Empiricism, Misc

The scientific community takes for granted a view of science that may be called standard empiricism. This holds that the basic intellectual aim of science is truth, nothing being presupposed about the truth, the basic method being to assess theories with respect to evidence. A basic tenet of the view is that science must not accept any thesis about the world as a part of scientific knowledge independent of evidence, let alone in violation of evidence. But physics only accepts unified (...) theories, and persistently rejects infinitely many ad hoc rivals that fit the phenomena even better. In persistently rejecting these infinitely many empirically more successful rival theories, physics thereby makes a substantial assumption about the universe – it is such that all ad hoc theories are false – an assumption that is accepted implicitly independently of evidence, even in a sense against the evidence. That contradicts standard empiricism. The scientific community needs to adopt a new conception of science that represents the assumption of physics as a hierarchy of assumptions, thus facilitating the improvement of the assumption that is made, as science proceeds. (shrink)

This is an unedited version of a paper written in 2012 accepted for publication in a forthcoming Festschrift for Mark Platts. In it I argue that the Helmholtz/Bayes tradition of free energy neuroscience begun by Geoffrey Hinton and his colleagues, and now being carried forward by Karl Friston and his, can be seen as a fulfilment of the Quine/Davidson program of radical interpretation, and also of Quine’s conception of a naturalized epistemology. -/- This program, in turn, is rooted in Helmholtz’s (...) scientific reconception of Kant’s notion of a concept-led synthesis of affectations by an extra-sensory reality that creates human self-consciousness, a topic previously discussed in my (2012) Psychoanalysis, Representation, and Neuroscience. -/- I also argue that 20th century analytical philosophy went astray when Frege, Russell, and Wittgenstein ignored their legacy from Helmholtz and espoused a conception of perception and epistemology that he had already shown to be false. (shrink)

Ernst Mach’s definition of the relationship between thoughts and facts is well known, but the question of how Mach conceived of their actual relationship has received much less attention. This paper aims to address this gap in light of Mary B. Hesse’s view of a postempiricist approach to natural science. As this paper will show, this view is characterized by a constructivist conception of the relationship between theory and facts that seems to be consistent with Mach’s observations on scientific knowledge. (...) The paper first explores Hesse’s account of postempiricism and her project of a new epistemology. It then considers Ernst Mach’s conception of facts as the middle term of a triad of concepts that includes thoughts and elements as extreme terms. Finally, the paper will offer concluding remarks on Mach’s contribution to the debate on scientific realism and his attempt to redefine the notions of correspondence and objectivity in science. (shrink)

Recently, a small but growing literature has started to fill the gap in our understanding of mid and late nineteenth-century German philosophy. But entrenched historiographical narratives suggest nothing much of interest happened in German-language philosophy after Hegel and before Nietzsche and Frege. So why should philosophers care about that period? Christian Damböck’s Deutscher Empirismus: Studien zur Philosophie im deutschsprachigen Raum 1830–1930 presents an argument for an unambiguous answer to that question, and one that matters for contemporary analytic philosophy. Naturalism in (...) analytic philosophy, especially in philosophy of science, often seems in the grip of an over-emphasis on the methods and results of the natural sciences, as opposed to the humanities and social sciences. This can lead to the neglect of and difficulty making sense of those matters dealt with by the humanities and social sciences. For example, we have a rich and mature literature on natural kinds, but only a comparatively limited and as yet immature understanding of social kinds. Damböck’s account of a tradition he calls German empiricism serves to illustrate what philosophy might look like if it took seriously the idea that knowledge is always embedded within a cultural and historical context, and thus that the theory of knowledge must be informed by those disciplines concerned with culture and history, namely, the Geisteswissenschaften. (shrink)

A very brief outline of Popper's methodology.

