In this thesis, I investigate realist, anti-realist and pluralist views in the philosophy of science and the philosophy of complexity. The philosophy of science can inform the philosophy of complexity and vice versa because we can consider scientific inquiry to largely involve the study of complex systems. I however find that the relevant realist, anti-realist and pluralist views are problematic in various ways, and that a version of pragmatism suggests a promising alternative. This version of pragmatism incorporates elements of pluralism, (...) but maintains a commitment to epistemic hierarchy, convergence and progress. The way to develop such a version of pragmatism is, I argue, by rebooting William Whewell’s 19th century philosophy of science. Whewell however held to the following two transcendental claims: 1. Empirical inquiry undertaken in science properly practiced can reveal necessary truths. 2. The revelation of such necessary truths grants us a glimpse of the mind of God. Such transcendental claims are obviously at odds with pragmatism. There are however core features of Whewell’s view that are notably pragmatist in nature, features that explicitly inspired Charles Sanders Piece’s convergent pragmatism. These are as follows: 3. Subject and object (or mind and world) are inextricably entwined during scientific inquiry; they are not separated by anything like a correspondence relationship. 4. Science progresses via what Whewell calls the consilience of inductions (an ongoing merging of scientific theories, a merging that increases our understanding of the world over time). I modify Whewell’s view by stripping away its transcendental elements while maintaining its pragmatist elements. What remains is, I argue, a robust and novel kind of pragmatism suitable for being introduced into the contemporary philosophy of science. Whewell suitably-pragmatised can offer new insights into ongoing debates, particularly those around the nature of scientific progress, scientific truth and scientific understanding. (shrink)

Dans sa violente charge contre la Révolution française, Edmund Burke avait élevé le débat politique à un niveau philosophique. Son argument le plus profond consistait à reprocher aux révolutionnaires de pécher par apriorisme, en cherchant à déduire, comme des géomètres, une nouvelle constitution à partir des principes abstraits énoncés dans la Déclaration des droits de l’homme. Reprise par les disciples allemands de Burke, cette critique de la méthode adoptée par la Constituante tirait des postulats empiristes des Lumières anglo-écossaises toutes les (...) implications conservatrices que recelaient déjà les textes politiques et historiques de Hume. Or c’est d’emblée sur ce terrain spéculatif que se joue, chez Fichte, la défense du droit de révolution. Reprochant à l’empirisme de réduire l’esprit au « mécanisme aveugle de l’association des idées », passivement déterminé par une extériorité en soi, Fichte entend au contraire fonder l’expérience elle-même sur l’activité d’un « Moi-en-soi », absolument indépendant. Conçu comme causalité libre, pouvant donc s’affranchir des « conjonctions coutumières » humiennes pour commencer une nouvelle série dans l’ordre des phénomènes, l’homme, pour Fichte, n’a pas seulement la « faculté de se perfectionner », mais la loi de sa liberté lui en fait même un devoir. Au regard de cet impératif catégorique de perfectionnement, il n’y a pas de Common Law qui tienne. Aussi Fichte ne recule-t-il pas devant la révolution, si les institutions du passé font obstacle à la destination de l’homme. (shrink)

Begriffsschrift, a formula language, modeled upon that of arithmetic, for pure thought (1879), by G. Frege.--Some metamathematical results on completeness and consistency; On formally undecidable propositions of Principia mathematica and related systems I; and On completeness and consistency (1930b, 1931, and 1931a), by K. Gödel.--Bibliography (p. [111]-116).

In "Off Track" art and philosophy are the inspiration to look differently at daily life and organizations. The book is a plea to approach the complexity of the current world with new metaphors. The author calls this "hinking around". She sees that in "square worlds" there is a need for tools to approach entrenched patterns and systems differently and to get thought processes moving. Sarai van de Boel challenges the reader to look at one's own systems from the inside with (...) a philosophical approach. In eight chapters there are eight "tracks" to follow, but it is also possible to go off the rails. More than fifty works of art by well-known and lesser-known artists and designers play a role in these traces. The author questions the essence of their works and asks philosophical questions about phenomena they evoke. With Marlene Dumas, Marinus Boezem, L.A. Raeven, Ed Atkins, Wong Ping, Kazumasa Nagai, Remy Jungerman, Otto Piene, Eiko Ishioka, Campana brothers, Ann Demeulemeester and Kara Walker. The book ends with the Art & Philosophy Strategy, a theoretical framework for the use of art and philosophy. (shrink)

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In this book, Andreas Serafim sets out to investigate the use of religious discourse, by which he means any reference to religious ideas, beliefs, and attitudes in public speaking contexts in classical Athens. Like Gunther Martin (Divine Talk: Religious Argumentation in Demosthenes, 2009), Serafim examines religion primarily as a tool for persuasion, but he differentiates himself from Martin’s book by offering a more comprehensive study: he aims to take into account all extant speeches from t...

