Philip Kitcher

In his book The Ethical Project, Philip Kitcher (2011) offers a naturalistic account of Ethics, which he dubs Pragmatic Naturalism. Based in evidence from primatology, archeology and anthropology, and some speculation from evolutionary biology, his account is intended to be normative and not merely descriptive, therefore it has to fulfill a challenge posed by Hume (1978) that any normative naturalistic account of ethics has to fulfill: how to bridge the is-ought gap, i.e. how can a prescription of an ethical practice be made from purely descriptive premises. The purpose of this paper is to explore the details of how this challenge could be met using the framework of pragmatic naturalism. My answer will be that pragmatic naturalism is able to give a logically valid argument from ‘is’ to ‘ought’ using descriptive claims and conceptual truths as premises. Its normative force is not delivered as an absolute authority—as some moral realists would like—but that is not a problem for pragmatic naturalism, since it does not have that aim.

In "Science, Truth and Democracy", Kitcher moderates the strongest ontological realist thesis he defended in The Advancement of Science, with the aim of making compatible the correspondence theory of truth with conceptual relativity. However, it is not clear that both things could be harmonized. If our knowledge of the world is mediated by our categories and concepts; if the selection of these categories and concepts may vary according to our interests, and they are not the consequence of the existence of certain supposed natural kinds or some intrinsic structure of the world, it is very problematic to establish what our true statements correspond to. This paper analyzes the transformation in Kitcher’s realism and expounds the main difficulties in this project. Finally, a modality of moderate ontological realism will be proposed that, despite of keeping the sprit of the conceptual relativity, is strong enough to support the correspondence theory of truth.

In this article, I will focus on two lines of discussion: the first is the rise of post-secularist discourses and theories; the second is the frequent (and recent) attenuation of John Dewey's naturalism. If it is important for me to note the curious weakening of his naturalism among many contemporary pragmatists, it is in order to better respond to the theories of the « post-secular society ». By returning to many of Dewey's texts, too often omitted from the discussion for the sole benefit of A Common Faith, I will show that they provide a powerful antidote to contemporary post-secularism, by not ceding on the affirmation of a strong anti-surnaturalism, a guarantee of the realization of the democratic ideal and of the "scientific attitude" promoted by Dewey.

Dans cet article, je noue deux lignes de discussion : la première regarde la montée en puissance des discours et théories post-sécularistes ; la seconde concerne la fréquente (et récente) atténuation du naturalisme de John Dewey. S’il m’importe de relever le curieux affadissement de son naturalisme chez de nombreux pragmatistes contemporains, c’est afin de mieux répondre aux théories de la « société post-séculière ». En revenant sur de nombreux textes de Dewey, trop souvent omis de la discussion au seul profit de A Common Faith, je montrerai qu’ils fournissent un puissant antidote au post-sécularisme contemporain, en ne cédant pas sur l’affirmation d'un anti-surnaturalisme vigoureux, gage de la réalisation de l’idéal démocratique et de « l’attitude scientifique » promue par Dewey.

A book chapter analysing both the ways in which biological theorising (and especially Evolutionary Psychology) is making inroads into political science and an account of some of the conceptual, empirical and normative problems with this trend. I focus mainly on International Relations, but also discuss some recent social and political theory.

Draft d'un article proposé à la revue Théorèmes, dans le cadre d'un dossier coordonné par Yann Schmitt et Romain Mollard sur "Pragmatisme et religion".

Résumé : Cet article poursuit deux lignes de discussion : la première regarde la montée en puissance des discours et théories du « post-séculier » ; la seconde concerne la fréquente (et récente) atténuation du caractère tranchant du sécularisme et du naturalisme de John Dewey. S’il m’importe de relever le curieux affadissement du naturalisme et du sécularisme de Dewey chez de nombreux pragmatistes contemporains, c’est afin de mieux répondre aux théories de la « société post-séculière », en opposant à ces théories une critique deweyenne non affadie. Pour faire droit à cette critique non affadie, je reviens sur plusieurs textes de Dewey, trop souvent occultés au seul profit de A Common Faith (Dewey, 1934) – un ouvrage dont la radicalité est d’ailleurs rarement considérée. Ce retour m’autorise, d’une part, à recouvrer la pleine puissance de la critique deweyenne des religions, et donc, par voie de conséquence, à corriger l’affadissement dont cette critique a fait l’objet ces dernières années. D’autre part, ce même retour me permet de montrer combien les positions deweyennes sont difficilement compatibles avec les discours et théories qui réclament l’advenue d’une « société post-séculière » ou d’un « âge post-séculier ».