This paper pulls together three debates fundamental in metaphysics and proposes a novel unified approach to them. The three debates are (i) between bundle theory and substrate theory about the nature of objects, (ii) dispositionalism and categoricalism about the nature of properties, and (iii) regularity theory and production theory about the nature of causation. The first part of the paper (§§2-4) suggests that although these debates are metaphysical, the considerations motivating the competing approaches in each debate tend to be epistemological. (...) The second part (§§5-6) argues that the two underlying epistemological pictures supporting competing views lead to highly unsatisfying conceptions of the world. The final part (§§7-10) proposes an alternative epistemological picture, which I call ‘introverted empiricism,’ and presents the way it provides for a more satisfying grasp of the ultimate nature of objects, properties, and causation. It is a consequence of this alternative picture that there is a kind of intimate self-understanding that underlies our understanding of the deep nature of reality. (shrink)

Le scepticisme est une véritable constante de l’histoire de la philosophie depuis l’Antiquité. En se nourrissant des désaccords philosophiques, il ne cesse de se transformer pour mieux remettre en cause les certitudes du dogmatisme. Ce volume présente des contributions en langue française de spécialistes de la pensée sceptique dans l’antiquité, domaine qui s’est considérablement développé ces dernières années. Les études ici présentées portent aussi bien sur le pyrrhonisme que sur la nouvelle Académie ou l’empirisme médical ; elles utilisent une variété (...) d’approches (analytique, systématique et historiographique), toutes dans le même but : mieux comprendre l’énigme de la pensée sceptique. (shrink)

Brentano's Thesis that intentionality is the mark of the mental is central to analytic philosophy of mind as well as phenomenology. The contemporary discussion assumes that it is a formulation of an analytic definition of the mental. I argue that this assumption is mistaken. According to Brentano, many philosophical concepts can only be elucidated by perceiving their instances because these concepts are abstracted from perception. The concept of the mental is one of these concepts. We need to understand Brentano's Thesis (...) accordingly: It is a piece of advice on how to become introspectively aware of the distinctive feature of mental phenomena. On this understanding of Brentano's Thesis standard objections to it no longer arise. (shrink)

"I tend to agree with more dialectical positions such as Noxon's who, even being a critic of the approach of the two concepts, writes the following: Hume explained certain mental phenomena, notably belief, as effects of the association. And, going further, I say that belief is a feeling or sensation aroused by two factors: habit and the association of ideas, but it does not arise either from one or from other singly, each one is a part of a process that (...) involves both. Therefore habit is an underlying principle which acts upon reasonable beings during their observation of constant conjunctions, in such a way that imagination can associate ideas only through this principle acting in the mind. However, as I have already stated in another text, such an association realised by the imagination will catch up to its certainty status just with the emergence of a feeling which imputes necessity to what is instead merely contingent" (Sample taken up from the text). (shrink)

The justificatory force of empirical reasoning always depends upon the existence of some synthetic, a priori justification. The reasoner must begin with justified, substantive constraints on both the prior probability of the conclusion and certain conditional probabilities; otherwise, all possible degrees of belief in the conclusion are left open given the premises. Such constraints cannot in general be empirically justified, on pain of infinite regress. Nor does subjective Bayesianism offer a way out for the empiricist. Despite often-cited convergence theorems, subjective (...) Bayesians cannot hold that any empirical hypothesis is ever objectively justified in the relevant sense. Rationalism is thus the only alternative to an implausible skepticism. (shrink)

Recent work on skin-brain thesis suggests the possibility of empirical evidence that empiricism is false. It implies that early animals need no traditional sensory receptors to be engaged in cognitive activity. The neural structure required to coordinate extensive sheets of contractile tissue for motility provides the starting point for a new multicellular organized form of sensing. Moving a body by muscle contraction provides the basis for a multicellular organization that is sensitive to external surface structure at the scale of the (...) animal body. In other words, the nervous system first evolved for action, not for receiving sensory input. Thus, sensory input is not required for minimal cognition; only action is. The whole body of an organism, in particular its highly specific animal sensorimotor organization, reflects the bodily and environmental spatiotemporal structure. The skin-brain thesis suggests that, in contrast to empiricist claims that cognition is constituted by sensory systems, cognition may be also constituted by action-oriented feedback mechanisms. Instead of positing the reflex arc as the elementary building block of nervous systems, it proposes that endogenous motor activity is crucial for cognitive processes. In the paper, I discuss the issue whether the skin-brain thesis and its supporting evidence can be really used to overthrow the main tenet of empiricism empirically, by pointing out to cognizing agents that fail to have any sensory apparatus. (shrink)

