Is Richard Rorty a philosophical quietist? We consider different stances Rorty has assumed toward philosophy, arguing that on the face of it there is no conflict between them. However, Rorty's extensive writing on the topic of truth suggests a tension between Rorty's own recommendation of “benign neglect” of metaphysics and his actual philosophical practice. The topic of truth actually serves Rorty's philosophical purposes well, allowing him to change the direction of conversation from a concern with the nature of concepts to (...) a direct concern with human practice. The switch Rorty envisions is captured in the emblematic figure of the ironist, and we consider the ironist variety of quietism accordingly. For Rorty, we conclude, quietism is a contingent, conditional, strategic stance. Rorty's aim is to change the direction of a strand of philosophical conversation, not to free us from philosophical illusion or to bring philosophy to an end. (shrink)

This book is an introduction to and interpretation of the philosophy of language devised by Donald Davidson over the past 25 years. The guiding intuition is that Davidson's work is best understood as an ongoing attempt to purge semantics of theoretical reifications. Seen in this light the recent attack on the notion of language itself emerges as a natural development of his Quinian scepticism towards "meanings" and his rejections of reference-based semantic theories. Linguistic understanding is, for Davidson, essentially dynamic, arising (...) only through a continuous process of theory construction and reconstruction. The result is a conception of semantics in which the notion of interpretation and not the notion of knowing a language is fundamental. In the course of his book Bjorn Ramberg provides a critical discussion of reference-based semantic theories, challenging the standard accounts of the principle of charity and elucidating the notion of radical interpretation. The final chapter on incommensurability ties in with the discussions of Kuhn's work in the philosophy of science and suggests certain links between Davidson's analytic semantics and hermeneutic theory. (shrink)

This book is an introduction to and interpretation of the philosophy of language devised by Donald Davidson over the past 25 years. The guiding intuition is that Davidson's work is best understood as an ongoing attempt to purge semantics of theoretical reifications. Seen in this light the recent attack on the notion of language itself emerges as a natural development of his Quinian scepticism towards "meanings" and his rejections of reference-based semantic theories. Linguistic understanding is, for Davidson, essentially dynamic, arising (...) only through a continuous process of theory construction and reconstruction. The result is a conception of semantics in which the notion of interpretation and not the notion of knowing a language is fundamental. In the course of his book Bjorn Ramberg provides a critical discussion of reference-based semantic theories, challenging the standard accounts of the principle of charity and elucidating the notion of radical interpretation. The final chapter on incommensurability ties in with the discussions of Kuhn's work in the philosophy of science and suggests certain links between Davidson's analytic semantics and hermeneutic theory. (shrink)

Essays by various philosphers on the work of Tyler Burge and Burge's extensive responses.

To approach the philosophical anthropology of Donald Davidson is to get ready for an unusually high number of laps around the hermeneutic circle. Apparently a problem-oriented philosopher, Davidson presents his views in a continuing series of dense, tightly focussed papers on narrowly circumscribed topics. The lines of the big picture are mostly implicit. Yet it is the scope and the power of this picture that has made Davidson one of the most significant philosophers of this century. Naturally, this makes Davidson's (...) work an extremely tempting—and extremely treacherous—target for the exegete with synthesizing tendencies. Until now, the sense of danger seems to have won out; secondary expositions have largely confined themselves to particular aspects of his thought. For those seeking to appreciate the cohesion and comprehensiveness of Davidson's vision, there has been no alternative but, as Ted Honderich says, to “struggle and learn,” working their way through Davidson's papers, continually calibrating and recalibrating interpretations of Davidson's detailed philosophical proposals with the emerging pattern of their interrelationships. (shrink)

In this chapter we focus on Rorty’s core commitments with respect to language, and consider their role in Rorty’s stormy relations to mainstream analytic philosophy. Further, we bring out key features of Rorty’s position by tracing his engagement with WittgensteinWittgenstein, SellarsSellars, QuineQuine, DavidsonDavidson, and KuhnKuhn.

With Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity Richard Rorty tries to persuade us that a case for liberalism is better served by historical narrative than by philosophical theory. The liberal ironist is the complex protagonist of Rorty’s anti-foundationalist story. Why does Rorty think irony serves—rather than undermines—commitments to liberal democracy? I distinguish political from existential dimensions of irony, consider criticisms of Rorty’s ironist, and then draw on recent work by Lear to argue that Rorty’s ironist character nevertheless can be recast as an (...) image useful to the self-understanding of contemporary liberal democrats. (shrink)

Richard Rorty (1931–2007) developed a distinctive and controversial brand of pragmatism that expressed itself along two main axes. One is negative—a critical diagnosis of what Rorty takes to be defining projects of modern philosophy. The other is positive—an attempt to show what intellectual culture might look like, once we free ourselves from the governing metaphors of mind and knowledge in which the traditional problems of epistemology and metaphysics (and indeed, in Rorty's view, the self-conception of modern philosophy) are rooted. The (...) centerpiece of Rorty's critique is the provocative account offered in Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (1979, hereafter PMN). In this book, and in the closely related essays collected in Consequences of Pragmatism (1982, hereafter CP), Rorty's principal target is the philosophical idea of knowledge as representation, as a mental mirroring of a mind-external world. Providing a contrasting image of philosophy, Rorty has sought to integrate and apply the milestone achievements of Dewey, Hegel and Darwin in a pragmatist synthesis of historicism and naturalism. Characterizations and illustrations of a post-epistemological intellectual culture, present in both PMN (part III) and CP (xxxvii-xliv), are more richly developed in later works, such as Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity (1989, hereafter CIS), in the popular essays and articles collected in Philosophy and Social Hope (1999), and in the four volumes of philosophical papers, Objectivity, Relativism, and Truth (1991, hereafter ORT); Essays on Heidegger and Others (1991, hereafter EHO); Truth and Progress (1998, hereafter TP); and Philosophy as Cultural Politics (2007, hereafter PCP). In these writings, ranging over an unusually wide intellectual territory, Rorty offers a highly integrated, multifaceted view of thought, culture, and politics, a view that has made him one of the most widely discussed philosophers in our time. (shrink)

Following Quine, Davidson, and Dennett, I take mental states and linguistic meaning to be individuated with reference to interpretation. The regulative principle of ideal interpretation is to maximize rationality, and this accounts for the distinctiveness and autonomy of the vocabulary of agency. This rationality-maxim can accommodate empirical cognitive-psychological investigation into the nature and limitations of human mental processing. Interpretivism is explicitly anti-reductionist, but in the context of Rorty's neo-pragmatism provides a naturalized view of agents. The interpretivist strategy affords a less (...) despondent view of constructive philosophical activity than Rorty's own. (shrink)

For researchers who study technology designs, the application and execution of so-called design-oriented research projects are a common way of funding their research. Against this background, we propose a new methodical approach with which VSD can easily be implemented in such projects and which we call “value declaration”. We share our experience with this method which we gained in two design-oriented research projects.

This short chapter is a personal homage to Richard Rorty as mentor. Ramberg provides the reader with a very intimate portrait of Rorty, of his intellectual humility and integrity, and of how he was living by the standards of his philosophy of conversation (the editor).

In this paper I explore the character and role of stereoformulas and models of the atom that appeared in the early history of stereochemistry, including those of Jacobus Henricus van't Hoff, Aemilius Wunderlich, Johannes Wislicenus, Victor Meyer, Arthur Hantzsch, Alfred Werner, and Hermann Sachse. I argue that stereochemists constructed and used stereoformulas in a pragmatic way that ignored the physical implications of the spatial distribution of valence, and that the models of the atom were created to reconcile the physically curious (...) concept of valence with known physical laws. Although such models were explanatory at a deeper level, they had little impact on the theory and practice of chemistry, and were not serious attempts to reduce chemical theory to physical laws. (shrink)

The problem I want to raise in this paper will not be a problem for anyone who does not share both the following concerns or prejudices. The first is that we should take a materialist, extensional approach to linguistic meaning, specifically, the approach that is suggested by the work of Donald Davidson. The second is that social analysis must be emancipatory, and that this requires the conceptual possibility of postulating social structures that are in some sense hidden by discourse. The (...) problem I want to address lies in a possible conflict between these concerns, both of which I will clarify, though not justify. The problem is this: Does the methodological core of Davidson's semantics—the principle of charity—permit interpretation informed by a concept of ideological concealment?As with many of our philosophical problems, the existence of this one is quite precarious. We can avoid avoiding it only if we move along a rather specific route, which, I am afraid, will constitute a good chunk of my paper. (shrink)

Insights into the history of chemistry Content Type Journal Article DOI 10.1007/s11016-010-9482-4 Authors Peter J. Ramberg, Truman State University, 100 E. Normal, Kirksville, MO 63501, USA Journal Metascience Online ISSN 1467-9981 Print ISSN 0815-0796.