The psychological and sociological dynamics of intellectual conflict. An illustration is provided by  the resistance of mainstream philosophers of science to the accounts of scientific truth, evidence, and progress that emerged from the history and sociology of science in the late 20th century.

Published in *Belief and Resistance: Dynamics of Contemporary Intellectual Controversy (Harvard UP, 1997).

An earlier version appeared in *Einstein Meets Magritte: An Interdisciplinary Reflection* eds. Diederik Aerts, Jan Broekaert, and Ernest Mathijs (Springer 1995),  expanded from a talk originally delivered at a conference held at the Brussels Free University..

What are scientific theories and how should they be represented? In this paper I propose a causal-structural account, according to which scientific theories are to be represented as sets of interrelated causal and credal nets. In contrast with other accounts of scientific theories (such as Sneedian structuralism, Kitcher's unificationist view, and Darden's theory of theoretical components), this leaves room for causality to play a substantial role. As a result, an interesting account of explanation is provided which sheds light on explanatory unification within a causalist framework. The theory of classical genetics is used as a case study.

Philosophers of science since Nagel have been interested in the links between intertheoretic reduction and explanation, understanding and other forms of epistemic progress. Although intertheoretic reduction is widely agreed to occur in pure mathematics as well as empirical science, the relationship between reduction and explanation in the mathematical setting has rarely been investigated in a similarly serious way. This paper examines an important and well-known case: the reduction of arithmetic to set theory. I claim that the reduction is unexplanatory. In defense of this claim, I offer evidence from mathematical practice, and I respond to contrary suggestions due to Steinhart, Maddy, Kitcher and Quine. I then show how, even if set-theoretic reductions are generally not explanatory, set theory can nevertheless serve as a legitimate and successful foundation for mathematics. Finally, some implications of my thesis for philosophy of mathematics and philosophy of science are discussed. In particular, I suggest that some reductions in mathematics are probably explanatory, and I propose that differing standards of theory acceptance might account for the apparent lack of unexplanatory reductions in the empirical sciences.

The plethora of contrary doctrines pertaining to salvation, among the variety of religions in the world today, creates a problem for the sincere investigator who seeks to find out if there is such a thing as salvation and, if there is, how to be saved. These contrary doctrines are problematic to the degree that the sincere investigator is unable to evaluate the probability of some of these doctrines over others. In order to aid the sincere investigator with this problem, I explore methods for evaluating doctrines that purport to affect one’s salvation.

Kitcher has proposed an ideal-theory account-well-ordered science (WOS)-of the collective good that science's research agenda should promote. Against criticism regarding WOS's action-guidance, Kitcher has advised critics not to confuse substantive ideals and the ways to arrive at them, and he has defended WOS as a necessary and useful ideal for science policy. I provide a distinction between two types of ideal-theories that helps clarifying WOS's elusive nature. I use this distinction to argue that the action-guidance problem that WOS faces remains even under the aims/means distinction, because the WOS's failure is more basic than critics have suggested.

In this paper, two questions are pursued. First, is Kitcher’s account of a priori knowledge a sensible reconstruction of the Kantian notion? My general answer is: to a large extent, yes. A central problem of justification in transcendental philosophy actually demands a conception of apriority along Kitcher’s lines. Secondly, can a priori knowledge be embedded within a naturalistic framework? To this, there is no answering "yes" or "no". However, an examination of particular limitations supports the contention that talk of justificatory procedures and beliefs should not be modelled on talk about causes and effects. The "actualistic" grammar of causality should not be allowed to dictate the shape of an epistemological theory.