Synopsis This book is an essay, it is an essay of Individualogy. It is an essay for “Individualism”. It is a rehearsal, because it rehearses, in the awareness that it is a rehearsal, open to other rehearsals. I have no interest in having a closed structure. I am interested in having an open structure for openings. It is an open rehearsal for more questions and more answers. If you have to answer why I write it, who I write it for, (...) or what I write it for, the answer is: "Love is the most important thing that exists" Everything else is a continuation of this thesis, as an answer The more men the book helps to love, the more fulfilled I will feel. Although my self-realization does not depend on it, I have an enormous desire to see the world, humanity, all animals, in harmony, with love. But I cannot go against anyone's free will. But nobody can contradict anyone's free will, nobody's free principle, so I believe that a book that asserts itself with self-help content comes in handy. Because the most I can do, because the most that each one can do, is to help others, others, to help themselves. Because he has to choose. For he has the choice. Always the choice. Always the free principle of each one. Always the free principle of each “Individuality”. And, from here, the philosophical science of “Individualogy” partially arises. So that the doctrine of “Individualism” can be formally affirmed. (shrink)

The emphasis on the role of observation, one of the hallmarks of Empiricism, is reaffirmed by the primacy of the distinction between observable and unobservable in Bas van Fraassen’s Constructive Empiricism. In this paper it will be showed that, despite being one the main topics of discussion in contemporary philosophy of science, particularly thanks to van Fraassen, the question of observation and observability is actually so old as philosophy itself and has to do with the willingness, that defines empiricism, to (...) keep ‘within the limits’. (shrink)

Francis Bacon’s main contribution to the emergence of experimental philosophy was a new way of thinking about the serial character of experimental practices. His natural and experimental histories document his constant attempts to order experimental inquiries. They consist of large collections of lists and series of items, most of which are called “experiments.” For Bacon, “experiment” is a generic term; it is used for tests and trials, recipes, ideas of experimental investigations, theoretical observations and methodological suggestions. Experiments never stand alone (...) in a natural history; they come in series of numbered items, sometimes grouped under “heads” and “topics of inquiry.” In the Latin natural histories.. (shrink)

It is made clear what discursive knowledge is and how we acquire it, and some age-old skeptical views are shown to be incoherent. It is shown that all knowledge is to some degree inferential. At the same time, it is shown that there are three quite distinct senses in which empirical knowledge can be inferential. It is proved that we have a priori knowledge, and also that knowledge of non-empirical truths is needed to acquire empirical knowledge. Finally, it is clearly (...) explained what prediction is, what explanation is, how the two differ, and how they are similar. (shrink)

Philosophy of science is seen by most as a meta-discipline – one that takes science as its subject matter, and seeks to acquire knowledge and understanding about science without in any way affecting, or contributing to, science itself. Karl Popper’s approach is very different. His first love is natural philosophy or, as he would put it, cosmology. This intermingles cosmology and the rest of natural science with epistemology, methodology and metaphysics. Paradoxically, however, one of his best known contributions, his proposed (...) solution to the problem of demarcation, helps to maintain the gulf that separates science from metaphysics, thus fragmenting cosmology into falsifiable science on the one hand, untestable philosophy on the other. This has damaging repercussions for a number of issues Popper tackles, from the problem of induction to simplicity of theory and quantum theory. But his proposed solution to the demarcation problem is untenable. Metaphysical assumptions are an integral part of scientific knowledge, inherent in the persistent acceptance of unified theories against the evidence. Once this is appreciated, it becomes obvious that natural philosophy, a synthesis of science and philosophy, is both more rigorous and of greater intellectual value than the two dissociated components we have today. What Popper sought for could come to full fruition. Problems that Popper tackled, from the problem of induction, to the problem of unity of theory, problems of quantum theory, and problems concerning the scope and limits of physics, all receive more adequate resolution within the new, fully-fledged natural philosophy. (shrink)

