An important method for finding the optimal solution for linear and nonlinear models is the graphical method, which is used if the linear or nonlinear mathematical model contains one, two, or three variables. The models that contain only two variables are among the most models for which the optimal solution has been obtained graphically, whether these models are linear or non-linear in references and research that are concerned with the science of operations research, when the data of the issue under (...) study is classical data. In this research, we will present a study through, which we present the graphical method for solving Neutrosophical nonlinear models in the following case: A nonlinear programming issue, the objective function is a nonlinear function, and the constraints are linear functions. Note that we can use the same method if (i) the objective function follower is a linear follower and the constraints are nonlinear; (ii) the objective function is a non-linear follower and the constraints are non-linear. In the three cases, the nonlinear models are neutrosophic, and as we know, the mathematical model is a nonlinear model if any of the components of the objective function or the constraints are nonlinear expressions, and the nonlinear expressions may be in both. At the left end of the constraints are neutrosophic values, at least one or all of them. Then, the possible solutions to the neutrosophic nonlinear programming problem are the set of rays that fulfills all the constraints. As for the region of possible solutions, it is the region that contains all the rays that fulfill the constraints. The optimal solution is the beam that fulfills all constraints and at which the function reaches a maximum or minimum value, depending on the nature of the issue under study (noting that it is not necessary to be alone). (shrink)

Written in the 1960s, TRUTH AND METHOD is Gadamer's magnum opus.

a) La doctrine de la connaissance défendue par Hilbert au cours du développement de la théorie de la démonstration est constituée dès la Conférence de Paris de 1900. Elle précède donc la théorie de la démonstration.b) L’application du principe fondamental de l’épistémologie hilbertienne (« Au commencement est le signe ») à la caractérisation de la négation logique est l’un des problèmes principaux de la théorie de la démonstration.c) Pour pouvoir caractériser la négation en termes de manipulation de signes, il faut (...) abandonner la méthode axiomatique et donc sacrifier l’essentiel de la doctrine hilbertienne de la connaissance. (shrink)

a) La doctrine de la connaissance défendue par Hilbert au cours du développement de la théorie de la démonstration est constituée dès la Conférence de Paris de 1900. Elle précède donc la théorie de la démonstration.b) L’application du principe fondamental de l’épistémologie hilbertienne (« Au commencement est le signe ») à la caractérisation de la négation logique est l’un des problèmes principaux de la théorie de la démonstration.c) Pour pouvoir caractériser la négation en termes de manipulation de signes, il faut (...) abandonner la méthode axiomatique et donc sacrifier l’essentiel de la doctrine hilbertienne de la connaissance. (shrink)

Preface In his book, African Philosophy, Theophilius Okere, after arguing that the way to African philosophy is the path of hermeneutics of culture, ...

How does experimental philosophy address philosophical questions and problems? That is: What projects does experimental philosophy pursue? What is their philosophical relevance? And what empirical methods do they employ? Answers to these questions will reveal how experimental philosophy can contribute to the longstanding ambition of placing philosophy on the ‘secure path of a science’, as Kant put it. We argue that experimental philosophy has introduced a new methodological perspective – a ‘meta-philosophical naturalism’ that addresses philosophical questions about a phenomenon by (...) empirically investigating how people think about this phenomenon. This chapter asks how this novel perspective can be successfully implemented: How can the empirical investigation of how people think about something address genuinely philosophical problems? And what methods – and, specifically, what methods beyond the questionnaire – can this investigation employ? We first review core projects of experimental philosophy and raise the question of their philosophical relevance. For ambitious answers, we turn to experimental philosophy’s most direct historical precursor, mid-20th century ordinary language philosophy, and discuss empirical implementations of two of its research programmes that use experimental methods from psycholinguistics and corpus methods from the digital humanities. (shrink)

This Hackett edition, first published in 1981, is an unabridged and unaltered republication of the seventh edition as published by Macmillan and Company, Limited. From the forward by John Rawls: In the utilitarian tradition Henry Sidgwick has an important place. His fundamental work, The Methods of Ethics, is the clearest and most accessible formulation of what we may call 'the classical utilitarian doctorine.' This classical doctrine holds that the ultimate moral end of social and individual action is the greatest net (...) sum of the happiness of all sentient beings. Happinesss is specified by the net balance of pleasure over pain, or, as Sidgwick preferred to say, as the net balance of agreeable over disagreeable consciousness.... (shrink)

This title presents a comprehensive guide to interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) which is an increasingly popular approach to qualitative inquiry taught to undergraduate and postgraduate students today.