Philip Kitcher is one of the most distinguished philosophers of our days. Since the rise of philosophy of biology in the 1960s Kitcher has deeply influenced and inspired many of the debates in this field. Among his most important books are The Advancement of Science (1993), In Mendel’s Mirror: Philosophical Reflections on Biology (2003), and Science in a Democratic Society (2011). However, Kitcher’s philosophical interest is not restricted to the philosophy of science. Rather, he has also made groundbreaking contributions to ethics, to the philosophy of religion, to the philosophy of literature, to the philoso-phy of mathematics, and, most recently, to pragmatism.
From a general perspective, two features of Kitcher’s work are particu-larly noteworthy. First, in most of his writings it becomes apparent that he takes a naturalistic stance. Kitcher characterizes himself as having an “impulse to naturalism”, which means that he resists the expansionist tendency to invoke entities or processes that are quite different from those studied in the various branches of inquiry (like Platonic forms or other abstract entities, Cartesian egos, and faculties of pure reason). Kitcher has explicated his naturalistic stance in The Naturalists Return (1992) and refined it in various recent works.
Second, the philosophical questions that always have urged Kitcher most are questions that matter to human lives. Just to mention a few examples, these are questions like “How do we reconcile our scientific picture of the world with religion?”, “In which way does social practice impact scientist’s search for knowledge?”, or “How do we understand and improve our moral practices?”. In recent years Kitcher has argued that his focus is not merely due to his personal interests. Rather, he thinks that the only philosophical problems that are significant are those whose solution makes a difference to contemporary human life. Philosophers would be wise to focus on these pragmatically relevant kinds of questions, rather than addressing questions that are isolated from real life. In defending this claim, Kitcher expresses his affinity to the pragmatist tradition of Dewey and others. Thus, the second major characteristic of Kitcher’s work is that he takes up a pragmatist stance.
Although Kitcher’s naturalistic and pragmatist impulses are discernible in most of his writings, he has only lately started to explicitly defend what he now calls pragmatic naturalism. His work on pragmatic naturalism contains innovative insights into questions about naturalism and pragmatism, while at the same time providing a meta-philosophical, unificatory framework for his longstanding work in various philosophical fields. Kitcher’s paper that is printed in this volume is one of the first publications in which he sets out his idea of pragmatic naturalism.
This volume is the result of the 15th Münster Lectures in Philosophy which were hosted by the Department of Philosophy of the University of Münster from the 27th to the 29th of October 2011. The basic idea of the Lectures is to give advanced students of the Department the opportunity to get into discus-sion with important philosophers of our days. In line with what has become by now a venerable tradition, Kitcher gave a lecture to a public audience on the first evening of the Lectures, and he participated in a colloquium on the following two days. At this colloquium, eight groups of advanced students and faculty members presented papers on a wide range of topics from Kitch-er’s work. Both the lecture and the papers are published in this volume. In addition, it contains Kitcher’s detailed replies to the colloquium papers.

Many books have been published trying to determine the moral status of the use of some biotechnologies (e g  genetic interventions, cloning, moral bioenhancement and the extension of human lifespan)  Practical ethics has been trying to answer these and similar moral problems for more than a century, and all this time the central question has been “What is the right thing to do?”  In his recent book Elvio Baccarini does not address this ques- tion – well aware that in the conditions of reasonable pluralism of moral and religious doctrines we cannot publicly agree upon what should we do as a political community and which laws and policies are the right or the virtu- ous ones, he shifts the central question from the domain of practical ethics to the domain of political philosophy by asking “What is the legitimate thing to do?”  Instead of an argument from a particular comprehensive doctrine (e g  consequentialism, deontology, virtue ethics, Christian ethics), Baccarini tries to establish an argumentative strategy that can be supported by various reasonable moral and religious doctrines  We should not conclude, however, that his book has nothing to do with ethics – in fact, this book presents a number of moral arguments and evaluates them according to their ability to constitute the legitimacy of a particular decision  In other words, this book presents a selection device that helps us determine which moral arguments are, and which are not, appropriate for the justification of public laws and policies.