El ser en su riqueza se expresa en el lenguaje que emana también del ser. El lenguaje emergió de su olvido en la filosofía griega, gracias a las ideas cristianas de encarnación y trinidad que le hicieron más justicia. El mayor milagro del lenguaje no estriba en que la palabra aparezca en su ser externo, sino en el hecho de que lo que emerge y se manifiesta sea siempre palabra. La vuelta de Gadamer al final de Verdad y método, en (...) torno a la evidencia de que el ser de lo bello consiste en presentarse, ilustra la estructura universal del ser mismo. Apalabrar a lo que es el ser mismo. Lo que determina y hace posible la interpretación es el presentarse del ser de lo que es. Being in its richness expresses itself in language, which itself emanates from Being. Language emerged from its oblivion in Greek philosophy thanks to the Christian ideas of incarnation and trinity, which did it more justice. Language's greatest miracle does not rest on the fact that the word appears in its external being, but on the fact that that which emerges and manifests itself is always word. Gadamer's turn at the end of Truth and Method, regarding the evidence according to which beauty's being consists of presenting itself, illustrates the universal structure of Being itself. Bespeaking what is Being itself. What determines and make possible interpretation is the presentation itself of the being of what is. (shrink)

I give a brief overview of Albert Casullo’s Essays on A Priori Knowledge and Justification, followed by a summary of his diagnostic framework for evaluating accounts of a priori knowledge and a priori justification. I then discuss Casullo’s strategy for countering deficiency arguments against empiricism. A deficiency argument against empiricism can be countered by mounting a parallel argument against moderate rationalism that shows moderate rationalism to be defective in a similar way. I argue that a particular deficiency argument put forth (...) by George Bealer in “The Incoherence of Empiricism” can withstand a parallel challenge mounted by Casullo.I then consider Casullo’s preferred analysis of the concept of a priori justification, which identifies a belief’s being justified by some nonexperiential source as the feature by virtue of which it is justified a priori. On the analysis, an apriori-justfied belief that is justified to a degree that is sufficient for knowledge is not taken to be empirically indefeasible. I argue that Casullo could avail himself of an empirical indefeasibility requirement that is consistent with his minimal and fallibilist conception of a priori knowledge. Doing so would capture a feature of the concept of a priori knowledge that is of particular interest and significance. (shrink)

The concept of observability is of key importance for a consistent defense of Constructive Empiricism. This anti-realist position, originally presented in 1980 by Bas van Fraassen in his book The Scientific Image, crucially depends on the observable/unobservable dichotomy. Nevertheless, the question of what it means to observe has been faced in an unsatisfactory and inadequate manner by van Fraassen and this represents an important lacuna in his philosophical position. The aim of this work is to propose a characterization of the (...) act of observation able to give the necessary support to the ‘rough guide’ of ‘observable’ that can be found in the aforementioned book. Countering van Fraassen’s own statements, that observability is not a matter for philosophy, but for scientific inquiry only, we maintain that any attempt to deal with this subject by the philosophers is legitimate. We will show that van Fraassen ended up doing a philosophical analysis of observation himself, albeit in a fragmentary way. We believe that this question should be dealt with methodically, though, ‘following the rules’ of a ‘proper’ philosophical analysis, as we attempted to do in this work. We will propose a way of conceiving the act of observation, different from van Fraassen’s one, that can help not only to ground the distinction between observable and unobservable, upon which Constructive Empiricism rests, but to get this anti-realist position closer to scientific practice as well, which is one of its desiderata. Without neglecting the philosophical dimension of the issue, though. However, this proposal does not represent an ad hoc ‘solution’ for Constructive Empiricism, but a characterization aspiring to have a universal reach. (shrink)

For four decades it has been argued that we need to adopt a new conception of science called aim-oriented empiricism. This has far-reaching implications and repercussions for science, the philosophy of science, academic inquiry in general, conception of rationality, and how we go about attempting to make progress towards as good a world as possible. Despite these far-reaching repercussions, aim-oriented empiricism has so far received scant attention from philosophers of science. Here, sixteen objections to the validity of the argument for (...) aim-oriented empiricism are subjected to critical scrutiny. (shrink)

Sgarbi just shows that in the century before Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding many writers mentioned induction and many claimed that knowledge must rely somehow on sense experience. An attempt to revive Randall’s thesis needs more than that.

In a recent paper, Dawid, Hartmann and Sprenger claim to prove the possibility of non-empirical theory confirmation via the No Alternatives Argument. In this note, I argue that from an empiricist point of view, their "proof" begs the question in the sense that it cannot convince someone who has not already been convinced of non-empirical theory confirmation before.

