Reclaiming Responsibility

Our human capacity for responsible agency infuses our lived experience yet seems impossible to situate fully within a materialistic scientific worldview. This book indicates how we can reconcile scientific and personal perspectives without eroding the integrity of either. The structural solution both amends foundational assumptions for understanding scientific activity, meaning and reality, and also recognizes our own participation in constituting each of these domains. The book reanalyzes the requirements for scientific objectivity, and then reconstructs and aligns both an external/causal and an internal/subjective account of our potential for genuine mental causation and responsibility. An Appendix presents original experimental data from the author s journey. This book is intended for anyone who has struggled with the tensions between scientific and humanistic conceptions of ourselves; for anyone interested in a conceptually unified solution to diverse problems in philosophy of science, mind and meaning; and for scientists wanting to take authentic responsibility for their science.

Autorentext

Jessica Heineman-Pieper, Ph.D. (in Psychology and in The Conceptual Foundations of Science: The University of Chicago) is a Rhodes Scholar (Philosophy and Psychology: Oxford University) and an Assistant Professor in the School of Public Policy, George Mason University. She has consulted on science policy to the National Institute of Mental Health.