Since antiquity, philosophers have investigated how change works. If a thing moves from one state to another, when exactly does it start to be in its new state, and when does it cease to be in its former one? In the late Middle Ages, the "problem of the instant of change" was subject to considerable debate and gave rise to sophisticated theories; it became popular and controversial again in the second half of the twentieth century. The studies (...) collected here constitute the first attempt at tackling the different aspects of an issue that, until now have been the object of seminal but isolated forays. They do so in through a historical perspective, offering both the medieval and the contemporary viewpoints. (shrink)

This anthology concerns limit-decision problems, chiefly as treated in the fourteenth-century Latin West. A central problem taken up concerns the instant of change: in a change from ø to not-ø such that before instant t there is ø and after t not-ø, at t is there ø, or not-ø, or neither, or both? For medieval thinkers, the answer often depended on what kind of item was at issue. They standardly distinguished permanent items, the whole of which (...) exists simultaneously, from successive items, whose parts are non-simultaneous, and gave different type or type answers in the two cases.The papers in... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Images >> Quan Zhou Wu and Linaje’s GenealogyJulia Haeyoon Chang (bio) Click for larger view View full resolutionQuan Zhou WuENJOY (Linaje 2024)Art and design by Quan Zhou WuDigital infrastructure by Marco Fratini[End Page 5] Click for larger view View full resolutionQuan Zhou WuUNA DE ELLAS (Linaje 2024)Art and design by Quan ZhouWu Digital infrastructure by Marco Fratini[End Page 6] Click for larger view View full resolutionQuan Zhou WuMEMORIAS RETORCIDAS(Linaje (...) 2024)Art and design by Quan Zhou WuDigital infrastructure by Marco Fratini[End Page 30] Click for larger view View full resolutionQuan Zhou Wu,NEGATIVOS (Linaje 2024)Art and design by Quan Zhou WuDigital infrastructure by Marco Fratini[End Page 31] Click for larger view View full resolutionQuan Zhou WuELLAS Y YO (Linaje 2024)Art and design by Quan Zhou WuDigital infrastructure by Marco Fratini[End Page 49] Click for larger view View full resolutionQuan Zhou Wu,STATEMENT (Linaje 2024)Art and design by Quan Zhou WuDigital infrastructure by Marco Fratini[End Page 74] Click for larger view View full resolutionQuan Zhou WuLAS ARTISTAS QUE NO FUIMOS (Linaje 2024)Art and design by Quan Zhou WuDigital infrastructure by Marco Fratini[End Page 75]Quan Zhou Wu’s followers will surely be struck—as I was—by the multisensory digital exhibit “Linaje” (“Lineage”), which was published in 2024 and departs, perhaps unexpectedly, from the artist’s previous well-established oeuvre. Before delving into the work in question, it may be fruitful first to have a glimpse at the artist’s iconic aesthetic. In 2015, and at the age of twenty-seven, Wu, a self-taught artist, debuted her first graphic memoir, Gazpacho Agridulce. The book commences with her parents’ newfound life in Spain after leaving Qingtian, a province of Zhejiang, China, to run a restaurant in Algeciras, a municipality of Cadiz. The opening pages of Gazpacho pack a punch, depicting Wu’s dramatic and untimely birth in a taxicab en route to the hospital.Gazpacho’s publication initiated a crucial sea change in the predominantly white Spanish publishing world, which would soon after be rocked by a boom of racialized1 authors penning anti-racist memoirs and other works of non-fiction.2 Gazpacho would also eventually become the first of the author’s trilogy of graphic memoirs, which was completed by the sequels Andaluchinas por el mundo (2017) and the most recent La agridolce vita (2023).Wu’s narratives capture the familial, identarian, and social conflicts that erupt from cultural disloyalties and racism—direct consequences of migration. She and her sisters, for example, loathe their family’s rigid Chinese and Christian mores and long for the cultural markers of an ordinary Spanish childhood, structured of course by U.S. global consumer culture, e.g. Barbie, Pizza Hut, and McDonald’s.An illustrator, cartoonist, and podcaster, Wu’s talent as a storyteller lies in her complex use of humor. With great care for her subject and her reader, Wu deploys humor to tend to the uncouth, raw, and ugly parts of life. In so doing, the author invites us to laugh and ultimately reckon with our own discomfort as we with sit with the heaviness of racism, sexism, and post-migration melancholy—using humor as a salve.At her best, Wu serves irreverence, rawness, and wit. To be immersed in her books is to rub up against the rough-hewn emotions that bring her characters to life. The vibrancy of her palette and the whimsy of her pen strokes are inviting, animated, and deceptively light-hearted. In an instant, lines and pigment rearrange into abstractions dense with affect. Fiery hollowed eyes, a gaping mouth, and flushed skin burn through the frame—making the volcanic rage of a migrant mother immediately palpable. It’s so emotive, it practically singes your skin. Click for larger view View full resolutionFigure 1.Cover of Wu’s first graphic memoir Gazpacho agridulce: Una autobiografía china-andaluza[End Page 102] Click for larger view View full resolutionFigure 2.Excerpt from Gazpacho agridulce (courtesy of the artist)[End Page 103]While... (shrink)