The term ‘realism’ and its contrasting terms have various related senses, although often they occlude as much as they illuminate, especially if ontological and epistemological issues and their tenable combinations are insufficiently clarified. For example, in 1807 the infamous ‘idealist’ Hegel argued cogently that any tenable philosophical theory of knowledge must take the natural and social sciences into very close consideration, which he himself did. Here I argue that Hegel ably and insightfully defends Newton’s causal realism about gravitational force, in (...) part by exposing a fatal equivocation in the traditional concept of substance, by criticizing some still-standard empiricist misconceptions of force, by emphasizing the role of explanatory integration in Newtonian mechanics, and by using his powerful semantics of singular, specifically cognitive reference to justify fallibilism regarding empirical justification, together with the semantic core of Newton’s Rule Four of (experimental) Philosophy—in a way that highlights a key fallacy in many arguments against realism, both in epistemology and within philosophy of science. (shrink)

En este ensayo planteo una dificultad que encuentro en la última propuesta que Quine desarrolló sobre las oraciones observacionales. Argumento que esta dificultad impide que tales oraciones cumplan satisfactoriamente el rol que él les asigna en su filosofía y comprometen seriamente su empirismo ilustrado. Luego trato de explorar tentativamente un resquicio que encuentro en la propia filosofía quineana que eventualmente podría evitar los problemas derivados de dicha dificultad. El precio de seguir el camino apuntado por ese resquicio es, sin embargo, (...) una cierta reinterpretación del espíritu empirista que recorre la filosofía de Quine. (shrink)

En este ensayo planteo una dificultad que encuentro en la última propuesta de Quine sobre las oraciones observacionales. Argumento que esta dificultad impide que tales oraciones cumplan el rol que él les asigna en su filosofía y socavan su empirismo ilustrado. Luego exploro tentativamente un resquicio que encuentro en la propia filosofía quineana que eventualmente podría evitar los problemas derivados de dicha dificultad. El precio de seguir el camino apuntado por ese resquicio es, sin embargo, una cierta reinterpretación del espíritu (...) empirista de la filosofía de Quine. In this paper I set out a problem I find in Quine's last proposal on observation sentences. I argue that this problem prevents those sentences to play the role he ascribes to them in his philosophy and undermines his enlightened empiricism. Then I tentatively explore an option I find in Quine's own philosophy which can eventually avoid the issues raised by that problem. The price to pay in following this option, though, is a certain reinterpretation of the empiricist spirit of Quine's philosophy. Apresenta-se uma dificuldade na última proposta de Quine sobre as orações observacionais. Argumenta-se que essa dificuldade impede que essas orações cumpram o papel que ele concede a elas em sua filosofia e debilitam seu empirismo ilustrado. Explora-se tentativamente um resquício na própria filosofia quineana que eventualmente poderia evitar os problemas derivados dessa dificuldade. O preço de seguir o caminho indicado por esse resquício é, contudo, certa interpretação do espírito empirista da filosofia de Quine. (shrink)

The book revives the neutral monism of Mach, James, and Russell and applies the updated view to the problem of redefining physicalism, explaining the origins of sensation, and the problem of deriving extended physical objects and systems from an ontology of events.

A critical survey of Quine's arguments against the analytic/synthetic distinction.

In the Aristotelian curriculum, De anima or the study of the soul fell under the rubric of physics. This area of study covered the vital (“vegetative”), sensitive, and rational powers of the soul. Descartes’ substance dualism restricted reason or intellect, and conscious sensation, to human minds. Having denied mind to nonhuman animals, Descartes was required to explain all animal behavior using material mechanisms possessing only the properties of size, shape, position, and motion. Within the framework of certainty provided by the (...) metaphysical foundations of his physics, he posited such mechanisms in accordance with appropriately lessened standards of certainty. As Cartesianism (or the Cartesian revolution) spread, adherents offered survey textbooks or treatises of physics to replace the corresponding Aristotelian curriculum. These books typically discussed the role of experience in physics and the appropriate standard of certainty. A comprehensive Cartesian natural philosophy needed to mechanize the offices of the Aristotelian sensitive soul, including sense perception, memory, and cognitive and appetitive responses to the environment. Descartes’ Treatise on Man (1664) offered an initial explanatory program. This chapter examines the role of experience in the natural philosophy and mechanistic psychology of Descartes’ English follower Antoine Le Grand. He offered detailed accounts of the sensory and motor mechanisms shared by human and nonhuman animals (for which he claimed “physical certainty”). These frame his Cartesian psychology. (shrink)

