If nature is by definition the object of the natural sciences, then the dichotomy ‘natural’ versus ‘chemical’, held by both chemists and nonchemists, suggests an idiosyncrasy of chemistry. The first part of the paper presents a selective historical analysis of the main notions of nature in chemistry, as developed in early Christian views of chemical crafts, alchemy, iatrochemistry, mechanical philosophy, organic chemistry, and contemporary drug research. I argue that the dichotomy as well as quasi-moral judgments of chemistry have been based (...) on static and teleological notions of nature throughout history and that chemists, unlike physicists, have neglected the dynamic notion of nature. The second part provides a philosophical criticism of the former notions and argues for the latter as well as for an explicit discourse about values in chemistry.Author Keywords: History and philosophy of chemistry; Notion of nature; Alchemy; Mechanical philosophy; Synthetic organic chemistry; Contemporary drug research. (shrink)

In modernity, the distinction between nature and artifice disappears, so that machines made by men become privileged models for the explanation of natural bodies, as can be observed in Bacon, Descartes, Hobbes, among others. This new relationship between nature and artifice is correlated with the mechanization and refutation of finality in nature, insofar as the adoption of mechanics as a model of nature’s explanation is associated to the rejection of the use of final causes in physics and to the conception (...) that bodies are devoid of immanent principles of movement or of any incorporeal principle that predisposes them to a process of change teleologically structured and oriented. Leibniz also conceives nature as artifice and organic bodies as automata, but his conception of natural bodies as artificial machines goes even further, to the point of characterizing the natural beings as those which carry the character of artificial rather than the artificial things themselves. However, unlike Bacon, Descartes, and Hobbes, Leibniz uses the analogy of nature as a machine and deepens it precisely to argue that nature is teleologically structured and that the difference between the machines made by men and the natural (divine) ones lies in the fact that while those have a purely extrinsic finality, these have an immanent finality inscribed in each of their parts to infinity. (shrink)

"A Survey of Ranking Theory": The paper gives an up-to-date survey of ranking theory. It carefully explains the basics. It elaborates on the ranking theoretic explication of reasons and their balance. It explains the dynamics of belief statable in ranking terms and indicates how the ranks can thereby be measured. It suggests how the theory of Bayesian nets can be carried over to ranking theory. It indicates what it might mean to objectify ranks. It discusses the formal and the philosophical (...) aspects of the tight relation and the complementarity of ranks and probabilities. It closes with comparative remarks on predecessors and other philosophical proposals as well as formal models developed in AI. (shrink)

Today, there are many natural sciences, one of which is physics, but there is no science in the sense of a Theory of Nature. In our everyday life, the opinion is rightly held that there is only one nature, but whether this opinion stands up to reflection is questionable. When we apply the speculation that Aristotle developed in Metaphysics Λ to his Physics, we will see, that Aristotle has developed a Theory of Nature that consists in posing the question of (...) the being of the natural being (Frage nach dem Sein des Naturseienden). The standardinterpretation wants us to believe that Aristotle founded a substance metaphysics with a corresponding theology, and that he practised natural science. But, our hermeneutical situation could lead us to an "Aristotle today" and free us from old beliefs so that we, like Thomas Aquinas and others, could learn from a contemporary Aristotle as an immediate interlocutor. One of the learning points, for example, would be that questions are more crucial than new assertions, even if they are sophisticated, and that unassertive thinking (unbehauptendes Denken) in a topical attitude can lead us to insight into the multiplicity of worlds. This insight would have immediate consequences for our behaviour towards our co-inhabitants of our planet and towards our environment. (shrink)

Sumário: 1. El caso del método científico, Alberto Oliva; 2. Un capítulo de la prehistoria de las ciencias humanas: la defensa por Vico de la tópica, Jorge Alberto Molina; 3. La figura de lo cognoscible y los mundos, Pablo Vélez León; 4. Lebenswelt de Husserl y las neurociencias, Vanessa Fontana; 5. El uso estético del concepto de mundos posibles, Jairo Dias Carvalho; 6. Realismo normativo no naturalista y mundos morales imposibles, Alcino Eduardo Bonella; 7. En la lógica de pragmatismo, Hércules (...) de Araujo Feitosa, Luiz Henrique da Cruz Silvestrini; 8 La lógica, el tiempo y el lenguaje natural: un sistema formal para tiempos de portugués, Carlos Luciano Manholi. / Temas em filosofia contemporânea II / Jonas Rafael Becker Arenhart, Jaimir Conte, Cezar Augusto Mortari (orgs.) – Florianópolis : NEL/UFSC, 2016. 167 p. : tabs. - (Rumos da epistemologia ; v. 14); ISBN 978-85-87253-27-9 (papel); ISBN 978-85-87253-26-2 (e-book). (shrink)