Philip Kitcher has recently worried that the New Atheists, by mounting an attack against religion tout court, risk alienating a large swath of ‘religious’ people whose way of life is, to Kitcher’s mind, innocuous.  Encouraging a more moderate response, Kitcher thinks certain non-threatening modes of religious existence should be protected. In this paper, I argue that while Kitcher’s attempt to provide balance to the secularism debate is a great service, he ultimately fails to distinguish innocuous modes of religious belief from more threatening modes, a failing that allows the debate to return to its previous extremes. In drawing attention to the shortcomings of Kitcher’s approach, I make the humanist’s argumentative burden explicit: the defender of a ‘moderate’ secular humanism must show that people who arrange their lives around belief in a transcendent being are more likely to do ethical harm than those that don’t.

W.V.Quine and Philip Kitcher have both developed naturalistic approaches to the philosophy of science which are partially based on a skeptical view about the possibility of rational inquiry into certain questions of value. Nonetheless, both Quine and Kitcher do not wish to give up on the normative dimension of the philosophy of science. I argue that Kitcher's recent argument against the specification of the goal of science in terms of truth raises a problem for Quine's account of the normative dimensions of the discipline. However Kitcher's alternative suggestion, that the goal of science is to be specified in terms of an ideal democratic procedure, does not escape this problem, given Kitcher's own limited skepticism about rational inquiry into certain questions of value.

En sus libros más conocidos, el biólogo británico Richard Dawkins ha planteado la necesidad de hacer una revisión de la forma como entendemos el funcionamiento causal de la teoría de la selección natural. Ante la idea aceptada de que, en una población biológica, los individuos se seleccionan, los genotipos cambian sus frecuencias y las poblaciones o grupos evolucionan, Dawkins planteó una redescripción del proceso" desde el punto de vista del gene". Los genes exitosos, según esta versión, actúan, en el ...

In the 1970s, Feyerabend earned his 'maverick' status by arguing that science is a pluralistic, disunified, value-laden enterprise, messily bound up with social and political concerns. Nowadays, this is rather the received image of the nature of science - so Feyerabend was ahead of the game. But he also still has things to teach us about the epistemic and social authority of science in democratic societies.

What should the goals of scientific inquiry be? What questions should scientists investigate, and how should our resources be distributed between different lines of investigation? Philip Kitcher has suggested that we should answer these questions by appealing to an ideal based on the consideration of hypothetical democratic deliberations under ideal circumstances. The paper argues that we have no reason to adopt this ideal. The paper examines both traditional arguments for democracy and Kitcher's own reasons for adopting this ideal, as presented in Kitcher (2001) and in Kitcher (2011b), and argues that none of these supports adoption of Kitcher's proposed ideal.

Democratic procedures are characterized by the equal status of all citizens participating in the decision-making process. This procedural fairness represents one of the central aspects of democracy's legitimacy-generating potential and should not be rejected or weakened. However, citizens specialize in different areas and inevitably some citizens become more competent (i.e. become experts) regarding some political issues. Democratic procedure would loose much of its appeal if it would be unable to take advantage of the experts' knowledge. In this paper I follow Kitcher and Christiano in embracing a form of division of epistemic (and political) labor - citizens and their political representatives should deliberate and set aims the political community is to pursue, while experts and policy-makers should devise means (laws, public policies and political decisions) needed to achieve the aims set by citizens. However, citizens should not blindly trust the experts - their epistemic authority is derivative and social and academic networks and structures should be employed in order to enable citizens to assess and evaluate experts' competence, but experts' impartiality regarding the issue at hand as well. Consequently, the process should not be unidirectional: experts should be able to help citizens select feasible and coherent aims, while citizens should be able to help experts in creating policies and decisions. Deliberative democracy is an appropriate political setting for this kind of bidirectional communication.

