Petition Background (Preamble):
We write on behalf of Abbas Khosravi Farsani, a graduate of Imam Sadegh University, who was until recently working on a Ph.D. in Western Philosophy at Isfahan University.
Last June, however, Mr. Farsani was arrested and expelled from the University and forbidden to teach at any Iranian university for writing the blog and book by the name of “Najvahaye Najibane” (“Noble Whispers”) allegedly insulting the Supreme Leader and high officials of the Iranian regime. He has a summons to appear before the Revolution Court of Iran on January 26.
... I would urge all readers to sign given the unjust and politically motivated treatment to which he has been subjected. It was prepared by philosophers Alan Hajek (ANU) and Jeff Jordan (Delaware). When you sign, put your institutional affiliation in the comment section.
UPDATE: I hope other bloggers, including those in other academic fields, will publicize this petition.
In his article “Why Philosophical Theories of Evidence Are (and Ought to Be) Ignored by Scientists,” Peter Achinstein argues that philosophical theories of evidence are ignored by scientists because they rest on assumptions which make their concepts of evidence too weak for scientists to work with, or which entail that the truth or falsity of evidential statements can be determined a priori. Given that, as Achinstein argues, the truth of many evidential statements can only be determined empirically, this “a priorist” assumption makes scientists consider philosophical accounts of evidence irrelevant to their work.
In what follows I will examine the value of evidence, its nature, and its relation to science. I hope to show that, while Achinstein’s conclusions are mostly right, the arguments and examples he gives to support them are flawed in some of their details. Specifically, I propose an account of evidence according to which, though evidential claims are objective to a large extent, something counts as evidence only if, ultimately, it has a relation to beings for whom it counts as evidence. On this view something’s status as evidence does not derive merely from people’s beliefs, but from shared practices that are embodied in what I call contexts of inquiry. I also propose that this concept of evidence is one according to which evidential claims, though defeasible, are in one respect a priori. I argue that this account of evidence is one that should be of interest to scientists.
Ayn Rand presented Objectivism as a philosophy of reason. But is it? That is the question Scott Ryan seeks to answer in this careful examination of the Objectivist epistemology and its alleged sufficiency as the philosophical foundation of a free and prosperous commonwealth. Sorting painstakingly through Rand’s writings on the subject, Mr. Ryan concludes that the epistemology of Objectivism is incoherent and debases both the concept and the practice of rationality.
[Note: Some of the formatting of the text has been corrupted and differs from the print version]
Scott Ryan has been a guitarist, singer, and songwriter, a mathematics teacher, a writer and editor, a computer programmer, a Sherlockian, and a husband and father. He holds a master’s degree in mathematics and a juris doctor, and has had a lifelong interest in philosophy. He currently works as a software developer and lives in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, with his wife.