La longue histoire de l’Acropole d’Athènes est une vitrine fascinante de la façon dont un patrimoine ancien peut être transformé, d’un sanctuaire païen à un sanctuaire chrétien, à une forteresse islamique, à l’autel symbolique de la Grèce moderne. De plus, ce site a suscité l’admiration presque religieuse des chercheurs et, comme dans le cas des marbres d’Elgin, a été contesté à de nombreux égards. L’auteur du volume analysé, William St Clair, un spécialiste des marbres d’Elgin et de divers a...

We apply the theory of partial algebras, following the approach developed by Van Alten, to the study of the computational complexity of universal theories of monotonic and normal modal algebras. We show how the theory of partial algebras can be deployed to obtain co-NP and EXPTIME upper bounds for the universal theories of, respectively, monotonic and normal modal algebras. We also obtain the corresponding lower bounds, which means that the universal theory of monotonic modal algebras is co-NP-complete and the universal (...) theory of normal modal algebras is EXPTIME-complete. It also follows that the quasi-equational theory of monotonic modal algebras is co-NP-complete. While the EXPTIME upper bound for the universal theory of normal modal algebras can be obtained in a more straightforward way, as discussed in the paper, due to its close connection to the equational theory of normal modal algebras with the universal modality operator, the technique based on the theory of partial algebras is applicable to the study of universal theories of algebras corresponding to a wide range of logics with intensional operators, where no such connection is available. (shrink)

In this essay I present what is, I contend, the free-will problem properly thought through, or at least presented in a form in which it is possible to think about it without being constantly led astray by bad terminology and confused ideas. Bad terminology and confused ideas are not uncommon in current discussions of the problem. The worst such pieces of terminology are "libertarian free will" and "compatibilist free will." The essay consists partly of a defense of the thesis that (...) the use of these phrases by writers on the problem of free will can only generate conceptual confusion and partly of a formulation of the problem that does not make use of them. I contend that this formulation is neutral with respect to the historically important positions on free will (e. g., compatibilism and incompatibilism). (shrink)

Imagination contributes to human agency in ways that haven't been well understood. I argue here that pathways from imagistic imagining to emotional engagement support three important agential capacities: 1. bodily preparedness for potential events in one's nearby environment; 2. evaluation of potential future action; and 3. empathy-based moral appraisal. Importantly, however, the kind of pathway in question (I-C-E-C: imagining-categorization-emotion-conceptualization) also enables engagement with fiction. So human enchantment with fiction is a consequence of imaginative pathways that make us the kind of (...) agents we are. Finally, I use this approach to address imaginative resistance and the paradox of fiction. [The version archived here is a penultimate draft. Please email me at [email protected] to receive a pdf of the final in accordance with fair use.]. (shrink)

Decision outcomes sometimes result in negative emotions. This can occur when a decision appears to be wrong in retrospect, and/or when the obtained decision outcome does not live up to expectations. Regret and disappointment are the two emotions that are of central interest in the present article. Although these emotions have a lot in common, they also differ in ways that are relevant to decision making. In this article we review theories and empirical findings concerning regret and disappointment. We first (...) discuss how regret and disappointment differ with respect to their antecedent conditions, appraisals, and phenomenology. We also discuss possible behavioural consequences of experiencing these emotions. Next, we consider how the anticipation of regret and disappointment may influence decision making. We use regret and disappointment theory, developed by the economists Bell (1982, 1985), and Loomes and Sugden (1982, 1986, 1987), as a framework for our discussion. Finally, we argue that combining the theoretical approaches and research paradigms of behavioural decision theory with emotion theories will significantly increase our knowledge of antecedents and consequences of emotions. (shrink)

Non-cognitivism is a variety of irrealism about ethics with a number of influential variants. Non-cognitivists agree with error theorists that there are no moral properties or moral facts. But rather than thinking that this makes moral statements false, noncognitivists claim that moral statements are not in the business of predicating properties or making statements which could be true or false in any substantial sense. Roughly put, noncognitivists think that moral statements have no truth conditions. Furthermore, according to non-cognitivists, when people (...) utter moral sentences they are not typically expressing states of mind which are beliefs or which are cognitive in the way that beliefs are. Rather they are expressing non-cognitive attitudes more similar to desires, approval or disapproval. Cognitivism is the denial of non-cognitivism. Thus it holds that moral statements do express beliefs and that they are apt for truth and falsity. But cognitivism need not be a species of realism since a cognitivist can be an error theorist and think all moral statements false. Still, moral realists are cognitivists insofar as they think moral statements are apt for truth and falsity and that many of them are in fact true. (shrink)

