The quality of doctoral-level biochemistry (N=139), botany (N=83), cellular/molecular biology (N=89), microbiology (N=134), physiology (N=101), and zoology (N=70) programs at United States universities was assessed, using 16 measures. These measures focused on variables related to: (1) program size; (2) characteristics of graduates; (3) reputational factors (scholarly quality of faculty, effectiveness of programs in educating research scholars/scientists, improvement in program quality during the last 5 years); (4) university library size; (5) research support; and (6) publication records. Chapter I discusses prior attempts (...) to assess quality in graduate education, development of the study plans, and the selection of disciplines and programs to be evaluated. Chapter II discusses the methodology used, focusing on each of the assessment measures. Chapters III to VIII present, respectively, findings from the analyses of the biochemistry, botany, cellular/molecular biology, microbiology, physiology, and zoology programs. Chapter IX includes a summary of results, correlations among measures, several additional analyses, and suggestions for future studies. Among the findings reported are those indicating that cellular/molecular biology programs had, on the average, the largest number of faculty and that students in cellular/molecular biology, biology, biochemistry, microbiology, and physiology received a relatively high fraction of financial support. (Survey instruments and supporting documentation are included in appendices.) (JN). (shrink)

The quality of doctoral-level chemistry (N=145), computer science (N=58), geoscience (N=91), mathematics (N=115), physics (N=123), and statistics/biostatistics (N=64) programs at United States universities was assessed, using 16 measures. These measures focused on variables related to: program size; characteristics of graduates; reputational factors (scholarly quality of faculty, effectiveness of programs in educating research scholars/scientists, improvement in program quality during the last 5 years); university library size; research support; and publication records. Chapter I discusses prior attempts to assess quality in graduate education, (...) development of the study plans, and the selection of disciplines and programs to be evaluated. Chapter II discusses the methodology used, focusing on each of the assessment measures. Chapters III to VIII present, respectively, findings from the analyses of the chemistry, computer science, geoscience, mathematics, physics, and statistics/biostatistics programs. Chapter IX includes a summary of results, correlations among measures, several additional analyses, and suggestions for future studies. Among the findings reported are those indicating that mathematics programs had, on the average, the largest number of faculty (N=33) in December 1980 followed closely by physics (N=28) and chemistry (N=23), and that 80 percent of computer science students had job commitments by graduation. (Survey instruments and supporting documentation are included in appendices.) (JN). (shrink)

A review of U. Mäki (ed.). Fact and Fiction in Economics, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. pp. xvi 384. ISBN 0521 00957. As people interested mainly in theory, methodologists and philos...

This paper is about philosophical disputes where the literal content of what speakers communicate concerns such object-level issues as ground, supervenience, or real definition. It is tempting to think that such disputes straightforwardly express disagreements about these topics. In contrast to this, I suggest that, in many such cases, the disagreement that is expressed is actually one about which concepts should be employed. I make this case as follows. First, I look at non-philosophical, everyday disputes where a speaker employs a (...) metalinguistic usage of a term. This is where a speaker uses a term to express a view about the meaning of that term, or, relatedly, how to correctly use that term. A metalinguistic negotiation is a metalinguistic dispute that concerns a normative issue about what a word should mean, or, similarly, about how it should be used, rather than the descriptive issue about what it does mean. I argue that the same.. (shrink)

In the growing Prussian university system of the early nineteenth century, "Wissenschaft" (science) was seen as an endeavor common to university faculties, characterized by a rigorous methodology. On this view, history and jurisprudence are sciences, as much as is physics. Nineteenth century trends challenged this view: the increasing influence of materialist and positivist philosophies, profound changes in the relationships between university faculties, and the defense of Kant's classification of the sciences by neo-Kantians. Wilhelm Dilthey's defense of the independence of (...) the methodology of the human sciences (Geisteswissenschaften) from those of the natural sciences (Naturwissenschaften) is as much a return to the ideal of Wissenschaft as a cooperative endeavor as it is a defense of the autonomy of interpretive or hermeneutic methods. The debate between Dilthey and the neo-Kantian Wilhelm Windelband at the close of the century illuminates the development of this dialogue over the nineteenth century. (shrink)