Instantaneous changes may well be thought to give rise to contradiction. If one endorses an explosive logic, where contradictions entail everything, this is entirely unacceptable. However, if one deploys a paraconsistent logic, which keeps contradictions under control, one may give perfectly coherent and precise models of such changes. In In Contradiction the author showed how and he explored the philosophical implications of the model. Here, the author revisits the issue in the light of a recent critique by Greg Littmann.

Ockham’s approach to the problem of the instant of change as it is found in the Summa logicae i, chapter 5, and ii, chapter 19, is usually described as “purely logical,” narrowing the treatment of “begins” and “ceases” to simplistic cases. The aim of this paper is to complement our knowledge of Ockham’s position on the problem of the instant of change by analysing the treatment of the problem he gives in his questions on the Physics (...) 98-101. In these passages, Ockham adopts a “physical approach” in order to deal with problems related to the continuity of alteration and the production of the form of the mix from elementary qualities. To solve these problems, he is compelled to give up one of the most important claims at the basis of the logical approach that he adopted in the Summa logicae, namely that the distinction between permanent and successive entities is not relevant in the assignment of truth-conditions to propositions containing the aspectual verbs “beginning” and “ceasing.”. (shrink)

When an event occurs which involves a change from a state ϕ\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\phi $$\end{document} to a state not-ϕ\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\phi $$\end{document}, when does the change occur? This is known in the philosophical literature as the problem of the moment of change. I discuss a puzzle based on this problem raised by Sextus Empiricus in Against the Physicists. I compare two lines of solution, (...) one provided by Hans Kamp’s work on the logic of change and the other inspired by Aristotle’s claim that change cannot happen at an instant. I end with a discussion of these solutions vis-à-vis the account of cessation implicatures proposed by Altshuler and Schwarzschild. (shrink)

Extending on an earlier paper [Found. Phys. Ltt., 16(4) 343–355, (2003)], it is argued that instants of time and the instantaneous (including instantaneous relative position) do not actually exist. This conclusion, one which is also argued to represent the correct solution to Zeno’s motion paradoxes, has several implications for modern physics and for our philosophical view of time, including that time and space cannot be quantized; that contrary to common interpretation, motion and change are compatible with the “block” universe (...) and relativity; and that time, space, and space-time too, cannot exist. Instead, motion and change become the major players. (shrink)

Most people in the United States agree they want some income inequality but debate exactly how much is fair. High‐status people generally prefer more inequality than low‐status individuals. Here we examine how much preferences for inequality are (or are not) driven by self‐interest. Past work has generally investigated this idea in two ways: The first is by stratifying preferences by income, and the second is by randomly assigning financial status within lab‐constructed scenarios. In this paper, we develop a method that (...) combines both experimental control and the social experience of inequality—a simulated society experiment. Across two experiments (N = 138, observations = 690), participants voted on the distribution of rewards—first behind a veil of ignorance, and then when they were randomly assigned a status within a game of chance. Status varied repeatedly across five rounds, allowing us to measure dynamic preferences. Under the veil of ignorance, people preferred inequality favoring the top status. When the veil of ignorance disappeared, self‐interest immediately influenced inequality preferences. Those who randomly landed in top positions were satisfied with the status quo established under the veil of ignorance, whereas those who randomly landed in bottom positions wanted more equality. Yet these preferences were not stable; decisions about the optimal level of inequality changed according to changes in social status. Our results also showed that, when inequality grows in a society, preferences regarding inequality become polarized by social status. Individuals in low‐status positions, particularly, tend to demand more equality. (shrink)

