This chapter on classical empiricism is divided into three sections, namely, absolutism, idealism, and memory. Presentism poses a particular problem for the empiricist view that the idea of time arises from people's experience of the succession of their ideas. The view that time passes independently of the succession of ideas was shared by canonically empiricist philosophers, such as Gassendi, Locke, and Newton. The idea of time arises from a compound impression that consists of successively disposed simple impressions – (...) impressions that may be identical in all respects but for their manner of disposition, and that may be disposed on either side of an unoccupied gap. People's experience is not confined to the present moment. The truly radical implication is that the past is not destroyed. It persists, not into the present by way of a trace or echo, but in the past, which continues to be visible to consciousness. (shrink)

Jerry Fodor has argued that Classical Empiricists are as committed to the innateness of ideas as Classical Rationalists. His argument, however, is proven inconclusive by an ambiguity surrounding “innate ideas”.Textual evidence for this ambiguity is provided and the “Dispositional Nativism” that, prima facie, makes Empiricist and Rationalist views similar dissolves into two distinct views about the nature of both the mind’s and the environment’s contribution in the process of concept acquisition.Once the Empiricist’s Dispositional Nativism is not conflated with (...) the Rationalist’s, it becomes evident that the Empiricist can accept the premises of Fodor’s argument without accepting his conclusion and, hence, remain unmoved in her conviction that no ideas are innate. (shrink)

Feyerabend's “Classical Empiricism” draws on a 17th century Jesuit argument against Protestant fundamentalism. The argument is very general, and applies to any simple foundationalist epistemology. Feyerabend uses it against Classical Empiricism—roughly, the view that what is to be believed is exactly what experience establishes, and no more—which he identifies as among other things Newton's “dogmatic ideology.”.

Hurford's discussion also vindicates the classical empiricist program in semantics. The idea that PREDICATE(x) is the logical form of the sensory representations encoded via the dorsal and ventral streams validates empiricists' insistence on the psychological primacy of sense data, which have the same form. In addition to knowing the logical form of our primitive representations, however, we need accounts of (1) their contents and (2) how more complex thoughts are derived from them. Ideally, our semantic vocabulary would both reflect (...) the psychological “primitiveness” of these representations and make clear how more complex representations derive from them. (shrink)

Eino Kaila’s recently translated Human Knowledge: A Classic Statement of Logical Empiricism from 1939 is an important document both in the history of analytic philosophy and the history of logical empiricism in particular. Kaila discusses all the relevant topics that featured in the discussions of the Vienna Circle in the early 1930s and provides a neat summary with his own historical narrative and critical remarks.

Classical American pragmatism: the pragmatist -- Enlightenment-and its problematic semantics -- Analyzing pragmatism: pragmatics and pragmatisms -- A Kantian rationalist pragmatism: pragmatism -- Inferentialism, and modality in Sellars's arguments against -- Empiricism -- Linguistic pragmatism and pragmatism about norms: an arc of -- Thought from Rorty's eliminative materialism to his pragmatism -- Vocabularies of pragmatism: synthesizing naturalism and -- Historicism -- Towards an analytic pragmatism: meaning-use analysis -- Pragmatism, expressivism, and anti-representationalism: -- Local and global possibilities.

In this article I argue for an empiricist view on laws. Some laws are fundamental in the sense that they are the result of inductive generalisations of observed regularities and at the same time in their formulation contain a new theoretical predicate. The inductive generalisations simul- taneously function as implicit definitions of these new predicates. Other laws are either explicit definitions or consequences of other previously established laws. I discuss the laws of classical mechanics, relativity theory and electromagnetism in (...) detail. Laws are necessary, whereas acciden- tal generalisations are not. But necessity here is not a modal concept, but rather interpreted as short for the semantic predicate “... is necessarily true”. Thus no modal logic is needed. The neces- sity attributed to law sentences is in turn interpreted as “necessary condition for the rest of the the- ory”, which is true since fundamental laws are implicit definitions of theoretical predicates use in the theory. (shrink)

This essay argues that there is no alethic basis for adopting one ontology of jazz music rather than another. Any ontology of jazz that is consistent with the available empirical evidence may be adopted, though pragmatic reasons may exist for favouring one ontology of jazz over another. There are empirical differences between jazz and much of classical music, but one may adopt the same ontology for jazz that one adopts for works classical music.

This paper aims at specifying the complex links which two major and polemically related 18th-century linguistic theories James Harris' universal grammar in Hermes (1751) and John Horne Tooke's system of etymology in the Diversions of Purley (1786, 1804) bear to empiricism. It describes both the ideologicalethical determining factors of the theories and the epistemological consequences dependent upon their respective philosophical orientation (Harris using classical Greek philosophy against empiricism, Tooke criticizing Locke's semantics along Hobbesian lines). The effects within (...) the linguistic theories are examined through a comparison of the theories of determination which follow from divergent theses concerning abstraction. The analysis proposed in this paper exemplifies once more the historical question of the exact location of the compatibility/incompatibility between empiricist and non-empiricist linguistic theories. (shrink)

Deleuze's readings of Hume, Spinoza, Bergson and Nietzsche respond to philosophical critiques of classical and modern empiricism. However, Deleuze's arguments against those critiques - by Kant, Hegel, Husserl and Heidegger - consolidate the philosophy of immanence that can be called 'transcendental empiricism'. Marc Rolli offers us a detailed examination of Gilles Deleuze's philosophy of transcendental empiricism. He demonstrates that Deleuze takes up and radicalises the empiricist school of thought developing a systematic alternative to the mainstreams of (...) modern continental philosophy. (shrink)

Quine on the relationship of the classical pragmatists to Empiricism.