Science is founded on a method based on critical thinking. A prerequisite for this is not only a sufficient command of language but also the comprehension of the basic concepts underlying our understanding of reality. This constraint implies an awareness of the fact that the truth of the World is not directly accessible to us, but can only be glimpsed through the construction of mod- els designed to anticipate its behaviour. Because the relationship between models and reality rests on the (...) interpretation of founding postulates and in- stantiations of their predictions (and is therefore deeply rooted in language and culture), there can be no demarcation between science and non-science. However, critical thinking is essential to ensure that the link between models and reality is gradually made more adequate to reality, based on what has already been established, thus guaranteeing that science progresses on this basis and excluding any form of relativism. (shrink)

In the process of implementing an ethical code of conduct, a business organization uses formal methods. Of these, training, courses and means of enforcement are common and are also suitable for self-regulation. The USA is encouraging business corporations to self regulate with the Federal Sentencing Guidelines (FSG). The Guidelines prescribe similar formal methods and specify that, unless such methods are used, the process of implementation will be considered ineffective, and the business will therefore not be considered to have complied with (...) the guidelines. Business organizations invest enormous funds on formal methods. However, recent events indicate that these are not, by themselves, yielding the desired results. Our study, based on a sample of 812 employees and conducted in an Israeli subsidiary of a leading multinational High-Tech corporation headquartered in the US, indicates that, of the methods used in the process of implementation, one of the informal methods (namely, the social norms of the organization) is perceived by employees to have the most influence on their conduct. This result, when examined against employee tenure, remains relatively stable over the years, and stands in contradistinction to the formalistic approach embedded in the FSG. We indirectly measure the effectiveness of the percieved most influential implementation process methods by analyzing their impact on employee attitudes (namely, personal ethical commitment and employees'' commitment to organizational values). Our results indicate that the informal methods (manager sets an example or social norms of the organization) are likely to yield greater commitment with respect to both employee attitudes than the formal method (training and courses on the subject of ethics). The personal control method (my own personal values) differs significantly from all the other methods in that it yields the highest degree of personal ethical commitment and the lowest degree of employees'' commitment to organizational values. (shrink)

In an attempt to answer the question of the proper methodology for African philosophy, I identify “Conversationalism” or “Conversational Thinking” as arguably the most developed and perhaps suitable methodology for African philosophy today. In reaction to the generally descriptive methodologies of African Philosophy, such as ethnophilosophy and sage philosophy, I find expedient the need for a proper rationally consistent and forward-thinking methodological foundation for the development of African philosophy. In acknowledging this deficit, I contest with pre-existing methodologies in African philosophy, (...) deconstructing them in an attempt to lay bare their deficiencies and question their adequacy and suitability for contemporary African philosophy. Finally, I present and critically examine the various tenets and principles of Conversational Philosophy in a bid to make clear and distinct its precepts and method. I also introduce micro-level conversationalism, sub-micro conversationalism and the up-down movement of thought as new principles of conversational philosophy. (shrink)

Pluralism about scientific method is more-or-less accepted, but the consequences have yet to be drawn out. Scientists adopt different methods in response to different epistemic situations: depending on the system they are interested in, the resources at their disposal, and so forth. If it is right that different methods are appropriate in different situations, then mismatches between methods and situations are possible. This is most likely to occur due to method bias: when we prefer a particular kind of method, despite (...) that method clashing with evidential context or our aims. To explore these ideas, we sketch a kind of method pluralism which turns on two properties of evidence, before using agent-based models to examine the relationship between methods, epistemic situations, and bias. Based on our results, we suggest that although method bias can undermine the efficiency of a scientific community, it can also be productive through preserving a diversity of evidence. We consider circumstances where method bias could be particularly egregious, and those where it is a potential virtue, and argue that consideration of method bias reveals that community standards deserve a central place in the epistemology of science. (shrink)