O conceito de empirismo evoca tanto uma tradição histórica quanto uma rede de questões filosóficas. Ambas frequentemente associadas a nomes como os de Francis Bacon, John Locke, George Berkeley e David Hume. Porém, lembremos que nenhum desses filósofos utilizaram o termo empirismo, e nem compartilharam de uma única escola epistemológica. Do ponto de vista histórico é comum encontrarmos estudos de História e Filosofia da Ciência que relacionam o conceito de ‘empirismo’ com a chamada Escola Empírica Médica, desenvolvida na Grécia Antiga. (...) Porém, mais uma vez, temos que ter cautela com essas simplificações históricas, afinal se por uma Escola médica compreendemos um número de médicos que se reconhecem como pertencentes a um grupo que defendem exatamente as mesmas ideias e conceitos, a Escola Empírica Médica é simplesmente uma invenção histórica. De fato, observaremos alguns elementos comuns dentro dessas escolas, mas não correntes unívocas. Essa postura historiográfica usualmente acarreta sérias consequências. Assim, por exemplo, os estudos que marcam a diferença entre as filosofias do continente europeu e as da Inglaterra do século XVII, distinguindo-a por meio de noções amplas, tais como racionalismo e empirismo, podem cair em reducionismos importantes. Se, por um lado, vincular o empirismo moderno à escola médica antiga acarreta numa compreensão histórica equivocada; por outro lado, aceitar a dicotomia empirismo x racionalismo como a única narrativa possível para compreendermos a gênese da filosofia moderna carrega consigo problemas de cunho epistemológico. Dos vários problemas que surgem dessa perspectiva historiográfica, isto é, de aceitarmos acriticamente a narrativa padrão, dois deles nos importam mais de perto: ela fornece uma ênfase às questões de cunho epistemológico, subestimando, então, a importância dos debates em outras áreas, como filosofia natural, ética e política, por exemplo; e deixa de lado pensadores que combinam elementos das duas correntes e, portanto, não operam stricto sensu com a dicotomia entre razão e experiência. Nesse sentido, objetivamos problematizar e aprofundar essa questão, ao discutir aspectos epistêmicos e metodológicos do chamado “programa baconiano” de conhecimento, bem como alguns de seus desdobramentos, especialmente no âmbito da química e da medicina no século XVII inglês. (shrink)

Philosophers have tried to explain how science finds the truth by using new developments in logic to study scientific language and inference. R. G. Collingwood argued that only a logic of problems could take context into account. He was ignored, but the need to reconcile secure meanings with changes in context and meanings was seen by Karl Popper, W. v. O. Quine, and Mario Bunge. Jagdish Hattiangadi uses problems to reconcile the need for security with that for growth. But he (...) mistakenly insists that all problems are mere contradictions and artificially separates rigid from flexible aspects of meanings. In order to resolve the conflict we must (1) replace the quest for rigid terms with techniques for improvement, (2) use plausible arguments to uncover confused meanings, (3) use frameworks to choose problems and to regulate meanings, and (4) employ a bootstrap approach that uses frameworks to improve meanings and refined meanings to improve frameworks. (shrink)

At the centenary of Frank H. Knight’s Risk, Uncertainty, and Profit, we explore the continuing relevance of Knightian uncertainty to the theory and practice of entrepreneurship. There are three challenges facing such assessment. First, RUP is complex and difficult to interpret. The key but neglected element of RUP is that Knight’s account is not solely about risk and uncertainty as states of nature, but about how an agent’s beliefs about uncertain outcomes and confidence in those beliefs guide their choices. Second, (...) RUP is Knight’s only effort in this area. His subsequent career led elsewhere, so he did not engage with subsequent interpretations of this work. Third, much of the current literature emphasizes that decisions must be different under the two states of nature with a consequent misunderstanding of entrepreneurial agency. This paper addresses each challenge in sequence. First, we explicate Knight’s approach and explain why that approach is murky. Second, as a complement to Knight’s interpretation, we examine Frank P. Ramsey’s approach to subjective probabilities to help clarify Knight’s murky approach. What links Knight and Ramsey is a shared pragmatism about entrepreneurial agency under uncertainty that depends upon the beliefs about, and confidence in, their judgments of possible outcomes. This Knight-Ramsey approach does not require actor’s behaviors to be determined by the class of uncertain environment they face. We focus on the response by the entrepreneur to the existence of uncertainty in all its forms. We argue that this reductive account provides a foundation to examine common problems in management, including managerial hubris, the interaction between entrepreneurs and venture capitalists, and the need for experimentation in advance of new product and venture launches. Third, we critique current literature that favors epistemic purism about the ontology of risk and uncertainty and ignores Knight-Ramsey pragmatism in meeting uncertainty, such as using formal and informal institutions for uncertainty mitigation. Our account locates Frank Knight’s subtleties in entrepreneurial behavior firmly in the literature on entrepreneurial agency a century later. (shrink)

