Contrary to a widespread belief, this book establishes that ontological and epistemological reductionism stand or fall together.

Abstract:Organizational justice is a behavioral science concept that refers to the perception of fairness of the past treatment of the employees within an organization held by the employees of that organization. These subjective perceptions of fairness have been empirically shown to be related to 1) attitudinal changes in job satisfaction, organizational commitment and managerial trust beliefs; 2) behavioral changes in task performance activities and ancillary extra-task efforts to assist group members and improve group methods; 3) numerical changes in the quantity, (...) quality and efficiency of divisional outputs; and—though this is far more tentative—4) eventual changes in the competitive advantage and financial performance of the full organization. The authors propose that these constructs can be applied to all stakeholders, rather than just to the current employees of the firm, and that objective determinations of fairness by the managers can be related to subjective perceptions of fairness by the stakeholders that will result in the sequential series of attitudinal, behavioral and numerical changes that will lead to performance improvements. In short, the authors propose a normative stakeholder theory of the firm, based upon ethical principles, that will have testable descriptive hypotheses derived from the behavioral constructs. (shrink)

This book explores Nietzsche's philosophical naturalism in its historical context, showing that his position is best understood against the background of encounters between neo-Kantianism and the life sciences in the nineteenth century. Analyzing most of Nietzsche's writings from the late 1860s onwards, Christian J. Emden reconstructs Nietzsche's naturalism and argues for a new understanding of his account of nature and normativity. Emden proposes historical reasons why Nietzsche came to adopt the position he did; his genealogy of values and his (...) account of a will to power are as much influenced by Kantian thought as they are by nineteenth-century debates on teleology, biological functions, and theories of evolution. This rich and wide-ranging study will be of interest to scholars and students of Nietzsche, the history of modern philosophy, intellectual history, and history of science. (shrink)

Are companies, churches, and states genuine agents? Or are they just collections of individuals that give a misleading impression of unity? This question is important, since the answer dictates how we should explain the behaviour of these entities and whether we should treat them as responsible and accountable on the model of individual agents. Group Agency offers a new approach to that question and is relevant, therefore, to a range of fields from philosophy to law, politics, and the social sciences. (...) Christian List and Philip Pettit argue that there really are group or corporate agents, over and above the individual agents who compose them, and that a proper approach to the social sciences, law, morality, and politics must take account of this fact. Unlike some earlier defences of group agency, their account is entirely unmysterious in character and, despite not being technically difficult, is grounded in cutting-edge work in social choice theory, economics, and philosophy. (shrink)

In the climate ethics debate, scholars largely agree that individuals should promote institutions that ensure the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. This paper aims to establish that there are individual duties beyond compliance with and promotion of institutions. Duties of individuals to reduce their emissions are often objected to by arguing that an individual’s emissions do not make a morally relevant difference. We challenge this argument from inconsequentialism in two ways. We first show why the argument also seems to undermine (...) the case for duties to promote institutions that the arguments’ proponents endorse. Second, we argue that individuals ought to cut emissions if they exceed their fair share of emissions entitlements and, by emitting, contribute to climate-related harm. In response to inconsequentialism, we specify the notion of ‘contribution’ via the so-called NESS theory, according to which an act is causally relevant for and contributes to an outcome if it is a Necessary Element of a Set of conditions that is Sufficient for the outcome. After refuting two objections to our approach, we conclude by discussing how to deal with possible conflicts between duties to promote institutions and to reduce one’s emissions. (shrink)

Meier shows how the structure of Greek communal life gave individuals a civic role and discusses a crucial reform that institutionalized the idea of equality ...