In 1675, Burchard de Volder (1643–1709) was the first professor to introduce the demonstration of experiment into a university physics course and built the Leiden Physics Theatre to accommodate this new pedagogy. When he requested the funds from the university to build the facility, he claimed that the performance of experiments would demonstrate the “truth and certainty” of the postulates of theoretical physics. Such a claim is interesting given de Volder’s lifelong commitment to Cartesian scientia. This chapter will examine de (...) Volder’s views on experiment and show that they are not Newtonian or inductivist, as is sometimes claimed. While de Volder thinks we need deductive reasoning from first principles to provide evidence of the certainty of the content of our physical theories, he also contends that we need experiment to provide evidence of the certainty of the existence of the particular bodies those theories discuss. This approach to experiment is based on a distinction between rational certainty and the certainty of material bodies in the actual world. While this account is deeply influenced by Descartes, it is importantly different than Descartes’ distinction between absolute and moral certainty. De Volder’s “Cartesian Empiricism” is best understood as a continuation and further development of a long tradition of teaching through observation at Leiden. (shrink)

David Chalmers burst onto the philosophical scene in the mid-1990s with his work on consciousness, which awakened slumbering zombie arguments against physicalism and transformed the explanatory gap into the hard problem of consciousness. The distinction between hard and easy problems of consciousness became a central dogma of the movement. Chalmers’ influence in philosophy and consciousness studies is unquestionable. But enthusiasts of Chalmers’ work on consciousness may be excused for not fully appreciating his own justification for drawing the hard/easy distinction, or (...) even exactly which distinction he is drawing. Consequently, it is not clear that the ‘Chalmers’ hard problem’ that has been widely influential is Chalmers’ ‘hard problem’ of consciousness. Chalmers’ ‘hard problem’ rests on, among other things: a methodological view about how philosophy—metaphysics, especially—ought to be conducted; a view about the requirements for explanation and reduction in philosophy and in the sciences; and a theory of the semantics of concepts.1 Although Chalmers writes that the present book is not intended as a foundation for his. (shrink)

This paper is part of an attempt to offer a better understanding of the origins of modern science in the light of the transformations of the concept of representation through XVIth and XVIIth centuries. My aim here is to point out how Francis Bacon had to revise naturalistic and mimetic conceptions of language for drawing up his particular methodical empiricism. In other words, it was not possible to formulate the modern scientific empiricism without advancing a criticism of those naturalistic philosophies (...) of language which had so great success in the XVIth century. To get to this conclusion, I set out here how the results achieved by those who united their empirical study of nature with mimetic and naturalistic conceptions of language were irremediably far from the open and progressive model of scientific knowledge which was an essential element of the Baconian project. (shrink)

Based on an analysis of some 4.000 pages of manuscript notes on ordinary medical practice which the little-known Bohemian physician Georg Handsch wrote from the late 1540s, this article traces the central place which empiricist attitudes and approaches held in mid-sixteenth-century learned medical practice. While explicit epistemological statements are rare, the very effort which Handsch put into recording thousands of observations he and other physicians around him had made, and the value they attributed to the experiences of ordinary lay persons (...) and even “empirics” reflects a profound belief in the value of sensory experience and personal observation. The paper traces the uses of empiricist key terms like “experientia,” “historia” and “observatio,” it highlights the epistemic effects of personal observation, from confirming and challenging established notions to the creation of new general knowledge from particulars, and it suggests, in conclusion, that such brief notes on ordinary medical practice played an important role in the history of “facts.”. (shrink)

A 2012 review article for Metascience which explains Mach's realistic brand of empiricism, contrasting it with the common phenomenalist reading of Mach by John Blackmore in two recent books.