L’histoire de la psychologie en tant que discipline autonome comporte non seulement des développements méthodologiques et institutionnels, mais aussi l’élaboration du concept même de psychologie et des représentations de sa place dans l’ordre des sciences. Si de telles représentations ne détenninent pas la constitution du champ professionnel ou la pratique concrète du psychologue, elles n’en expriment pas moins des idéaux épistémologiques et reflètent les changements qui s’opèrent au sein de la discipline. Nous donnerons d’abord une vue générale de la position (...) de la psychologie au XVIIe et au VXIIIe siècle, puis nous esquisserons l’histoire de sa place dans l’ordre des sciences de Destutt de Tracy à Jean Piaget. Après avoir été la science des sciences des classifications hiérarchiques, la psychologie s’intègre aux autres sciences dans des schémas moins linéaires, voire circulaires, sans pour autant toujours perdre la prééminence gnoséologique et pédagogique que lui attribuèrent en premier les « psychologues » du XVIIIe siècle. (shrink)

William Whewell’s 19th century philosophy of science is sometimes glossed over as a footnote to Kant. There is however a key feature of Whewell’s account worth noting. This is his appeal to Aristotle’s form/matter hylomorphism as a metaphor to explain how mind and world merge in successful scientific inquiry. Whewell’s hylomorphism suggests a middle way between rationalism and empiricism reminiscent of experience pragmatists like Steven Levine’s view that mind and world are entwined in experience. I argue however that Levine does (...) not adequately explain exactly how mind and world entwine. He could nonetheless do so if he appealed to Whewell’s hylomorphic metaphor. We may prefer a reductive metaphysical explanation, but I suggest that pragmatists only have recourse to metaphor in this case. Both reductive and metaphorical explanations can enjoy great explanatory power if they exhibit a suitable measure of what I will call sematic distance. Semantic distance measures how close or how far apart explanandum and explanans are from each other in meaning. Metaphorical explanation - as evident in Whewell’s hylomorphism and as detailed via the notion of semantic distance - presents a valuable new explanatory tool to those who hold that mind and world are entwined sans recourse to metaphysics. (shrink)

This paper resolves some puzzles regarding Spinoza’s appropriations and rejections of various aspects of Bacon’s methodology, and uses these solutions to resolve some long-standing puzzles concerning Spinoza’s modus operandi in the TTP. We argue first that, appearances to contrary, Spinoza takes a consistent line in his assessment of Bacon’s epistemic approach. We argue that Spinoza follows Bacon in grounding his overall epistemic method in a “historiola mentis” (a brief account or history of the mind), and that differences between Spinoza’s and (...) Bacon’s respective historiola mentis can explain Spinoza’s embrace of this inductive method for his interpretation of Scripture in the TTP, as well as his general abandonment of Bacon’s inductive method in the metaphysical investigation of the Ethics. In short, we argue that the “historiola mentis” constructed by Bacon depicts the intellect as an error-prone faculty that needs be continuously restrained by observation and experimentation—a depiction which motivates Bacon’s reformed inductive empiricism. Spinoza accepts this depiction in regard to a subset of the mind’s ideas—the ideas of the imagination, and hence sees the inductive method as suitable for interpreting Scripture. But contra Bacon, Spinoza’s “historiola mentis” also shows that the human mind includes a subset of ideas that yield true, certain knowledge of things “infinite” and sub specie aeternitatis. Spinoza finds these “intellectual” ideas to be quite useful for systematic metaphysics, but of limited use for interpreting historical texts like Scripture. (shrink)

