The author draws attention to gnoseologically not enough investigated phenomenon of automorphism thinking. In the widely known works of F. Varela, and U. Maturana automorphism is associated mainly with the study of the adaptation of biological organisms. It appears, however, that the possibilities of this approach are more significant. The author believes that the driving force of thinking activity is the constructive combination. Cognitive morphogenesis processes as a free combination of symbolic forms, managed by rules of mental experimentation over one’s (...) own resources, resulting in the development of the spiritual world of a person. The ‘generation of meanings through distinction of meanings‘ logic is a lever that starts independent-functioning automatic processes. Such a spiritual auto-modelling generates symbolic morphisms – what is referred to as drawing ‘castles in the air‘, creating constructions without basement. The author comes to the conclusion that in scientific knowledge, as in poetry, all abilities of associative consciousness on the basis of auto-modelling mechanism are involved and they serve as indicators for creation of form. In this process tools of internal semantic transformations aimed at paramorph exposure of reality are applied. (shrink)

If one were to write a history of the philosophy of science in the spirit of T. S. Kuhn, one would have to consider the model of scientific explanation which Popper proposed and Hempel and Oppenheim developed to be one of the great paradigms of contemporary analytical philosophy of science. This analogue to the historically important paradigms of the individual sciences seems to me to be justifiable for the following reasons: first, the Hempel—Oppenheim model claims universal methodological validity; second, discussions (...) on the problem of explanation have centred on this model for some time; third, the recent cognitive progress in this field has been largely the result of the interrelation between criticism of this model on the one hand and its improvement and explication on the other hand; and lastly, this model stands for a particular comprehension of the problems and possibilities of science, a concept of quite important practical consequence. (shrink)

Written in the form of a dialogue with Brussels sociologist Dieter Vandebroeck, this article retraces the social and intellectual trajectory of Loïc Wacquant as stepping stone to reviewing and discussing the major concepts coined and theoretical propositions elaborated in the course of his research on comparative urban marginality, racial domination, the ghetto, the penal state, neoliberalism, and carnality. This provides an opportunity to specify the relationships between ethnography, history and theory; the dialectic of domination and resistance; the role of public (...) (dis)honor in social life; the uses of Bourdieu's bureaucratic field; and the social and academic conditions of incubation, diffusion, and death of scholarly myths such as the “underclass.” The article closes on a call to clearly distinguish the rhetorical, metaphorical, and analytical usages of concepts and reaffirms the need for epistemic reflexivity as sine qua non for the articulation of robust scientific problematics. (shrink)

If one were to write a history of the philosophy of science in the spirit of T. S. Kuhn, one would have to consider the model of scientific explanation which Popper proposed and Hempel and Oppenheim developed to be one of the great paradigms of contemporary analytical philosophy of science. This analogue to the historically important paradigms of the individual sciences seems to me to be justifiable for the following reasons: first, the Hempel—Oppenheim model claims universal methodological validity; second, discussions (...) on the problem of explanation have centred on this model for some time; third, the recent cognitive progress in this field has been largely the result of the interrelation between criticism of this model on the one hand and its improvement and explication on the other hand; and lastly, this model stands for a particular comprehension of the problems and possibilities of science, a concept of quite important practical consequence. (shrink)

This article tacks back towards the idealist side of the argument, in a spirited defence of critical humanism against the radical symmetry of ANT. Vandenberghe argues that the critique of reification and the ethics of emancipation require us to go beyond the `flat ontology' of ANT and its intermediate level of sociotechnical networks towards a more stratified view of social reality, which is able to account for the determining effect of broader generative but invisible structures of domination. Reasserting the categorical (...) distinction between the ontological regions inhabited by humans and nonhumans, he develops a critical opposition between the gift economy, which emphasizes qualitative relations of reciprocity between humans and which tends towards the personalization of things, and the commodity economy, which objectifies things as property, promotes the reification of persons, and turns them into strategically operating `humants'. This model is critically applied to ANT by suggesting that its `fetishist' attribution of social power to nonhumans effectively results from a failure to account for the emergent properties of the broader relational and cultural systems in which they are embedded, and which overdetermine the blackboxed object worlds which ANT has described. (shrink)

In Science as a Profession and Vocation, Max Weber presents a clear task to scientists: he claims that they have the responsibility to present uncomfortable knowledge to politicians, students and o...

