Matthew J. Brown
I am a Professor of Philosophy and the Jo Ann & Donald N. Boydston Chair of American Philosophy at Southern Illinois University (Carbondale); I am also the Director of the Center for Dewey Studies, which focuses both on the study of John Dewey’s life and works as well as carrying on the living legacy of John Dewey.
I received my Ph.D. in Philosophy in Spring 2009 at the University of California, San Diego. From 2009-2022, I taught at the University of Texas at Dallas, in philosophy, history, history of ideas, humanities, cognitive science, and emerging media and communication.
The main areas of my research and teaching are the history of philosophy, history and philosophy of science, and cognitive science. In the history of philosophy, I focus on the 19th and 20th centuries, particularly on the history and legacy of John Dewey and American pragmatism, as well as the history of philosophy of science. I also work on topics in history and philosophy of science including the role of values in science and engineering, the role and authority of science in politics and policymaking, feminist science, scientific evidence, models, objectivity, the social structure of science, climate science, the history of psychology and cognitive science, and the interpretation of quantum mechanics. Finally, I am interested in contemporary theory and methods in cognitive science, particularly related to the emergence of theories of cognition called social, distributed, extended, etc. I conduct research using the methods of cognitive ethnography, especially to the study of laboratory research and education in science and engineering. I am also broadly interested in issues in the theoretical or philosophical foundations of psychology and cognitive science. I also do research and teach in the field of comics studies.
Supervisors: Paul Churchland and Nancy Cartwright
I received my Ph.D. in Philosophy in Spring 2009 at the University of California, San Diego. From 2009-2022, I taught at the University of Texas at Dallas, in philosophy, history, history of ideas, humanities, cognitive science, and emerging media and communication.
The main areas of my research and teaching are the history of philosophy, history and philosophy of science, and cognitive science. In the history of philosophy, I focus on the 19th and 20th centuries, particularly on the history and legacy of John Dewey and American pragmatism, as well as the history of philosophy of science. I also work on topics in history and philosophy of science including the role of values in science and engineering, the role and authority of science in politics and policymaking, feminist science, scientific evidence, models, objectivity, the social structure of science, climate science, the history of psychology and cognitive science, and the interpretation of quantum mechanics. Finally, I am interested in contemporary theory and methods in cognitive science, particularly related to the emergence of theories of cognition called social, distributed, extended, etc. I conduct research using the methods of cognitive ethnography, especially to the study of laboratory research and education in science and engineering. I am also broadly interested in issues in the theoretical or philosophical foundations of psychology and cognitive science. I also do research and teach in the field of comics studies.
Supervisors: Paul Churchland and Nancy Cartwright
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This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 1338735.
This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 1338735.
Though his is the road less traveled, Dewey's views provide a good starting place for addressing current concerns. He worked towards a model of science that is both fully naturalistic and fundamentally oriented towards human practice, demands that have been strongly argued for but poorly assimilated by most mainstream philosophers of science. He treats scientific practice, and human thinking generally, as not only embodied but also socially and technologically embedded, and thus can be used to open up a dialogue with much of the social studies of science. He has an anti-foundationalist but structured epistemology, and he offers a way to navigate the narrow paths between an immodest and simplistic realism and the pessimistic extremes of anti-realism and social constructivism, a pursuit of interest to many major philosophers of science at present. Philosophy of science took a different path in the twentieth century, beginning with the ``received view'' of logical positivism that left many of the nuances of the original movement by the wayside. No aspect of that starting point has avoided disrepute in recent decades. I show that Dewey avoided the wrong turns of mid-century philosophy of science which are now blocking the way forward.
Many arguments can be given for (1), both epistemic and moral/political; I will focus on an argument based on the role of non-epistemic values in policy-relevant science. I will argue that we must accept (2) as a result of an appraisal of the nature of contemporary political problems. Technocratic systems, however, are subject to serious moral and political objections; these difficulties are sufficiently mitigated by (1). I will set out a framework in which (1) and (2) can be consistently and compellingly combined.