Abstract Summary
Kathryn Plaisance (University of Waterloo), Alexander Graham (University of Waterloo), John McLevey (University of Waterloo), Janet Michaud (University of Waterloo) - As the motivation for this workshop session stipulates, more and more philosophers of science are expressing interest in doing work that is not only relevant to other communities but that actually engages with those outside the discipline. However, philosophers of science who are interested in taking an engaged approach often express concern about the barriers to disseminating their work more broadly and/or collaborating with others. While some of these concerns have been discussed in print (e.g., Fehr and Plaisance 2010), most have arisen in informal venues, such as conferences and workshops, making it difficult to critically assess and advance these types of discussions. Furthermore, the publications that directly address these issues are typically based on personal experience (Thagard 2006; Dennett 2009) or anecdotal data from a select few (Plaisance and Fehr 2010). As a result, we have little-to-no empirical data about the actual views and experiences of most philosophers of science with respect to engaged work. This gap in our collective knowledge is both a practical problem and an epistemological one. Practically speaking, we need to understand the challenges philosophers face when trying to engage other communities and/or increase the broader impact of their work, especially if we wish to cultivate actionable knowledge that can be used to overcome those challenges. Epistemologically, we lack a comprehensive understanding of how knowledge in philosophy of science is and could be mobilized across disciplinary boundaries. This presentation addresses this gap by providing empirical data on the actual views and experiences of philosophers of science working in the field today, as well as drawing on and providing a broader context for the lessons shared in the first two presentations regarding strategies for doing engaged work. Specifically, this presentation will discuss the results of a survey of 299 philosophers of science, as well as relevant findings from in-depth interviews with 35 philosophers of science working in the field today. The emerging picture from our study suggests that the majority of philosophers of science are interested in and think the discipline ought to value work that engages communities outside the discipline. Almost all respondents reported that it is at least somewhat important that scientists and/or science policy makers read or make use of their work; most have tried to disseminate their work to scientific communities or policy makers; and many have collaborated in a variety of ways (e.g., about half have co-authored a peer-reviewed paper with a scientist). In addition, most respondents believe engaged work is undervalued by the discipline, and just over half think philosophy of science, as a discipline, has an obligation to have an impact on science and on society. (Notably, respondents did not suggest that an engaged approach should be the only one, nor that it is necessarily better or more valuable than more traditional work in philosophy of science.) Participants reported a variety of barriers to doing engaged work, though the significance of those barriers were mixed and varied substantially depending on one’s career stage.