Logic is concerned with the design or structure of arguments. It describes the forms of valid argument and is concerned with the public presentation and reception of arguments. Hence it has a close connection with politics and the public sphere, and with rhetoric as the science of persuasion. Philosophers have analysed the objective conditions of validation, that is, the justifiability of assertions about the world. This quest for objective and scientific validity in argumentation about the nature of reality dominated much (...) of the development of logic in the 20th century. Logical arguments are held to be successful as a result of the ‘force of reason’ rather than because one's opponents have been bribed or coerced. Logic involves the study of the abstract, deductive moves in argumentation rather than an empirical study of how actual arguments are conducted. However, there is also a tension between rhetoric and philosophy; Plato drew a clear distinction between knowledge and persuasion. Logic is intended to give security to the former. The historical drift of logic is towards abstraction, especially the use of mathematical forms of representation. The study of logic is an important component of any project on encyclopaedic knowledge, that is, with knowledge that circulates in the public sphere, but the globalization of culture has raised an important problem about the universalistic claims of traditions of logic, namely, are there different forms of logical reasoning? (shrink)

There are broadly five interconnected meanings of the noun ‘discipline’. Disciplinawere instructions to disciples, and hence a branch of instruction or department of knowledge. This religious context provided the modern educational notion of a ‘body of knowledge’, or a discipline such as sociology or economics. We can define discipline as a body of knowledge and knowledge for the body, because the training of the mind has inevitably involved a training of the body. Second, it signified a method of training or (...) instruction in a body of knowledge. Discipline had an important military connection involving drill, practice in the use of weapons. Third, there is an ecclesiastical meaning referring to a system of rules by which order is maintained in a church. It included the use of penal methods to achieve obedience. To discipline is to chastise. Fourth, to discipline is to bring about obedience through various forms of punishment; it is a means of correction. Finally there is a rare use of the term to describe a medical regimen in which ‘doctor's orders’ brings about a discipline of the patient. In contemporary society, there is, following the work of Michel Foucault, the notion of increasing personal regulation resulting in a ‘disciplinary society’ or a society based upon carceral institutions. (shrink)

Integrative experiment design assumes that we can effectively design a space of factors that cause contextual variation. However, this is impossible to do so in a sufficiently objective way, resulting inevitably in observations laden with surrogate models. Consequently, integrative experiment design may even deepen the problem of incommensurability. In comparison, one-at-a-time approaches make much more tentative assumptions about the factors excluded from experiment design, hence still seem better suited to deal with incommensurability.

Drama is a relatively unexplored tool in academic science education. This paper addresses in what way the use of drama may allow science students to deepen their understanding of recent developments in the emerging and controversial field of neuro-enhancement, by means of a case study approach. First, we emphasise the congruency between drama and science, notably the dramatic dimension of experimental research. Subsequently, we draw on educational literature to elaborate the potential of using drama as a teaching modality, specifically focusing (...) on the ethical and moral dimensions of future techno-scientific innovations. Our case study consisted of a drama experiment as a module in a philosophy course on human enhancement. Twenty-two students from various science disciplines performed multiple roles, as authors, actors, audience and reviewers. Qualitative data were collected on the educational process and student performance during the course, i.e. observations and video recordings of class discussions, group work and plays, interviews and questionnaires. Our drama experiment proved to be effective in enabling students to explore and relate to a future life world affected by enhancement technologies. It allowed them to deepen their awareness of social and ethical implications of neuro-technologies and of the different viewpoints people may have on this issue in academic, professional or everyday settings. Moreover, drama allowed them to develop a reflexive position of their own in the neuro-enhancement debate by enacting a moral dilemma in front of an audience. Our results confirm the potential of drama as a tool for exploring techno-scientific futures in science education. (shrink)

The thought that it might be possible to develop a method of scientific discovery, a procedure of investigation and reasoning which, so long as its principles were studiously followed, would be guaranteed to result in scientific knowledge, has long been recognized to be a mere philosophers' dream, with no more possibility of fulfilment than the alchemists' dream of producing a philosophers' stone which would turn base metals into gold. Yet it remains the case that the authority of science rests on (...) claims made on behalf of its methods; they are regarded as somehow superior to, or more reliable than, any other means of acquiring beliefs about the world around us. To say that there is no scientific evidence that any of the food additives currently permitted in Britain have any harmful effects is a way of dismissing as groundless and irrational the fears of those who think that such additives do have harmful effects. Whereas to say that it is scientifically established that smoking causes lung cancer is a way of saying that this is something a smoker ought to worry about. (shrink)

