Philosophical Theorizing and its Limits Anti-Theory in Ethics and Philosophy of Science

This book brings together scholars from ethics and philosophy of science in order to identify ways in which insights gleaned from one subfield can shed light on the other. The book focuses on two radical Anti-Theory movements that emerged in the 1970’s and 1980’s, one in philosophy of science and the other in ethics. Both movements challenged attempts to supply general, systematized philosophical theories within their domains and thus invited the reconsideration of what philosophical theorizing can and should offer. Each of these movements was domain-specific – that is, each criticized the aspirations to philosophical theories within its own domain and advanced arguments aimed at philosophers within their own specific subfield. The innovative systematic comparative examination of these movements by scholars from each domain sheds new light on some familiar debates, offers new and exciting paths of research to pursue in each domain, provides insight into the place of science and ethics in contemporary life and culture, and enables a fresh view on the longstanding and alluring philosophical aspiration for a fully general, absolute theory of reality and an ultimate objective foundational theory of knowledge.

Chapter 1. Introduction.- Chapter 2. Moral Philosophy is not What it Used to Be: Reflections on Three Decades of Anti-Theory.- Chapter 3. Feyerabend’s Asymmetry Argument for Epistemological Anarchism.- Chapter 4. The Scientific Method and The Moral Method.- Chapter 5. Against Theory and Method in Ethics and Philosophy of Science.- Chapter 6. Ethical Description as a Form of Anti Theory.- Chapter 7. Overcoming Metaethics: Interpretation, Objectivity, and Realism.- Chapter 8. What is it Like to See an Animal? Self-Examination and the Moral Relevance of Ordinary Descriptions of Animals.- Chapter 9. Anti-Theory in Philosophy: A Case for Pragmatism.- Chapter 10. The Dangers of ‘Best Practices’: Against Supposedly Revolutionary Theories of Evidence in Medicine.

Uri D. Leibowitz is a senior lecturer at the Philosophy Department at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. His main areas of interest are at the intersection of ethics/meta-ethics and the philosophy of science. Uri’s published work includes scholarly essays on various topics including explanation in ethics and in science, Aristotle’s ethics, moral particularism, Descartes’ Cogito, The Euthyphro problem, as well as an edited volume (with Neil Sinclair) titled ‘Explanation in Ethics and Mathematics’ (OUP, 2016).

Klodian Coko is a postdoctoral fellow in the Philosophy Department at the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. His research focuses on the historical emergence and development of scientific methods and experimental practices. His published work includes articles on the methodological strategies of consilience, robustness, and multiple determination, as well as articles on the early twentieth century atomism debates.

Isaac Nevo is a retired Associate Professor at the Philosophy Department at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. His main areas of interest are the history of analytic philosophy, American pragmatism, applied ethics (particularly, the ethics of scientific research and academic conduct). His published work includes a book on the History of analytic Philosophy (The Dulling of the Razor’s Edge: Analytic Philosophy and Its Development (Resling, 2009; In Hebrew), edited volumes and scholarly articles.