Der Band versammelt einen Großteil der Beiträge, die internationale Experten anlässlich der Tagung „Philosophie und Wissenschaft bei Hermann Cohen“ im November 2014 am Institut Wiener Kreis der Universität Wien präsentiert haben. Mit der Tagung zu Hermann Cohen, der zusammen mit Paul Natorp die Marburger Schule begründete, wurden zwei Ziele verfolgt: erstens die Aspekte in der Philosophie des Kantianers Cohen herauszuarbeiten, die an die Idee einer Einheitswissenschaft anknüpfen und zweitens Divergenzen und Übereinstimmungen Cohens mit der wissenschaftlichen Weltauffassung, der Programmatik des Wiener (...) Kreises um Rudolf Carnap und Moritz Schlick zu identifizieren. Der Tagungsband ist in drei Teile gegliedert. Die Aufsätze im ersten Teil beschäftigen sich mit der Bedeutung von Erfahrung und Empirismus für das Philosophieverständnis Hermann Cohens. Im zweiten Teil gehen die Autoren der Frage nach, welche Rolle Theorien aus den Bereichen Mathematik, Naturwissenscha ften und Psychologie für Cohens Denken gespielt haben – unter anderem Hermann von Helmholtz‘ Theorie des Messens und die Bedeutung der Infinitesimalrechnung für die Philosophie der Marburger Schule. Die Beiträge im dritten Teil des Bandes stellen die Philosophie Cohens und der Marburger Schule den Vertretern des Wiener Kreises und der Berliner Gruppe um Hans Reichenbach gegenüber. Dabei wird Reichenbachs Rezeption der Relativitätstheorie in den Kontext einer Relativierung Kants bei Cohen und Ernst Cassirer gestellt und „versteckte Verwandtschaften“ zwischen Cohen und dem Logischen Empirismus aufgedeckt. Der Band richtet sich an Wissenschaftler auf dem Gebiet der Geschichte der Philosophie. (shrink)

This article is concerned with the development of philosophy of science in the 1970s. The explanatory framework is the picture of two fundamental split-offs: the controversial establishment of history and sociology of science and of formal philosophy of science as independent disciplines, against the background of more traditional “conceptual” varieties of philosophy of science. I illustrate these developments, which finally led to somewhat “purified” versions of the respective accounts, by examining a case study, namely, that of the structuralist school, which (...) emerged in the 1970s as an attempt to reconcile historical and formal approaches in philosophy of science. I try to explain the failure of this initial program of “Kuhn Sneedified” and its transition to a more purified formalist version, on the basis of the fact that the former attempt was caught somewhere amid the purism of conceptual, historical, and formal accounts of philosophy of science. (shrink)

This field review discusses several recently published books that are concerned with historical, cultural, philosophical, or sociological aspects of the social sciences and humanities, past and present. It investigates similarities and differences between the various perspectives and approaches, and analyzes how these are informed by different visions of the field of SSH studies. In concluding, the review discusses three recurrent themes that will presumably move in the focus of debate in the near future: the debate on positivism in SSH and (...) its “epistemological others;” the impact of the Cold War on the gestalt of the SSH; and, finally, the adequacy of science, technology, and society approaches to describe techniques and practices in the SSH. (shrink)

Political science is divided between methodological individualists, who seek to explain political phenomena by reference to individuals and their interactions, and holists (or nonreductionists), who consider some higher-level social entities or properties such as states, institutions, or cultures ontologically or causally significant. We propose a reconciliation between these two perspectives, building on related work in philosophy. After laying out a taxonomy of different variants of each view, we observe that (i) although political phenomena result from underlying individual attitudes and behavior, (...) individual-level descriptions do not always capture all explanatorily salient properties, and (ii) nonreductionistic explanations are mandated when social regularities are robust to changes in their individual-level realization. We characterize the dividing line between phenomena requiring nonreductionistic explanation and phenomena permitting individualistic explanation and give examples from the study of ethnic conflicts, social-network theory, and international-relations theory. (shrink)

Philosophers have argued about the nature and the very existence of free will for centuries. Today, many scientists and scientifically minded commentators are skeptical that it exists, especially when it is understood to require the ability to choose between alternative possibilities. If the laws of physics govern everything that happens, they argue, then how can our choices be free? Believers in free will must be misled by habit, sentiment, or religious doctrine. Why Free Will Is Real defies scientific orthodoxy and (...) presents a bold new defense of free will in the same naturalistic terms that are usually deployed against it. -/- Unlike those who defend free will by giving up the idea that it requires alternative possibilities to choose from, Christian List retains this idea as central, resisting the tendency to defend free will by watering it down. He concedes that free will and its prerequisites—intentional agency, alternative possibilities, and causal control over our actions—cannot be found among the fundamental physical features of the natural world. But, he argues, that’s not where we should be looking. Free will is a “higher-level” phenomenon found at the level of psychology. It is like other phenomena that emerge from physical processes but are autonomous from them and not best understood in fundamental physical terms—like an ecosystem or the economy. When we discover it in its proper context, acknowledging that free will is real is not just scientifically respectable; it is indispensable for explaining our world. (shrink)