The thought that it might be possible to develop a method of scientific discovery, a procedure of investigation and reasoning which, so long as its principles were studiously followed, would be guaranteed to result in scientific knowledge, has long been recognized to be a mere philosophers' dream, with no more possibility of fulfilment than the alchemists' dream of producing a philosophers' stone which would turn base metals into gold. Yet it remains the case that the authority of science rests on (...) claims made on behalf of its methods; they are regarded as somehow superior to, or more reliable than, any other means of acquiring beliefs about the world around us. To say that there is no scientific evidence that any of the food additives currently permitted in Britain have any harmful effects is a way of dismissing as groundless and irrational the fears of those who think that such additives do have harmful effects. Whereas to say that it is scientifically established that smoking causes lung cancer is a way of saying that this is something a smoker ought to worry about. (shrink)

This paper has two central purposes: the first is to survey some of the more important examples of fallacious argument, and the second is to examine the frequent use of these fallacies in support of the psychological construct: Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. The paper divides 12 familiar fallacies into three different categories—material, psychological and logical—and contends that advocates of ADHD often seem to employ these fallacies to support their position. It is suggested that all researchers, whether into ADHD or otherwise, (...) need to pay much closer attention to the construction of their arguments if they are not to make truth claims unsupported by satisfactory evidence, form or logic. (shrink)

In the popular literature of physics the electromagnetic field isoften treated as though it has an intrinsic particle nature. When thetheory is examined carefully, quantum theory only makes the weakerrequirement that the emission and absorption of light are restricted todiscrete amounts of energy. There are very few realizable experiments inoptics for which the classical Maxwell theory and the quantum theorymake a different prediction. I discuss some of these experiments with anemphasis on the distinction between what the experiments tell us aboutthe (...) measurement process, and what they tell us about the nature of thelight field. (shrink)

in his recent text Sustainable Knowledge, Robert Frodeman argues that the unchecked proliferation of academic knowledge is unsustainable. While his account provides a basis for more sustainable disciplinary practices, it fails to show how the knowledge produced by such practices is ultimately superior to traditional academic knowledge. This essay provides an epistemic justification for sustainable knowledge. It begins by introducing the maker’s knowledge tradition as an alternative to traditional academic knowledge. It then expands and advances this tradition through Dewey’s naturalized (...) epistemology. Ultimately, it develops an account of knowledge that is not only of a higher quality than traditional knowledge but... (shrink)

Some exceptional and surprising mistakes of scholarship made in the writings of a number of feminist academics (Ruth Bleier, Ruth Hubbard, Susan Bordo, Sandra Harding, and Rae Langton) are examined in detail. This essay offers the psychological hypothesis that these mistakes were the result of political passion and concludes with some remarks about the ability of the social sciences to study the effect of the politics of the researcher on the quality of his or her research.

A normative framework for modeling causal and counterfactual reasoning has been proposed by Spirtes, Glymour, and Scheines. The framework takes as fundamental that reasoning from observation and intervention differ. Intervention includes actual manipulation as well as counterfactual manipulation of a model via thought. To represent intervention, Pearl employed the do operator that simplifies the structure of a causal model by disconnecting an intervened-on variable from its normal causes. Construing the do operator as a psychological function affords predictions about how people (...) reason when asked counterfactual questions about causal relations that we refer to as undoing, a family of effects that derive from the claim that intervened-on variables become independent of their normal causes. Six studies support the prediction for causal arguments but not consistently for parallel conditional ones. Two of the studies show that effects are treated as diagnostic when their values are observed but nondiagnostic when they are intervened on. These results cannot be explained by theories that do not distinguish interventions from other sorts of events. (shrink)

Behavior that solves a problem is distinguished by the fact that it changes another part of the solver's behavior and is strengthened when it does so. Problem solving typically involves the construction of discriminative stimuli. Verbal responses produce especially useful stimuli, because they affect other people. As a culture formulates maxims, laws, grammar, and science, its members behave more effectively without direct or prolonged contact with the contingencies thus formulated. The culture solves problems for its members, and does so by (...) transmitting the verbal discriminative stimuli called rules. Induction, deduction, and the construction of models are ways of producing rules. Behavior that solves a problem may result from direct shaping by contingencies or from rules constructed either by the problem solver or by others. Because different controlling variables are involved, contingency-shaped behavior is never exactly like rule-governed behavior. The distinction must take account of a system which establishes certain contingencies of reinforcement, such as some part of the natural environment, a piece of equipment, or a verbal community; the behavior shaped and maintained by these contingencies; rules, derived from the contingencies, which specify discriminative stimuli, responses, and consequences, and the behavior occasioned by the rules. (shrink)