While introspective methods went out of favour with the decline of Titchener’s analytic school, many important questions concern the rehabilitation of introspection in contemporary psychology. Hatfield rightly points out that introspective methods should not be confused with analytic ones, and goes on to describe their “ineliminable role” in perceptual psychology. Here I argue that certain methodological conventions within psychophysics reflect a continued uncertainty over appropriate use of subjects’ perceptual observations and the reliability of their introspective judgements. My first claim is (...) that different psychophysical methods do not rely equally on the introspective capabilities of experimental subjects. I contrast “minimally-introspective” tasks with “introspection-heavy” ones. It is only in the latter, I argue, that introspection can be said to have a non-trivial role in the subjects’ performance. My second claim is that my rough-and-ready distinction maps onto a number of important “dichotomies” in vision science. Not coincidentally, the introspection-heavy categorisation captures many of the tasks typically considered less able to yield useful information regarding the processes underlying visual sensation. (shrink)

Paul Feyerabend's globally acclaimed work, which sparked and continues to stimulate fierce debate, examines the deficiencies of many widespread ideas about scientific progress and the nature of knowledge. Feyerabend argues that scientific advances can only be understood in a historical context. He looks at the way the philosophy of science has consistently overemphasized practice over method, and considers the possibility that anarchism could replace rationalism in the theory of knowledge. -- Amazon.com.

During the past decade ethical theory has been in a lively state of development, and three basic approaches to ethics - Kantian ethics, consequentialism, and virtue ethics - have assumed positions of particular prominence.

Liberalism in Dark Times seeks to reconstruct an ethically oriented form of liberalism that is demanding, skeptical, and non-perfectionist. My friendly, astute interlocutors appropriately hold me t...

This collection of essays deals with three clusters of problems in the philo sophy of science: scientific method, conceptual models, and ontological underpinnings. The disjointedness of topics is more apparent than real, since the whole book is concerned with the scientific knowledge of fact. Now, the aim of factual knowledge is the conceptual grasping of being, and this understanding is provided by theories of whatever there may be. If the theories are testable and specific, such as a theory of a (...) particular chemical reaction, then they are often called 'theoretical models' and clas sed as scientific. If the theories are extremely general, like a theory of syn thesis and dissociation without any reference to a particular kind of stuff, then they may be called 'metaphysical' - as well as 'scientific' if they are consonant with science. Between these two extremes there is a whole gamut of kinds of factual theories. Thus the entire spectrum should be dominated by the scientific method, quite irrespective of the subject matter. This is the leitmotiv of the present book. The introductory chapter, on method in the philosophy of science, tackles the question 'Why don't scientists listen to their philosophers?'. (shrink)

As with much contemporary philosophical and scientific research, the predominant metaphysics of situatedness is monism, particularly, physicalism. Here, we claim that while monism is the proper metaphysical thesis, empirically-supported theories of situated phenomena require ontological pluralism as well. We defend this position via the example of bird flocks, which are situated systems that exhibit ontologically plural features, namely, component dominance and interaction dominance. The description of these features will illustrate that understanding these phenomena requires a coevolution of conceptual and methodological (...) development. Specifically, ontological features are partially identified and evaluated by way of the analyses applied to them. Both descriptive and normative lessons are drawn. Descriptively, research on bird flocks demonstrate that natural phenomena may not be readily cast via a monistic ontology (e.g., component dominant), even at the same scale of investigation. The normative consequence is that while research on situated systems need not reject metaphysical monism, it ought to begin from a pluralistic position concerning ontology. (shrink)

Philosophy: methods, approaches and methodology. Illustrations of different methods and approaches, with illustrations, discussions and comments.