This commentary on Cheryl Misak’s The American Pragmatists opens with a schematic distinction between Type I philosophers, who think of their problems in ahistorical terms, and Type II philosophers, who take the genesis of the vocabulary in which problems are stated to have philosophical import. I suggest that Misak is a moderate Type II philosopher, who constructs a successful narrative of pragmatism around the issue of objectivity. The narrative carefully traces the dialectic of convergence and conflict that shapes pragmatist thought (...) on this central topic, smoothly connecting—both historically and systematically—with central concerns in contemporary Anglophone philosophy. Misak thus achieves a main aim, namely, to open avenues of dialogical engagement across sub-disciplinary boundaries. Success has a cost, of course, and I conclude by briefly suggesting what may be left in the shadows cast by this generally illuminating story. (shrink)

The Ontology for Biomedical Investigations (OBI) is an ontology that provides terms with precisely defined meanings to describe all aspects of how investigations in the biological and medical domains are conducted. OBI re-uses ontologies that provide a representation of biomedical knowledge from the Open Biological and Biomedical Ontologies (OBO) project and adds the ability to describe how this knowledge was derived. We here describe the state of OBI and several applications that are using it, such as adding semantic expressivity to (...) existing databases, building data entry forms, and enabling interoperability between knowledge resources. OBI covers all phases of the investigation process, such as planning, execution and reporting. It represents information and material entities that participate in these processes, as well as roles and functions. Prior to OBI, it was not possible to use a single internally consistent resource that could be applied to multiple types of experiments for these applications. OBI has made this possible by creating terms for entities involved in biological and medical investigations and by importing parts of other biomedical ontologies such as GO, Chemical Entities of Biological Interest (ChEBI) and Phenotype Attribute and Trait Ontology (PATO) without altering their meaning. OBI is being used in a wide range of projects covering genomics, multi-omics, immunology, and catalogs of services. OBI has also spawned other ontologies (Information Artifact Ontology) and methods for importing parts of ontologies (Minimum information to reference an external ontology term (MIREOT)). The OBI project is an open cross-disciplinary collaborative effort, encompassing multiple research communities from around the globe. To date, OBI has created 2366 classes and 40 relations along with textual and formal definitions. The OBI Consortium maintains a web resource providing details on the people, policies, and issues being addressed in association with OBI. (shrink)

SummaryThe development of universities and technical schools in nineteenth century Switzerland is commonly assumed to be similar to the development of comparable schools in Germany. To a large extent this is correct, but there are subtle differences in the founding and organization of Swiss institutions that are reflective of the Swiss national and local cantonal contexts. In the case of Zürich, the specific local political and financial conditions underlying the formation of the University of Zürich, the Zürich Cantonal School and (...) the Swiss Federal Polytechnic resulted in a complex set of dual appointments and shared facilities that were absent at comparable chemical laboratories at German universities. This essay outlines the origins of these complex relationships under Carl Löwig and Georg Städeler and follows in more detail the complex career path of Johannes Wislicenus in Zürich from his appointment as Privatdozent in 1860 to his appointment as Director of the Polytechnic in 1871. Wislicenus’ career path illustrates the institutional context of chemistry in Zürich and shows how this context, including the roles of cantonal and federal support, and the physical constraints created by shared laboratory facilities, shaped chemical research and instruction in Zürich. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Pragmatic Redescription versus Philosophy of Mind The Interpretive Strategy Vocabularies, Agency, and Nature The Mind, Psychology, and Nature Pragmatism and Science Pragmatism and the Naturalization of Philosophy.

(1993). Strategies for Radical Rorty (‘… but is it progress?’) Canadian Journal of Philosophy: Vol. 23, Supplementary Volume 19: New Essays on Metaphilosophy, pp. 223-246.

J. H. van 't Hoff's 1874 Dutch pamphlet, in which he proposed the spatial arrangement of atoms in a molecule, is one of the most significant documents in the history of chemistry. This essay presents a new narrative of Van 't Hoff's early life and places the appearance of the pamphlet within the context of the 'second golden age' of Dutch science. We argue that the combination of the reformed educational system in The Netherlands, the emergence of graphical molecular modelling (...) within the theoretical and practical culture of chemistry during the 1860s and 1870s, as well as Van 't Hoff's own personal research trajectory, formed the background to his unprecedented attribution of spatial meaning to the traditional concept of atomic 'arrangement'. We also present a new English translation of the pamphlet, for we have found that the existing translation, published by G. M. Richardson in 1901, contains many errors, changes and omissions. The new version offers a more accurate rendition in English of Van 't Hoff's style and argument. (shrink)