Mass media ethics and the classical liberal ideal of the autonomous individual are historically linked and professionally dominant--yet the authors of this work feel this is intrinsically flawed. They show how recent research in philosophy and social science--together with a longer tradition in theological inquiry--insist that community, mutuality, and relationship are fundamental to a full concept of personhood. The authors argue that "persons-in-community" provides a more defensible grounding for journalists' professional moral decision-making in crucial areas such as truthtelling, privacy, organizational (...) culture, and balanced coverage. With numerous examples drawn from life as well as from theory, this book will interest journalists, editors, and professionals in media management as well as students and scholars of media ethics, reporting, and media law. (shrink)

[A] Prologue -- 1. De l'imaginaire au symbolique (livres I, II, III, IV) -- 2. Les pensées totalisantes (livres I, II, III) -- 3. La philosophie -- 4. La totalité réalisée (livre I) -- 5. La totalité réalisée : les sciences (livre II) -- v. 6. L'Histoire (livre III).

Focusing primarily on papers and books discussing the evolutionary and systematic interpretation of the Cambrian animal fossils from the Burgess Shale fauna, this paper explores the role of epistemic values in the context of a discipline striving to establish scientific authority within a larger domain of epistemic problems and issues . The focal point of this analysis is the repeated claims by paleontologists that the study of fossils gives their discipline a unique ‘historical dimension’ that makes it possible for them (...) to unravel important aspects of evolution invisible to scientists who study the extant biosphere. The first part of the paper explores the shifting of emphasis in the writings of paleontologists between two strategies that employ opposing views on the classical positivist and physicalist ideal of science. The second part analyzes paleontologists’ claims of privileged access to life’s historical dimension in a situation where a theoretical upheaval occurring independent of the epistemical problem at hand completely shifts the standards for evaluating the legitimacy of various knowledge claims. Though the various strategies employed in defending the privileged historical perspective of paleontology have been disparate and, to an extent contradictory, each impinges on the acceptance of a specific epistemic ideal or set of values and success or failure of each depends on the compatibility of this ideal with the surrounding community of scientists. (shrink)

Offers a philosophical critique of neoclassical and post-neoclassical economics.

Abstract:Organizational justice is a behavioral science concept that refers to the perception of fairness of the past treatment of the employees within an organization held by the employees of that organization. These subjective perceptions of fairness have been empirically shown to be related to 1) attitudinal changes in job satisfaction, organizational commitment and managerial trust beliefs; 2) behavioral changes in task performance activities and ancillary extra-task efforts to assist group members and improve group methods; 3) numerical changes in the quantity, (...) quality and efficiency of divisional outputs; and—though this is far more tentative—4) eventual changes in the competitive advantage and financial performance of the full organization. The authors propose that these constructs can be applied to all stakeholders, rather than just to the current employees of the firm, and that objective determinations of fairness by the managers can be related to subjective perceptions of fairness by the stakeholders that will result in the sequential series of attitudinal, behavioral and numerical changes that will lead to performance improvements. In short, the authors propose a normative stakeholder theory of the firm, based upon ethical principles, that will have testable descriptive hypotheses derived from the behavioral constructs. (shrink)

What are some of the distinctive virtues of the confluence approach that sets it apart from other attempts to do philosophy across cultural boundaries? First, unlike comparing and contrasting, the confluence approach remains faithful to the dominant conception of philosophy as an intellectual enterprise centered on dialogue and argumentation, in which philosophers pursue unresolved problems by building on the achievements of their acknowledged forbears. Second, confluence philosophy implements a syncretic and creative approach to doing philosophy by drawing on non-Western philosophical (...) sources while using the tools and conceptual resources of analytic philosophy. Third and last, the confluence approach highlights possible tensions when the traditions of thought brought into dialogue are on a diverging path on certain matters. Contemporary philosophy, at least in the Anglophone world and its satellites, is an avowedly secular enterprise, deferring to the sciences for its account of what can be said to exist at the most fundamental level and for its understanding of the processes that realize cognition. Buddhism at its core is often understood as a soteriological project manly concerned with overcoming suffering, which sometimes is taken to entail an insight into the emptiness of all the constitutive elements of existence and/or experience. Confluence philosophy thus makes it possible to ask whether defending a theoretical framework which affirms this truth of emptiness means that one must engage in the very sort of activity, namely, rational self-assertion, that hinders enlightenment. (shrink)