This study employs a newly developed methodology called the variational homotopy perturbation transformation method to study fractional acoustic wave equations. The motivation for this study is to extend the variational homotopy perturbation technique to the variational homotopy perturbation transformation technique in the sense of the Yang–Caputo–Fabrizio operator. The suggested method demonstrated a straightforward and accurate technique for investigating fractional-order partial differential equations. The technique’s validity is demonstrated through the use of several illustrative instances. The obtained answers were found (...) to be extremely near to the precise solutions. Additionally, the proposed strategy achieves the best degree of accuracy. Indeed, the current technique can be seen as one of the analytic strategies for solving nonlinear fractional partial differential equations compared to other analytical techniques. (shrink)

Attempts to apply the mathematical tools of dynamical systems theory to cognition in a systematic way has been well under way since the early 90s and has been recognised as a “third contender” to computationalist and connectionist approaches :441–463, 1996). Nevertheless, it was also realised that such an application will not lead to a solid paradigm as straightforwardly as was initially hoped. In this paper I explicate a method for assessing such proposals by drawing upon Lakatos’s Criticism and the growth (...) of knowledge, Cambridge University Press, London, pp 91–195, 1970) methodology of scientific research programs. MSRP focuses on the heuristics of a particular field and gauges the model/theory building stratagems by reference to theoretical and empirical progress, on the one hand, and the continuity and the autonomy of the way the field’s heuristic generates its series of models/theories, on the other. The requirement of continuity and autonomy afford distinct senses of ad hoc-ness, which serve as an effective tool to detect various subtleties which may otherwise be missed: the present approach identifies shortcomings missed by Chemero’s radical embodied cognitive science and falsifies Chemero’s claim that the methodological powers of his model-based account is on a par with computationalism. In general, I claim that MSRP is relevant to current methodological issues in cognitive science and can supplement debates regarding “local” assessments of methodologies, such as that between mechanical versus covering-law explanations. MSRP must at least be viewed as a necessary constraint for any methodological considerations in cognitive science. (shrink)

The debates between Bayesian, frequentist, and other methodologies of statistics have tended to focus on conceptual justifications, sociological arguments, or mathematical proofs of their long run properties. Both Bayesian statistics and frequentist (“classical”) statistics have strong cases on these grounds. In this article, we instead approach the debates in the “Statistics Wars” from a largely unexplored angle: simulations of different methodologies’ performance in the short to medium run. We conducted a large number of simulations using a straightforward decision problem (...) based around tossing a coin with unknown bias and then placing bets. In this simulation, we programmed four players, inspired by Bayesian statistics, frequentist statistics, Jon Williamson’s version of Objective Bayesianism, and a player who simply extrapolates from observed frequencies to general frequencies. The last player functions as a benchmark: a statistical methodology should at least outperform a crude form of induction. We focused on the performance of these methodologies in guiding the players towards good decisions. Unlike an earlier simulation study of this type, we found no systematic difference in performance between the Bayesian and frequentist players, provided the Bayesian used a flat prior and the frequentist used a low confidence level. Unlike that study, we were able to use Big Data methods to mitigate problems of random error in the simulation results. The Williamsonian player, who is a novel element of our study, also had no systematic differences in their performance, provided that they use a low confidence level. These players performed similarly even in the very short run, when players were making different decisions. Our study indicates that all three methodologies should be taken seriously by philosophers and practitioners of statistics. However, the frequentist and Williamsonian performed poorly when their confidence levels were high, and the Bayesian was surprisingly harmed by biased priors, providing some unexpected lessons for these methodologies when facing this type of decision problem. (shrink)

