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\title{I am Anna Alexandrova, philosopher of science working on well-being and
economics, and author of `A Philosophy for the Science of Well-Being'.
AMA!}



\author[1]{annaalexandrova }%
\author[1]{r/Science AMAs}%
\affil[1]{Affiliation not available}%


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  \date{April 24, 2026}


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\begin{abstract}
I am Anna Alexandrova, currently a Senior Lecturer in Philosophy of
Science at University of Cambridge and a Fellow of King's College. Born
and bred in Russia (a city of Krasnodar in the northern Caucasus) I came
of age with the collapse of USSR, a time of hope and excitement but also
fear, confusion, and anxiety. The teenage uncertainty of not knowing
what it means to be kind, cool, feminine, coincided with genuine social
and cultural upheavals -- none of the adults around me had answers to
these questions either. I spent the 1990s testing different ways to be
in different places but the pull of intellectual life was always there
even though it was not valued in my environment. I finally tasted that
world at the London School of Economics where I did a master's in
Philosophy of Social Science. Although I had no idea what this field was
initially, I fell for it almost immediately -- the idea of asking
whether there could be a genuine science of people and their communities
fitted right into the very questions that made the 1990s so painful and
so fascinating for me. I learned a lot from the course but the best part
was meeting (my now husband) Robert Northcott. Among other good things
together we concocted a fateful application for funding at the Open
Society Institute and this is what enabled me to start PhD program in
Philosophy and Science Studies at the University of California San
Diego. At UCSD I got the thorough and deep education that I longed for
and from some wonderful teachers. Perhaps the most influential among
them was Nancy Cartwright who encouraged me to stick to my guns (the
guns being philosophy of social science) even as I felt professional
pressure to do `core' philosophy. Nancy taught me to immerse myself into
a science so deeply as to be able to see philosophical problems from the
inside. I remember spending a lot of time in the departments of
economics and political science and overhearing condescending jokes
about sociologists. This was a crucial moment that gave me a better
understanding of why rational choice models were so important to
economists and political scientists. They justified their feelings of
superiority. My dissertation argued that although game theorists got the
credit for successes in mechanism design, it was in fact the
experimental economists that deserve this credit at least equally. Out
of a case study on design of spectrum auctions arose a general
philosophical account of the nature and role of formal models in
empirical research. I believe that for too long philosophers of science
have gone out of their way to show that despite their very many
weaknesses idealized deductive models are nevertheless very powerful in
such and such ways. It's high time to recognise that these models play
only a limited heuristic role when it comes to real epistemic goods such
as explanation and stop spending our smarts on trying to justify
practices that scientists often hold on to largely for reasons of power
and so that they could poke fun of sociologists who don't build models.
Towards the end of my dissertation time Nancy pointed me toward a
fascinating debate about measurement of happiness and well-being.
Although after graduating from UCSD I was mostly publishing on economic
models, the former quickly took over as my main research interest. My
first teaching job was in University of Missouri St Louis, where I had
generous and brilliant colleagues all around the city and where I
learned most of what I know about the science of well-being. Dan Haybron
of SLU, whose work on happiness I admire the most, was a big influence.
I brought my philosophy of science temperament to this topic and in my
recent book A Philosophy for the Science of Well-being (which I wrote
after moving to Cambridge England in 2011) is not about what well-being
or happiness really are, but rather about what sort of scientific
knowledge it is possible to have about them. This book has both
optimistic and pessimistic streaks. It is optimistic against the critics
for whom well-being is too personal, too mysterious, and too complex to
be an object of science. Such arguments are common throughtout history
of science and should be treated with suspicion. But equally -- and
that's the pessimistic bit -- when well-being becomes an object of
science it is redefined and this redefinition makes scientific claims
about it far less applicable to individual deliberation about how to
live than positive psychologists would have us believe Some of my work:
My book A Philosophy for the Science of Well-Being. Thanks to OUP can
purchase it 30\% off from their site with promocode AAFLYG6. Series of
posts on the science of well-being at Brains Blog ``Does anyone know
what mental health is?'' OUP Blog ``The Meaning of It All (with Anna
Alexandrova)'' Black Goat podcast Quick review note of A Philosophy for
the Science of Well-being ``Who is the expert on your well-being?'' OUP
Blog ``Towards a Theory of Child Well-being: Podcast Interview with Anna
Alexandrova'' ``Value-Added Science: Anna Alexandrova on value judgments
and measurement of well-being''%
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