Summary This paper examines the experimentum crucis under the light of the Duhem’s holistic thesis. This methodological instrument is not usable in physics, because physical theories are always logically connected to many assumptions. On the contrary, it is usable in psychological research oriented to perceptual laws, when these laws are, without any hypothetical term, isolated systems. An application of experimentum crucis in Experimental Phenomenology of perception is presented. In conclusion, the role of perceptual knowledge as an essential assumption in other (...) scientific disciplines that have a high degree of theoricity is also underlined. (shrink)

RESUMO O presente artigo tem por objetivo caracterizar a “metafísica prática ” em Schopenhauer. Segundo essa caracterização, a metafísica prática corresponde ao correlato prático da “metafísica teórica” e, desse modo, ao correlato empírico do discurso filosófico. Para Schopenhauer, isto equivale a afirmar a possibilidade de comprovação, via experiencia, da tese metafísica fundante de “O mundo como vontade e como representação”, a saber, da identidade metafísica da vontade subjacente aoplano da multiplicidade aparente. Por funcionar como uma espécie de prova empírica desta (...) tese metafísica, a metafísica prática é também Experimentalmetaphysik, isto é, “metafísica experimental”. ABSTRACT This article aims to characterize the “practicalmetaphysics” in Schopenhauer. According to this characterization, the practical metaphysics corresponds to the practical correlate of the “theoretical metaphysics” and thus to the empirical correlate of the philosophical discourse. For Schopenhauer, this is equivalent to affirm the possibility of proving, via experience, the metaphysical founding thesis of “The World as Will and Representation”, namely, the metaphysical identity of the will underlying the plane of apparent multiplicity. Due to the fact that itfunctions as a kind of empirical proof of this metaphysical thesis, the practical metaphysics is also Experimentalmetaphysik, that is, “experimental metaphysics”. (shrink)

I take pseudoscience to be a pretence at science. Pretences are innumerable, limited only by our imagination and credulity. As Stove points out, ‘numerology is actually quite as different from astrology as astrology is from astronomy’ (Stove 1991, 187). We are sure that ‘something has gone appallingly wrong’ (Stove 1991, 180) and yet ‘thoughts…can go wrong in a multiplicity of ways, none of which anyone yet understands’ (Stove 1991, 190). Often all we can do is give a careful description of (...) a way of pretending, a motivation for pretence, a source of pretension. In this chapter I attempt the latter. We will be concerned with the relation of conviction to rational belief. I shall be suggesting that the question of whether an enquiry is a pretence at science can be, in part, a question over the role of conviction in rational belief, and that the answer is to be found in the philosophical problem of the role of values in rational belief. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThis article claims that today’s reading of Francis Bacon’s Essayes as a solely literary text turns upon philosophers’ having largely lost access to the renaissance culture which Bacon inherited, and the renaissance debates about the role of rhetoric in philosophy in which Bacon participated. The article has two parts. Building upon Ronald Cranes’ seminal contribution on the place of the Essayes in Bacon’s ‘great instauration’, Part 1 examines how the subjects of Bacon’s Essayes need to be understood as Baconian contributions (...) to ‘morrall philosophye’ and ‘civile knowledge’, rather than rhetorical or poetic exercises. In Part 2, contesting the interpretations of Crane, Fish, Ferrari and others, I will argue that the Essayes’ striking rhetorical form needs to be conceptualized in light of Bacon’s renaissance account of the ‘duty and office’ of rhetoric in any moral and civil philosophy that would look to actively cure mental afflictions and cultivate the virtuous or canny conduct it extols. Bacon’s Essayes, in this light, are best understood as a legatee and transformation of the popular early modern genre of books of apothegms and maxims designed to guide conduct. (shrink)