Philosophers and scientists both ask questions about what the world is like. How do these fields interact with one another? How should they? Naturalism Beyond the Limits of Science investigates an approach to these questions called methodological naturalism. According to methodological naturalism, when coming up with theories about what the world is like, philosophers should, whenever possible, make use of the same methodology that is deployed by scientists. Although many contemporary philosophers have implicit commitments that lead straightforwardly to methodological (...) naturalism, few have a clear understanding of how widespread and disruptive methodological naturalism promises to be for the field. By way of a series of case studies involving laws of nature, composition, time and modality, and drawing on historical and contemporary scientific developments including the discovery of the neutrino, the introduction of dark energy, and the advent of relativity theory, this book demonstrates the ways in which scientists rely on extra-empirical reasoning and how that very same extra-empirical reasoning can yield surprising results when applied to philosophical debates. Along the way, Nina Emery's investigation illuminates the complex relationship between philosophy and the sciences, and makes the case that philosophers and scientists alike would benefit from a greater understanding of the connections between the two fields. (shrink)

The methodology of the empirical sciences is treated from a set-theoretical point of view. Starting from Tarski's formulation of the methodology of the deductive sciences, a relation between terms, called degree of centrality, is introduced. Epistemic correlation, and therefore the notion of interpretative system, is defined using this relation.

Crowdsourcing is an increasingly popular method for researchers in the social and behavioral sciences, including experimental philosophy, to recruit survey respondents. Crowdsourcing platforms, such as Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (MTurk), have been seen as a way to produce high quality survey data both quickly and cheaply. However, in the last few years, a number of authors have claimed that the low pay rates on MTurk are morally unacceptable. In this paper, I explore some of the methodological implications for online experimental philosophy (...) research if, in fact, typical pay practices on MTurk are morally impermissible. I argue that the most straightforward solution to this apparent moral problem—paying survey respondents more and relying only on “high reputation” respondents—will likely increase the number of subjects who have previous experience with survey materials and thus are “non-naïve” with respect to those materials. I then discuss some likely effects that this increase in experimental non-naivete will have on some aspects of the “negative” program in experimental philosophy, focusing in particular on recent debates about philosophical expertise. (shrink)

Descartes intended to revolutionize seventeenth-century philosophy and science. But first he had to persuade his contemporaries of the truth of his ideas. Of all his publications, Meditations on First Philosophy is methodologically the most ingenuous. Its goal is to provoke readers, even recalcitrant ones, to discover the principles of “first philosophy.” The means to its goal is a reconfiguration of traditional methodological strategies. The aim of this chapter is to display the methodological strategy of the Meditations. The text’s method is (...) more subtle and more philosophically significant than has generally been appreciated. Descartes’ most famous work is best understood as a response to four somewhat separate philosophical concerns extant in the seventeenth century. Section 1 describes these. Section 2 discusses how Descartes uses and transforms them. A clearer sense of the Meditations’ methodological strategy provides a better understanding of exactly how Descartes intended to revolutionize seventeenth-century thought. (shrink)

In his writings Alfred Schutz identifies an artificiality in the concept of life-world produced by Edmund Husserl's method of reduction. As an alternative, he proposes to assume intersubjectivity as a given of everyday life. This eradicates Husserl's distinction between life-world and natural attitude. The subsequent phenomenological project appears to center upon sociological descriptions of the structures of the life-world rather than on a search for apodictic truth. Schutz, however, actually retains Husserl's emphasis on the subject. A tension then arises between (...) the assumption of intersubjectivity and individual experience. Rather than clarifying the concept of intersubjectivity, this further problematizes it. Drawing upon Max Weber's work, Schutz responds by developing a rigorous methodology for studying the social world. But having rejected Husserl's reduction and conflated life-world and natural attitude, Schutz's analysis moves at the level of daily life itself. Consequently, the explanatory categories he proposes appear as abstractions rather than as a way of describing lived experience. Schutz, it is concluded, initiates a scientistic sociology in which the commonsense structures of the natural attitude of everyday life are subverted and replaced by the more rigorous knowledge of the scientific attitude. Schutz's version of phenomenology is ultimately untrue to the spirit of Husserl's original project; and deploying his work as a clear-cut alternative to scientistic tendencies within sociology is not as straightforward as it might at first seem. (shrink)

