Developments In Philosophy Of Science Research Articles

Kant’s Ongoing Relevance for Philosophy of Science

AbstractIn this introductory article we reconstruct several broad developments in the scholarship on Kant’s theory of natural science with a particular focus on the Anglophone context over the past half-century. Our goal is to illuminate the co-development of Kant scholarship and the philosophy of science during this period and to identify points of influence in both directions. In section 2 we present an overview of the scholarship on Kant’s account of natural laws. In section 3 we survey the diverse interpretations of Kant’s views on biology and consider recent appeals to Kant by philosophers of biology. In section 4 we explore several recent developments in philosophy of science that have potential synergies with Kant scholarship. Our aim is not simply to establish that Kant’s philosophy can have relevance for philosophy of science but also to point out where it has been and continues to be relevant. Appreciating this relevance, we suggest, can help identify productive lines of inquiry for Kant studies.

Another Way from Davos:

In A Parting of the Ways, Friedman narrates the Davos debate as a catalysator in the genesis of two diverging trajectories within twentieth-century philosophy. In this paper, I introduce a participant of the Davos debate, Jean Cavaillès, who does not adhere to Friedman’s bifurcation and who was able to zigzag between the developments in phenomenology and logical positivism. To show how this French epistemologist was able to connect these two traditions, I detail Cavaillès’ encounter with the Vienna Circle, explicate his Kantianism, and chronicle the place of Bolzano in his account of the (historical) development of philosophy of science. After that, I examine Cavaillès’ critique of Carnap’s Logische Syntax der Sprache and argue that Cavaillès’ theory of science is much closer to Carnap’s logical analysis than either he himself or the secondary literature suggests. Both philosophers, in fact, argue for the importance of constructing the unity of science, affirm the autonomous development of science, and conceptualize a dynamic notion of the a priori. In the conclusion, I disclose the similarities between Cavaillès’ conceptualization of the dynamic a priori and Friedman’s relativized a priori, and argue for the importance of extending Friedman’s account of the interwar developments in philosophy of science.

The boundaries that constitute us: Parasite, pandemic life, and crises of vulnerability

In a very literal sense, a biological organism cannot be alive on its own. I employ key premises in second-order cybernetics in current developments in philosophy of science and posthumanist thought in an attempt to speak upon the state of precarity and lived reality of social and political life during the unprecedented COVID-19 pandemic. I posit the parasite and the virus as biological and communicational forms which model the impossibility of solipsism in life (be it viral, parasitic, or human). I believe that disrupting a premise of solipsism operates as a central task in an attempt to see and speak of the skein of interrelationships that inform our shared understanding about current events. To mobilize this discussion, I am sensitized to seek the resonances of the film Parasite on topics of radical interrelationality, systemicities within capitalist strictures, and muddled boundaries of biological and political life. The role of socio-economic boundaries affectively felt in the film provides a starting point from which I delve into analogous scientific concepts, including work of cyberneticians Gregory Bateson and Heinz von Foerster, among others, and their respective notions of epistemological responsibility and the circularity of human relations and mutual interaction. This discussion will anchor my attempt to present a symbiosis of concepts that posit the existence of viruses as the existence of boundaries in life forms on earth. Such concepts include Jakob von Uexküll’s Umwelt especially as it pertains to viral life, Michel Serres’ malleable interpretation of the parasite, and the formal analogies made by cyberneticists between viral ‘consciousness’ and Alan Turing’s machine (self-)organization. I frame these concepts with their potential to offer a phenomenologically resonant and scientifically nuanced understanding into systemic class warfare in mind, as depicted in the film and ramifying throughout.

Back to the big picture

ABSTRACT We distinguish between two different strategies in methodology of economics. The big picture strategy, dominant in the twentieth century, ascribed to economics a unified method and evaluated this method against a single criterion of ‘science’. In the last thirty years a second strategy gained prominence: fine-grained studies of how some specific technique common in economics can achieve one or more epistemic goal. We argue that recent developments in philosophy of science and in economics warrant a return to big picture – but now reinvented. It should focus on a new question, already intensely debated within the profession: is the organization of economics healthy and appropriate?

Thomas Kuhn’s Revolutions: A Historical and Evolutionary Philosophy of Science? By James A.Marcum. Pp. viii, 287. London, Bloomsbury, 2015, £20.68/$29.95.

Thomas Kuhn’s Revolutions: A Historical and Evolutionary Philosophy of Science? By James A.Marcum. Pp. viii, 287. London, Bloomsbury, 2015, £20.68/$29.95.

James A. Marcum. Thomas Kuhn’s Revolutions: A Historical and an Evolutionary Philosophy of Science? London: Bloomsbury, 2015. Pp. ix+304. $94.00 (cloth); $29.95 (paper); $21.99 (e-book).