Situé à la croisée des sciences humaines et de la recherche neurobiologique, cet essai entend dépasser les clivages conceptuels.

The former Queen of Science seems to be lacking both a specific subject and a particular method. Thus the need arises for intra- and metaphilosophical orientation – especially since the way philosophy sees itself stems from various influential schools and traditions whose mutual exchange is not as lively as one might have hoped. This volume of original essays brings together some of the protagonists of different metaphilosophical debates that have so far been led fairly independently of each other. The authors (...) discuss the question of both the possibility and the scope of philosophical knowledge under a variety of aspects, particularly: (1) a priori knowledge and the role of intuitions, (2) transcendental arguments, (3) analytic philosophy and its methods as well as (4) phenomenology and analytic philosophy. (shrink)

Wissenschaft setzt, folgt man dem Theologen Heinrich Schmidinger, als Minimalqualifikationen rationale Nachvollziehbarkeit und Überprüfbarkeit voraus. Damit ist sie an Methoden gebunden, die jenseits des subjektiven Überzeugtseins operieren und ihre Glaubwürdigkeit darin zum Ausdruck bringen, dass sie verallgemeinerbar sind. Intuition, ein höchst persönlicher und im Grunde irrationaler Erkenntnismodus, hält diesen wissenschaftlichen Kriterien nicht stand. Und dennoch stößt man sowohl in den Geistes- als auch in den Naturwissenschaften immer wieder auf Formen intuitiven Erkennens.0Wissenschaftlerinnen und Wissenschaftler unterschiedlichster fachlicher Herkunft? von der Wissenschafts- und (...) Ideengeschichte sowie der Philosophie und Epistemologie über die Rechts-, Musik und Literaturwissenschaften bis zur Medizin und Naturwissenschaft? gehen im vorliegenden Band dem spannungsreichen Verhältnis von Intuition und Wissenschaft nach. Drei Fragestellungen stehen dabei im Zentrum der Beiträge:01) Welche Rolle spielt Intuition im Entwicklungsgang der einzelnen Wissenschaften, was kann aus wissenschaftshistorischer und epistemologischer, also externer Perspektive zur Intuition in den Wissenschaften gesagt werden? 02) Was positionieren sich einzelne Wissensfelder und Wissenschaftsdisziplinen zur Intuition? Welche Definitionen bieten sie an? Wie sieht die interne Perspektive aus, gibt es eine 'angewandte Intuition' in den Wissenschaften?03) Kann Intuition eine Rolle als Bindeglied zwischen wissenschaftlichen und außerwissenschaftlichen Erkenntnisformen und Vorstellungswelten spielen? (shrink)

Humean reductionism about laws of nature appears to leave a central aspect of scientific practice unmotivated: If the world’s fundamental structure is exhausted by the actual distribution of non-modal properties and the laws of nature are merely efficient summaries of this distribution, then why does science posit laws that cover a wide range of non-actual circumstances? In this paper, we develop a new version of the Humean best systems account of laws based on the idea that laws need to organize (...) information in a way that maximizes their cognitive usefulness for creature like us. We argue that this account motivates scientific practice because the laws’ applicability to non-actual circumstances falls right out of their cognitive usefulness. (shrink)

Scientists often think of the world as a dynamical system, a stochastic process, or a generalization of such a system. Prominent examples of systems are the system of planets orbiting the sun or any other classical mechanical system, a hydrogen atom or any other quantum–mechanical system, and the earth’s atmosphere or any other statistical mechanical system. We introduce a general and unified framework for describing such systems and show how it can be used to examine some familiar philosophical questions, including (...) the following: how can we define nomological possibility, necessity, determinism, and indeterminism; what are symmetries and laws; what regularities must a system display to make scientific inference possible; how might principles of parsimony such as Occam’s Razor help when we make such inferences; what is the role of space and time in a system; and might they be emergent features? Our framework is intended to serve as a toolbox for the formal analysis of systems that is applicable in several areas of philosophy. (shrink)