A Leviathan in the Lab? Problems of Democracy and Well-Ordered Science
Michael Musielewicz
John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin (Poland)
mpmusielewicz@gmail.com

The importance of the sciences in today’s world is hardly questioned as being a fact.
When we consider many of the world’s problems (e.g. climate change) it seems that
the expert knowledge of various specialists from many different fields is needed to
resolve such problems in their complexity. Yet when it comes to formulating
science policy, the modes by which it is established are left unclear. One question to
help clarify this mater is, how should we understand science in relation to the state?
In this paper I will argue that pure science - as such – may be subverted when it is
subsidiary to the state. To argue this point I will present a sketch of the views of the
autonomy of science in the view of Philip Kitcher and examine issues concerning his
democratic image of a well-ordered science. The importance of this question I
believe is well summarized by an observation made by Louis Pasteur “Le savant a
une patrie, la science n'en a pas” (The scientist has a homeland, science does not).
Pure science ought to be oriented towards truth, and is normatively not bound by
the concerns and matters of state in this pursuit. Yet the same cannot be said the
scientists -and other specialists- who are the pursuers of this truth. By being
members of the body politic, scientists and scientific institutions, may have their
actions limited by the state for various social pressures, security or merely the
raison d’etat. This then gives rise to the possibility where the demands made upon
the scientists both by the state and by his vocation may conflict with one another
and lead to the subversion of one or the other. To avoid this conflict it is important
to understand the relationship between science and the state.

Current theories of the division of cognitive labor are confined to the ``context of justification'', assuming exogenous theories. But new theories are made from the same labor that is used for developing existing theories, and if none of this labor is ever allocated to create new alternatives, then scientific progress is impossible. A unified model is proposed in which theories are no longer given but a function of the division of labor in the model itself. The interactions of individuals balancing the exploitation of existing theories and the exploration of new theories results in a robust cyclical pattern.

In this article, I will, first of all, briefly summarize Kitcher's Ethical Project main points1,providing both its analytical reconstruction of the evolution of ethics, the meta-ethical analysis of the issues that emerge from this reconstruction and the normative stance to continue this project. I will then try to underline both the problems and the useful ideas of Kitcher's proposal and compare them with other authors of the contemporary debate in ethics.

Introducción Tal vez una de las tensiones más amenazantes para las sociedades democráticas modernas está en la esencia misma de éstas: el hecho de que tales sociedades deben proveer las condiciones que permitan a cada ciudadano tener su propia visión exhaustiva del mundo 1 y, al mismo tiempo, deben garantizar una coexistencia respetuosa y armónica entre las personas que profesen visiones de mundo incompatibles entre sí. Para ello, estas sociedades deben contar con leyes que cada ciudadano autónomamente sienta el deber de obedecer. Éste es precisamente el problema que John Rawls aborda en una de sus últimas obras, El liberalismo político 2. En concreto, Rawls propone que a través de una determinada noción de razón pública es posible concebir y proteger la estructura de una democracia liberal-es decir, su constitución-y los derechos básicos para cada persona en esa sociedad. El artículo de Kitcher, «Science, Religion and Democracy» 3 , muestra el problema que representa para una democracia la existencia de lo 1 El término en inglés usado en este contexto es comprehensive worldview. Esta expresión hace referencia a una visión del mundo que está en la base de toda comprensión e interpretación particular de fenómenos en el mundo para la persona o grupo de personas que la adopten.

Steady engagement, over the last decade or so, with the classical pragmatists has led Philip Kitcher to develop a position he calls “ethical pragmatic naturalism.” Ethical pragmatic naturalism has three legs: an anlytic history, and metaethical stance, and a normative position. The first two of these extend and expand pragmatist, especially Deweyan, insights in novel and illuminating, if not entirely unproblematic, ways. In particular, we are offered a plausible, naturalistic account of how our species moved from its pre-ethical state to where it is today, as well as a metaethical account that takes progress, rather than truth, to be primary. The normative position, developed on the basis of the analytic history and metaethical stance, attempts to combine a refined version of Adam Smith’s theory of “social mirroring” with Deweyan moral experimentalism. I contend that Kitcher’s focus here falls too heavily on the cognitive dimensions of the ethical project, overemphasizing efforts of rule-formation, the alleged construction of an internalized “impartial spectator,” and an experimentalism construed primarily, if not exclusively, in terms of thought experiments. Consequently, Kitcher’s position hews far more closely to the traditional picture he is ciritcal of than it does to the revolutionary Dewey he claims as inspiration. I suggest that Kitcher’s position would be strengthened by a more robust construal of experimentalism, grounded in Deweyan habit, that puts greater emphasis on reconstruction of environing conditions as a crucial part of our toolkit for progressive change.

