Martin Cohen | |
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 Martin Cohen talking at HowTheLightGetsIn 2023. | |
| Born | 1964 (age 59–60) Brighton, East Sussex, England |
| Alma mater | Sussex University (BA) University of Exeter (PhD) |
| Occupation(s) | Philosopher, writer |
| Website | www |
Martin Cohen (born 1964) is a British philosopher, an editor and reviewer who writes on philosophy, philosophy of science and political philosophy.
He studied philosophy and social science at Sussex University where his tutors included some of the early group of philosophers who launched the university's pioneering language and values programme, including Terry Diffey and Bernard Harrison. He obtained a teaching qualification at Keele University and his PhD in philosophy of education from the University of Exeter. After research posts at universities in Britain and Australia, Cohen moved to France to concentrate on his writing, which typically blend "psychological and social studies with philosophical theory ... eschewing technical jargon and using easily understood scenarios to demonstrate the theme". [1] The first of these, 101 Philosophy Problems has been published in a dozen languages and is now in its third edition. His book on thought experiments, Wittgenstein's Beetle and Other Classic Thought Experiments was selected by The Guardian as one of its 'books of the week' [2] and the Times Literary Supplement said that 'With its sense of history, Wittgenstein's Beetle provides the opportunity to consider which thought experiments last.' [3]
Another element of Martin Cohen's style in presenting philosophy is to use simple and unpretentious line drawings both to break up the text (and make it less monolithic) and to illustrate specific issues under discussion, for example the 'Traditional Chinese Problem' of the turtle told to cross a pan of boiling water by balancing on a piece of bamboo.
Cohen has been a frequent contributor and reviewer for the Times Higher Education Supplement (THES), [4] the New Statesman (on environmental issues) and the Guardian (London) (on the role of computers in education) [5] as well as occasional pieces on economics [6] including the obesity issue. [7] His writing, for example, on food and society, blends philosophy and social science as well as ethics. [8]
An article in the New York Times (entitled Nuclear Power's Death Somewhat Exaggerated [9] ) quoted his book on energy policy and ethics to illustrate how business interests can join forces with environmentalists to improve their public image, a point he also explored in an article for the Times Higher (London) entitled 'The Profits of Doom'. [10]
Mind Games was selected by France Culture as one of new philosophy books for dissection in the program essai du jour; [11] Paradigm Shift: How Expert Opinions Keep Changing on Life, the Universe and Everything was featured on RTE Radio 1 in Ireland; [12]
Paradigm Shift: How Expert Opinions Keep Changing on Life, the Universe and Everything (Imprint Academic UK September 2015) is a book by Cohen. It claims that scientific knowledge is less certain than it is usually portrayed. Cohen offers a number of examples to back up this claim, which he traces back to Thomas Kuhn, and the original theory of 'paradigm shifts' in 1962, in his book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions .
In this key social science text, Kuhn claims that the progress of scientific knowledge is not the steady accumulation of pieces of a great jigsaw but rather a haphazard, political affair involving periodic paradigm shifts in which much of the old certainties are abandoned in order to open up new approaches to understanding that scientists would never have considered valid before.
The idea behind Cohen's book is to treat a broader sweep of issues than Kuhn does, from public health to climate change and high finance, as a series of 'case studies' which he argues illustrate both the radical insights Kuhn's theory brings, and conversely the error of assuming that science and knowledge generally is 'a very sensible and reassuringly solid sort of affair'. He advocates the 'separation of state and science'.
Cohen argues information cascades can distort rational, scientific debate, with a particular focus on health issues. The book looks at the example of highly mediatised 'pandemic' alarms, and why they have turned out eventually to be little more than scares. [13]
Martin Cohen is well known for having invented the famous 'cow-in-the-field' thought experiment in the spirit of Edmond Gettier's imaginary scenarios intended to explore the nature of knowledge. [14] The Cow in the Field leads his book 101 Philosophy Problems including being on the cover of the second edition. However, numerous websites erroneously attribute the imaginary scenario directly to Gettier.
Sir Karl Raimund Popper was an Austrian–British philosopher, academic and social commentator. One of the 20th century's most influential philosophers of science, Popper is known for his rejection of the classical inductivist views on the scientific method in favour of empirical falsification. According to Popper, a theory in the empirical sciences can never be proven, but it can be falsified, meaning that it can be scrutinised with decisive experiments. Popper was opposed to the classical justificationist account of knowledge, which he replaced with critical rationalism, namely "the first non-justificational philosophy of criticism in the history of philosophy".
A paradigm shift is a fundamental change in the basic concepts and experimental practices of a scientific discipline. It is a concept in the philosophy of science that was introduced and brought into the common lexicon by the American physicist and philosopher Thomas Kuhn. Even though Kuhn restricted the use of the term to the natural sciences, the concept of a paradigm shift has also been used in numerous non-scientific contexts to describe a profound change in a fundamental model or perception of events.
Philosophy of science is the branch of philosophy concerned with the foundations, methods, and implications of science. Amongst its central questions are the difference between science and non-science, the reliability of scientific theories, and the ultimate purpose and meaning of science as a human endeavour. Philosophy of science focuses on metaphysical, epistemic and semantic aspects of scientific practice, and overlaps with metaphysics, ontology, logic, and epistemology, for example, when it explores the relationship between science and the concept of truth. Philosophy of science is both a theoretical and empirical discipline, relying on philosophical theorising as well as meta-studies of scientific practice. Ethical issues such as bioethics and scientific misconduct are often considered ethics or science studies rather than the philosophy of science.