Previous articleNext article No AccessBook ReviewsJames A. Marcum. Thomas Kuhn’s Revolutions: A Historical and an Evolutionary Philosophy of Science? London: Bloomsbury, 2015. Pp. ix+304. $94.00 (cloth); $29.95 (paper); $21.99 (e-book).Vasso KindiVasso KindiNational and Kapodistrian University of Athens Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by HOPOS Volume 8, Number 1Spring 2018 Sponsored by The International Society for the History of Philosophy of Science Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/696350 Views: 72Total views on this site For permission to reuse, please contact [email protected]PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

Evolutionary Philosophy of Science: A New Image of Science and Stance towards General Philosophy of Science

An important question facing contemporary philosophy of science is whether the natural sciences in terms of their historical records exhibit distinguishing developmental patterns or structures. At least two philosophical stances are possible in answering this question. The first pertains to the plurality of the individual sciences. From this stance, the various sciences are analyzed individually and compared with one another in order to derive potential commonalities, if any, among them. The second stance involves a general philosophy of science in which a thorough theory of the natural sciences is developed. The latter stance strives to account for more than possible commonalities among the sciences but also to provide a broad-spectrum philosophical framework to account for, or to explicate, the nature of science itself and its progress. In this paper, the second stance is taken in which an evolutionary philosophy of science is proposed. To that end, Thomas Kuhn’s evolutionary philosophy of science is initially discussed and critiqued. An evolutionary philosophy of science is then proposed based on a revision of Kuhn’s evolutionary philosophy of science in terms of George Gaylord Simpson’s various tempos and modes for biological evolution. Next, two historical case studies from the biological sciences are reconstructed to illustrate the robustness of the proposed evolutionary philosophy of science for explicating the progress of the natural sciences. A concluding section discusses the proposed evolutionary philosophy of science with respect to providing a broad-spectrum framework or general philosophy of science for understanding the nature and progress of the natural sciences.

Thomas Kuhn's revolutions: a historical and an evolutionary philosophy of science?

Thomas Kuhn's revolutions: a historical and an evolutionary philosophy of science?

Structural realist account of the self

In this paper, inspired by the late twentieth century developments in philosophy of science (ontic structural realism), I propose an ontological scheme to accommodate the scientifically-informed anti-substantivalist views of the self. I call the position structural realist theory of the self (SRS for short). More specifically, I argue that SRS provides a middle ground for bringing a metaphysical reconciliation between the two recurring, and apparently competing forms of such anti-substantivalist views, i.e., eliminativism and pluralism. The notion of the structural self, as the underpinning pattern that is the subject of the ontological commitments in SRS, is not as cumbersome as the orthodox substantivalist notion, and yet accounts for the relation of the different aspects and elements of the self by integrating them structurally into a central unifying pattern of selfhood. I use the experimental studies of Northoff et al. (Neuroimage 31:440–457, 2006) about the processing of the self-related stimuli in the cortical midline structure of the brain, to argue that the underlying pattern of the selfhood could be sought at the level of information processing (in the sense of generic computation). I also add a programmatic suggestion about how the different situated, experiential and extended aspects of the selfhood could be structurally incorporated into this underlying pattern.

Constitutive Explanations as a Methodological Framework for Integrating Thermodynamics and Economics

The common approach to integrating thermodynamics and economics is subsuming thermodynamic aspects among the set of constraints under which economic activity takes place. The causal link between energy and growth is investigated via aggregate econometric analysis. This paper discusses methodological issues of aggregate analysis and proposes an alternative framework based on recent developments in philosophy of science, in particular of the life sciences. “Constitutive explanations” eschew the covering law approach to scientific explanation and concentrate on the identification of multi-level architectures of causal mechanisms that generate phenomena. This methodology has been productively employed to organize cross-disciplinary research, and I suggest that it can also provide a framework for integrating thermodynamics and economics, since this also requires the combination of several scientific disciplines. I present the example of the “rebound effect” as a kind of constitutive explanation and put it in the context of urbanization as a complex mechanism that is the defining feature of economic growth in physical terms.

Constitutive Explanations as a Methodological Framework for Integrating Thermodynamics and Economics

The common approach to integrating thermodynamics and economics is subsuming thermodynamic aspects among the set of constraints under which economic activity takes place. The causal link between energy and growth is investigated via aggregate econometric analysis. This paper discusses methodological issues of aggregate analysis and proposes an alternative framework based on recent developments in philosophy of science, in particular of the life sciences. “Constitutive explanations” eschew the covering law approach to scientific explanation and concentrate on the identification of multi-level architectures of causal mechanisms that generate phenomena. This methodology has been productively employed to organize cross-disciplinary research, and I suggest that it can also provide a framework for integrating thermodynamics and economics, since this also requires the combination of several scientific disciplines. I present the example of the “rebound effect” as a kind of constitutive explanation and put it in the context of urbanization as a complex mechanism that is the defining feature of economic growth in physical terms.