This paper presents arguments and evidence from psychology and neuroscience supporting Lipton’s 2004 claim that scientists create knowledge through an abductive process that he calls “Inference to the Best Explanation”. The paper develops two conclusions. Conclusion 1 is that without conscious effort on our part, our brains use a process very similar to abduction as a powerful way of interpreting sensory information. To support Conclusion 1, evidence from psychology and neuroscience is presented that suggests that what we humans perceive through (...) our senses is not reality, but rather, our ‘brain’s “best guess” of the causes of its sensory input. The implication of this best guessing is that our brains use a process very similar to abduction throughout our lives to inform us of what is happening in the world around us. In addition, an argument based on Darwinian evolution is presented claiming that our brains do an excellent job of interpreting sensory information from the outside world. (If they did not, we, as a species, could hardly have survived.) Combining these two claims leads to Conclusion 1. Building on Conclusion 1, Conclusion 2 is that Lipton and others are correct in claiming that scientists use abduction when creating scientific theories. Abduction must be strong, because Nature chose abduction for its own sensemaking purposes. This paper’s contribution to knowledge is in pointing out that recent psychological and neuroscientific research has major implications for the philosophical world’s confidence in the probable validity of abductive inference. The punchline is simple: Nature chose abduction! (shrink)

Many enhancement technologies are distributed by healthcare professionals—by physicians—who are held to the Hippocratic Oath and the goals of medicine. While the ethics of enhancement has been widely discussed with regard to the social justice, humanism, morals and normative values of these interventions, their place in medicine has not attracted a great deal of attention. This paper investigates the potential for enhancement technologies to fulfil the goals of medicine, arguing that they play a role in promoting the health of individuals, (...) and thus, an unavoidable place in medicine. It also warns of potential dangers, suggesting a set of guidelines to initiate conversations regarding the role and responsibilities of physicians practising in an era of enhancement. (shrink)

ABSTRACTFrancis Bacon’s works are pervaded by the firm belief that he was living in a new epoch. He thought of this epoch as based on knowledge and mechanical arts, which would permit dominion over nature. This dominion arises from mankind’s taking concrete action to improve the living conditions of humanity. Defining the nature of this action leads to individuate a plural historical subjectivity in Bacon’s thought. The different kinds of agency, and different kinds of technologies, define peoples in ethnological and (...) spatial terms. Imperiality, that is human dominion over nature, implies the necessity of improving the conditions of the whole mankind, in a manner that opens the way of thinking in which ‘backward’ peoples are subject to this action of improvement. Colonialism is strictly related to imperiality. The idea of colonialism, in the New World in particular, rests on the assumption that human race can improve its living conditions, exercising power over nature. Therefore, imperiality and colonialism are not simply a tool of a British dominion, but elements of the new epoch that Bacon is theorising. In this sense, imperiality and colonialism are part of the philosophical structure of Bacon’s modernity. (shrink)

Current Perspectives in Philosophy of Biology.

El trabajo defiende que la verdad del mundo es, en el Barroco hispano, diferencial. El mundo consiste en una multiplicidad infinita de diferencias en relación, teniendo esta última carácter de ser. Es, además, una multiplicidad de perspectivas reales, cada una de las cuales constituye una infinitud de acontecimientos diferentes. Esta verdad diferencial está vinculada a la aporía según la cual el mundo es todo y nada al unísono, de manera que el infinito trascendente posee en el mundo la paradójica y (...) creativa presencia de su ausencia. El autor sostiene también que la verdad es dependiente de una ética, litigiosa con el mundo dado, y de una posición existencial que rechaza la auto-identidad del sujeto (su identificación con el rol e intereses del teatro del mundo). Desde tales resultados, el autor analiza las diferencias entre la modernidad prevaleciente (cartesiana, científica e identitaria) y la modernidad-otra que representa el Barroco hispano. (shrink)

This paper argues that talk of ‘the aim of science’ should be avoided in the philosophy of science, with special reference to the way that van Fraassen sets up the difference between scientific realism and constructive empiricism. It also argues that talking instead of ‘what counts as success in science as such’ is unsatisfactory. The paper concludes by showing what this talk may be profitably replaced with, namely specific claims concerning science that fall into the following categories: descriptive, evaluative, normative, (...) and definitional. There are two key advantages to this proposal. First, realism and its competitors may be understood to consist of highly nuanced variants. Second, scientific realism and its competitors may be understood as something other than ‘all or nothing’ theses about science. More particularly, one may accept that there are general claims concerning science in some of the identified categories, but deny that there are such claims in the others. (shrink)