The central question of the peer disagreement debate is: what should you believe about the disputed proposition if you have good reason to believe that an epistemic peer disagrees with you? This article shows that this question is ambiguous between evidential support (or propositional justification) and well-groundedness (or doxastic justification). The discussion focuses on conciliatory views, according to which peer disagreements require you to significantly revise your view or to suspend judgment. The article argues that for a wide range of (...) conceptions of evidential support, conciliatory views are false if they are understood entirely in terms of evidential support. Alternative conceptions of evidential support face some serious difficulties. These arguments speak against conciliationism, but the article then goes on to defend a conciliatory view about well-grounded belief: when you believe p, and you have good reason to believe that your epistemic peer disagrees with you, you are not justified in believing p because that belief is no longer well grounded. This picture of the epistemology of peer disagreement offers a reconciliation of some of the main competing views in the literature: conciliationism is true when we look at well-grounded belief, but a nonconciliatory view like Thomas Kelly's “total evidence view” is correct when we look at peer disagreement exclusively in terms of evidential support. (shrink)

We study the computational complexity of the universal and quasi-equational theories of classes of bounded distributive lattices with a negation operation, i.e., a unary operation satisfying a subset of the properties of the Boolean negation. The upper bounds are obtained through the use of partial algebras. The lower bounds are either inherited from the equational theory of bounded distributive lattices or obtained through a reduction of a global satisfiability problem for a suitable system of propositional modal logic.

In this paper we report on our experiences with using network analysis to discern and analyse ethical issues in research into, and the development of, a new wastewater treatment technology. Using network analysis, we preliminarily interpreted some of our observations in a Group Decision Room session where we invited important stakeholders to think about the risks of this new technology. We show how a network approach is useful for understanding the observations, and suggests some relevant ethical issues. We argue that (...) a network approach is also useful for ethical analysis of issues in other fields of research and development. The abandoning of the overarching rationality assumption, which is central to network approaches, does not have to lead to ethical relativism. (shrink)

ON BROUWER, like other titles in the Wadsworth Philosopher's Series, offers a concise, yet comprehensive, introduction to this philosopher's most important ideas. Presenting the most important insights of well over a hundred seminal philosophers in both the Eastern and Western traditions, the Wadsworth Philosophers Series contains volumes written by scholars noted for their excellence in teaching and for their well-versed comprehension of each featured philosopher's major works and contributions. These titles have proven valuable in a number of ways. Serving as (...) standalone texts when tackling a philosophers' original sources or as helpful resources for focusing philosophy students' engagements with these philosopher's often conceptually daunting works, these titles have also gained extraordinary popularity with a lay readership and quite often serve as "refreshers" for philosophy instructors. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: References and Further Reading.

Contemporary literature investigating the significant impact of technology on our lives leads many to conclude that ethics must be a part of the discussion at an earlier stage in the design process i.e., before a commercial product is developed and introduced. The problem, however, is the question regarding how ethics can be incorporated into an earlier stage of technological development and it is this question that we argue has not yet been answered adequately. There is no consensus amongst scholars as (...) to the kind of ethics that should be practiced, nor the individual selected to perform this ethical analysis. One school of thought holds that ethics should have pragmatic value in research and design and that it should be implemented by the engineers and/or scientists themselves, while another school of thought holds that ethics need not be so pragmatic. For the latter, the ethical reflection can aim at a variety of goals, and be carried out by an ethicist. None of the approaches resulting from these lines of thinking have been adopted on a wide-scale basis. To that end, the approach presented here is intended to bridge the gap between these schools of thought. It is our contention that ethics ought to be pragmatic and to provide utility for the design process and we maintain that adequate ethical reflection, and all that it entails, ought to be conducted by an ethicist. Thus, we propose a novel role for the ethicist—the ethicist as designer—who subscribes to a pragmatic view of ethics in order to bring ethics into the research and design of artifacts—no matter the stage of development. In this paper we outline the series of steps that a pragmatic value analysis entails: uncovering relevant values, scrutinizing these values and, working towards the translation of values into technical content. In conclusion, we present a list of tasks for the ethicist in his/her role as designer on the interdisciplinary team. (shrink)

Current dynamic-epistemic logics model different types of information change in multi-agent scenarios. We generalize these logics to a probabilistic setting, obtaining a calculus for multi-agent update with three natural slots: prior probability on states, occurrence probabilities in the relevant process taking place, and observation probabilities of events. To match this update mechanism, we present a complete dynamic logic of information change with a probabilistic character. The completeness proof follows a compositional methodology that applies to a much larger class of dynamic-probabilistic (...) logics as well. Finally, we discuss how our basic update rule can be parameterized for different update policies, or learning methods. (shrink)

Psillos has recently argued that van Fraassen’s arguments against abduction fail. Moreover, he claimed that, if successful, these arguments would equally undermine van Fraassen’s own constructive empiricism, for, Psillos thinks, it is only by appeal to abduction that constructive empiricism can be saved from issuing in a bald scepticism. We show that Psillos’ criticisms are misguided, and that they are mostly based on misinterpretations of van Fraassen’s arguments. Furthermore, we argue that Psillos’ arguments for his claim that constructive empiricism itself (...) needs abduction point up to his failure to recognize the importance of van Fraassen’s broader epistemology for constructive empiricism. Towards the end of our paper we discuss the suspected relationship between constructive empiricism and scepticism in the light of this broader epistemology, and from a somewhat more general perspective. (shrink)