It is common in the literature on classical electrodynamics and relativity theory that the transformation rules for the basic electrodynamical quantities are derived from the hypothesis that the relativity principle applies to Maxwell's electrodynamics. As it will turn out from our analysis, these derivations raise several problems, and certain steps are logically questionable. This is, however, not our main concern in this paper. Even if these derivations were completely correct, they leave open the following questions: Is the RP a (...) true law of nature for electrodynamical phenomena? Are, at least, the transformation rules of the fundamental electrodynamical quantities, derived from the RP, true? Is the RP consistent with the laws of ED in a single inertial frame of reference? Are, at least, the derived transformation rules consistent with the laws of ED in a single frame of reference? Obviously, and are empirical questions. In this paper, we will investigate problems and. Abstract First we will give a general mathematical formulation of the RP. In the second part, we will deal with the operational definitions of the fundamental electrodynamical quantities. As we will see, these semantic issues are not as trivial as one might think. In the third part of the paper, applying what J. S. Bell calls “Lorentzian pedagogy”---according to which the laws of physics in any one reference frame account for all physical phenomena---we will show that the transformation rules of the electrodynamical quantities are identical with the ones obtained by presuming the covariance of the equations of ED, and that the covariance is indeed satisfied. Abstract As to problem, the situation is much more complex. As we will see, the RP is actually not a matter of the covariance of the physical equations, but it is a matter of the details of the solutions of the equations, which describe the behavior of moving objects. This raises conceptual problems concerning the meaning of the notion “the same system in a collective motion”. In case of ED, there seems no satisfactory solution to this conceptual problem; thus, contrary to the widespread views, the question we asked in the title has no obvious answer. (shrink)

Is logical empiricism incompatible with a critical social science? The longstanding assumption that it is incompatible has been prominent in recent debates about welfare economics. Sen’s development of a critical and descriptively rich welfare economics is taken by writers such as Putnam, Walsh and Sen to involve the excising of the influence of logical empiricism on neo-classical economics. However, this view stands in contrast to the descriptively rich contributions to political economy of members of the left Vienna (...) Circle, such as Otto Neurath. This paper considers the compatibility of the meta-theoretical commitments of Neurath and others in the logical empiricist tradition with this first-order critical political economy. (shrink)

In _Aristotle’s Empiricism_, Jean De Groot argues that an important part of Aristotle’s natural philosophy has remained largely unexplored and shows that much of Aristotle’s analysis of natural movement is influenced by the logic and concepts of mathematical mechanics that emerged from late Pythagorean thought. De Groot draws upon the pseudo-Aristotelian_ Physical Problems_ XVI to reconstruct the context of mechanics in Aristotle’s time and to trace the development of kinematic thinking from Archytas to the Aristotelian _Mechanics_. She shows the influence (...) of kinematic thinking on Aristotle’s concept of power or potentiality, which she sees as having a physicalistic meaning originating in the problem of movement. De Groot identifies the source of early mechanical knowledge in kinesthetic awareness of mechanical advantage, showing the relation of Aristotle’s empiricism to more ancient experience. The book sheds light on the classical Greek understanding of imitation and device, as it questions both the claim that Aristotle’s natural philosophy codifies opinions held by convention and the view that the cogency of his scientific ideas depends on metaphysics. (shrink)

The philosophy of Gabriel Marcel is informed by the classical tradition of American philosophy – most notably William James, William Ernest Hocking and Josiah Royce. At a time when Marcel scholarship is at risk of being eclipsed by abstract modes of philosophical discourse, a return to the classical American sources of Marcel's thought is vital. This article investigates Marcel's thought from the standpoint of James’ conception of radical empiricism, the primacy of intersubjective experience in Hocking’s philosophy, and (...) the importance of praxis in the later Royce. Marcel’s openness to the classical American tradition in philosophy is a function of the Catholic character of Marcel’s thought. (shrink)

This volume traces the influence of the British Empiricists--John Locke and David Hume--upon the American pragmatists--Charles S Peirce, William James, and John Dewey. But there are significant differences between the two traditions so that it can be said that the pragmatists gave the classical empirical tradition new directions. Heretofore these lines of influence and divergence have been recognized but not sufficiently developed. This movement is illustrated in chapters on experience, necessary connection, personal identity, and moral, social, and political theory. (...) A final chapter indicates the challenges that are still to be addressed by pragmatism. (shrink)

