, to work towards the research interests of students.
All readings will be made available on the e-learning (Moodle) platform of the course.
SCHEDULE
1 Wed, Jan 11 Introduction,
Discussion of Chapter 1-2 (pp. 1-20) 2 Wed, Jan 18 Discussion of Chapter 3-5
(pp. 21-69)
3 Wed, Jan 25 Discussion of Chapter 6-8 (pp. 70-101);
Meet the author
4 Wed, Feb 01 Book review workshop;
Specify your focus 5 Wed, Feb 08 Further readings
(2 papers selected together) 6 Wed, Feb 15 Further readings
(2 papers selected together) 7 Wed, Feb 22 Further readings
(2 papers selected together) 8 Wed, Mar 01 Further readings
(2 papers selected together) 9 Wed, Mar 08 Further readings
(2 papers selected together)
10 Wed, Mar 15 Further readings (1 paper selected together);
First discussion of research ideas 11 Wed, Mar 22 Bring a literature report (see handout on
specificities); Workshop on interdisciplinarity 12 Wed, Mar 29 Triadic feedback group on term paper drafts (see
handout on specificities); Trouble shooting
4 REFERENCES
The following list of references does not aim at completeness. Yet, it is indicative of the diversity of approaches available. We included some of the most important authors of the contemporary debate only (roughly from the last 20 years), despite of the deep history of the issues involved, and despite the 20th century history of these debates. In addition, most of the authors mentioned have published more than the listed item. A few paper-length
contributions on specific issues are also listed.
INTRODUCTORY AND HISTORICAL MATERIAL
Bird, A. and Tobin, E. 2018. “Natural kinds.” In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2018 Edition), E. N. Zalta (ed.),
https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2018/entries/natural-kinds/
Mallon, R. 2019. “Naturalistic approaches to social construction.” In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2019 Edition), E. N. Zalta (ed.).,
https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2019/entries/social-construction-naturalistic/
McOuat, G. (2009). The origins of ‘natural kinds’: Keeping ‘essentialism’ at bay in the age of reform. Intellectual History Review, 19(2), 211–230.
Ritvo, H. (1998). The platypus and the mermaid: And other figments of the classifying imagination. Harvard UP.
SOCIOLOGY OF KNOWLEDGE, COGNITIVE ANTHROPOLOGY, AND PHILOSOPHY IN GENERAL (BOOKS)
Bowker, G., & Leigh Star, S. 2000. Sorting things out: Classification and its consequences.
MIT Press.
Ellen, R. F. 2006. The categorical impulse: Essays in the anthropology of classifying behaviour. Berghahn Books.
Hacking, I. 2003. The social construction of what? Harvard UP.
Khalidi, M. A. 2013. Natural categories and human kinds: Classification in the natural and social sciences. Cambridge UP.
LaPorte, J. 2009. Natural kinds and conceptual change. Cambridge UP.
Mallon, R. 2016. The construction of human kinds. Oxford UP.
SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY AND SOCIAL ONTOLOGY (BOOKS)
Ásta. 2019. Categories we live by: The construction of sex, gender, race, and other social categories. Oxford UP.
Drabek, M. L. 2014. Classify and label: The unintended marginalization of social groups.
Lexington Books.
Godman, M. 2021. The epistemology and morality of human kinds. Routledge.
Haslanger, S. A. 2012. Resisting reality: Social construction and social critique. Oxford UP.
Searle, J. R. 2010. Making the social world: The structure of human civilization. Oxford UP.
EXAMPLES FOR PAPERS FOR DISCUSSING SPECIFIC ISSUES.
Beebee, H., & Sabbarton-Leary, N. 2010. Are psychiatric kinds real? European Journal of Analytic Philosophy, 6(1), 11–27.
Burman, Å. 2019. Categories we do not know we live by. Journal of Social Ontology, 5(2), 235–243.
Diaz-Leon, E. 2015. What is social construction? European Journal of Philosophy, 23(4), 1137–1152.
Dupré, J. 2002. Is ‘natural kind’ a natural kind term? The Monist, 85(1), 29–49.
Franklin-Hall, L. R. 2015. Natural kinds as categorical bottlenecks. Philosophical Studies, 172(4), 925–948.
Gannett, L. 2010. Questions asked and unasked: How by worrying less about the `really real’
philosophers of science might better contribute to debates about genetics and race.
Synthese, 177(3), 363–385.
Guala, F. 2014. On the nature of social kinds. In M. Gallotti & J. Michael (Eds.), Perspectives on social ontology and social cognition (pp. 57–68). Springer Netherlands.
Kendler, K. S., Zachar, P., & Craver, C. 2011. What kinds of things are psychiatric disorders?
Psychological Medicine, 41(06), 1143–1150.
Kincaid, H. 2016. Debating the reality of social classes. Philosophy of the Social Sciences, 46(2), 189–209.
Kõiv, R. 2019. Causal social construction. Journal of Social Ontology, 5(1), 77–99.
Laimann, J. 2020. Capricious kinds. The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 71(3), 1043–1068.
Ludwig, D. 2018. Letting go of “natural kind”: Toward a multidimensional framework of nonarbitrary classification. Philosophy of Science, 85(1), 31–52.
Marques, T. 2017. The relevance of causal social construction. Journal of Social Ontology, 3(1), 1–25.
Mason, R. 2021. Social kinds are essentially mind-dependent. Philosophical Studies, 178(12), 3975–3994.
Millikan, R. G. 1999. Historical kinds and the “special sciences.” Philosophical Studies, 95(1–
2), 45–65.
Ritchie, K. 2020. Social structures and the ontology of social groups. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 100(2), 402–424.
Thomasson, A. L. 2003. Realism and human kinds. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 67(3), 580–609.