This dissertation is focused on the validity of “the data” that are collected in psychotherapy research for the purpose of evidencing treatment efficacy. In the ‘Evidence Based Treatment’ paradigm, researchers rely on the so-called ‘gold standard methodology’ to gather sound and trustworthy evidence, which increasingly influences the organization of mental health care worldwide. In the gold standard, data are collected by quantified self-report measures, to assess the presence and severity of symptoms before and after treatment. When the pre-post difference (...) is larger for a group of people that received the treatment of interest and a group of people who received no or an alternative treatment, the treatment of interest is called effective. In this methodological procedure, researchers tend to assume that when this gold standard methodology is conducted properly, “the data” will speak for themselves. However, when evidence is based on data, that evidence is principally limited by that data. In other words: output depends on input. That implies that when input is flawed, output will be flawed, even when the very best methods of analysis would be used. So what if “the data” yield validity issues despite being collected by validated measures? When “the data” do not straightforwardly evidence treatment effects, will the subsequent steps in the analysis of these data be enough to secure that the evidence in the end does evidence treatment efficacy? In this dissertation, the focus is turned to validity of “the data” that are concretely provided by patient-participants by scoring their own experienced symptoms in self-report questionnaires, in function of evidencing treatment efficacy. A series of empirical case studies were conducted to scrutinize how patient-participants in a randomized controlled psychotherapy study experienced the process of data collection, and how these experiences affected the data that they provided. Each of the studied patient-participants experienced a substantial effect of the questionnaire administration on their complaints. This impacted the level of complaints, but also changed the way in which the complaints were understood at all, and how patient-participants perceived themselves. Thus, rather than neutrally measuring symptoms, questionnaire administration changed the experienced complaints ‘performatively’, which turned measurement into a clinical intervention of its own. Consequently, what is measured cannot straightforwardly be called ‘treatment efficacy’, as it may be entangled with, enabled by or even obstructed by effects of measurement and research. Therefore, the act of measurement itself can pose a vital threat to the validity of “the data”. This way, the empirical case studies exhibited that data can yield validity problems despite the use of validated measures. Consequently, the validity of a measure as such is no guarantee for the validity of data. Nonetheless, in gold standard research, the data are straightforwardly taken as input for analyses of general treatment efficacy. The question is what happens with those validity issues on the level of individual data, when they pursue their journey towards becoming evidence. In this dissertation, it was argued that the validity issues are not sufficiently solved in the methodological steps after data collection, so when data are invalid in the beginning, these validity issues will simply become part of the data set that forms the input for analysis of the final evidence. This urges that validity issues should be solved on the level of individually provided data, as the validity issues will otherwise become inherent to “the data”. Put formally: valid data is a precondition for evidence in EBT. In conclusion, it is crucial for a sound evidence-base to scrutinize the validity of data in function of the overall goal and utility of the research. For this, it is important not to take “the data” as speaking for themselves, but to regard them as clinical narratives, which are framed in a specific format to be communicated between researcher and respondent in a research context. This emphasizes that the choice for a certain format determines what can be evidenced, so it is vital that these choices indeed allow for obtaining evidence that is useful and valid to serve the clinical goal of EBT. (shrink)

This article addresses the impact of systematic ignorance and epistemic uncertainty upon white Western women's participation in anti-racist and transnational feminisms. I argue that a “methodology of the privileged” is necessary for effective coalition-building across racial and geopolitical inequities. Examining both self-reflexivity and racial sedition as existing methods, I conclude that epistemic uncertainty should be considered an additional strategy rather than a dilemma for the privileged.