In this wide-ranging book, Jesse Prinz attempts to resuscitate a strand of empiricism continuous with the classical thesis that all Ideas are imagistic. His name for this strand is “concept empiricism,” and he formulates it as follows: “all (human) concepts are copies or combinations of copies of perceptual representations” (p. 108). In the process of defending concept empiricism, Prinz is careful not to commit himself to a number of other theses commonly associated with empiricism more (...) broadly construed. For example, he is prepared to accept that there are innate concepts and/or knowledge, denies that what a concept means consists in the experiences that prompt us to use or create it, implies that cognitive architecture is not associationist, and offers no opinion on whether all knowledge claims must be justified by sensory experience. Those who await a full resurrection will have to wait a little longer – but in the meantime, Prinz’s reconstructive surgery will tide you over. Although it falls short of miraculous, it is still pretty impressive. Prinz has brought a vast knowledge of the literature to bear on his project, from philosophy, psychology, and neuroscience. In fact, this book would serve as an excellent entrée for the philosopher into the scientific aspects of concept research, or for the scientist into philosophical concerns. Prinz writes with exemplary clarity, and wields his theory with aplomb in answering the many objections that have been raised against imagism. To take just one example, anyone who doubts that imagism can accommodate the large scope of human concepts would be well advised to read Chapter 7, which contains a wealth of ingenious suggestions for how imagism might handle difficult cases, including lofty concepts such as cause and truth. His discussions of nativism (Chapter 8) and compositionality are also particularly illuminating. The central theoretical construct in Prinz’s theory of concepts is the “proxytype,” a group of imagistic/perceptual representations.. (shrink)

An article by Alexandra Kirsch accepted for publication in Cognitive Processing occasioned debate among reviewers about broad methodological issues in cognitive science. One of these issues is the proper place of Popperian falsificationism in the interdisciplinary cluster. Another is the tension between abstract models and theories that apply to wide classes of cognitive systems, and models of more restricted scope intended to predict specifically human patterns of thought and behavior. The lead editorial in a Commentary debate invited by the journal’s (...) editors considers these issues from the perspective of a pragmatist philosophy of science inspired by Herbert Simon’s classic, MIT Press, Cambridge, 1969) reflections on the blurring of the distinction between science and engineering in cognitive science. (shrink)

The topic of this paper is our knowledge of the natural numbers, and in particular, our knowledge of the basic axioms for the natural numbers, namely the Peano axioms. The thesis defended in this paper is that knowledge of these axioms may be gained by recourse to judgements of probability. While considerations of probability have come to the forefront in recent epistemology, it seems safe to say that the thesis defended here is heterodox from the vantage point of traditional philosophy (...) of mathematics. So this paper focuses on providing a preliminary defense of this thesis, in that it focuses on responding to several objections. Some of these objections are from the classical literature, such as Frege's concern about indiscernibility and circularity, while other are more recent, such as Baker's concern about the unreliability of small samplings in the setting of arithmetic. Another family of objections suggests that we simply do not have access to probability assignments in the setting of arithmetic, either due to issues related to the~$\omega$-rule or to the non-computability and non-continuity of probability assignments. Articulating these objections and the responses to them involves developing some non-trivial results on probability assignments, such as a forcing argument to establish the existence of continuous probability assignments that may be computably approximated. In the concluding section, two problems for future work are discussed: developing the source of arithmetical confirmation and responding to the probabilistic liar. (shrink)

David Hume is the most influential precursor of modern empiri cism. By modern empiricism, I intend a belief that all cognitive conflicts can be resolved, in principle, by either appeal to matters off act, via scientific procedure, or by appeal to some sets of natural or conventional standards, whether linguistic, mathematical, aes thetic or political. This belief itself is a consequent of an old appre hension that all synthetic knowledge is based on experience, and that the rest can be (...) reduced to a set of self-evident truths. In this broad sense, Modern Empiricism encompasses classes, such as Logi cal Empiricism, Logical Atomism and Philosophical Analysis, and unique individuals such as Russell and Moore. It excludes, thereby, the present day continental philosophies, such as Thomism, Exist entialism, and Dialectical Materialism. Modem empiricists, to be sure, are influenced by many other phi losophers. Locke, Berkeley, and Mill, among the classical empiri cists, and Leibniz and Kant, among the rationalists (the former especially on the logico-mathematical side) in one way or other are responsible for the appearance of empiricism in its new form. But none of them were as influential as Hume. This, by itself is not news. Weinberg, in his well-known book, An Examination of Logical Positivism, observes that: Many, if not all, of the principal doctrines of contemporary positivism derive from Hume. (shrink)

Debating Archaeological Empiricism examines the current intellectual turn in archaeology, primarily in its prehistoric and classical branches, characterized by a return to the archaeological evidence. Each chapter in the book approaches the empirical from a different angle, illuminating contemporary views and uses of the archaeological material in interpretations and theory building. The inclusion of differing perspectives in this collection mirrors the conceptual landscape that characterizes the discipline, contributing to the theoretical debate in archaeology and classical studies. As (...) well as giving an important snapshot of the practical as well as theoretical uses of materiality in archaeologies today, this volume looks to the future of archaeology as an empirical discipline. (shrink)