Wie Max Weber verlangt auch Marx die Wertfreiheit der Wissenschaften, hält es aber im Gegensatz zu Weber dennoch für möglich, politische Entscheidungen durch wissenschaftliche Aussagen zu begründen. Der Grund liegt in Marx' Anerkennung eines allgemein verbindlichen politischen Ziels, der Interessenharmonie, das Weber aus empirischen Gründen für ohne Einbuße an Kultur unrealisierbar hält. Dieser Grund für die unterschiedliche Auffassung der Wertfreiheit der Wissenschaften wird als der entscheidende Grund für den methodologischen Gegensatz zwischen Kritischer Theorie und Kritischem Rationalismus hervorgehoben.

Digital communication now pervades all spheres of life, creating new possibilities for commodification: personal data and communication are the new resources of surplus value. This in turn brings about a totally new category of threats to privacy. With recourse to the culture industry critique of early critical theory, this article seeks to challenge basic theoretical assumptions held within a liberal account of privacy. It draws the attention to the entanglement of technical and socio-economic transformations and aims at elaborating an alternative (...) framing which takes into account that privacy is not in the first place a pre-political space for individual freedom but a constituted sphere in which social power relations are reproduced in a particularly deceitful way. With recourse to positions of critical theory, this article revisits the conceptual ambiguity of liberation and oppression and looks to draft prospects for a socio-theoretical justification and critique of privacy, updated for the digital age. Following the tradition of critical theory, the argument focuses on (new) forms of domination in and by privacy. It aims to prepare the ground for a critique of the social’s increasing commodification as well as an idea of privacy understood as reflexive participation in social practices. (shrink)

Technical thinking predominates in industrial society. It also predominates ethics. Virtually everything is viewed in terms of the technical model or—more broadly—the reductionistic machine model. Neither of these models has any room for life as a fundamental and decisive factor. Huge problems have been the result. Our appreciation of technology will change completely if the will to power and mastery will be exchanged for respect for all that lives, in all its multi-coloured variety and multiplicity. The aim of technology should (...) become, not to break down and to reduce reality in order to master and control, but to unfold and cause to flourish. We should nurture the perspective of the living and vibrant garden-city, of a culture that takes care of nature and the environment. An ethics of responsibility involves a large agenda. It calls for its own, distinct development, and a spiritual and philosophical struggle with the dominant traditions of ethics in our culture. (shrink)

Der Essay behandelt Aspekte des philosophisch seit Jahren breit diskutierten Problems der Anerkennung aus psychoanalytischer Perspektive. Im Zentrum stehen dabei zwei »asymmetrische« Anerkennungsprozesse, die beide mit extremen, Anfang und Ende eines Lebenszyklus bezeichnenden biographischen Konstellationen zusammenhängen, nämlich, mit Rückgriff auf Fichtes Theorie der »Aufforderung«, die Kommunikation zwischen dem Erwachsenen und dem Kind sowie die Anerkennungsprozesse, die sich im Feld zwischen Leben und Tod vollziehen. Ausgehend von Freuds »Trauer und Melancholie« und im Anschluss an Konzepte Winnicotts wird Trauer als paradoxer Anerkennungsprozess (...) verstanden: als Konstitution einer inneren »Objektverwendung« durch Zerstörung einer inneren »Objektbeziehung«. (shrink)