This is a comprehensive and authoritative reference collection in the philosophy and methodology of the social sciences. The source materials selected are drawn from debates within the natural sciences as well as social scientific practice. This four volume set covers the traditional literature on the philosophy of the social sciences, and the contemporary philosophical and methodological debates developing at the heart of the disciplinary and interdisciplinary groups in the social sciences. It addresses the needs of researchers and academics who (...) are grappling with the relationship between questions of knowledge construction and the problems of social scientific method. (shrink)

Are all three of Marr's levels needed? Should they be kept distinct? We argue for the distinct contributions and methodologies of each level of analysis. It is important to maintain them because they provide three different perspectives required to understand mechanisms, especially information-processing mechanisms. The computational perspective provides an understanding of how a mechanism functions in broader environments that determines the computations it needs to perform. The representation and algorithmic perspective offers an understanding of how information about the environment is (...) encoded within the mechanism and what are the patterns of organization that enable the parts of the mechanism to produce the phenomenon. The implementation perspective yields an understanding of the neural details of the mechanism and how they constrain function and algorithms. Once we adequately characterize the distinct role of each level of analysis, it is fairly straightforward to see how they relate. (shrink)

The paper focuses on the reflective analysis of one of the most powerful philosophical and methodological programs for the development of reflective thinking in Russia. This is the “Program for the Development of Regional Social Systems by Means of Education”, developed in the 90s of the last century by a team of young scientists on the basis of the theory of developing education of V.V. Davydov. The author studies the problems to be solved by the program as well as the (...) main stages of its implementation. Such projects as “Metropolitan Education”, “Updating the content of education: meta-subjects, meta-subject technologies”, “Education of design activities: School of General Designers”, – are in the centre of analysis. The author discusses also the structures of solutions that have been aimed at the developing educational practices (experimental sites, innovative networks) and reflective thinking in the metropolitan education system (Expert Council). The results of the implementation of the program at each stage are summed up. The limitations in the application of the reflection method are analyzed and the path of further research is outlined. (shrink)

When two people try to communicate there is, inevitably, confrontation: representation against representation, subconscious against subconscious. As this confrontation is subconscious, it often degenerates into conflict. A new model of civilisation is necessary, whose keystone is the dialogue between human beings, nations, cultures and religions for the survival of humanity. Inthe formation of a new model of civilization, the methodology of transdisciplinarity is crucial.

Zwart uses Hegel’s dialectical method to develop a dialectical methodology for assessing biology as technoscience during the Anthropocene. In this paper I will evaluate this use of Hegelian dialectics in biology. I will first elaborate the meaning of Hegel’s method of “Dialectics”. This helps me to evaluate Zwart’s dialectical scientific methodology from the perspective of Hegel’s method of “Dialectics” and to evaluate Zwart’s dialectical scientific methodology from the perspective of the praxis of biology. Finally, I will oppose (...) Zwart’s claim that the synthetic cell is an appropriate case study to demonstrate the relevance of dialectics for understanding contemporary biological research. (shrink)

This paper examines the methodological claim made famous by P.F. Strawson: that we understand what features are required for responsible agency by exploring our attitudes and practices of holding responsible. What is the presumed metaphysical connection between holding responsible and being fit to be held responsible that makes this claim credible? I propose a non-standard answer to this question, arguing for a view of responsible agency that is neither anti-realist (i.e. purely 'conventionalist') nor straightforwardly realist. It is instead ‘constructivist’. On (...) the ‘Scaffolding View’ I defend, reactive attitudes play an essential role in developing, supporting, and thereby maintaining the capacities that make for responsible agency. While this view has relatively novel implications for a metaphysical understanding of capacities, its chief virtue, in contrast with more standard views, is providing a plausibly defensible account of how so-called responsible agents genuinely deserve to be treated as such. (shrink)