Munsat’s objective in collecting eleven selections on the analytic-synthetic distinction is to acquaint the beginning or intermediate student with the major aspects of the issue. The selections are presented in historical sequence and Munsat has effectively edited the works such that one can easily follow the development of the distinction without having to contend with excessive peripheral material. The editor provides a short introduction to the varieties of truth as well as prefatory notes to each selection. Beginning with brief selections (...) from Leibniz and Hobbes, the treatment of necessary and contingent truths is traced through Kant and Mill. The Mill selection, "Of Demonstration, and Necessary Truths," deals with the inductive foundations of the deductive sciences and mathematics. This line of investigation reaches its climax in the Frege passages on the nature of arithmetical propositions and Russell’s "What is an Empirical Science?" Of particular importance are portions of three classic contributions to the analytic-synthetic distinction: Kant’s Introduction to the Critique of Pure Reason, W. V. Quine’s critical "Two Dogmas of Empiricism," and the rebuttal to Quine’s attack by Grice and Strawson, "In Defense of a Dogma." Finally, the segment of J. L. Austin’s "The Meaning of a Word" could just as well have been excluded in the interest of continuity and in deference to some more appropriate selection. Munsat has included a useful nineteen-page bibliography.—B. G. H. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Ideas 62.1 (2001) 99-119 [Access article in PDF] Animism and Empiricism: Copernican Physics and the Origins of William Gilbert's Experimental Method John Henry In the second year of this journal's run, way back in 1941, appeared Edgar Zilsel's classic and still widely cited paper on The Origins of William Gilbert's Experimental Method. 1 Focusing on Gilbert's De magnete of 1600, undoubtedly a seminal (...) text in the history of the experimental method, 2 Zilsel argued that Gilbert borrowed his methodology from elite craftsmen, artisans, and other manual workers involved in mining, smelting, smithing, compass making, navigation, sailing, and other activities which involved working with iron or with magnets. 3 On its appearance the paper contributed to a growing and still continuing debate in the history of science about the relative importance of scholars and craftsmen in the origins of modern science. Although Zilsel's general thesis has been critically evaluated in terms of that wider debate, 4 his very specific claims about the [End Page 99] role of elite craftsmen in providing Gilbert with a ready-made experimental method, have never been properly considered. This paper attempts to reassess Zilsel's claims about the origin of Gilbert's experimental method and, in so doing, to arrive at a richer understanding of what Gilbert was trying to do in De magnete and to suggest an alternative source for his experimentalism.The first thing to note about Zilsel's argument is that it had two strands. 5 One of these pointed to actual experimental techniques used by Gilbert and showed that they can all be found in earlier writings on magnets. To be more specific, the techniques in question are to be found either in the thirteenth-century "Letter on the Magnet" written by Petrus Pergrinus or Pierre de Maricourt, first published in 1558, or in The Newe Attractive, a work on the magnetic compass written by a retired mariner, Robert Norman, first published in 1581 but reprinted three times before 1600. 6 The second strand did not involve experiments at all, with one notable exception, but simply implied or suggested that Gilbert's experimental techniques must have been inspired by miners and foundrymen, or navigators and instrument makers. The problem here, as others have objected, 7 is that it is by no means clear that elite craftsmen were engaged in performing experiments in anything like the sense of the word required for the argument to cut any ice. For Zilsel, however, "we cannot doubt that many of [the miners and foundrymen of the period], stimulated to improvements by economic competition, were wont to try new techniques and to observe natural processes." 8 A few sentences later we are told that it is "obvious" that "among such manual labourers there were experimentalists, though experimentalists with practical aims only and without theoretical knowledge." 9 [End Page 100]The philosopher of science at this point might legitimately want to suggest that an experiment is not an experiment unless it is testing a theory, but we do not have to enter into such arguable niceties. 10 We can see that there is something profoundly tendentious in Zilsel's claims simply by reading on. At this point Zilsel mentioned the only experiment specifically referred to in this strand of his argumentation. Quoting Gilbert, Zilsel showed that Gilbert himself must have descended into a mine in order, as Zilsel says, "to verify the hypothesis" that the polarity of a magnet derives from the polarity of the earth: We had a twenty pounds' heavy loadstone dug and hauled out after having first observed and marked its ends in its vein. Then we put the stone in a wooden tub on water, so that it could turn freely. Immediately the surface which had looked to the North in the mine turned itself to the North on the water. 11Zilsel did not make the absurd claim that Gilbert must have seen miners doing this kind of experiment, but he did all he could to... (shrink)