Philip Kitcher is one of the most distinguished philosophers of our days. Since the rise of philosophy of biology in the 1960s Kitcher has deeply influenced and inspired many of the debates in this field. Among his most important books are The Advancement of Science (1993), In Mendel’s Mirror: Philosophical Reflections on Biology (2003), and Science in a Democratic Society (2011). However, Kitcher’s philosophical interest is not restricted to the philosophy of science. Rather, he has also made groundbreaking contributions to ethics, to the philosophy of religion, to the philosophy of literature, to the philoso-phy of mathematics, and, most recently, to pragmatism. From a general perspective, two features of Kitcher’s work are particu-larly noteworthy. First, in most of his writings it becomes apparent that he takes a naturalistic stance. Kitcher characterizes himself as having an “impulse to naturalism”, which means that he resists the expansionist tendency to invoke entities or processes that are quite different from those studied in the various branches of inquiry (like Platonic forms or other abstract entities, Cartesian egos, and faculties of pure reason). Kitcher has explicated his naturalistic stance in The Naturalists Return (1992) and refined it in various recent works. Second, the philosophical questions that always have urged Kitcher most are questions that matter to human lives. Just to mention a few examples, these are questions like “How do we reconcile our scientific picture of the world with religion?”, “In which way does social practice impact scientist’s search for knowledge?”, or “How do we understand and improve our moral practices?”. In recent years Kitcher has argued that his focus is not merely due to his personal interests. Rather, he thinks that the only philosophical problems that are significant are those whose solution makes a difference to contemporary human life. Philosophers would be wise to focus on these pragmatically relevant kinds of questions, rather than addressing questions that are isolated from real life. In defending this claim, Kitcher expresses his affinity to the pragmatist tradition of Dewey and others. Thus, the second major characteristic of Kitcher’s work is that he takes up a pragmatist stance. Although Kitcher’s naturalistic and pragmatist impulses are discernible in most of his writings, he has only lately started to explicitly defend what he now calls pragmatic naturalism. His work on pragmatic naturalism contains innovative insights into questions about naturalism and pragmatism, while at the same time providing a meta-philosophical, unificatory framework for his longstanding work in various philosophical fields. Kitcher’s paper that is printed in this volume is one of the first publications in which he sets out his idea of pragmatic naturalism. This volume is the result of the 15th Münster Lectures in Philosophy which were hosted by the Department of Philosophy of the University of Münster from the 27th to the 29th of October 2011. The basic idea of the Lectures is to give advanced students of the Department the opportunity to get into discus-sion with important philosophers of our days. In line with what has become by now a venerable tradition, Kitcher gave a lecture to a public audience on the first evening of the Lectures, and he participated in a colloquium on the following two days. At this colloquium, eight groups of advanced students and faculty members presented papers on a wide range of topics from Kitch-er’s work. Both the lecture and the papers are published in this volume. In addition, it contains Kitcher’s detailed replies to the colloquium papers.

This paper provides a critical comment on Philip Kitcher?s as yet unpublished book The Ethical Project. In the first part it explains why Kitcher?s position is naturalist as well as pragmatist. In the second part it is argued that the role ethics plays in human history is richer than Kitcher conceives it: Building on his view, this paper suggests that ethics not only provides a mechanism to diminish the risk of social conflict and social instability, but it also enables the emergence of self-conceptions. This reveals according to what processes certain particular changes occurred in the evolution of ethics.

