Measuring the human 

Location:  Seminar Room 2, Free School Lane, Cambridge, CB2 3RH, United Kingdom.  The Department is the first building on your right as you walk up Free School Lane from the junction with Pembroke Street. The building was formerly the Laboratory of Physical Chemistry and still has the old sign above the door.

Invited Speakers: Leah McClimans (University of South Carolina), Alistair Isaac (University of Edinburgh), Mark Fabian (University of Warwick), Riet van Bork (University of Amsterdam) 

Download the program here 

Registration: The workshop will be held at the University of Cambridge, in Seminar Room 2 of the Department of History and Philosophy of Science. All times are GMT+1. The workshop will also be broadcast live on Zoom. If you want to participate in person or via Zoom, please register by email to Cristian Larroulet Philippi at cl792@cam.ac.uk 

Organizers: Eran Tal (McGill University), Alessandra Basso (University of Cambridge), and Cristian Larroulet Philippi (University of Cambridge) 

Sponsors: Canada Research Chairs Program (via McGill University); Ann Johnson Institute for Science, Technology and Society (University of South Carolina); King's College, Cambridge 

Description: The aim of this workshop is to lay the ground for a unifying account of measurement in the human sciences. Recent philosophy of science has put forward a unifying account of measurement of well-defined physical parameters like temperature and time, but the extent to which this account is applicable to the human sciences remains to be explored. In contrast to the successful measurement of temperature and time, the reliability of measurement in the human sciences is often contested. In the human sciences, measurement faces specific theoretical, practical, and moral challenges due to the peculiarities of the phenomena being studied. In these domains, measurement is carried out in contexts where theoretical resources are scarce. Moreover, the parameters measured in the human sciences are often complex and multidimensional, raising concerns regarding their measurability. Finally, many of the parameters measured in the human sciences are value-laden and context-dependent, which casts doubt on the appropriateness of standardisation and raises complex moral and political questions. 

Currently, the philosophy of measurement in the human sciences does not offer a unifying picture. On the contrary, the contributions are scattered and disconnected throughout various literatures, obstructing the possibility of mutual enrichment. Many philosophers of science, often in collaboration with reflective practitioners, focus on specific disciplines like economics, psychology, or health care. Others look at specific challenges such as values, quantification, or repeatability. So far, however, there haven't been many intersections between these distinct lines of inquiry. Our workshop offers opportunities for dialogue among multiple research strands and provides an arena for leveraging the potential to develop an integrated framework of measurement practice in the human sciences. 

Call for abstracts

Although measurement is widespread across the human sciences (psychology, economics, sociology, medicine, and related fields), the reliability of measurement in these disciplines is often contested. Philosophers of science have developed conceptual models for how measurement practice progresses in the natural sciences, highlighting in particular the virtuous co-development of theoretical understanding and measurement procedures (e.g., Chang 2004; van Fraassen 2008; Tal 2017). The extent to which these accounts of measurement are applicable outside the physical sciences, however, remains unclear. In the human sciences, measurement faces a number of challenges that are related to the peculiarities of the phenomena under study and, as a consequence, the evaluation of measurement in these disciplines may require different criteria than those employed in the physical sciences. To name a few: In the human sciences, measurements are carried out in contexts where there are much fewer theoretical resources to draw from. Moreover, many of the properties studied in the human sciences are complex and multidimensional, which raises questions about their very measurability. Finally, some of these properties are value-laden and context-dependent, which challenges the appropriateness of standardization and raises difficult moral and political questions. Although recent scholarship has already made progress analyzing some of these challenges (e.g., Alexandrova 2017), the conditions of reliable and legitimate measurement in the human sciences remain to be spelled out. Doing so might require a unifying account of measurement across disciplines (see McClimans et al 2017 and Mari et al 2022 for recent work that unifies natural science and human science measurement). 

The workshop aims to foster dialogue among philosophers and methodologists interested in measurement practices across the human sciences and to explore opportunities for developing an integrated account of measurement in these disciplines. It will feature invited speakers alongside contributed talks. We welcome authors working on measurement in the diverse human sciences to present research that sheds light on the possible shape(s) of such a framework. 

We invite 500-word abstracts describing your proposed contribution to the workshop. This workshop is meant as a first step towards a special issue titled “Measuring the Human”, to be published by a leading philosophy of science journal. Authors of accepted abstracts will be expected to submit an article-length version of their contribution for publication in the special issue following the workshop (see dates below).

Topics

The range of topics of interest includes but is not limited to:

• Challenges to the very possibility of quantitative measurement in the human sciences

• The role of standardization and calibration in the human sciences

• The applicability of coherentist accounts of measurement across the human sciences

• Meaning and use of validity concepts (validity, precision, accuracy) in human measurement

• Intertwinement of moral and epistemic aspects in measurement practices

• Conditions of reliability for context-dependent and/or morally charged parameters

• The role of models in the measurement of human parameters

• Theory-ladenness of measurement in these disciplines

• New methodological and epistemological developments of measurement in one discipline that could be of interest to other disciplines

Important dates

Deadline for submission: 30 April 2023

Notification of acceptance: 15 May 2023

Workshop dates: 10-11 July 2023

Submission deadline for the special issue: 1 July 2024

Submission guidelines

We invite submissions for 30-40 minute presentations.

Please send a 500-word abstract in PDF format for review.

All abstracts should be submitted electronically to Cristian Larroulet Philippi at cl792@cam.ac.uk 

All inquiries concerning the workshop should be sent to the above email address.