Offering a unique and wide-ranging examination of the theory of knowledge, the new edition of this comprehensive collection deftly blends readings from the foremost classical sources with the work of important contemporary philosophical thinkers. Human Knowledge: Classical and Contemporary Approaches, 3/e, offers philosophical examinations of epistemology from ancient Greek and Roman philosophy (Plato, Aristotle, Sextus Empiricus); medieval philosophy (Augustine, Aquinas); early modern philosophy (Descartes, Locke, Leibniz, Berkeley, Hume, Reid, Kant); classical pragmatism and Anglo-American empiricism (James, Russell, (...) Ayer, Lewis, Carnap, Quine, Rorty); and other influential Anglo-American philosophers (Chisholm, Kripke, Moore, Wittgenstein, Strawson, Putnam). Organized chronologically and thematically, Human Knowledge, 3/e, features exceptionally broad coverage and nontechnical selections that are easily accessible to students. An ideal text for both undergraduate and graduate courses in epistemology, it is enhanced by the editors' substantial general introduction, section overviews, and up-to-date bibliographies. The third edition offers expanded selections on contemporary epistemology and adds selections by Thomas Reid, Richard Rorty, David B. Annis, Richard Feldman and Earl Conee, Ernest Sosa, Barry Stroud, and Louise M. Antony. Human Knowledge, 3/e, offers an unparalleled introduction to our ancient struggle to understand our own intellectual experience. (shrink)

Our objectives in this paper are, first, to identify several puzzling aspects of the “Trilemma Argument” of Section 6 against the Sense Datum Theory; second, to resolve these puzzles by reconstructing the Trilemma Argument; third to point to a distinction Sellars makes between two versions of the Sense Datum Theory, the “nominalist” version and the “realist” version; fourth, to reconstruct Sellars’s arguments against both; and, finally, to find in an earlier paper, “Is There a Synthetic A Priori?” that his argument (...) against the second version, assumed but not actually given in EPM, is against property realism and depends on taking language expressing propositional perception as fundamental and language expressing non-propositional perception as incomplete and derivative from the former. (shrink)

This paper treats some of the issues raised by Putnam's discussion of, and claims for, quantum logic, specifically: that its proposal is a response to experimental difficulties; that it is a reasonable replacement for classical logic because its connectives retain their classical meanings, and because it can be derived as a logic of tests. We argue that the first claim is wrong (1), and that while conjunction and disjunction can be considered to retain their classical meanings, negation (...) crucially does not. The argument is conducted via a thorough analysis of how the meet, join and complementation operations are defined in the relevant logical structures, respectively Boolean- and ortholattices (3). Since Putnam wishes to reinstate a realist interpretation of quantum mechanics, we ask how quantum logic can be a logic of realism. We show that it certainly cannot be a logic of bivalence realism (i.e., of truth and falsity), although it is consistent with some form of ontological realism (4). Finally, we show that while a reasonable explication of the idealized notion of test yields interesting mathematical structure, it by no means yields the rich ortholattice structure which Putnam (following Finkelstein) seeks. (shrink)

Hume's regularity theory of causation was partly motivated by a criticism of Descartes' causal account of collisions. According to Descartes, bodies are things with extension, and since having extension does not entail any ability to cause changes of motion in other bodies, such changes must be explained by attributing a ‘causal power’ to bodies, logically independent of their extension. Hume's point is that we can't observe any such causal power and we should not use ideas about such unobserved qualities of (...) bodies. Given his form of empiricism, the regularity theory is the only choice; causation is no more than constant correlation. However, there is a third option beside attributing a metaphysical ‘causal power’ and mere regularity; if we follow Newton and say that bodies are characterised and individuated by their mass, not their extension, we can give another analysis of causal interaction between bodies. It is by having mass a body can cause changes in the motion of other bodies. Thus, using classical mechanics we can give an alternative to Hume's regularity theory of causation in which the necessary connection between cause and effect is understood as a conceptual connection between certain descriptions of cause and effect. It does not satisfy Hume's strictures on concept formation, but no additional metaphysics is necessary. In a sense it is an intermediate position between Humean regularity and an account in terms of metaphysical necessity. (shrink)

David Hume is the most influential precursor of modern empiri cism. By modern empiricism, I intend a belief that all cognitive conflicts can be resolved, in principle, by either appeal to matters offact, via scientific procedure, or by appeal to some sets of natural or conventional standards, whether linguistic, mathematical, aes thetic or political. This belief itself is a consequent of an old appre hension that all synthetic knowledge is based on experience, and that the rest can be reduced (...) to a set of self-evident truths. In this broad sense, Modern Empiricism encompasses classes, such as Logi cal Empiricism, Logical Atomism and Philosophical Analysis, and unique individuals such as Russell and Moore. It excludes, thereby, the present day continental philosophies, such as Thomism, Exist entialism, and Dialectical Materialism. Modern empiricists, to be sure, are influenced by many other phi losophers. Locke, Berkeley, and Mill, among the classical empiri cists, and Leibniz and Kant, among the rationalists (the former especially on the logico-mathematical side) in one way or other are responsible for the appearance of empiricism in its new form. But none of them were as influential as Hume. This, by itself is not news. Weinberg, in his well-known book, An Examination of Logical Positivism, observes that: Many, if not all, of the principal doctrines of contemporary positivism derive from Hume. (shrink)

This is a careful explication of and commentary on Wilfrid Sellars's classic essay "Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind" [EPM]. It is appropriate for upper-level undergraduates and beyond. The full text of EPM is included in the volume.