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and (...) made generally available to the public. To ensure a quality reading experience, this work has been proofread and republished using a format that seamlessly blends the original graphical elements with text in an easy-to-read typeface. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

All interpretations of the Portland Vase frieze to date have failed to see, much less explain, a crucial figural attribute in the frieze, one that proves to be both explicit and explicatory, and whose location and appearance secures the identification of not one but, indeed, three figures. Furthermore, the attribute lies at the heart of a distinct schema of figural grouping and arrangement which has also gone unheeded in previous treatments of the Portland Vase frieze. By dint of this previously (...) unknown attribute, one can straightforwardly read the opening scene of the frieze using the attributes therein provided, but the opening scene only. To complete the task, a second methodology–that which I laid out in Arion in 1992–is a categorical sine qua non. One can, as I have already shown, successfully navigate the entire frieze using the second methodology alone but, as so many others have shown, not contrariwise. These new findings–the attribute and figural plan–are clear proof that the artistic vision of the Portland Vase was purposefully executed in a two-part program. (shrink)

Biorobotics research should not only target “realistic” models of living systems and be judged exclusively from that perspective. It should pay just as much attention to formal models and artificial systems. They allow the examination of assumptions which do not necessarily hold for living systems, but precisely therein lies their value. They generate insight by enabling a comparison between the artificial and the real.

The article reviews the book Metodologia nauk [Methodology of the Sciences], by Adam Grobler.

This book is an examination of the nature of economic explanation. The opening chapters introduce current thinking in the philosophy of science and review the literature on methodology. Professor Blaug then turns to the troublesome question of the logical status of welfare economics, giving the reader an understanding of the outstanding issues in the methodology of economics. This is followed by a series of case studies of leading economic controversies, which shows how controversies in economics may be illuminated (...) by paying attention to questions of methodology. A final chapter draws the strands together and gives the author's view of what is wrong with modern economics. This book is a revised and updated edition of a classic work on the methodology of economics, in which Professor Blaug develops his discussion of the latest developments in macroeconomics, general equilibrium theory and international trade theory. A new section on the rationality postulate is also added. (shrink)

Ernest Gellner's final book, first published in 1998, is a synoptic interpretation of the thought of Wittgenstein and Malinowski.

In this entry, we provide an overview of some of the methodological debates surrounding contextualism and consider whether they are, in effect, based on an underlying methodological dispute. We consider three modes of motivation of epistemic contextualism including i) the method of cases, ii) the appeal to linguistic analogies and iii) the appeal to conceptual analogies and functional roles. We also consider the methodological debates about contextualism arising from experimental philosophy. We conclude that i) there is no distinctive methodological doctrine (...) or set of methodological doctrines that is centrally invoked by all epistemic contextualists and ii) the substantive dispute about the truth of contextualism very frequently, although not invariably, reflects an underlying methodological dispute. (shrink)

This article examines the methodology of a core branch of contemporary political theory or philosophy: “analytic” political theory. After distinguishing political theory from related fields, such as political science, moral philosophy, and legal theory, the article discusses the analysis of political concepts. It then turns to the notions of principles and theories, as distinct from concepts, and reviews the methods of assessing such principles and theories (e.g., the reflective-equilibrium method), for the purpose of justifying or criticizing them. Finally, it (...) looks at a recent debate on how abstract and idealized political theory should be, and assesses the significance of disagreement in political theory. The discussion is carried out from an angle inspired by the philosophy of science. (shrink)

Ernest Nagel was one of the first philosophers of science who reflected systematically on the methodology of the social sciences. His cooperation with Paul F. Lazarsfeld at Columbia University proved to be instructive in this regard. Moreover, Nagel stood in close contact with representatives of sociological functionalism and published, in 1956, a contribution on the prospects of a formalization of functionalism. In his seminal The Structure of Science from 1961, Nagel devoted two long chapters to methodological and explanatory problems (...) of the social sciences. The aim of the present chapter is to rationally reconstruct this 1961 account. I will proceed in three steps: first, I shall shed some light on Nagel’s discussion of the problem of a clear-cut demarcation between the natural and the social sciences; then Nagel’s interpretation of the presumptive ‘immaturity’ of the social sciences will be taken into account; finally, two case studies will be provided in order to illustrate the implications of Nagel’s particular analysis. (shrink)