On a traditional view, the primary role of a mathematical proof is to warrant the truth of the resulting theorem. This view fails to explain why it is very often the case that a new proof of a theorem is deemed important. Three case studies from elementary arithmetic show, informally, that there are many criteria by which ordinary proofs are valued. I argue that at least some of these criteria depend on the methods of inference the proofs employ, and that (...) standard models of formal deduction are not well-equipped to support such evaluations. I discuss a model of proof that is used in the automated deduction community, and show that this model does better in that respect. (shrink)

This paper is an essay based on many years of reviewing journal submissions and discussions with business ethics scholars on a range of themes regarding methods. To some extent, it contains condensed thoughts from two experienced scholars in the field, which we hope will be useful, especially to emerging scholars who, to some extent, may still be wrestling with some of the issues raised in the paper. The validity and reliability of research methods in business ethics research is discussed in (...) terms of legitimate methods to employ in the discipline, the epistemic challenges in the discipline, the debate between qualitative and quantitative methods, and some considered comments on ‘researching well’ in this discipline. Within each theme, we attempt to convey our distilled thoughts in the hope that methods employed in future studies will avoid some of the failures we have observed in the past. (shrink)

Two studies examined the possibility that instruction in psychological methodology is committed to a philosophy of science, logical positivism, that is not adequately acknowledged and is empirically problematic. Study 1 suggested that psychology departments had more courses in methodology than corresponding physics departments, and psychology departments were far more likely to offer an introductory course in general methodology. Study 2 suggested that psychology had more introductory general methods textbooks than did physics. Both studies suggested psychology still presents itself as the (...) kind of science that was defined by logical positivism. Study 2 suggested psychology does this only implicitly in its texts and without acknowledging problematic features of that philosophy. Psychology methods texts commonly justified the importance of the scientific method by describing human cognitive fallibilities without cautioning that these same fallibilities could be seen alternatively as showing the problematic nature of the positivistic conception of scientific methodology. In several regards, texts conformed to Fleck's notion of “textbook science” and to Kuhn's description of science texts as “tourist brochures.” It was cautioned that an implicit appeal by psychology to logical positivism contradicts its claim that its methods and data are objective, transparent, and little influenced by philosophy, logic divorced from data, or authority. 2012 APA, all rights reserved). (shrink)

Written in the 1960s, TRUTH AND METHOD is Gadamer's magnum opus. Looking behind the self-consciousness of science, he discusses the tense relationship between truth and methodology. In examining the different experiences of truth, he aims to "present the hermeneutic phenomenon in its fullest extent.

This paper provides a systematic literature review, analysis and discussion of methods that are proposed to practise ethics in research and innovation. Ethical considerations concerning the impacts of R&I are increasingly important, due to the quickening pace of technological innovation and the ubiquitous use of the outcomes of R&I processes in society. For this reason, several methods for practising ethics have been developed in different fields of R&I. The paper first of all presents a systematic search of academic sources that (...) present and discuss such methods. Secondly, it provides a categorisation of these methods according to three main kinds: ex ante methods, dealing with emerging technologies, intra methods, dealing with technology design, and ex post methods, dealing with ethical analysis of existing technologies. Thirdly, it discusses the methods by considering problems in the way they deal with the uncertainty of technological change, ethical technology design, the identification, analysis and resolving of ethical impacts of technologies and stakeholder participation. The results and discussion of our literature review are valuable for gaining an overview of the state of the art and serve as an outline of a future research agenda of methods for practising ethics in R&I. (shrink)

Principlism : the Borg of bioethics -- A common morality for hedgehogs : Bernard Gert -- Getting down to cases : the revival of casuistry in bioethics -- Nice story but so what : narrative and justification in ethics -- Dewey and Rorty's pragmatism and bioethics -- Freestanding pragmatism in bioethics and law -- A method in search of a purpose : the internal morality of medicine -- Method to rule them all? Reflective equilibrium in bioethics -- Concluding reflections : (...) method in bioethics : the very idea. (shrink)