All knowledge 'begins with experience,' but it does not therefore 'arise' from experience.The classical American pragmatists are usually considered to be either empiricists or heirs to the empiricist tradition in philosophy. This is unsurprising given the nature of the pragmatist philosophical program as a late nineteenth-and early twentieth-century reaction against transcendental idealism. Pragmatists sought to ground their inquiry resolutely in experience sans speculative metaphysics. However, the pragmatists were also stridently opposed to certain doctrines and epistemological tendencies in British (...) class='Hi'>empiricism that they regarded as either implicitly idealist, or as laying a groundwork that stood as the .. (shrink)

Part I is concerned with the tenet of modern Emperical Realism that while the theoretical concepts employed in science obtain their meanings entirely from the connections their usage establishes with the data language, the referents of such terms may be "unobservables," that is, entities which cannot be discussed within the data language alone. Such a view avoids both the restrictive excesses of logical positivism and the epistemic laxity of transcendentalism; however, it also necessitates a break with classical semantics, for (...) it follows from the empirical realistic position that a theoretical term must in principle be capable of simultaneously designating not just one entity, but indefinitely many. Drawing upon the Carnapian explication of "analytic truth," Part II examines a possible axiomatic basis for the empiricist theory of scientific meaningfulness to demonstrate that even if theoretical terms are able to designate entities inaccessible to the observation language, as held by Empirical Realism, so long as the meanings of theoretical terms derive from their connections with the observation language, the meaning content of a theory is exhausted by its observational consequences. (shrink)

This volume is intended for use in an undergraduate philosophy course employing the problems' approach. Chapter I provides a clear presentation of Cartesian rationalism. Following the exposition of Descartes' position, there is a section on the standard criticisms levelled by B. Russell. Aune defends the rationalist position with an outline of the traditional arguments for the validity of intuitive knowledge. Chapter I terminates with a list of "Study Questions" and an annotated bibliography suggesting further readings. Chapter II considers classical (...) English empiricism, taking the thought of Hume as paradigmatic. There is a discussion of a priori and a posteriori knowledge as well as a section on the problems of induction and solipsism. Chapter III outlines the attempts of contemporary empiricists to eschew Hume's skepticism by envisioning the world as a construct of our sensory experiences. To avoid the solipsism still implicit in the latter position, a re-evaluation of Hume's theory of perception is offered. Wittgenstein and Strawson are briefly treated in this section. Chapter IV explains the pragmatist's attempt to reduce to the same untenable position the rationalist and empiricist views of the a priori. Chapter V concentrates on the pragmatic theory of justification and includes a treatment of N. Goodman's "new riddle of induction." Aune's book is a readable account of conflicting theories of knowledge and undergraduates should find it of value.--W. J. L. (shrink)

Though classical and twentieth-century versions of empiricism and rationalism fail in their aims, as does the Kantian attempt at a compromise between those views, there are residues of those views that play important roles in the scientific enterprise. Those residue, and their scientific roles, are examined in this paper.

This volume is intended for use in an undergraduate philosophy course employing the problems' approach. Chapter I provides a clear presentation of Cartesian rationalism. Following the exposition of Descartes' position, there is a section on the standard criticisms levelled by B. Russell. Aune defends the rationalist position with an outline of the traditional arguments for the validity of intuitive knowledge. Chapter I terminates with a list of "Study Questions" and an annotated bibliography suggesting further readings. Chapter II considers classical (...) English empiricism, taking the thought of Hume as paradigmatic. There is a discussion of a priori and a posteriori knowledge as well as a section on the problems of induction and solipsism. Chapter III outlines the attempts of contemporary empiricists to eschew Hume's skepticism by envisioning the world as a construct of our sensory experiences. To avoid the solipsism still implicit in the latter position, a re-evaluation of Hume's theory of perception is offered. Wittgenstein and Strawson are briefly treated in this section. Chapter IV explains the pragmatist's attempt to reduce to the same untenable position the rationalist and empiricist views of the a priori. Chapter V concentrates on the pragmatic theory of justification and includes a treatment of N. Goodman's "new riddle of induction." Aune's book is a readable account of conflicting theories of knowledge and undergraduates should find it of value.--W. J. L. (shrink)

While the earlier work of Philip Kitcher, in particular The Advancement of Science (1993), continues to inform his more recent studies, such as Science, Truth, and Democracy (2001), there are significant "changes of opinion" from those articulated in the 1990s. One may even speak of two different stages in the configuration of epistemological proposals. An analysis, from an empiricist standpoint, of the shifts between one and the other indicates further evolution towards realist positions but much more modest ones than those (...) previously endorsed. Kitcher qualifies former individualism with an ensuing defence of pluralism, vital to his effort to develop a social epistemology. The present centrality of the achievement of a well-ordered science , one that promotes the common good within the context of democracies, encapsulates recent variation in the work of Kitcher and may be considered one of the author's most defendable proposals, even including its classically empiricist resonance. (shrink)