What is a person? This fundamental question is a perennial concern of philosophers and theologians. But, Christian Smith here argues, it also lies at the center of the social scientist’s quest to interpret and explain social life. In this ambitious book, Smith presents a new model for social theory that does justice to the best of our humanistic visions of people, life, and society. Finding much current thinking on personhood to be confusing or misleading, Smith finds inspiration in critical (...) realism and personalism. Drawing on these ideas, he constructs a theory of personhood that forges a middle path between the extremes of positivist science and relativism. Smith then builds on the work of Pierre Bourdieu, Anthony Giddens, and William Sewell to demonstrate the importance of personhood to our understanding of social structures. From there he broadens his scope to consider how we can know what is good in personal and social life and what sociology can tell us about human rights and dignity. Innovative, critical, and constructive,_ What Is a Person?_ offers an inspiring vision of a social science committed to pursuing causal explanations, interpretive understanding, and general knowledge in the service of truth and the moral good. (shrink)

It is often argued that higher-level special-science properties cannot be causally efficacious since the lower-level physical properties on which they supervene are doing all the causal work. This claim is usually derived from an exclusion principle stating that if a higher-level property F supervenes on a physical property F* that is causally sufficient for a property G, then F cannot cause G. We employ an account of causation as difference-making to show that the truth or falsity of this principle is (...) a contingent matter and derive necessary and sufficient conditions under which a version of it holds. We argue that one important instance of the principle, far from undermining non-reductive physicalism, actually supports the causal autonomy of certain higher-level properties. (shrink)

This paper argues that some defenses of global antirealism that critique both epistemic foundationalism and ontological priority foundationalism (e.g., Westerhoff 2020) turn on a false dilemma that ignores non-representational approaches to consciousness and cognition. Arguments against the existence of an external world and against introspective certainty, typically draw on a range of empirical findings (mainly about the brain-based mechanisms that realize cognition) and that are said to lend support to irrealism. Theories that incorporate these findings, such as the interface theory (...) of perception and predictive processing, not only retain the notion of the veil of perception, but have continued to assign to it an important theoretical role. While the mathematical frameworks these theories employ do make them viable candidates, neither theory is moving in a direction that would suggest global anti-realism is the more plausible attitude. Rather, I argue that the new paradigm of 4E cognitive science (embodied, embedded, enactive, extended) bolsters epistemological and metaphysical realism. (shrink)

This book explores what science fiction can tell us about the human condition in a technological world, with the ethical dilemmas and consequences that this entails. This book is the result of the joint efforts of scholars and scientists from various disciplines. This interdisciplinary approach sets an example for those who, like us, have been busy assessing the ways in which fictional attempts to fathom the possibilities of science and technology speak to central concerns about what it means to be (...) human in a contemporary world of technology and which ethical dilemmas it brings along. One of the aims of this book is to demonstrate what can be achieved in approaching science fiction as a kind of imaginary laboratory for experimentation, where visions of human (or even post-human) life under various scientific, technological or natural conditions that differ from our own situation can be thought through and commented upon. Although a scholarly work, this book is also designed to be accessible to a general audience that has an interest in science fiction, as well as to a broader academic audience interested in ethical questions. (shrink)

Does the need to find a quantum theory of gravity imply that the gravitational field must be quantized? Physicists working in quantum gravity routinely assume an affirmative answer, often without being aware of the metaphysical commitments that tend to underlie this assumption. The ambition of this article is to probe these commitments and to analyze some recently adduced arguments pertinent to the issue of quantization. While there exist good reasons to quantize gravity, as this analysis will show, alternative approaches to (...) gravity challenge the received wisdom. These renegade approaches do not regard gravity as a fundamental force, but rather as effective, i.e. as merely supervening on fundamental physics. I will urge that these alternative accounts at least prove the tenability of an opposition to quantization. (shrink)