On many science-related policy questions, the public is unable to make informed decisions, because of its inability to make use of knowledge and information obtained by scientists. Philip Kitcher and James Fishkin have both suggested therefore that on certain science-related issues, public policy should not be decided upon by actual democratic vote, but should instead conform to the public's Counterfactual Informed Democratic Decision (CIDD). Indeed, this suggestion underlies Kitcher's specification of an ideal of a well-ordered science. The paper argues that this suggestion misconstrues the normative significance of CIDDs. At most, CIDDs might have epistemic significance, but no authority or legitimizing force.

This paper provides a critical comment on Philip Kitcher’s as yet unpublished book “The Ethical Project”. In the first part it explains why Kitcher’s position is naturalist as well as pragmatist. In the second part it is argued that the role ethics plays in human history is richer than Kitcher conceives it: Building on his view, this paper suggests that ethics not only provides a mechanism to diminish the risk of social conflict and social instability, but it also enables the emergence of self-conceptions. This reveals according to what processes certain particular changes occurred in the evolution of ethics.

In this thesis, I will explicate the commitments and consequences of three metaphilosophical views: Metaphilosophical Realism (MR), Metaphilosophical Skepticism (MS), and Metaphilosophical Pragmatism (MP). These three views will be distinguished on several grounds, including their views on truth, reason, and progress. I will show that MR views philosophy’s relation to history as merely one as a form of pedagogy that is meant to give pupils the self-confidence to make sense of things in a particular way. For MS, philosophy lies forfeit to history, and historiography replaces philosophy as it shows an incommensurable plurality of ways of making sense. MP, however, takes historiography to be an essential part of philosophy for it reconciles distinct ways of making sense by redescribing them. In order to make redescription palatable both to redescriber and redescribed, we must conceive of a way of making sense as a skill rather than a collection of propositions.

Resumen: Este artículo analiza los distintos desafíos a los que se enfrentaron los cronólogos bíblicos al tratar de calcular la fecha de La Creación durante el periodo histórico conocido como la Antigüedad Tardía hasta el siglo xvii, desafíos tales como: ¿Cuándo fue el momento exacto de La Creación? ¿O cómo podemos calcular ese tiempo? Desde un análisis histórico-filosófico se exponen las dificultades conceptuales, epistémicas, metodológicas y cognitivas a las que se enfrentaron los cronólogos en su intento por establecer una escala temporal que les permitiera fechar de manera absoluta toda la historia humana incluyendo el origen del Mundo. Las preguntas filosóficas esbozadas aquí son acerca del rol, la representación, la evaluación y las limitaciones epistémicas de las escalas de tiempo.

Palabras clave: ciencias históricas, medición científica, filosofía de la medición, escalas de tiempo, medición del tiempo.

The aim of this paper is to develop an account of semantic reference initially put forward by Philip Kitcher that should be of interest to scientific realists. I discuss the motivations behind Kitcher's proposal and especially how it faces a retrospection problem viz. the beliefs used to fix reference are selected retrospectively but not by the historical actors at the time. In order to sidestep this problem, I look at the idea of partial reference as put forward by Hartry Field and further advanced by Christina McLeish. I discuss the merits of these proposals and will argue that McLeish's development of the idea leads to a deeply confused semantics for realism. In the last section, Kitcher's account of heterogeneous reference potential is further developed in light of the issues raised in relation to partial reference and the retrospection problem. I think this raises the prospect of filling in a descriptivist picture of reference for theoretical terms of science.

Many thinkers lament the lack of public knowledge and understanding of science, expressing doubts about the wisdom of allowing public opinion to direct policy- or decision-making. Philip Kitcher argues that “free discussion” is just as likely to produce less, rather than more, informed public views.  e paper takes Kitcher to task for his analysis of public knowledge and his claims that “irremediable” ignorance poses a great di culty for properly addressing pressing social and environmental chal- lenges. Kitcher’s assessment is compared to Dewey’s discussion of democratic pub- lic engagement and it is shown that their views di er considerably. It is argued that public knowledge must be understood in connection with epistemic trust toward policy-making and social institutions. It is argued that Dewey’s criticism of “intel- lectualistic” criteria of knowledge can be usefully applied to Kitcher’s discussion of public knowledge, and that a Deweyan account of public knowledge brings a more optimistic and realistic perspective on pub- lic participation in determining policies.