NAME: Harold
Kincaid BIRTH
DATE: May 4, 1952
ADDRESS: Department of Philosophy PHONE: (205) 934-4805
University
of Alabama at
Birmingham
Birmingham, AL 35294
Education
Ph.D.,
Philosophy (Economics minor), Indiana University, 1983
Universitat
Heidelberg, 1980-81
M.A.,
Philosophy, Indiana University, 1980
A.B., Philosophy, Indiana University, 1977
Area of Specialization
Philosophy
of Science, especially Philosophy of the Social Sciences
Employment
Professor,
University of Alabama at Birmingham, 1995-present
Secondary appointment Department of
Sociology
Associate
Professor, University of Alabama at Birmingham, 1990
Assistant
Professor, University of Alabama at Birmingham, 1983-1990
Instructor,
Schiller College, Heidelberg, West Germany, 1980-81
Copy
Editor, Springer Verlag, 1980-1981
Visiting Scholar, London School of Economics and
Political Science, Department of Philosophy, Logic, and Scientific
Methodology, 1990-91
Visiting Lecturer, Indiana University, 1983
Chair,
Department of Philosophy, 2001-present
Director,
Center for the Study of Ethics and Values in the Sciences, 1998-present
Main responsibilities: Organizing
and raising funds for a large annual conference
Director,
Science Studies Minor, 1991-present
Series editor, Sociological Imagination and
Structural Change, Aldine de Gruyter, 2000-present
Grant Support
National Institutes of Health (issues in human
research oversight)
National
Science Foundation (conference on values and science)
Office of Research Integrity (video on mentoring
and authorship)
Alabama Humanities Foundation (conference on
ethical issues in clinical trials)
National Endowment for the Humanities (topics in
philosophy of science)
American Council of Learned Societies (topics in
philosophy of science)
Ireland Award for Scholarly Distinction, 1998
Scholarship
Forthcoming
"Functional Explanation," in Risjord
and Turner, Handbook for the Philosophy of Science: Philosophy of
Anthropology and Sociology (Elsevier, forthcoming).
“Philosophies of Science and Contemporary Development Economics,” D.
Ross and M. Ayogu, Development and the New Economy (Routledge, forthcoming).
"Causation in the Social Sciences," Oxford
Handbook of Causation, ed. H. Beebee, C. Hitchcock, and P. Menzies (Oxford,
forthcoming).
"Social Sciences," Routledge
Companion to the Philosophy of Science, ed. S. Psillos and M. Curd
(Routledge, forthcoming).
"Methodological Individualism and
Economics," ed. Davis, Marciano, and Runde, Elgar Companion to
Economics and Philosophy (Elgar, forthcoming).
"Theories of Explanation and Issues in the
Philosophy of Economics," in Maki, Handbook for the Philosophy of
Science: Philosophy of Economics (Elsevier, forthcoming)
"Concepts of Evidence and Issues in the
Philosophy of Economics," in Maki, Handbook for the Philosophy of
Science: Philosophy of Economics (Elsevier, forthcoming)
Individualism
and the Unity of Science: Essays on
Reduction, Explanation, and the Special Sciences (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1997).
Philosophical
Foundations of the Social Sciences: Analyzing Controversies in Social Research (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1996).
Selection reprinted in J. Charon, The
Meaning of Sociology (Prentice Hall, 1999).
Articles
“Are There Laws in the Social Sciences: Yes.,”
In Contemporary Debates in the Philosophy of Science, ed. Christopher
Hitchcock (Blackwell, 2004), pp. 168-187.
“Explaining Inequality,” in Philips, et
al., Beyond Sociology’s Tower of
Babel (Lanham, MD: University Press of American, 2002), pp. 131-151.
“Functionalist Successes and Excesses in the
Social Sciences,” Analyse and Kritik 24 (2002): 60-71.
“Scientific Realism and the Empirical Nature of
Methodology,” in Clarke and Lyons, Recent Themes in the Philosophy of
Science (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2002), pp. 39-62.
“Local Realism, Global Arguments and Objectivity
in the Social Sciences”, Philosophy of Science (2000), pp. S667-78.
"Philosophy of the Social Sciences,"
in Blackwell Guide to Philosophy of Science (London: Blackwell, 2002)
290-312.
“Assessing Game-Theoretic Accounts in the Social
Sciences,” in P. Gardenfors, J.
Wolenski, and K. Kijania-Placek (eds.),
In the Scope: Logic, Methodology and the Philosophy of Science,
Volume II (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2002), pp. 457-470.
“Formal Rationality and Its Pernicious Effects
on the Social Sciences,” Philosophy of Social Science 30 (2000): 67-88.