The present paper has two main aims. The first one is philosophical and is related to the general topic of this volume (Logical Empiricism and Pragmatism): I would like to draw attention to the fact that the issue of classical scientific determinism, despite being ‘metaphysical’ and thereby ‘nonsensical’ according to the Vienna Circle's ‘scientific world conception’, bothered philosophers, like William James and Charles Peirce, who were deeply involved in scientific practice. At the end of the paper I shall (...) raise the question of why it was so and what this fact may suggest about the relationship between science and metaphysics. The second main aim of this paper is historico-philosophical: in the time span between the late 1870s and by the turn of 1900 James (1842–1910) and Peirce (1839–1914) contributed repeatedly to the ongoing discussions about scientific determinism. In this paper I give a general overview of their positions based mainly on primary sources and I embed them into the broader context of the history of the concept of scientific determinism, dedicating special attention to their relationship with a particular French anti-deterministic tradition (Renouvier, Poincaré, Boutroux and Bergson). (shrink)

It is the task of this article to explore the status of experience within Jean-Luc Nancy’s exposition of freedom in order to discover his positioning of “the empirical” within philosophical discourse. It is my intention to (a) determine the coherence of the etymological work relating experience to the various manifestations of the sense of pir- (PIE base per-), (b) survey the role of “experience” in Nancy’s work on freedom, and (c) propose a reading of “the empirical” within Nancy’s work and, (...) by extension, philosophical discourse generally. Interested in “the empirical” in philosophy, not empiricism as a philosophy, Nancy seeks to revise empiricist notions of experience and freedom by means of what he refers to as “empirico-transcendentalism.” I shall argue that, in raising empirical concepts (givenness, seizing, testing, self-evidence, factuality, etc.) up to a “transcendental” level of inquiry, Nancy’s “empirico-transcendentalism” bears no fruitful relationship with “classical empiricism” itself. (shrink)

In this paper we discuss three examples of the appropriation of Kuhn’s ideas in philosophy of science. First we deal with classical logical empiricism. Perhaps somewhat surprisingly, the arch-logical empiricist Carnap considered Kuhn’s socio-historical account as a useful complementation, and not as a threat of the philosophy of science of logical empiricism. As a second example we consider the attempt of the so-called struc- turalist philosophy of science to provide a “rational reconstruction” of Kuhn’s approach. Finally, we (...) will deal with Friedman’s proposal to apply Kuhn’s ideas to the formulation of a modernized, historically enlightened Kantian approach that is based on the concept of a non-apodictic constitutive and historically moving a priori. (shrink)

According to a generally held impression, which has coalesced out of centuries of misinterpretation occasioned mostly by misguided charitable commentary, but often by outright hostility to his followers (and occasionally deliberate misrepresentation of his ideas), Aristotle is a teleological (as opposed to “mechanistic”) philosopher, responsible for a “qualitative” (as opposed to quantitative) approach to physics that is thereby inadequately mathematical, whose metaphysical speculations, as absorbing as they continue to be even for contemporary and otherwise ahistorical analytical metaphysicians, are essentially devoid (...) of the virtues that determine the success of our modern sciences, which are in fact the result of overthrowing Aristotelian views. Jean De Groot’s monograph Aristotle’s Empiricism: experience and mechanics in the 4th century BC should completely wipe away that impression, as she offers an extremely attractive interpretation of Aristotle and his methods to replace it. This is a groundbreaking and exciting work, brimming with insights won from close and careful readings of both well-known and obscure passages of the Aristotle Corpus. It is an instant classic of Aristotle studies that should not only change the image of Aristotle’s role in the history of science but also set the agenda for much of the future research in every area of his theoretical sciences, including metaphysics, mathematics, and natural science. Thus although my primary goal in this review is to summarize its contents and try to give an idea of the richness, depth, and breadth of de Groot’s project, I will mention at the end what I think are the most important ways that the research should be developed and extended—the next areas of Aristotle studies that should incorporate these views and methods. (shrink)

History of science students will want to read this book. Professor Zuo animates the life, career, and thought of SHEN Gua in this delightful historical, biographical work. SHEN Gua embodied the classical spirit of the scholar-official during the Song dynasty. Shen is the author of Brush Talks from Dream Brook, a canonical text in the study of the history of science in China and in the Notebook style of writing. Zuo argues, using a double-narrative structure, that Shen’s intellectual life (...) and career are fused in his scientific empiricism. This book is a complete study containing a List of Tables and Figures, three pages of Acknowledgments, a List of terms. (shrink)

Ernst Mach’s and Bertrand Russell’s philosophical outlooks contributed to shaping the philosophy of science of the 20th century. Mach is a philosophical interpreter of science, a positivist, and a historian, considering the general principles of science as condensed economic descriptions of observed facts. Russell held a view of the nature and relation of philosophy to science and to logic that can be described as essentially consistent. In this article, the aim is to explore how both Mach and Russell defended the (...) classical version of “Neutral Monism”. Since it was developed as a reaction to the mechanical philosophy of nature, Neural Monism also emerged along with scientific psychology in the late 19th century. The attempt in this article is to examine their versions of neutral monism and emphasize their differences and convergences. (shrink)