1. Overview and organizing themes 2. Historical Review: Aristotle to Mill 3. Logic of method and critical responses 3.1 Logical constructionism and Operationalism 3.2. H-D as a logic of confirmation 3.3. Popper and falsificationism 3.4 Meta-methodology and the end of method 4. Statistical methods for hypothesis testing 5. Method in Practice 5.1 Creative and exploratory practices 5.2 Computer methods and the ‘third way’ of doing science 6. Discourse on scientific method 6.1 “The scientific method” in science education and as seen (...) by scientists 6.2 Privileged methods and ‘gold standards’ 6.3 Scientific method in the court room 6.4 Deviating practices 7. Conclusion Bibliography Academic Tools Other Internet Resources Related Entries . (shrink)

This selective and opinionated overview of English-language scholarship on the philosophical method(s) of Plato's Socrates discusses whether this Socrates has any expertise or method, how he examines others and why, and how he exhorts others to care about wisdom and the state of their soul.

"This stunning work is without question a major contribution to Cartesian studies, to the field of early modern philosophy, and to general epistemology- ...

Report on the workshop "Empirical Methods of Linguistics in Philosophy", which took place at TU Dortmund University, Germany, on March 13–14, 2014.

Until not too many years ago, all logics except classical logic (and, perhaps, intuitionistic logic too) were considered to be things esoteric. Today this state of a airs seems to have completely been changed. There is a growing interest in many types of nonclassical logics: modal and temporal logics, substructural logics, paraconsistent logics, non-monotonic logics { the list is long. The diversity of systems that have been proposed and studied is so great that a need is felt by many researchers (...) to try to put some order in the present logical jungle. Thus Cl91], Ep90] and Wo88] are three recent books in which an attempt is made to develop a general theoretical framework for the study of logics. On the more pragmatic side, several systems have been developed with the goal of providing a computerized logical framework in which many di erent logical systems can be implemented in a uniform way. An example is the Edinburgh LF( HHP91]). (shrink)

The use of “levels of abstraction” in philosophical analysis (levelism) has recently come under attack. In this paper, I argue that a refined version of epistemological levelism should be retained as a fundamental method, called the method of levels of abstraction. After a brief introduction, in section “Some Definitions and Preliminary Examples” the nature and applicability of the epistemological method of levels of abstraction is clarified. In section “A Classic Application of the Method ofion”, the philosophical fruitfulness of the new (...) method is shown by using Kant’s classic discussion of the “antinomies of pure reason” as an example. In section “The Philosophy of the Method of Abstraction”, the method is further specified and supported by distinguishing it from three other forms of “levelism”: (i) levels of organisation; (ii) levels of explanation and (iii) conceptual schemes. In that context, the problems of relativism and antirealism are also briefly addressed. The conclusion discusses some of the work that lies ahead, two potential limitations of the method and some results that have already been obtained by applying the method to some long-standing philosophical problems. (shrink)

The problems of referential opacity in psychological contexts require a solution, of which three types are indicated, that contains a profound theory of predication, identity, and individuation. a radical theory, not in the spirit of the current fashions, is outlined. it is called the guise-consubstantiation, conflation, and consociation theory. this theory was first expounded in "thinking and the structure of the world," "philosophia" (1974) and "critica" (1972). the present paper is an introduction to this essay, motivated by two criticisms of (...) romane clark in "not every object of thought has being," "nous" (1978). it is shown that clark's arguments rest on equivocations, one involving the data and the theory, and the other within the theory itself. thus, a discussion of philosophical method turns out to be crucial, and an analysis of expression 'true of' is offered. (shrink)

Changing Methods is a collection of original essays by feminist practitioners, scholars, and activists. The authors show why "the method question" has moved to the top of many feminist research and interpretive research strategies, and engage in thinking about how ideas and actions have developed within complex social circumstances. The essays in this book challenge the tradition that has allowed abstracted, formalized versions of the ideas and experiences of privileged white men to set standards for how everyone should conduct themselves. (...) The authors use new-found knowledge to displace the dominant ideology constructed around race, class, gender, and heterosexual privilege, and then propose innovative feminist-informed analyses of subjects as diverse as political change, critical linguistics, child care, religious studies, and violence against women. (shrink)

In this paper we describe a method for the specification of computationalmodels of argument using dialogue games. The method, which consists ofsupplying a set of semantic definitions for the performatives making upthe game, together with a state transition diagram, is described in full.Its use is illustrated by some examples of varying complexity, includingtwo complete specifications of particular dialogue games, Mackenzie's DC,and the authors' own TDG. The latter is also illustrated by a fully workedexample illustrating all the features of the game.