Intended for philosophically minded psychologists and psychologically minded philosophers, this book identifies the ways that psychology has hobbled itself by adhering too strictly to empiricism, this being the doctrine that all knowledge is observation-based. In the first part of this two-part work, it is shown that empiricism is false. In the second part, the psychology-relevant consequences of this fact are identified. Five of these are of special importance. First, whereas some psychopathologies (e.g. obsessive-compulsive disorder) corrupt the activity mediated by one’s (...) psychological architecture, others (e.g. sociopathy) corrupt that architecture itself. Second, the basic tenets of psychoanalysis are coherent. Third, all propositional attitudes are beliefs. Fourth, selves are minds that self-evaluate. Fifth, it is by giving our thoughts a perceptible form that we enable ourselves to evaluate them, and it is by expressing ourselves in language and art that we give our thoughts a perceptible form. (shrink)

Empiricism: reloaded Content Type Journal Article Category Book Review Pages 1-4 DOI 10.1007/s11016-012-9652-7 Authors David Spurrett, University of KwaZulu-Natal, Howard College Campus, Durban, 4041 South Africa Journal Metascience Online ISSN 1467-9981 Print ISSN 0815-0796.

George Gemistos Plethon’s work in all its dimensions has attracted many scholars across the ages. One of those scholars was Alexandre Joseph Hidulphe Vincent, a French mathematician and erudite, who in the first and the only critical edition of Plethon’s Book of Laws by C. Alexandre in the nineteenth century, added three notes on his calendar, metrics and music, as he could reconstruct them from the ancient text. Vincent’s calculations were dictated by the main scientific thought of his time, which (...) was Positivism, and through this he thus contributed to the elucidation of some practical aspects of Plethon’s metaphysics. The results of meticulous calculations of the Plethonian calendar, metrics and musical modes show that the scientific spirit, which started appearing in the last days of Byzantium and during the Renaissance, was not only a revival of Antiquity, but an innovative attempt at explaining and being in accordance with the social demands and the physical reality of the time, both being understood as an extension of the metaphysical order. Vincent’s positivistic approach allows considering the impact of Plethon’s system in a postmodern perspective. (shrink)

After summarizing the essential details of Anil Gupta’s account of perceptual justification in his book _Empiricism and Experience_, I argue for three claims: (1) Gupta’s proposal is closer to rationalism than advertised; (2) there is a major lacuna in Gupta’s account of how convergence in light of experience yields absolute entitlements to form beliefs; and (3) Gupta has not adequately explained how ordinary courses of experience can lead to convergence on a commonsense view of the world.

Article in question holds in epistemological implications of the revolution copernicana of Immanuel Kant, whose perspective, emerging of borders that inter-related rationalism of Leibniz, empiricism Hume and science positive physical-mathematics Newton, introduces the horizon of idealism transcendental, establish the correlation fundamental involving the subject and object of knowledge.

I sketch a philosophical program called ‘Empirical Fundamentalism,’ whose signature feature is the extensive use of a distinction between fundamental and derivative reality. Within the framework of Empirical Fundamentalism, derivative reality is treated as an abstraction from fundamental reality. I show how one can understand reduction and supervenience in terms of abstraction, and then I apply the introduced machinery to understand the relation between water and H2O, mental states and brain states, and so on. The conclusion is that such relations (...) can be understood either as metaphysical contingencies or as necessary type-identities. (shrink)

Where does Aristotle stand in the debate between rationalism and empiricism? The locus classicus on this question, Posterior Analytics II. 19, seems clearly empiricist. Yet many commentators have resisted this conclusion. Here, I review their arguments and conclude that they rest in part on expectations for this text that go unfulfilled. I argue that this is because his views about norms of empirical inquiry are in the rich methodological passages in his scientific treatises. In support of this claim, I explore (...) such passages in On Parts of Animals and De anima. I argue that they reach distinct, though complementary, conclusions about the norms governing zoological and psychological inquiries. (shrink)

In these comments I briefly discuss three aspects of the empiricist account of the epistemic role of experience that Anil Gupta develops in his Empiricism and Experience. First, I discuss the motivations Gupta offers for the claim that the given in experience should be regarded as reliable. Second, I discuss two different ways of conceiving of the epistemic significance of the phenomenology of experience. And third, I discuss whether Gupta's account is able to deliver the anti-skeptical results he intends it (...) to. I close by suggesting that, once fully fleshed out, Gupta's account is best understood in terms of the fusion of certain core ideas within both the empiricist and the rationalist traditions. (shrink)