Der erkenntnistheoretische Realismus ist die systematische Basis dessen, was im Positivismusstreit als positivistisch attackiert worden war; darum knüpft der Beitrag an jene Kontroverse an. An die Analyse der argumentativen Funktion des Realismus innerhalb der Popperschen Wissenschaftslehre schließt sich eine sinnkritische Rekonstruktion der realistischen Unabhängigkeitsthese aus den Kontexten technischen, experimentellen und kommunikativen Handelns an mit dem Ziel, die Bedeutungsabhängigkeit eines jeden Redens von "unabhängiger Realität" von solchen Handlungskontexten zu erweisen. Die Darlegungen schließen mit der These, daß der Poppersche Realismus nur eine (...) Konsistenzbedingung experimentellen Handelns formuliert und philosophisch als ein bloßes Mittel der Legitimation und Stabilisierung dieses Handlungstypus zu verstehen ist. (shrink)

Organizations routinely make choices when addressing conflicting stakes of their stakeholders. As stakeholder theory continues to mature, scholars continue to seek ways to make it more usable, yet proponents continue to debate its legitimacy. Various scholarly attempts to ground stakeholder theory have not narrowed down this debate. We draw from the work of Juergen Habermas to theoretically advance stakeholder theory, and to provide practical examples to illustrate our approach. Specifically, we apply Habermas’ language-pragmatic approach to extend stakeholder theory by advancing (...) seven sets of normative axioms. We conclude that a deliberative approach, with its focus on the conditions of legitimation and deliberative democracy, has the potential to become a cornerstone of stakeholder theory. The need for global stakeholder discourse and its internalization in corporate structures and institutions is exemplified by a multitude of CSR and stakeholder initiatives that have mushroomed in response to global risk scenarios such as climate change, nuclear warfare, or terrorism. Further research may help to build a functioning global governance system in order to provide guidance for management in the 21st century. (shrink)

In this article, I argue that conventional reasoning on corporate social responsibility (CSR) is based on the assumption of a liberal market economy in the context of a nation state. I build on the study of Scherer and Palazzo (Acad Manage Rev 32(4):1096-1120, 2007), developing a number of criteria to identify elements of liberal philosophy in the ongoing CSR debate. I discuss their occurrence in the CSR literature in detail and reflect on the implications, taking into account the emerging political (...) reading of the firm. I conclude that the apolitical framework in the mainstream CSR literature has to be overcome since it does not reflect recent changes in the socio-economic conditions for economic actors in a globalizing world. (shrink)

Tracing the interplay between theory and practice in the dynamics of philosophical argument, This paper represents philosophy as an open, Critical discipline, Which keeps asking the same fundamental questions about knowledge, Reality, Justice, Freedom, Harmony and truth under changing historical conditions. In the light of this, The present impasse of human thought which manifests itself in the confrontation between totalitarian functionalism in the west on the one hand and totalitarian ideologism in the east on the other, The need for a (...) reversal of thinking becomes evident. The present deadlock of human thought and the confrontation between west and east resulting from it can be broken only if one-Sided functional practice is replaced by fully-Fledged human practice. This requires moving beyond popper's one-Dimensional 'critical' rationalism and marxism-Leninism's 'scientific' dialectical materialism to a critical humanism, Based on man's contingent experience of reality. (shrink)

The concept of free will has been heavily debated in philosophy and the social sciences. Its alleged importance lies in its association with phenomena fundamental to our understandings of self, such as autonomy, freedom, self-control, agency, and moral responsibility. Consequently, when neuroscience research is interpreted as challenging or even invalidating this concept, a number of heated social and ethical debates surface. We undertook a content analysis of media coverage of Libet’s et al.’s :623–642, 1983) landmark study, which is frequently interpreted (...) as posing a serious challenge to the existence of free will. Media descriptions of Libet et al.’s experiment provided limited details about the original study. Overall, many media articles reported that Libet et al.’s experiments undermined the existence of free will, despite acknowledging that several methodological limitations had been identified in the literature. A propensity to attribute greater credibility than warranted to neurobiological explanations could be at stake. (shrink)

Three philosophical perspectives on the relation between technology and society are distinguished and discussed: 1) technology as an autonomous force that determines society; 2) technology as a human construct that can be shaped by human values, and 3) a co-evolutionary perspective on technology and society where neither of them determines the other. The historical evolution of the three perspectives is discussed and it is argued that all three are still present in current debates about technological change and how it may (...) affect society. This is illustrated for the case of Artificial Intelligence (AI). It is argued that each of the three perspectives contributes to the debate of AI but that the third has the strongest potential to uncover blind spots in the current debate. (shrink)