If something changes from being in one state to being in another state, when exactly does it change? And what’s going on at that time? These questions are often discussed under the heading of the ‘moment’ or ‘instant’ of change. In this paper, I will investigate a view on which there is an intrinsically distinguished, atomic time at which something changes, and at that time it is metaphysically indeterminate what is the case. The background metaphysical picture is (...) situationalism, a theory on which reality is composed of irreducibly conflicting parts. These conflicting parts give rise to unsettledness in reality as a whole, and also at the point of change. I propose this view as a competitor for existing accounts of the time of change, and spell out a few reasons in its favour. (shrink)

When do things change? When do things have some characteristics? I try to answer these questions by looking at different solutions Plato and Aristotle presented in their works. The famous analysis of change from the second half of Plato’s Parmenides claims that change happens outside of time, at an “instant”. On the contrary, Aristotle in the Physics explicitly argues that all change occurs only in time. However, both Plato and Aristotle also provide other analyses of (...) change. How to deal with this variety of explanations and tensions between them? In this paper, I argue that if we differentiate between several kinds of change, most of Plato’s and Aristotle’s analyses provide a thorough insight into the nature of change. For processes such as locomotion, change occurs exclusively within time. For changes where both the initial and final states occur only in time, such as a transition from motion to rest, change takes place in the ‘now’. However, for changes where both the initial and final states occur in both time and in the ‘now’ – for example, a qualitative change from being white to not being white – change does not occur in time nor in the ‘now’, but instead happens instantaneously. (shrink)

In this essay, I first set out the principles of change, paying particular attention to the need for a support for all changes and to the need for prime matter. I then discuss the nature of time, arguing that time is not actually composed of durationless instants but that instants can be understood as limits to an infinite process of potential division. I then give a definition of instants in terms of intervals and propose a way of modeling them. (...) In the next section I bring together the two previous sections by explaining change as an instantaneous process that does not involve actual instants. In the final section I draw out a larger metaphysical moral that emphasizes the role of potentiality and sees the potentiality in change and the potentiality in time as but different aspects of the same radical potentiality in nature. (shrink)

In order to care ethically nurses need to care holistically; holistic care includes religious/spiritual care. This research attempted to answer the question: Do nurses have the resources to offer religious care? This article discusses only one aspect - the provision of religious care within the Taiwanese health care system. It is assumed that, if hospitals do not provide enough religious services, nurses working in these hospitals cannot be fully ethical beings or cannot respect patients’ religious needs. The relevant literature was (...) reviewed, followed by a survey study on the provision of religious facilities and services. Aspects considered are: the religions influences in and on Taiwanese society; the religious needs of patients and their families; strategies that patients use to enable them to cope with their health care problems; professional motives for attuning to patients’ religious needs; and hospital provision for meeting the religious and spiritual needs of patients. A survey of nursing executives showed differences between religious service provision in hospitals with and without a hospice ward. The practical implications for hospital management and nursing practice are discussed. (shrink)

When we think of Sartre's proposal for a theory of alterity in Being and Nothingness, our attention often turns to his famous and original analysis of “the look of the other”. The moment when Sartre presents this analysis in his work is characterised by the author's effort to escape from the problem of solipsism, and the development of a “phenomenology of the look” is presented as a decisive response to the problem. However, Sartre's critics have shown how problematic this response (...) is, insofar as it favours the “being-seeing” - a dimension acquired through a metamorphosis that the look of the other is capable of provoking in the subject - as what would guarantee an effective relationship of otherness. In this work, I try to return to these criticisms in order to highlight their limits, and then change the focus, bringing to the fore the "backstage" of the look that directs us towards a way out of solipsism. (shrink)