This article reevaluates Hermann Ebbinghaus’s famous criticisms of Wilhelm Dilthey’s 1894 essay “Ideas for a Descriptive and Analytic Psychology,” to determine how Dilthey’s diverse approaches toward philosophy and the human sciences are related to experimental psychology and to hypothetico-deductive science. It turns out that Ebbinghaus falsely accuses Dilthey of rejecting experimental psychology overall, while, in fact, Dilthey rejects only a specific misuse of experimental psychology: as a way to provide a foundation for the humanities. At the same time, Dilthey recognizes (...) several ways in which philosophy and the human sciences might benefit from experimental psychology. Although it clearly rules out experimental psychology, Dilthey’s descriptive psychology involves a hypothetico-deductive standpoint that intermediates, with some success, between modern social science and nineteenth-century hermeneutics. (shrink)

This book presents an analysis of the institutional development of selected social science and humanities disciplines in Argentina, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands, Sweden and the United Kingdom. Where most narratives of a scholarly past are presented as a succession of ‘ideas,’ research results and theories, this collection highlights the structural shifts in the systems of higher education, as well as institutions of research and innovation within which these disciplines have developed. This institutional perspective will facilitate systematic comparisons between (...) developments in various disciplines and countries. Across eight country studies the book reveals remarkably different dynamics of disciplinary growth between countries, as well as important interdisciplinary differences within countries. In addition, instances of institutional contractions and downturns and veritable breaks of continuity under authoritarian political regimes can be observed, which are almost totally absent from narratives of individual disciplinary histories. This important work will provide a valuable resource to scholars of disciplinary history, the history of ideas, the sociology of education and of scientific knowledge. (shrink)

This introduction concerns the place that Indian philosophical literature should occupy in the history of philosophy, and the challenge of championing pre-modern modes of inquiry in an era when philosophy, at least in the anglophone world and its satellites, has in large measure become a highly specialized and technical discipline conceived on the model of the sciences. This challenge is particularly acute when philosophical figures and texts that are historically and culturally distant from us are engaged not only exegetically but (...) also with a view to recruiting their topics and arguments for contemporary philosophical debates. (shrink)

This paper develops the first parts of a logical framework for the empirical sciences, by means of a redefinition of theory structuralism as originally developed by Joseph Sneed, Wolfgang Stegmüller, and others, in the context of a ‘rigid’ logic as based on a fixed (therefore rigid) ontology. The paper defends a formal conception of the empirical sciences that has an irreducible ontological basis and is unable, in general, to provide purely structural characterizations of the domain of a theory. The extreme (...) rationalist utopia of a characterization of the real world ‘up to isomorphism’, therefore, is rejected. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to analyze which concept describes the central theme in Max Weber’s works — the rationalization processes — best: disenchantment, alienation, or anomie. I first describe how Weber’s rationalization processes were understood in the past. Most scholars have interpreted these processes as disenchantment, although some have seen a stronger affinity to the Marxist concept of alienation. Since the majority have regarded disenchantment as the central theme of Weber’s legacy, I discuss Weber’s rare statements about the (...) disenchantment process, most of which appear in a speech that was published later as Science as a Vocation. I then introduce definitions of key concepts (Hegelian alienation, Marxist alienation, Durkheimian anomie, and de-magification) to provide a more varied and precise vocabulary. This will aid in describing at least two different rationalization processes that can be derived from Weber’s theoretical framework (Economy and Society) and his historical studies. The first, in the economic and political sphere, can be characterized as Marxist alienation, whereas the second, in the religious sphere, can be interpreted as de-magification and Hegelian alienation. It is possible to regard Weber’s statement in Science as a Vocation as a third rationalization process, in the sphere of knowledge production, which would suggest the concepts of de-magification and anomie. However, such a reading would seem to contradict the greater body of Weber’s methodological writings. Finally, it is concluded that the term disenchantment is not a very useful concept for portraying Weber’s intended view. (shrink)

This paper argues that recent arguments to the effect that the debate between presentism and eternalism lacks any metaphysical substance ultimately fail, although important lessons can be gleaned from them in how to formulate a non-vacuous version of presentism. It suggests that presentism can best be characterized in the context of spacetime theories. The resulting position is an ersatzist version of presentism that admits merely non-present entities as abstracta deprived of physical existence. Ersatzist presentism both escapes the charges of triviality (...) and promises to offer a route to solving the grounding problem which befalls its more traditional cousins. (shrink)