“Technology is an ambivalent process with promising as well as threatening aspects … it depends on our choices which promises and dangers will become real.” An exploration of this ambivalence is offered by Dr Paul van Dijk, who is a member of the Faculty of Philosophy and Social Sciences at the University of Twente, The Netherlands. This paper was originally delivered at the Eighth Annual Conference of the European Business Ethics Network, held in 1995 at the University of Twente.

In this paper I try to challenge some received views about the role and the function of the traditional academic practice of publishing papers in peer?reviewed journals. I argue that our publishing practices today are rather based on passively accepted social norms and humdrum work habits than on actual needs for communicating the advancements of our research. By analysing some examples of devices and practices that are based on tacitly accepted norms, such as the Citation Index and the new role (...) of DOI attributions in digital publishing, I advocate an epistemically vigilant stance not only towards our ways of acquiring knowledge, but also towards the implicit norms we accept when we produce research. (shrink)

This paper deals with Ágnes Heller’s suggestion, in A Theory of Modernity (1999), to ascribe to science a central role in the ongoing development of modernity. As we shall argue, this is not merely a historical issue but, rather, a historical-philosophical one that entails the problem of defining modernity, science and technology and their mutual interconnections. As for modernity, according to Heller, it is a free developmental project without any foundations other than freedom itself. In particular, the evolution of science (...) and technology is one of its main developmental tendencies. Science, she argues, has become the dominant world explanation while technological thought is the corresponding dominant (but not unique) imaginary institution. Her attempt to isolate the essential cultural features of science-technology owes much to Habermas’s analyses of the 1960s on the technocratic developments of contemporary societies legitimized through an ideological employment of science. Like Habermas, Heller embraces an instrumental and problem-solving conception of technology and ‘normal’ science which appears questionable, however, in the light of conclusions on the intrinsic creativity of the science-technology interface deriving from historical epistemology and an externalist history of science. Considerations and examples derived from the recent agenda of historical epistemology could integrate Heller’s philosophical and cultural analysis of the role of science in modernity while challenging some of her assumptions. (shrink)

The label ‘Frankfurt School’ became popular in the ‘positivism dispute’ in the mid-1960s, but this article shows that it is wrong to describe Jürgen Habermas as representing a ‘second generation’ of exponents of critical theory. His communication theory of society is intended not as a transformation of, but as an alternative to, the older tradition of thought represented by Adorno and Horkheimer. The novel and innovative character of Habermas’s approach is demonstrated in relation to three thematic complexes: (1) the public (...) sphere and language; (2) democracy and the constitutional state; and (3) system and lifeworld as categories for a theory of modernity. (shrink)

The present article offers an introductory vision to the political philosophy of science. The political philosophy of science is a new field of study where the philosophy of science and political philosophy converge. We will see the main contents of this field. We will also note that it depends on the construction of a model of rationality where science and politics can meet each other. Finally, the article tries to outline such a model of rationality. In order to do so, (...) we will review the relationship between Karl Popper’s scientific and political philosophy. I suggest to read Popper’s critical rationalism in terms of a kind of prudential rationality. (shrink)

The authors discuss Popper's and Kuhn's theories of science and consider whether these can explain the real course taken by the history of science, that is the real behaviour of scientists seen in an historical light. It has mainly to do with the problem of what criteria influence scientists in deciding on the acceptance of one of several possible theories. The authors postulate the necessity of introducing the category of "objective technological Erkenntnisinteresse" to help solve the problem. They illustrate this (...) by analysing the various models of the structure of Benzol, proposed by Kekulé, Claus and Ladenburg. According to the authors, Popper and Kuhn cannot explain the fact that the model of Kekulé was readily accepted. It can however be explained with the category of Erkenntnisinteresse. (shrink)