Alain Badiou and Slavoj Žižek together have emerged as two of Europe’s most significant living philosophers. In a shared spirit of resistance to global capitalism, both are committed to bringing philosophical reflection to bear upon present-day political circumstances. These thinkers are especially interested in asking what consequences the supposed twentieth-century demise of communism entails for leftist political theory in the early twenty-first century. _ Badiou, Žižek, and Political Transformations_ examines Badiouian and Žižekian depictions of change, particularly as deployed at (...) the intersection of philosophy and politics. The book details the origins of Badiou’s concept of the event and Žižek’s concept of the act as related theoretical visions of revolutionary happenings, delineating a number of difficulties arising from these similar concepts. Johnston finds that Badiou and Žižek tend to favor models of transformation that risk discouraging in advance precisely the efforts at changing the world of today that these uncompromising leftists so ardently desire. _Badiou, Žižek, and Political Transformations_ will surely join Johnston’s _Žižek’s Ontology _as an instant classic in its field. (shrink)

Hugh of Novocastro, Landolfo Caracciolo, John Baconthorpe, and some other medieval authors argued that there are real contradictions in nature. The background of this early fourteenth-century theory was the Aristotelian question of how to determine the instant of change between p and ~p. The argument was that these are simultaneously true at the temporal instant of change if it is an instant of changing. The author’s aim is to discuss the background of this view in (...) Henry of Ghent’s theory of instantaneous change from potentiality to actuality at that very instant. (shrink)

Although companies recognize the importance of social responsibility and community engagement, conflicts between companies and communities have been noticeably increasing. To better understand the role of institutional environments in company–community conflicts, we analyze two mining conflicts—Minera Yanacocha's Minas Conga extension project in Peru and Minera Los Pelambres' El Mauro Tailings Dam in Chile. Our findings imply that, to prevent negative consequences and alleviate company–community conflicts, mining companies should address underlying structural causes and pursue informal approaches in order to obtain and (...) maintain their social license. We find that better formal institutional environments not only alleviate conflict intensity but also facilitate informal approaches through which companies and communities can cooperate to resolve conflicts. The best practice would be to start and continue dialogs between communities and companies, mediated by impartial governments, to understand the concerns of the counterparty and find means by which to address the causes. (shrink)

ObjectiveTo investigate the instant impact of hemodialysis on the cerebral morphological measurements of patients with end-stage renal disease.Materials and methodsTwenty-five patients undergoing maintenance HD and twenty-eight age-, sex-, and education-matched healthy control were included. The HD group and HC group had 3D high-resolution structural magnetic resonance imaging scans twice and once, respectively. Both groups underwent neuropsychologic tests. The morphological measurements of structural MRI were measured using CAT12 and these measures were compared among three groups. The relationship between morphological measures (...) and clinical parameters and neuropsychological tests were investigated through multiple regression analysis.ResultsCompared to the HC group, the cortical thickness before HD significantly decreased in the bilateral temporal lobe and significantly decreased in the left superior temporal gyrus after HD. The cortical thickness significantly increased in the bilateral temporal lobe, frontal lobe and occipital lobe after HD compared to before HD. The sulcus depth in the bilateral insula, frontal lobe, and parietal lobe after HD significantly increased compared to before HD. No significant differences in sulcus depth between HD and HC were detected. After HD, the cortical thickness of the right parsopercularis was positively correlated with the number connection test-A. Cortical thickness in multiple regions were positively correlated with blood flow velocity and cortical thickness in the left parahippocampal gyrus was negatively correlated with ultrafiltration volume. Patients showed better performance in the digit symbol test and line tracing test after HD compared to before HD, but there were no significant differences in the comparison of neuropsychologic tests between patients and HC.ConclusionThe instant morphological changes were captured during a single hemodialysis in HD patients. There was an association between these instant changes in the brain and clinical parameters and neuropsychologic tests. This work implied the instant impact of a single hemodialysis impact on the brain in HD patients. (shrink)

This article aims to help readers to learn about health care related cultural and religious beliefs and spiritual needs in Chinese communities. The recall diary of a severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS)-infected intern working in Hoping Hospital in Taiwan during the 2003 SARS epidemic is presented and used to assist in understanding one patient’s spiritual activities when personally confronted with this newly emerging infectious disease. The article also gives an overview of the 2003 SARS epidemic in Taiwan, and discusses people’s (...) general perceptions towards infectious diseases, their coping strategies concerning disease, and their spiritual beliefs, the psychological impact of the 2003 SARS outbreak in Chinese communities, Chinese myths about infectious disease, and the religious activities of a SARS-infected intern in Taiwan. Recommendations are given on how to achieve quality holistic nursing care. (shrink)