Biological ontologies are used to organize, curate, and interpret the vast quantities of data arising from biological experiments. While this works well when using a single ontology, integrating multiple ontologies can be problematic, as they are developed independently, which can lead to incompatibilities. The Open Biological and Biomedical Ontologies Foundry was created to address this by facilitating the development, harmonization, application, and sharing of ontologies, guided by a set of overarching principles. One challenge in reaching these goals was that the (...) OBO principles were not originally encoded in a precise fashion, and interpretation was subjective. Here we show how we have addressed this by formally encoding the OBO principles as operational rules and implementing a suite of automated validation checks and a dashboard for objectively evaluating each ontology’s compliance with each principle. This entailed a substantial effort to curate metadata across all ontologies and to coordinate with individual stakeholders. We have applied these checks across the full OBO suite of ontologies, revealing areas where individual ontologies require changes to conform to our principles. Our work demonstrates how a sizable federated community can be organized and evaluated on objective criteria that help improve overall quality and interoperability, which is vital for the sustenance of the OBO project and towards the overall goals of making data FAIR. Competing Interest StatementThe authors have declared no competing interest. (shrink)

Vaccine research, as well as the development, testing, clinical trials, and commercial uses of vaccines involve complex processes with various biological data that include gene and protein expression, analysis of molecular and cellular interactions, study of tissue and whole body responses, and extensive epidemiological modeling. Although many data resources are available to meet different aspects of vaccine needs, it remains a challenge how we are to standardize vaccine annotation, integrate data about varied vaccine types and resources, and support advanced vaccine (...) data analysis and inference. To address these problems, the community-based Vaccine Ontology (VO) has been developed through collaboration with vaccine researchers and many national and international centers and programs, including the National Center for Biomedical Ontology (NCBO), the Infectious Disease Ontology (IDO) Initiative, and the Ontology for Biomedical Investigations (OBI). VO utilizes the Basic Formal Ontology (BFO) as the top ontology and the Relation Ontology (RO) for definition of term relationships. VO is represented in the Web Ontology Language (OWL) and edited using the Protégé-OWL. Currently VO contains more than 2000 terms and relationships. VO emphasizes on classification of vaccines and vaccine components, vaccine quality and phenotypes, and host immune response to vaccines. These reflect different aspects of vaccine composition and biology and can thus be used to model individual vaccines. More than 200 licensed vaccines and many vaccine candidates in research or clinical trials have been modeled in VO. VO is being used for vaccine literature mining through collaboration with the National Center for Integrative Biomedical Informatics (NCIBI). Multiple VO applications will be presented. (shrink)

This distinctive collection by scholars from around the world focuses upon the cultural, educational, and political significance of Richard Rorty's thought. The nine essays which comprise the collection examine a variety of related themes: Rorty's neopragmatism, his view of philosophy, his philosophy of education and culture, Rorty's comparison between Dewey and Foucault, his relation to postmodern theory, and, also his form of political liberalism.

Is there an ideology of chemistry? Given recent developments in history of science, we would almost certainly answer “yes” in some form to this question; and in this detailed institutional study Ulrike Fell uses the example of chemistry in France to define more precisely what the “ideology” of a science would be. Fell outlines the collective system of common beliefs and cultural goals of chemists using three interrelated concepts: “discipline” , “profession” , and “nation” .Fell's multilayered analysis is divided among (...) three major episodes. The first section of the book treats the institutional and educational patterns in French chemistry to 1914, focusing on the formation and professionalization of the Société de Chimique de Paris with a prosopographical study of its membership by subdiscipline and occupation. She also notes that the loss of the Alsace‐Lorraine region in 1871 reinforced among French chemists their sense of inferiority to the Germans , leading to a desire to emulate the chemical educational system found in Germany. In the second part Fell closely analyzes the effect of World War I on the identity of French chemists. Prior to 1914 French chemists, as indicated by the study of the membership of the Société de Chimique and the content and origin of the publications in its Bulletin, were predominantly academic and oriented toward pure research, rather than industrial chemists interested in practical results. The outbreak of war spurred the growth of a native French chemical industry, especially in dyestuff production, along with the apparatus necessary for research in applied chemistry and the production of chemicals on an industrial scale. This increasing importance of industrial chemistry resulted in the formation of the Société de Chimie Industrielle. In the third section Fell shows how chemists in France attempted to show the unity of their discipline amid increasing fragmentation. Both the Centenaire de Marcelin Berthelot in 1927 and the creation of the Maison de la Chimie in 1934 were attempts to show the unity of chemists.Fell has a thorough knowledge of the large secondary literature on French science and has based much of her argument on archival documents. Her book, in which she reworks and rethinks the long‐standing issue of the “decline” of French science and Parisian centralization, is a welcome addition to our understanding of science in the French state and the dynamics of professional identity. (shrink)