This paper presents a methodology to design and implement programs intended to decide cases, described as sets of factors, according to a theory of a particular domain based on a set of precedent cases relating to that domain. We useDialectical Frameworks, a recent development in AI knowledge representation, as the central feature of our design method. ADFs will play a role akin to that played by Entity–Relationship models in the design of database systems. First, we explain how the factor (...) hierarchy of the well-known legal reasoning system CATO can be used to instantiate an ADF for the domain of US Trade Secrets. This is intended to demonstrate the suitability of ADFs for expressing the design of legal cased based systems. The method is then applied to two other legal domains often used in the literature of AI and Law. In each domain, the design is provided by the domain analyst expressing the cases in terms of factors organised into an ADF from which an executable program can be implemented in a straightforward way by taking advantage of the closeness of the acceptance conditions of the ADF to components of an executable program. We evaluate the ease of implementation, the performance and efficacy of the resulting program, ease of refinement of the program and the transparency of the reasoning. This evaluation suggests ways in which factor based systems, which are limited by taking as their starting point the representation of cases as sets of factors and so abstracting away the particular facts, can be extended to address open issues in AI and Law by incorporating the case facts to improve the decision, and by considering justification and reasoning using portion of precedents. (shrink)

There is growing debate about what is the correct methodology for research in the ontology of artworks. In the first part of this essay, I introduce my view: I argue that semantic descriptivism is a semantic approach that has an impact on meta-ontological views and can be linked with a hermeneutic fictionalist proposal on the meta-ontology of artworks such as works of music. In the second part, I offer a synthetic presentation of the four main positive meta-ontological views that (...) have been defended in philosophical literature about artworks and of some criticisms that can be lodged against them: Amie Thomasson’s global descriptivism, Andrew Kania’s local descriptivism, Julian Dodd’s folk-theoretic modesty, and David Davies’ rational accountability view. In the conclusion, I show the advantages of my view. (shrink)

Every science examines the personal accidents of the subject, which it determines as its subject, and the sciences differ from each other in this aspect. However, sciences offer the principles that they prove themselves through the use of other sciences. Sciences take and use the principles of other sciences that they will need, but they do not have to prove these principles in themselves. On the contrary, they entrust this proof to the sciences from which they took their principles. While (...) examining the sources of fiqh and the method of making judgments from these sources, the method of fiqh uses the principles set forth in other sciences in the problems it encounters. One of the sciences in which the method of fiqh takes principles is kalām. Actually, the science of kalām provides principles to all other sciences with the conception of God and the world it reveals. One of these principles is the indeterminist understanding of the world, in other words, the theory of ʽādah (custom). The theory of custom, produced in the tradition of Ahl al-Sunnah Kalām, is a theory that cancels causality and makes all effects in the world peculiar to Allah. According to this theory, Allah operates the universe according to the laws of physics, which are named custom. However, this theory makes it possible for Allah, if He wills, to do extraordinary acts that are described as humanly extraordinary. Since the Fiqh and its Methodology, which is assisted by the science of kalām, is a science that is expected to judge according to the apparent, it seems to be contrary to his identity to make judgments by using the possibilities of the theory of custom. However, like the situation of a person who becomes a Muslim at the last moment of prayer, sometimes things get so tight that it becomes very difficult to judge according to outward appearance. Well, did the methodists look at the outward appearance and decide that this person is not responsible for the prayer of the aforementioned time, or did they come to a different conclusion by using the possibilities of the theory of custom. (shrink)