This survey aimed to illustrate factors that contribute to nurses' fear when faced with a possible human-to-human avian flu pandemic and their willingness to care for patients with avian flu in Taiwan. The participants were nursing students with a lesser nursing credential who were currently enrolled in a bachelor degree program in a private university in southern Taiwan. Nearly 42% of the nurses did not think that, if there were an outbreak of avian flu, their working hospitals would have sufficient (...) infection control measures and equipment to prevent nosocomial infection in their working environment. About 57% of the nurse participants indicated that they were willing to care for patients infected with avian influenza. Nurses' fear about an unknown infectious disease, such as the H5N1 influenza virus, could easily be heightened to levels above those occurring during the 2003 severe acute respiratory syndrome outbreak in Taiwan. (shrink)

Why do some epistemic objects persist despite undergoing serious changes, while others go extinct in similar situations? Scientists have often been careless in deciding which epistemic objects to retain and which ones to eliminate; historians and philosophers of science have been on the whole much too unreflective in accepting the scientists’ decisions in this regard. Through a re-examination of the history of oxygen and phlogiston, I will illustrate the benefits to be gained from challenging and disturbing the commonly accepted continuities (...) and discontinuities in the lives of epistemic objects. I will also outline two key consequences of such re-thinking. First, a fresh view on the (dis)continuities in key epistemic objects is apt to lead to informative revisions in recognized periods and trends in the history of science. Second, recognizing sources of continuity leads to a sympathetic view on extinct objects, which in turn problematizes the common monistic tendency in science and philosophy; this epistemological reorientation allows room for more pluralism in scientific practice itself. (shrink)

This paper argues for the existence of a fourth positive generic value relation that can hold between two items beyond ‘better than’, ‘worse than’, and ‘equally good’: namely ‘on a par’.

This book exhibits deep philosophical quandaries and intricacies of the historical development of science lying behind a simple and fundamental item of common sense in modern science, namely the composition of water as H2O. Three main phases of development are critically re-examined, covering the historical period from the 1760s to the 1860s: the Chemical Revolution, early electrochemistry, and early atomic chemistry. In each case, the author concludes that the empirical evidence available at the time was not decisive in settling the (...) central debates and therefore the consensus that was reached was unjustified or at least premature. This leads to a significant re-examination of the realism question in the philosophy of science and a unique new advocacy for pluralism in science. Each chapter contains three layers, allowing readers to follow various parts of the book at their chosen level of depth and detail. The second major study in "complementary science", this book offers a rare combination of philosophy, history and science in a bid to improve scientific knowledge through history and philosophy of science. (shrink)

This book presents the concept of “complementary science” which contributes to scientific knowledge through historical and philosophical investigations. It emphasizes the fact that many simple items of knowledge that we take for granted were actually spectacular achievements obtained only after a great deal of innovative thinking, painstaking experiments, bold conjectures, and serious controversies. Each chapter in the book consists of two parts: a narrative part that states the philosophical puzzle and gives a problem-centred narrative on the historical attempts to solve (...) the puzzle; and the analysis part which provides in-depth analyses of certain scientific, historical, and philosophical aspects of the story. (shrink)

We argue why interpretability should have primacy alongside empiricism for several reasons: first, if machine learning models are beginning to render some of the high-risk healthcare decisions instead of clinicians, these models pose a novel medicolegal and ethical frontier that is incompletely addressed by current methods of appraising medical interventions like pharmacological therapies; second, a number of judicial precedents underpinning medical liability and negligence are compromised when ‘autonomous’ ML recommendations are considered to be en par with human instruction in specific (...) contexts; third, explainable algorithms may be more amenable to the ascertainment and minimisation of biases, with repercussions for racial equity as well as scientific reproducibility and generalisability. We conclude with some reasons for the ineludible importance of interpretability, such as the establishment of trust, in overcoming perhaps the most difficult challenge ML will face in a high-stakes environment like healthcare: professional and public acceptance. (shrink)

