2000 HSS/PSA Program 1 - History of Science Society

Rachel␣ A. Ankeny University of Sydney
PSA Abstracts
Model Organisms as Cases:Understanding the ‘Lingua Franca’ at the Heart
of the Human Genome Project
Through an examination of research in the Human Genome Project, it is argued
the reasoning underlying the model organism program is best understood as casebased,
analogical reasoning beginning from idealized, descriptive models, rather
than as reasoning via causal analog models. This conceptualization of the role of
model organisms should guide our understanding and assessment of these research
programs, their knowledge claims and progress, and their limitations, as well as
how we educate the public about this type of biomedical research.
Theodore Arabatzis University of Athens
Can a Historian of Science be a Scientific Realist?
In this paper I want to address the problems that the historical development of
science poses for a realist and to discuss whether a realist construal of scientific
activity is conducive to historiographical practice. My aim is to show that the
realism problem is relevant to historiography and that the position one adopts
with respect to this problem entails a particular historiographical strategy. I
will argue that for historiographical purposes an agnostic attitude with respect
to scientific theories and unobservable entities is the most appropriate.
P
S
A
Murat Aydede The University of Chicago
Guven Guzeldere Duke University
Explaining Pain Experience in an Information-Theoretic Framework:
Introspective Mechanisms And Concept Formation
There is a significant sense in which the neuroscience literature on pain suggests
that what the basic pain researcher investigates is not pain itself, which is
“always subjective”, but rather its most “proximate physical cause,” which is
always objective. In fact, this dilemma is not peculiar to pain research but
characteristic of neuroscientific research in general. We argue that the need
for this kind of prima facie dualistic language arises out of a radical epistemic
asymmetry in accessing the subject matter, rather than an indication of a dualist
ontology. By drawing on recent scientific results we show how the
phenomenology of pain experience can be handled in an ontologically unified
way that remains monistic (physicalist). In particular, we argue that pain states
are informational states to the core, and their affective dimensions can be
treated within a psychofunctionalist framework. Finally, in order to account
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