This paper defends the naïve thesis that the method of experiment has per se an epistemic superiority over the method of computer simulation, a view that has been rejected by some philosophers writing about simulation, and whose grounds have been hard to pin down by its defenders. I further argue that this superiority does not come from the experiment’s object being materially similar to the target in the world that the investigator is trying to learn about, as both sides of (...) dispute over the epistemic superiority thesis have assumed. The superiority depends on features of the question and on a property of natural kinds that has been mistaken for material similarity. Seeing this requires holding other things equal in the comparison of the two methods, thereby exposing that, under the conditions that will be specified, the simulation is necessarily epistemically one step behind the corresponding experiment. Practical constraints like feasibility and morality mean that scientists do not often face an other-things- equal comparison when they choose between experiment and simulation. Nevertheless, I argue, awareness of this superiority and of the general distinction between experiment and simulation is important for maintaining motivation to seek answers to new questions. (shrink)

This paper defends the naïve thesis that the method of experiment has per se an epistemic superiority over the method of computer simulation, a view that has been rejected by some philosophers writing about simulation, and whose grounds have been hard to pin down by its defenders. I further argue that this superiority does not come from the experiment’s object being materially similar to the target in the world that the investigator is trying to learn about, as both sides of (...) dispute over the epistemic superiority thesis have assumed. The superiority depends on features of the question and on a property of natural kinds that has been mistaken for material similarity. Seeing this requires holding other things equal in the comparison of the two methods, thereby exposing that, under the conditions that will be specified, the simulation is necessarily epistemically one step behind the corresponding experiment. Practical constraints like feasibility and morality mean that scientists do not often face an other-things- equal comparison when they choose between experiment and simulation. Nevertheless, I argue, awareness of this superiority and of the general distinction between experiment and simulation is important for maintaining motivation to seek answers to new questions. (shrink)

Four propositions relative to the laws of nature in the classical period must be noted. 1. Certain regularities in phenomena had been discovered. 2. A concept of law had emerged. 3. Classical science is characterized by the introduction of the notion of the legality of nature. 4. New uses of the word «law» had appeared in scientific texts. This article is devoted to the analysis of only this last proposition, that is to say to a terminological problem. First we will (...) describe the semantic uses of the word «law» that may have contributed to the constitution of its classical meaning: its specific usage, disciplinary usage, usage in physics, in mathematics, in metaphysics. Second we will analyze the various moments of the diffusion of the word in the sciences in the xviith century. The general thesis defended in the end is that if the term «law» had indeed been used in science with no reference to a law-giving God prior to the xviith century, only this reference, that is, the coming together of its physical and its metaphysical usage, allowed its generalization in the period between the xviith and xviiith centuries. (shrink)

Most recent discussions of John Stuart Mill’s System of Logic (1843) neglect the fifth book concerned with logical fallacies. Mill not only follows the revival of interest in the traditional Aristotelian doctrine of fallacies in Richard Whately and Augustus De Morgan, but he also develops new categories and an original analysis which enhance the study of fallacies within the context of what he calls ‘the philosophy of error’. After an exploration of this approach, the essay relates the philosophy of error (...) to the discussion of truth and error in chapter two of On Liberty (1859) concerned with freedom of thought and discussion. Drawing on Socratic and Baconian perspectives, Mill defends both the traditional study of logic against Jevons, Boole, De Morgan, and others, as well as the study of fallacies as the key to maintaining truth and its dissemination in numerous fields, such as science, morality, politics, and religion. In Mill’s view the study of fallacies also liberates ordinary people to explore the truth and falsity of ideas and, as such, to participate in society and politics and develop themselves as progressive beings. (shrink)

Western thought has dominated scientific development for a long time, and nursing has not escaped the influence of such ideology. Nurse scholars, in an attempt to fit the dominant scientific ideology, typically have had to struggle with non-empirical elements of nursing. This orientation in science, however, may have contributed inadvertently to a form of scientific ethnocentrism in the culture of inquiry in nursing as in other fields. The result has been a narrow view of science and knowledge and failure to (...) recognize the potential significance of Eastern philosophy in nursing knowledge development. Recently, intensive cultural exchanges between the East and the West have contributed to Western scientists becoming aware of the limits of Western linear thinking and concomitant efforts to explore the mysteries of Eastern philosophy. In this article, we explore Buddhism as one example of such philosophies that have great potential to enrich nursing as it continues to strive for definition and identity. (shrink)

The primary purpose of this article is to explore the limits that an agent, such as the government or the American Psychological Association, may place on one's right to pursue a program of research or to share the findings of a research project. The primary argument that evolves here is that researchers' rights to pursue an interesting hypothesis, and their freedom of expression, are conditional. The author examines the potential pragmatic and epistemological barriers to a program of research and the (...) responsibilities that researchers bear to address epistemological and nonepistemological matters while reviewing the implications of their work. (shrink)