The contemporary proliferation of “filter bubbles” and “echo chambers” seems to render obsolete the notion of a public sphere in the singular. In my article, I would like to argue against this view: Following Jürgen Habermas, “the public sphere” can be understood as the concomitant horizon of communicative action, while the latter permeates society as a whole. On the basis of this socio-philosophical approach, the omnipresent tendencies toward fragmentation appear as reactive attempts to ward off this socially established and context-transcending (...) context of discussion. Habermas himself, however, has never adopted this perspective. Instead, he interprets the various symptoms of the decline of the public sphere—including its fragmentation—as the result of a “colonization of the lifeworld” by economic, bureaucratic, and technological system logics. However, on the basis of the concept of “systematically distorted communication,” which was still crucial for Habermas’s early work, it is possible to reconstruct how the lifeworld context of communicative action, out of which the public sphere emerges, is not only corroded and cut through from the outside by system logics but also exhibits its own dialectic of the refusal of discourse and the overcoming of this refusal. The fragmentation of the public sphere that we are confronted with today can be theoretically interpreted and politically addressed as a precarious standstill of this dialectic. (shrink)

Evidence-based policy-making (EBP) is widely seen as a key instrument for good policy-making. Yet in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, the debate on the relation of science and policy-making gained new momentum. The premises of EBP, its narrow understanding of what kind of knowledge counts and how to make decisions, appeared inapt to provide a sound foundation for policy-making under conditions of high complexity and uncertainty. This paper addresses the major shortcomings of EBP and argues for revising its evidentialist (...) framework. First, the idea of evidence itself has to be extended and pluralized by including alternative forms of knowledge. Second, uncertainty has to be taken seriously as a fundamental epistemic condition. To arrive at a more apt model of policy-making, this paper suggests to adopt a pragmatist perspective on the relation of politics, science and the public. This leads to an experimentalist account in the meliorist spirit. Such an account highlights the role of experience, participatory processes and collective learning. Furthermore, and in contrast to scientistic models, it underlines political responsibility and demands to cultivate sensitivity for possible failures and tragic constellations. Finally, a non-evidentialist model of policy advice is outlined. (shrink)

There is a continuing irresolution on the levels, both of theory and political praxis, vis-à-vis a coming to terms with the problem of 'historical greatness'. This results from the pre-history of a concept which is, when seen in the context of a systematic theory of science, in two respects methodologically unsatisfactory. 1. The pre-idealist understanding of "greatness", in the sense of canonical exemplariness, is based on a timeless concept of morality, itself determined through a heteronomous concept of norm-giving transcendence and/or (...) nature. 2. The philosophy of history ignores the Kantian reference to the autonomy of the genesis of human orientation; instead it sees this genesis not as the expression of a potentially autonomous normativity but as a source of normative existential orientation. In this orientation the goal and the steps towards the goal are pre-reflexively implied. In the philosophy of history the 'historically great' function as genial mediators between telos and epoché. Their actions are not explicable by the categories of normal rationality. The lack of a sufficient methodology of socially practicable communication continues to lessen the chances of overcoming the practical and theoretical dependency on the idea of the mediating genius. Yet the shift to a critical social hermeneutic remains impossible as long as hermeneutic theory is willing to deny itself in the face of a purely scientistic analytic philosophy. (shrink)

In this contribution, we argue that critical theories of the public sphere (in Habermas, but also in Negt and Kluge as well as Fraser) leave out the socially central field of labour and labour-political disputes, and that a reactualization and refocusing becomes necessary: We define the dynamics of globalization, commodification and digitalization as sequences of a renewed structural transformation of both social self-understanding and gainful employment. With the help of a multi-level model of labour-political publics and counter-publics, class mobilizations can (...) be examined with a public-theoretical lens and important moments of labour-political disputes can also be reflected on their communicative conditions. This is exemplified by two vignettes. (shrink)