"Positivism in the Social
Sciences," Routledge
Encyclopedia of Philosophy (London: Routledge University Press, 1998),
Vol.7, pp. 558-561.
“Why the Philosophy of Science Matters to
Science,” Ireland Award Lecture
(University of Alabama at Birmingham, 1998)
"Methodological Individualism," The
Handbook of Economic Methodology,
ed. J. Davis, W. Hands,
and U. Maki (Cheltenham: Edward Elger, 1998), pp. 294-300.
"Supervenience," The Handbook of
Economic Methodology, ed. J. Davis, W. Hands and U. Maki (Cheltenham:
Edward Elger, 1998), pp. 487-488.
“Mill and the Nature of Science,”
Philosophy Then and Now, ed. N. Arnold, T. Benditt, and G. Graham
(Oxford: Blackwell, 1998), pp. 321-338.
"Can Neoclassical Economics Be Defended on
Grounds of Explanatory Power?", Southern Journal of Philosophy 34 (1996): 155-179.
"Optimality Arguments and the Theory of the
Firm," in The Reliability of Economic Models: Essays in the Epistemology
of Economics, ed. Daniel Little
(Boston: Kluwer, 1995), pp.
211 - 236.
"The Empirical Presuppositions of
Metaphysical Explanations in Economics,” Monist 78
(1995): 368-385.
Reprinted
in The Economic Realm, ed. U. Maki (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2002), p.290-312.
"The Empirical Nature of the Individualism-Holism
Dispute," Synthese 97 (1994): 229-247.
"Putting Inference to the Best Explanation
in Its Place," Synthese 98 (1994):
271-295 (with
Timothy
Day).
"Group Size, Language, and Evolutionary
Mechanisms," Behavior and Brain Sciences 16 (1993): 713-714.
"Hegel on External Relations and Partial
Understanding," Idealistic Studies (1991): 29-47.
"Molecular Biology and the Unity of
Science," Philosophy of Science 57 (1990): 575-593.
(Italian
and Finnish translations)
"Assessing Functional Explanation in the
Social Sciences," PSA 1990, Vol. 1, 341-354.
Reprinted
in Readings in the Philosophy of the Social Sciences, ed. L. McIntyre
and M. Martin (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1994), pp.415-429.
"Discussion: Eliminativism and Individualism: Reply to Tuomela," Philosophy
of Science 57 (1990) 141-148.
"Defending Laws in the Social
Sciences,” Philosophy of the Social
Sciences 20 (1990) 56-83.
Reprinted in Readings
in the Philosophy of the Social Sciences, ed. L. McIntyre and M. Martin
(Cambridge: MIT Press, 1994), pp. 111-131.
"Confirmation, Complexity, and Social
Laws," PSA 1988, Vol 2, 299-307.
"Supervenience and Explanation," Synthese
77 (1988): 251-281.
"Supervenience Doesn't Entail
Reducibility," The Southern Journal of Philosophy 25 (1987): 343-356.
"Explanation, Reduction and
Individualism," Philosophy of Science 53 (1986): 492-513.
Reprinted
in Readings in the Philosophy of the Social Sciences, ed. L. McIntyre
and M. Martin (Cambridge: MIT
Press, 1994), pp. 497-515.
Reviews
“Review of
J. D. Trout, Measuring the Intentional World (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), Philosophical
Review, forthcoming.
"Review of Alexander Rosenberg, Economics--Mathematical
Politics or Science
"Review of David Levy, The Economic
Ideas of Ordinary People (London: Routledge, 1992)," Economics and Philosophy 9 (1993): 328-335.
"Explaining Ritual Behavior: A Critical Review of E. Lawson and R.
McCauley,
Rethinking
Religion: Connecting Cognition and Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990)," Annals of Scholarship 9 (1992):
503-509.
"Levels of Explanation and the Units of
Selection: A Review of Genes, Organisms, and Populations, ed. R. Brandon and R.
Burian," Behaviorism 14
(1986): 69-76.
"Review of John Foster, The Case for Idealism
(Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1982)," Philosophical
Review 43 (1984): 465-468.
Conference
Papers
"Orbitals, Genes and Institutions,"
Ghent Conference on Explanation, 2002
"The Implications of Post-Positivist
Philosophy of Science for Integrating the Social Sciences," American
Sociological Association, 2000
“Local Realism, Global Arguments, and
Objectivity in the Social Sciences," Philosophy of Science Association,
1998
“Comments on Sawyer,” Pacific American
Philosophical Association meetings, 1998
“Can Neoclassical Economics Be Defended on
Grounds of Explanatory Power?”, Spindel Conference,
1995.
"Problems and Prospects For the Theory of
the Firm," International Economics and Philosophy
Society, 1994.