This paper investigates two puzzles in practical reason and proposes a solution to them. First, sometimes, when we are practically certain that neither of two alternatives is better than or as good as the other with respect to what matters in the choice between them, it nevertheless seems perfectly rational to continue to deliberate, and sometimes the result of that deliberation is a conclusion that one alternative is better, where there is no error in one’s previous judgment. Second, there are (...) striking differences between rational agents – some rational agents have most reason to pursue careers on Wall Street while others have most reason to take up a career in teaching, or scuba diving, or working for political causes. These differences aren’t plausibly explained by ‘passive’ facts about our psychology or their causal interaction with our environment; instead, these facts seem in some sense to ‘express who we are’. But what is this sense? These puzzles disappear if we adopt a novel view about the source of the normativity of reasons – some reasons are given to us and others are reasons in virtue of an act of will. We make certain considerations reasons through an act of will and thus sometimes make it true through an act of agency that we have most reason to do one thing rather than another. (shrink)

This paper is the introduction to the volume. It gives an argumentative view of the philosophical landscape concerning incommensurability and incomparability. It argues that incomparability, not incommensurability, is the important phenomenon on which philosophers should be focusing and that the arguments for the existence of incomparability are so far not compelling.

This paper presents an argument against the widespread view that ‘hard choices’ are hard because of the incomparability of the alternatives. The argument has two parts. First, I argue that any plausible theory of practical reason must be ‘comparativist’ in form, that is, it must hold that a comparative relation between the alternatives with respect to what matters in the choice determines a justified choice in that situation. If comparativist views of practical reason are correct, however, the incomparabilist view of (...) hard choices should be rejected. Incomparabilism about hard choices leads us to an implausible error theory about the phenomenology of hard choices, threatens an unattractive view of human agency, and leaves us in perplexity about what we are doing when we choose in hard choices. The second part of the argument explores the main competitor to comparativist views of practical reason, noncomparativist view, according tow which a choice is justified so long as it is not worse than any of the alternatives. This view is often assumed by rational choice theorists but has its best philosophical defense in work by Joseph Raz. On Raz’s view, incomparabilism about hard choices avoids the problems faced if comparativism is correct, but it faces different difficulties. I argue that Raz’s noncomparativist view mistakenly assimilates practical reason to more restricted normative domains such as the law. (shrink)

The feeling of being offended, as a moral emotion, plays a key role in issues such as slurs, the offense principle, ethics of humor, etc. However, no adequate theory of offense has been developed in the literature, and it remains unclear what questions such a theory should answer. This paper attempts to fill the gap by performing two tasks. The first task is to clarify and summarize the questions of offense into two kinds, the descriptive questions (e.g., what features differentiate (...) offense from similar moral states like anger?) and the normative questions (e.g., what are the conditions for taking offense to be apt?). The second task is to answer these questions by developing what I call ‘the violated norm theory of offense’. According to this theory, feeling offended entails that the norm one endorses is judged to be violated by the offender. Appealing to the violated norm enables this theory to answer the descriptive questions (e.g., taking offense differs from anger because of features like not requiring victims and the difficulty of animal offense) and the normative questions of offense (e.g., taking offense is apt only if the violated norm is universalizable). (shrink)

Can quite different values be rationally weighed against one another? Can the value of one thing always be ranked as greater than, equal to, or less than the value of something else? If the answer to these questions is no, then in what areas do we find commensurability and comparability unavailable? And what are the implications for moral and legal decision making? This book struggles with these questions, and arrives at distinctly different answers.".

In virtue of what is something a reason for action? That is, what makes a consideration a reason to act? This is a metaphysical or meta-normative question about the grounding of reasons for action. The answer to the grounding question has been traditionally given in ‘pure’, univocal terms. This paper argues that there is good reason to understand the ground of practical normativity as a hybrid of traditional ‘pure’ views. The paper 1) surveys the three leading ‘pure’ answers to the (...) question of a normative ground, 2) examines one or two of the most difficult problems for each, proposing along the way a new objection to one, and 3) argues that a particular hybrid view about normative grounds –‘hybrid voluntarism’ – avoids each of the main problems faced by the three leading ‘pure’ views. (shrink)

a central thesis of martin heidegger's first reading of a Platonic dialogue, the 1924/25 course on the Sophist, was that, "for the Greeks, being means precisely to be present, to be in the present [Anwesend-sein, Gegenwärtig-sein]."1 Heidegger saw this Greek interpretation of being as leading to Plato's specific interpretation of being as eidos or idea. Heidegger makes this clear in the following passage from another Plato course, the 1931–32 course On the Essence of Truth: "'Idea' is the look [der Anblick] (...) of what something offers itself as being. These looks [Anblicke] are that in which the individual thing presents itself as this or that, that in which it is present and presencing [präsent und anwesend].... (shrink)