This book explores Friedrich Nietzsche's understanding of modern political culture and his position in the history of modern political thought. Surveying Nietzsche's entire intellectual career from his years as a student in Bonn and Leipzig during the 1860s to his genealogical project of the 1880s, Christian Emden contributes to a historically informed discussion of Nietzsche's response to the political predicaments of modernity, and sheds new light on the intellectual and political culture in Germany as the ideals of the Enlightenment (...) gave way to the demands of the modern nation state. This is a distinguished addition to the series of Ideas in Context, and a major reassessment of a philosopher and aphorist whose stature among post-enlightenment European thinkers is now almost unrivalled. (shrink)

Dahlman analyzes the case with a version of Bayes’ rule that can handle dependencies. He claims that his method can help a fact finder avoid various kinds of bias in probabilistic reasoning, and he identifies occurrences of these biases in the analyzed decision. While a mathematical analysis may give a false impression of objectivity to fact finders, Dahlman claims as a benefit that it forces to make assumptions explicit, which can then be scrutinized.

Is there such a thing as mental causation? Is it possible for the mental to have causal influence on the physical? Or has the old “mind over matter” question been rendered obsolete by the advent of brain science? Whatever our answers to these questions, it seems that we cannot systematically pursue them without considering what makes mental causation problematic in the first place: The causal closure of the physical world. This paper revisits the problem of mental causation by drawing on (...) a classical debate between Dharmakirti and the Indian materialists. The main argument of the paper is that expanding our conception of causality to accommodate phenomenal content can cast new light on the problem of mental causation. A satisfactory solution to the problem of mental causation must reject the completeness of the physical principle in favor of conceptions of causality that allow for phenomenal properties to play a causal-explanatory function. (shrink)

In this paper Dennett's method of heterophenomenology is discussed. After a brief explanation of the method, three arguments in support of it are considered in turn. First, the argument from the possibility of error and self-delusion of the subject is found to ignore the panoply of intermediate position that one can take with regard to the epistemic status of first-personal knowledge. The argument is also criticized for employing an epistemic double-standard. Second, the argument from the neutrality of heterophenomenology is found (...) to be defeated by the fact that, contrary to Dennett's claims, third-person, functionalist and instrumentalist assumptions substantially underpin and inform the method. Similarities between heterophenomenology and the Turing Test are furthermore explored, and it is shown that a weaker version of the neutrality claim also fails. Third, the argument from the appeal to the standard practice of science is shown to substantially rest on an equivocation on the term 'heterophenomenology' and is therefore rejected. Finally, it is suggested that the use of introspective reports is not inherently at odds with sound scientific procedures. (shrink)

Modern psychology, it is widely held, was born as a “science of mental life” based almost exclusively on the method of introspection. The most salient example is E.B. Titchener’s influential system of psychology known as “introspectionism.” Early in the twentieth century, this approach fell into disfavor—and, in turn, introspection as such also came to be seen as a dead end in psychology. As this paper argues, Titchener’s psychology was based on the key notions of elementism, reductionism and sensationism. His philosophical (...) commitment to these suppositions was deep and the general aim was to deliver a comprehensive scientific account of human mental life in accordance with that pre-experimental, theoretical agenda. The scientific goal of introspectionism was thus not to describe mental phenomena as they naturally and plainly form part of the subject’s experience. Here, Titchener’s approach contrasts rather starkly with contemporary introspective approaches, such as Descriptive Experience Sampling, that aim to bracket assumptions and theory. In sum, this paper calls into question the assumption that introspectionism in psychology should be regarded as an archetypal instantiation in the history of science, of a psychological system built on a fundamental commitment to introspection. (shrink)