"Comments on Mirowski, Hands, and
McClellan," Society for the Social Studies of Science, 1994.
"The Empirical Nature of the
Individualism-Holism Dispute," Boston Colloquium for Philosophy of Science, 1992.
"Ethics in Research," Keynote Address,
Southeast Allied Health Research Symposium.
"Recent Work in the Philosophy of the
Social Sciences," Southern Society for Philosophy and Psychology, 1991.
"Assessing Functional Explanation in the
Social Sciences," Philosophy of Science Association.
"Comments on Wilder," Southern Society
for Philosophy and Psychology, 1990.
"Confirmation, Complexity, and Social
Laws," Philosophy of Science Association, 1988.
"The Search for An Environmental
Ethic," UAB Conference on
Environmental Ethics, 1988.
"Laws and the Social Sciences," Central
Division American Philosophical Association, 1988.
"Molecular Biology and the Unity of
Science," American Society for Cell Biology, 1986.
"A Re-appraisal of Methodological
Individualism," Southern Society for Philosophy and Psychology, 1985.
"Explanation, Reduction and
Individualism," Alabama Philosophical Society, 1984.
"Marx and Sraffa on the Theory of
Value," Red Feather Conference, 1980.
Courses
Taught
Principles of Scientific Integrity
Philosophy of Medicine
Philosophy of Social Science
Philosophy of Biology
The Scientific Enterprise
Philosophy of Science
Epistemology
Seminar: Rationality
Ethics, Science and the Environment
Research Ethics
Bioethics Component of Dentistry I
Seminar: Sartre
Medical Ethics
Contemporary Moral Issues
Kant and the 19th Century
Existentialism
Introduction to Philosophy
What We Know and How We Know It
(Interdisciplinary Team Taught Honors Course)
The Mythology of Western Scientific Materialism
(Interdisciplinary Team Taught Honors Course)
Professional
Service
Program Chair, Southern Society for Philosophy
and Psychology, 1997.
Advisory Committee, BSCS Project on
Non-Mendelian Inheritance, 1996-1997
Chair and Organizer, Philosophy of Social
Science Interest Group, 1993-1998
Internal Review Board (human experimentation),
St. Vincent's Hospital, 1987-1997.
Secretary-Treasurer, Alabama Philosophical
Society, 1987-88
Referee for National Science Foundation,
National Endowment for the Humanities, Philosophy of Science, Economics
and Philosophy, Philosophical Psychology, American Political Science
Review, Cambridge Journal of Economics,
Philosophy of the Social Sciences, Journal of Economic Methodology, Dialogue,
Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Philosophical Research Archives, Synthese, Science
and Engineering Ethics, Yale University Press, Harcourt Brace, Cambridge
University Press, Oxford University
Press, Routledge, Columbia University Press, MIT Press, Penn State University
Press.
UAB
Service
Iceland Award Committee (Chair), 2001-present
Research Compliance Steering Committee (Chair),
2000-2002
UAB Institutional Review Board for Human
Subjects, 2000-present
Gene Therapy Panel, UAB Institutional Review
Board, 1993-present
Promotion and Tenure Committee (Chair), 1998-99
Recruitment Committee (Chair), 1998-99
Dean's Advisory Committee, 1996-97
Promotion and Tenure, 1995-97
Teaching Award Committee (Chair), 1996
Faculty Policies and Procedures Committee,
1994-96
Ad Hoc Committee on Undergraduate Policies,
1995-96
Ad Hoc Committee on Faculty Handbook, 1993-1994
Dissertation Committee, Lynn Carlson, School of
Nursing, 1992-present
Institutional Effectiveness Committee, 1993-1994
Curriculum Committee (Chair), 94-95
Chair, Evaluation Committee for the Dean, 1993
Strategic Planning Committee, 1992-1993
Faculty Affairs Committee, 1992-1994
Dissertation Committee, Jan Newsome, School of
Nursing, 1992-93
Athletic Committee, 1992-1993
Dean's Advisory Council 1991-1992
Committee on Social Medicine, 1990
Committee on Environmental Studies, 1990
Wrote Proposal for Foundations of Science Minor,
1990
Wrote Grant for and Spoke at Teacher's Workshop
on Environmental Ethics, 1990
Philosophy Department Recruitment Committee
Co-organizer and speaker, UAB Environmental
Ethics Conference, 1988
Ingalls Award Committee, 1988
Promotion and Tenure Committee, 1985-86
Benevolent Fund Council, 1985-87
Emergency Assistance Fund Committee, 1985-86
Library Committee, 1985-86
Faculty Senate, 1984-87
Philosophy Club Advisor, 1984-85
Revised 1/21/04