This chapter brings together Murdoch’s thoughts about language with other central aspects of her thought such as love, attention, perfectionism and morality. By making clear how Murdoch’s variety of linguistic philosophy differs from contemporary philosophy of language, this paper also shows that Murdoch’s philosophy contains the seeds for a fruitful form of philosophizing which brings the moral and aesthetic dimensions of language into view. “Taking the linguistic method seriously” means making clear the ways in which all concepts belong to a (...) fabric that is changing on a personal level as well as an historical one. One of the things that Murdoch can help us see is that one problem with contemporary philosophy of language, is that it does not take the linguistic method seriously enough. (shrink)

There is widespread excitement in the literature about the method of arbitrary functions: many take it to show that it is from the dynamics of systems that the objectivity of probabilities emerge. In this paper, I differentiate three ways in which a probability function might be objective, and I argue that the method of arbitrary functions cannot help us show that dynamics objectivise probabilities in any of these senses.

Legal analysis is dominated by legal arguments, and the assessment of any legal claim requires the assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of those arguments. The ‘logocratic’ method is a systematic method for assessing the strengths and weaknesses of arguments. More specifically, it is a method designed to help the analyst determine what degree of warrant the premises of an argument provide for its conclusion. Although the method is applicable to any type of argument, this essay focuses on the logocratic (...) framework for assessing the strengths and weaknesses of evidentiary legal arguments, arguments offered in litigation in which evidentiary propositions are proffered to support hypotheses. The focus is on American law, but the logocratic analysis offered here could be adjusted without much trouble to handle arguments about evidence in other systems of litigation. In any legal system that aspires to have a fact-finding process that is sufficiently reliable to meet the requirements of justice, we might fashion an analogue for the Socratic maxim ‘the unexamined life is not worth living’: the unexamined evidentiary argument is not worth believing. The logocratic method seeks to help the evidence analyst pursue that Socratic mission, tailored to the rules and institutions of evidence law. (shrink)

Experimental philosophers rely almost exclusively on quantitative surveys that potentially misrepresent participants’ multifarious judgments. To assess the efficacy of qualitative methods in experimental philosophy and reveal limitations with quantitative surveys, a study was conducted on the Kantian principle that ‘ought implies can’, which limits moral obligation to actions that agents can do. Specifically, the think aloud method and a follow-up interview were employed in a modified version of a prominent experiment that recorded participants’ judgments of ability, blame, and obligation using (...) quantitative surveys. The modified version produced quantitative results similar to the original experiment along with qualitative data that reveal that the surveys fundamentally misrepresented participants’ judgments. The qualitative transcripts from 40 participants are analyzed to show that ‘ought implies can’ judgments are complex and multifarious, that ‘ought implies can’ judgments are misrepresented by quantitative survey questions, and that the majority of participants uphold or preserve ‘ought implies can.’ The results suggest that experimental philosophers can more accurately capture judgments by using qualitative methods, and that studies which rely on quantitative surveys possibly misrepresent participants’ judgments. (shrink)

This paper focuses on invasive therapeutic procedures, defined as procedures requiring the introduction of hands, instruments, or devices into the body via incisions or punctures of the skin or mucous membranes performed with the intent of changing the natural history of a human disease or condition for the better. Ethical and methodological concerns have been expressed about studies designed to evaluate the effects of invasive therapeutic procedures. Can such studies meet the same standards demanded of those, for example, evaluating pharmaceutical (...) agents? This paper describes a research project aimed at examining the interplay and sometimes apparent conflict between ethical standards for human research and standards for methodological rigor in trials of invasive procedures. The paper discusses how the authors plan to develop a set of consensus standards that, if met, would result in substantial and much-needed improvements in the methodological and ethical quality of such trials. (shrink)