Exploring IT-Enabled Opportunities for Crowdsourcing Innovation: An Epistemic Stance Perspective

In this paper, we propose a new theoretical perspective, which we call epistemic stance on novelty, to understand firms’ experimentations with IT-enabled crowdsourcing to organize innovation. Under growing pressures to enhance innovation capacity, firms increasingly explore new opportunities to engage crowds, external to the firm, in the innovation process. Based on an in-depth interpretive study of two innovation consulting firms, we investigate their efforts to consider and take a position toward crowdsourcing. Our findings highlight significant differences in the ways by which these two firms engage with crowdsourcing and the key role of each firm’s attitudes toward the nature of knowledge and pursuit of novelty in this process. To interpret these findings, we develop the epistemic stance perspective. We draw on recent developments in philosophy of science to suggest that taking an epistemic stance entails enacting specific ontological and epistemological beliefs in dynamic ways and gives rise to certain meanings and possibilities for organising innovation through crowdsourcing. Our research makes a contribution by deepening understanding of the ways new open IT-enabled forms of organizing innovation work may emerge.

“Knowing Things in Common”: Sheila Jasanoff and Helen Longino on the Social Nature of Knowledge.

In her analysis of the politics of biotechnology, Sheila Jasanoff argued that modern democracy cannot be understood without an analysis of the ways knowledge is created and used in society. she suggested calling these ways to “know things in common” civic epistemologies. Jasanoff thus approached knowledge as fundamentally social. the focus on the social nature of knowledge allows drawing parallels with some developments in philosophy of science. In the first part of the paper, I juxtapose Jasanoff’s account with the philosopher Helen longino’s approach. longino argued that objectivity of scientific knowledge is made possible by the social nature of knowledge production. in the process of community-wide discussion, claims that are not intersubjectively acceptable are rejected and communally acceptable knowledge emerges. longino called this knowledge-creating critical dialogue transformative. i suggest that longino’s account can be seen as providing epistemological support for the civic epistemologies Jasanoff described. They are capable of producing knowledge in the normative philosophical sense of the word to the degree that they are able to support this transformative critical dialogue. in the second part of the paper, i explore in the light of longino’s criteria for effective knowledge-productive dialogue one of the controversies in biotechnology policy that Jasanoff analysed. I suggest that Longino’s criteria allow identifying some fundamental obstacles for initiating and maintaining this kind of responsive critical dialogue and that the controversy can be seen as caused by inability to overcome these obstacles. in such a case, the controversy signals an epistemic failure as well as a failure of democratic policy. 1 During the work on this paper, my research was partially funded from the grants ETF7946 and SF0180110s08. Acta Baltica Historiae et Philosophiae scientiarum Vol. 1, no. 2 (Autumn 2013) Doi: 10.11590/abhps.2013.2.03

Pluralistic physicalism and the causal exclusion argument

There is a growing consensus among philosophers of science that scientific endeavors of understanding the human mind or the brain exhibit explanatory pluralism. Relatedly, several philosophers have in recent years defended an interventionist approach to causation that leads to a kind of causal pluralism. In this paper, I explore the consequences of these recent developments in philosophy of science for some of the central debates in philosophy of mind. First, I argue that if we adopt explanatory pluralism and the interventionist approach to causation, our understanding of physicalism has to change, and this leads to what I call pluralistic physicalism. Secondly, I show that this pluralistic physicalism is not endangered by the causal exclusion argument.

Deconstruction, Science, and the Logic of Enquiry

In this essay I set out to place Derrida's work – especially his earlier (pre-1980) books and essays – in the context of related or contrasting developments in analytic philosophy of science over the past half-century. Along the way I challenge the various misconceptions that have grown up around that work, not only amongst its routine detractors in the analytic camp but also amongst some of its less philosophically informed disciples. In particular I focus on the interlinked issues of realism versus anti-realism and the scope and limits of classical (bivalent) logic, both of which receive a detailed, rigorous and sustained treatment in his deconstructive readings of Husserl, Austin and others. Contrary to Derrida's reputation as a exponent of anti-realism in its far-gone ‘textualist’ form and as one who merely plays perverse though ingenious games with logic I show that those readings presuppose both a basically realist conception of their subject-matter and a strong commitment to the protocols of bivalent logic. These he applies with the utmost care and precision right up to the point – unreachable except by way of that procedure – where they encounter certain problems or anomalies that cannot be resolved except by switching to a different (non-bivalent, deviant, paraconsistent, ‘supplementary’, or ‘parergonal’) logic. Philosophy of science in the analytic mainstream might benefit greatly from a closer acquaintance with Derrida's thinking on these topics, as it might from a knowledge of his likewise rigorous thinking-through of the antinomy between structure and genesis as it bears upon issues in the history of scientific thought.