Ondanks het door Kroes gemelde en in de inleiding aangegeven feit dat op de Burndy Library conferentie in 1973 de meeste deelnemers het lineaire model, waarin techniek als toegepaste natuurwetenschap wordt gezien, afwezen, stelt G. de Vries in 1989 in een artikel in Kennis en Methode dat dit model nog steeds het gangbare beeld is.33 Daarin “wordt de weg van een wetenschappelijke vinding naar het uiteindelijke gebruik in een aantal stappen voorgesteld. Om te beginnen wordt in fundamenteel onderzoek de natuur (...) bestudeerd. Hier legt men de feiten bloot en onderzoekt men de mogelijkheden van ingrijpen die de natuur ons biedt. In een aantal volgende stappen worden vervolgens deze mogelijkheden op maat gesneden en omgevormd tot daadwerkelijk geproduceerde en bruikbare produkten. Elk van de stappen vindt plaats binnen een gemakkelijk te identificeren institutie [..]” . Maar hij stelt vrijwel onmiddellijk daarna de vraag of dit wel klopt en richt voor de beantwoording van deze vraag de aandacht op het verleden om te kunnen schetsen hoe een nieuwe techniek wordt geïntroduceerd. (shrink)

The ArgumentThe secret of invention or the art of inventing has recently become the object of positive or experimental research, aimed at discovering the logic of the initial mental processes that lead to “innovation.” But the problem is old and goes back to antiquity: The art of memory, rhetoric, symbolics. Does the succession of thought in invention follow a rule, such that its variations could be classified? Here I offer but a general direction: There is an analogy between the two (...) relations: invention/innovation and fecundation/maturation – namely, a male and a female principle.The Ancients thought that inventing was a divine art and that man receives the spark to then brood over its fruit in his mind. Today's still dominant materialist tendency insists on the importance of this secondary maturation and minimizes the role of the primordial spark.Thus becomes possible the ranking according to a unique order — but not without hesitations and guilt — of thinkers as far apart as Mandeville, Adam Smith, Hegel, Buffon, Rousseau, and Herder, to find the contemporary trend to which François Dagognet belongs. (shrink)

ABSTRACT “Complexity” is ubiquitous in contemporary political commentary, where it is invoked to justify innovative governance programs. However, the term lacks analytic clarity. One way to make sense of it is to construct a genealogy of the notion of “wicked problems,” a concept that highlights the intractability of complex problems and problematizes the technocratic management of complexity. The term wicked problems originated in science planning in postwar Germany and urban planning in the United States. In both cases, planners rejected a (...) naïve optimism about the potential of technical expertise in favor of recognizing that many problems transcend the knowledge possessed by experts. This appreciation of complexity led to attempts, still ongoing, to accommodate both participatory and expert-based decision making in the face of wicked problems, producing a form of technical democracy in which problem solving requires the orchestration of conflict. (shrink)

The Habermasian concept of ‘interest’ has had a profound effect on the characterization of scientific disciplines. Going beyond issues unrelated to the theory itself, intra‐theoretical interest characterizes the specific ways of approaching any science‐related discipline, defining research topics and methodologies. This approach was developed by Jürgen Habermas in relation to empirical–analytical sciences, historical–hermeneutics sciences, and critical sciences; however, he did not make any specific references to health sciences. This article aims to contribute to shaping a general epistemological framework for health (...) sciences, as well as its specific implications for the medical and nursing areas, via an analysis of the basic knowledge interests developed by Habermas. (shrink)

The paper suggests a critique of scientism by revealing the existential genesis of knowledge-constitutive interests in scientific research. This scenario of overcoming scientism is spelled out in terms of the doctrine of cognitive existentialism. On the doctrine?s central claim, a knowledge-constitutive interest is not fixed and determined by a strongly situated epistemic position that is distinguished by invariant norms of theorizing, methodological devices, cognitive aims, goals, and values. In reflecting upon its situated transcendence, scientific research has a potentiality for discarding (...) that form of objectivist realism which is pre-supposed by the ideology of scientism. The paper develops arguments against the essentialist picture of scientific research shared by philosophers as different as Heidegger and Habermas. (shrink)