Traditional theories construe approximate truth or truthlikeness as a measure of closeness to facts, singular facts, and idealization as an act of either assuming zero of otherwise very small differences from facts or imagining ideal conditions under which scientific laws are either approximately true or will be so when the conditions are relaxed. I first explain the serious but not insurmountable difficulties for the theories of approximation, and then argue that more serious and perhaps insurmountable difficulties for the theory of (...) idealization force us to sever its close tie to approximation. This leads to an appreciation of lawlikeness as a measure of closeness to laws, which I argue is the real measure of idealization whose main purpose is to carve nature at its joints. (shrink)

Historians often feel that standard philosophical doctrines about the nature and development of science are not adequate for representing the real history of science. However, when philosophers of science fail to make sense of certain historical events, it is also possible that there is something wrong with the standard historical descriptions of those events, precluding any sensible explanation. If so, philosophical failure can be useful as a guide for improving historiography, and this constitutes a significant mode of productive interaction between (...) the history and the philosophy of science. I illustrate this methodological claim through the case of the Chemical Revolution. I argue that no standard philosophical theory of scientific method can explain why European chemists made a sudden and nearly unanimous switch of allegiance from the phlogiston theory to Lavoisier's theory. A careful re-examination of the history reveals that the shift was neither so quick nor so unanimous as imagined even by many historians. In closing I offer brief reflections on how best to explain the general drift toward Lavoisier's theory that did take place. (shrink)

In this article, I identify and critically examine 3 dogmas of normativity that support a commonly accepted ‘Passivist View' of rational agency. I raise some questions about these dogmas, suggest what we should believe in their place, and moot an alternative ‘Activist View' of what it is to be a rational agent that grows out of rejection of the 3 dogmas. Underwriting the dogmas and the Passivist View, I suggest, is a deeply held but mistaken assumption that the normative domain (...) is fundamentally akin to the nonnormative domain. Once we allow that the normative may be fundamentally unlike the nonnormative in certain key ways, a shift in our thinking about what it is to be rational becomes possible. I end by considering some implications of this paradigm shift in rationality from the passive to the active for various applied matters. (shrink)

What makes a choice hard? I discuss and criticize three common answers and then make a proposal of my own. Paradigmatic hard choices are not hard because of our ignorance, the incommensurability of values, or the incomparability of the alternatives. They are hard because the alternatives are on a par; they are comparable, but one is not better than the other, and yet nor are they equally good. So understood, hard choices open up a new way of thinking about what (...) it is to be a rational agent. (shrink)

In this innovative book, Hasok Chang constructs a philosophy of science for 'realistic people' interested in understanding and promoting the actual practices of inquiry in science and other knowledge-focused areas of life. Inspired by pragmatist philosophy, he reconceives the very notions of reality and truth on the basis of his concept of the 'operational coherence' of epistemic activities, and offers new pragmatist conceptions of truth and reality as operational ideals achievable in actual scientific practice. Rejecting the version of scientific realism (...) that is concerned with claiming that our theories correspond to an ultimate reality, he proposes instead an 'activist realism': a commitment to do all that we can actually do to improve our knowledge of realities. His book will appeal to scholars and students in philosophy, science and the history of science, and all who are concerned about the place of science and empirical truth in society. (shrink)

I seek to provide a systematic and comprehensive framework for the description and analysis of scientific practice—a philosophical grammar of scientific practice, ‘grammar’ as meant by the later Wittgenstein. I begin with the recognition that all scientific work, including pure theorizing, consists of actions, of the physical, mental, and ‘paper-and-pencil’ varieties. When we set out to see what it is that one actually does in scientific work, the following set of questions naturally emerge: who is doing what, why, and how? (...) More specifically, we must arrive at some coherent philosophical accounts of the following elements of scientific practice: the agent—free, embodied, and constantly in second-person interactions with other agents; the purposes and proximate aims of the agent; types of activities that the agent engages in; ontological principles necessarily presumed for the performance of particular activities; instruments and other resources that the agent pulls together for the performance of each activity. After sketching the general framework, I also give some illustrative contrasts between the more traditional descriptions of scientific practice and the kind of descriptions enabled by the proposed framework. (shrink)