The epistemological virtues of assumptions: towards a coming of age of Boltzmann and Meinong’s objections to ‘the prejudice in favour of the actual’?

Two complementary debates of the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth century are examined here: the debate on the legitimacy of hypotheses in the natural sciences and the debate on intentionality and ‘representations without object’ in philosophy. Both are shown to rest on two core issues: the attitude of the subject and the mode of presentation chosen to display a domain of phenomena. An orientation other than the one which contributed to shape twentieth-century philosophy of science is explored through the analysis of the role given to assumptions in Boltzmann’s research strategy, where assumptions are contrasted to hypotheses, axioms, and principles, and in Meinong’s criticism of the privileged status attributed to representations in mental activities. Boltzmann’s computational style in mathematics and Meinong’s criticism of the confusion between representation and judgment give prominence to an indirect mode of presentation, adopted in a state of suspended belief which is characteristic of assumptions and which enables one to grasp objects that cannot be reached through direct representation or even analogies. The discussion shows how assumptions and the movement to fiction can be essential steps in the quest for objectivity. The conclusion restates the issues of the two debates in a contemporary perspective and shows how recent developments in philosophy of science and philosophy of language and mind can be brought together by arguing for a twofold conception of reference.

The idea of nursing science

This paper addresses the question of whether or not nursing can legitimately be considered as a science. It is proposed that an adequate answer to this question requires consideration of recent developments in philosophy of science (as urged by Paley). It is shown that such developments call into question the 'rational image' of science. However, a defence of the legitimacy of the scientific enterprise has been attempted by Laudan, an advocate of the 'historical turn'. Two conditions necessary for the applicability of this 'turn' are identified. It is shown that although they apply relatively unproblematically to science, they do not readily apply to nursing. Hence the conclusion is drawn that claims for the integrity of nursing science stand in need of much further development.

Deconstructing Anti-Realism: Quantum Mechanics and Interpretation Theory

IN THIS ESSAY I SHALL BE LOOKING AT SOME RECENT (post-1970) developments in philosophy of science that offer a hopeful way forward from the various well-known problems (of meaning-variance, paradigmchange, ontological relativity and the like) bequeathed by logical empiricism. Most promising among them-in my view-is the theory of critical realism that draws inspiration from the work of Rom Harr6 and whose chief exponent during the past two decades has been Roy Bhaskar.1 In North America the emphasis has fallen rather differently, with no such overt or programmatic link between the two major arguments that find expression in the title of Bhaskar's best-known book, Scientific Realism and Human Emancipation. Nevertheless there is a clearly-marked ethical and sociopolitical dimension to the current widespread renewal of interest in causal realism among US philosophers of science. This aspect is important, I shall argue, partly on account of the challenge it offers to the kinds of Kuhnian-relativist thinking that have attained near-orthodox status elsewhere in the social and human sciences.

Theory Format and SLA Theory

This paper reviews work in the philosophy of science pertinent to theory formats and relates it to recent second language acquisition (SLA) theories. Recent developments in philosophy of science and science studies have shown that the theory format advocated by philosophy of science for much of this century is unhelpful; developments in theory format in cognitive science, particularly psychology, artificial intelligence, and linguistics, have proceeded on lines independent of the older tradition in theory format. The naturalization of philosophy of science has resulted in improved understandings of what is necessary in a theory if it is to be adequately explanatory. SLA theory development has largely taken place in ignorance of such recent developments, and initial critiques of SLA theory from within the field reflected the earlier conception of theory. However, SLA research has reached the stage where a meta-understanding of theory formats, in terms of the components of a theory and the language in which a theory is couched (its formalism), is badly needed to facilitate theory development.

Realisme en representasie in wetenskap en literatuur

Although there are important areas of overlap, the problem of realism differs in the contexts of philosophy, science and literature. What is common to all three realms is the fact that the empiricist notion of objectivity is not tenable any more. The recognition of the theory ladenness of scientific observation and the commentary ladenness of interpretation in literature is in fundamental contrast with the older views of objectivity which have dominated the scene for such a long time. The notion of realism inherent in this older view of objectivity in which science, philosophy or literature somehow “mirrors” the world, has fundamentally been affected by the overthrow of the objectivist tradition through developments in philosophy of science and developments in metaphor theory in which the emphasis on “literal” descriptions of reality have made way for the recognition of the relative distinction between the literal and the metaphorical. Both science and literature have acknowledged the possibility of a potential plurality of possible interpretations of “reality”. This means that as many “realities” exist as interpretations of reality and of texts are possible. This has confronted both science and literature with the need for a fundamentally revised notion of “realism” and of truth and has posed the very real problem of the (im-)possibility of convergence toward truth, reality or the one and only “correct” interpretation.