Ce livre s’intéresse à une rencontre : celle de deux philosophes, mais aussi celle de deux siècles et de deux régimes de pensée. Leibniz (1646-1716) et Diderot (1713-1784) appartiennent à deux traditions en apparence opposées : on associe généralement la pensée leibnizienne aux grands systèmes métaphysiques du XVIIe siècle, et celle de Diderot à la mise en pièces de ces édifices par la voie d’une philosophie expérimentale radicalement antisystématique. Pourtant, plusieurs liens entre les deux œuvres sont visibles, qu’il s’agisse d’emprunts (...) conceptuels ou thématiques par Diderot ou de convergences plus difficiles à circonscrire. Le premier objet de ce livre est d’identifier ces liens et de faire le point sur cette sympathie entre les deux philosophies. Mais ce livre s’intéresse aussi à cette rencontre pour ses effets transformateurs, tant sur le plan des concepts, des thèses et des arguments que sur celui des méthodes. Il s’agit alors de voir comment la rencontre avec le leibnizianisme a nourri la pensée diderotienne, comment la lecture du texte leibnizien par Diderot en modifie le sens, comment elle peut parfois en être une interprétation ou un devenir possible. Pour saisir ces transformations, les auteurs ont examiné divers contextes théoriques dans lesquels les pensées de Leibniz et Diderot dialoguent : métaphysique et philosophie de la nature, épistémologie et philosophie des sciences, théorie de la perception et esthétique. À travers ce dialogue, l’ouvrage contribue à une réflexion générale sur les méthodes requises pour mettre en perspective les rapports entre des philosophies à la fois proches et éloignées. (shrink)

This article analyzes the angular spacing of the degree marks on the zodiac scale of the Antikythera mechanism and demonstrates that over the entire preserved 88° of the zodiac, the marks are systematically placed too close together to be consistent with a uniform distribution over 360°. Thus, in some other part of the zodiac scale (not preserved), the degree marks have been spaced farther apart. By contrast, the day marks on the Egyptian calendar scale are spaced uniformly, apart from minor (...) errors. A solar equation of center is apparent which rises by nearly 2.7° over the preserved portion of the zodiac. The placement of the degree marks indicates that, in the preserved portion of the zodiac, the Sun was considered to run at a uniform pace of about 30° per synodic month, which is consistent with the Sun’s speed in the fast zone of the Babylonian solar theory of System A. (shrink)

The book of Aristarchus of Samos, On the distances and sizes of the sun and moon, is one of the few pre-Ptolemaic astronomical works that have come down to us in complete or nearly complete form. The simplicity and cleverness of the basic ideas behind the calculations are often obscured in the reading of the treatise by the complexity of the calculations and reasoning. Part of the complexity could be explained by the lack of trigonometry and part by the fact (...) that Aristarchus appears unwilling to make some simplifications that could be simply taken for granted. But an important part of the complexities is due to some unnecessary inconsistencies, as recently discovered by Berggren and Sidoli (Arch Hist Exact Sci 61:213–254, 2007). In the first part of this paper, I will try to show that some of these inconsistencies are just apparent. But the complexity of the calculations and reasoning is not the only reason that could disturb a reader of the treatise. The great inaccuracy—even for the measurement methods and instruments available at those times—of one of the three input values of the treatise is really astonishing. In the sixth and last hypothesis, Aristarchus states that the moon’s apparent size is equal to 2∘\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$^{\circ }$$\end{document}, while the correct value is one-fourth of that. Some attempts have been made in order to explain such a big value, but all of them have problems. In the second part of this paper, I will propose a new speculative but plausible explanation of the origin of this value. (shrink)

There appears to be a widespread belief that the social sciences during the 1950s and 1960s can be characterized by an almost unquestioned faith in a positivist philosophy of science. In contrast, the article shows that even within the narrower segment of Cold War social science, positivism was not an unquestioned doctrine blindly followed by everybody, but that quite divergent views coexisted. The article analyses two ‘techniques of prospection’, the Delphi technique and political gaming, from the perspective of a comprehensive (...) set of ideas attributed to ‘positivism’. Both techniques were developed in the early 1950s by researchers at the RAND Corporation, a Californian think tank with tight relations to the US Air Force. Despite the closeness of origin, the two techniques show considerable differences in their basic epistemologies. The article thus concludes that more important than positivism in uniting US Cold War social science was the shared sense of urgency and of the potential of social science to put decision-making in foreign policy on a rational basis. In this sense, as far as the Cold War social sciences were of a piece, they were made so by the sense of danger and urgency of action evoked by the image of the Iron Curtain. (shrink)