Analytic philosophy is a broad, contemporary movement or tradition within Western philosophy and especially anglophone philosophy focused on analysis.
In science and philosophy, a paradigm is a distinct set of concepts or thought patterns, including theories, research methods, postulates, and standards for what constitute legitimate contributions to a field. The word paradigm is Greek in origin, meaning "pattern."
Edmund Lee Gettier III was an American philosopher at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He is best known for his article written in 1963: "Is Justified True Belief Knowledge?", which has generated an extensive philosophical literature trying to respond to what became known as the Gettier problem.
The Gettier problem, in the field of epistemology, is a landmark philosophical problem concerning the understanding of descriptive knowledge. Attributed to American philosopher Edmund Gettier, Gettier-type counterexamples challenge the long-held justified true belief (JTB) account of knowledge. The JTB account holds that knowledge is equivalent to justified true belief; if all three conditions are met of a given claim, then we have knowledge of that claim. In his 1963 three-page paper titled "Is Justified True Belief Knowledge?", Gettier attempts to illustrate by means of two counterexamples that there are cases where individuals can have a justified, true belief regarding a claim but still fail to know it because the reasons for the belief, while justified, turn out to be false. Thus, Gettier claims to have shown that the JTB account is inadequate because it does not account for all of the necessary and sufficient conditions for knowledge.
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions is a book about the history of science by philosopher Thomas S. Kuhn. Its publication was a landmark event in the history, philosophy, and sociology of science. Kuhn challenged the then prevailing view of progress in science in which scientific progress was viewed as "development-by-accumulation" of accepted facts and theories. Kuhn argued for an episodic model in which periods of conceptual continuity where there is cumulative progress, which Kuhn referred to as periods of "normal science", were interrupted by periods of revolutionary science. The discovery of "anomalies" during revolutions in science leads to new paradigms. New paradigms then ask new questions of old data, move beyond the mere "puzzle-solving" of the previous paradigm, change the rules of the game and the "map" directing new research.
In philosophy of science and epistemology, the demarcation problem is the question of how to distinguish between science and non-science. It also examines the boundaries between science, pseudoscience and other products of human activity, like art and literature and beliefs. The debate continues after more than two millennia of dialogue among philosophers of science and scientists in various fields. The debate has consequences for what can be termed "scientific" in topics such as education and public policy.
The sociology of scientific knowledge (SSK) is the study of science as a social activity, especially dealing with "the social conditions and effects of science, and with the social structures and processes of scientific activity." The sociology of scientific ignorance (SSI) is complementary to the sociology of scientific knowledge. For comparison, the sociology of knowledge studies the impact of human knowledge and the prevailing ideas on societies and relations between knowledge and the social context within which it arises.
Gilbert Ryle was a British philosopher, principally known for his critique of Cartesian dualism, for which he coined the phrase "ghost in the machine." He was a representative of the generation of British ordinary language philosophers who shared Ludwig Wittgenstein's approach to philosophical problems.
Stephen Edelston Toulmin was a British philosopher, author, and educator. Influenced by Ludwig Wittgenstein, Toulmin devoted his works to the analysis of moral reasoning. Throughout his writings, he sought to develop practical arguments which can be used effectively in evaluating the ethics behind moral issues. His works were later found useful in the field of rhetoric for analyzing rhetorical arguments. The Toulmin model of argumentation, a diagram containing six interrelated components used for analyzing arguments, and published in his 1958 book The Uses of Argument, was considered his most influential work, particularly in the field of rhetoric and communication, and in computer science.
Neopragmatism, sometimes called post-Deweyan pragmatism, linguistic pragmatism, or analytic pragmatism, is the philosophical tradition that infers that the meaning of words is a result of how they are used, rather than the objects they represent.
Objectivity in science is an attempt to uncover truths about the natural world by eliminating personal biases, emotions, and false beliefs. It is often linked to observation as part of the scientific method. It is thus intimately related to the aim of testability and reproducibility. To be considered objective, the results of measurement must be communicated from person to person, and then demonstrated for third parties, as an advance in a collective understanding of the world. Such demonstrable knowledge has ordinarily conferred demonstrable powers of prediction or technology.
Epistemology or theory of knowledge is the branch of philosophy concerned with the nature and scope (limitations) of knowledge. It addresses the questions "What is knowledge?", "How is knowledge acquired?", "What do people know?", "How do we know what we know?", and "Why do we know what we know?". Much of the debate in this field has focused on analyzing the nature of knowledge and how it relates to similar notions such as truth, belief, and justification. It also deals with the means of production of knowledge, as well as skepticism about different knowledge claims.
101 Philosophy Problems (1999) is a philosophy book for a general audiences by Martin Cohen published by Routledge.
Wittgenstein's Beetle is a book by Martin Cohen, perhaps better known for his popular introductions to philosophy, such as 101 Philosophy Problems. It was selected by The Guardian as one of its "books of the week" and was reviewed in Times Literary Supplement which said that "With its sense of history, Wittgenstein's Beetle provides the opportunity to consider which thought experiments last."
Thomas Samuel Kuhn was an American historian and philosopher of science whose 1962 book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions was influential in both academic and popular circles, introducing the term paradigm shift, which has since become an English-language idiom.
Margaret Masterman was a British linguist and philosopher, most known for her pioneering work in the field of computational linguistics and especially machine translation. She founded the Cambridge Language Research Unit.
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