One important strand of Sellars’s attack on classical foundationalism from Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind is his thesis about the priority of is-talk over looks-talk. This thesis has been criticized extensively in recent years, and classical foundationalism has found several contemporary defenders. I revisit Sellars’s thesis and argue that is-talk is epistemically prior to looks-talk in a way that undermines classical foundationalism. The classical foundationalist claims that epistemic foundations are constituted by the agent’s set (...) of looks-judgments. However, I argue that only a subset of these looks-judgments are even candidates to serve as foundations for the agent’s empirical knowledge, and membership in this subset is determined by the agent’s theory of how the world is. Thus, the epistemic force of the looks-judgments in this subset is dependent on the agent’s theory of how the world is. This means that these looks-judgments aren’t foundational at all, as the agent’s theory of how the world is is epistemically is prior to the epistemic status of these looks-judgments. This is the sense in which judgments about how the world is are epistemically prior to judgments about how things look. This conclusion allows concrete elaboration of another of Sellars’s well-know claims: “I do wish to insist that the metaphor of ‘foundation’ is misleading in that it keeps us from seeing that if there is a logical dimension in which other empirical propositions rest on observation reports, there is another logical dimension in which the latter rest on the former”. (shrink)

How are we to connect the mechanist methodology used by Baglivi in his physiological treatises with the apparently strict empiricism that he promotes in his therapeutic work entitled Practice of Physick, reduc’d to the Ancient Way of Observations? In order to answer this question, we examine the methodological implications of the “history of diseases” that Baglivi promotes by using Bacon’s recommendations in the Novum organum. Then, we compare this result with the place that historians generally gave to Baglivi in (...) the medical context of that time: the place of a dogmatic and “iatromechanist” physician who was far from practical and therapeutic concerns. This confrontation allows us first to apprehend the polemical origin of the so-called “iatromechanism” as a historiographical label, and second, to question the preeminence of the role of observations in the shaping of the classical distinction between “rational” physicians and “empirical” ones. When Early Modern physicians use the dichotomy between “empirical” and “rationalist” in order to discredit what they perceive as oversimplification or dogmatism, there is most often a third group at stake: a group which is depicted as the providential and intelligent solution to sectarianism. For Baglivi, this third group would be an “Empirick rational sect.” The distinction between a medicina prima and a medicina secunda allows us to understand such an apparently paradoxical category. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 39.3 (2001) 447-448 [Access article in PDF] Brigitte Sassen, translator and editor. Kant's Early Critics: The Empiricist Critique of the Theoretical Philosophy. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Pp. ix + 331. Cloth, $54.95. Brigitte Sassen has translated and edited an extremely useful collection of texts dating from the years 1782 to 1789. Most of the texts were written by Kant's empirically minded (...) critics, but a few are the work of defenders of the Critical philosophy. Although some have been translated before—e.g., the notorious Feder/Garve review of the first Critique that prompted Kant's vitriolic response in the Prolegomena, the original Garve review that served as the basis of the Feder/Garve review, and Jacobi's critique of Kant's transcendental idealism—the entire anthology is the first ever to be devoted exclusively to English translations of some of the first reactions to and defenses of Kant's theoretical philosophy. All of this makes for an exciting event in Kant studies.Sassen identifies three major trends in Kant criticism that began in 1782. The first is the empiricist reaction to Kant's theoretical writings. Sassen considers the year 1789 the endpoint of this trend, since critical attention, she argues, shifted around that time to the rationalist reaction to Kant's writings. The initial wave of rationalist criticism, which constitutes the second trend, lasted until 1793. The third and final trend, she says, is the more forward-looking one that eventually blossomed into the systems of post-Kantian thought.Given such a wealth of material, Sassen has focused on Kant's empiricist critics, choosing the writers and topics most representative of the overall empiricist critique of the 1780s. The selections are divided into five sections. The first consists of the Feder/Garve and Garve reviews (from 1782 and 1783, respectively). Since these were the very first reviews of the Critique of Pure Reason, they helped to formulate many of the classic objections to it. For example, not only does the standard charge of Berkeleyan idealism originate in these reviews, but Feder and Garve also express concerns about Kant's ability to distinguish between reality and illusion if nothing in sensation itself determines the understanding to combine sensations in one way as opposed to another. The second section contains discussions of the Transcendental Aesthetic, including an early version of the "neglected alternative" charge more famously made by Trendelenburg in the nineteenth century. Hermann Andreas Pistorius, one of the most sophisticated of Kant's empiricist critics, argues that Kant has not ruled out the possibility that space and time are both forms of sensibility and properties of things in themselves. The third section (especially Jacobi's famous critique) explores the relationship between appearances and things in themselves, the problem of affection, and other topics touching on the very nature of Kant's idealism. The fourth section deals with various issues involving the table of categories. For example, Kant's critics had doubts about its completeness, and they were also puzzled as to how a priori concepts could be applied to ordinary experience. The fifth and final section looks at the contrast between empiricism and purism, that is, the overall adequacy of empiricist and Kantian approaches to issues in metaphysics and epistemology. Here we find Pistorius once again writing thoughtfully about the Critical philosophy, this time in response to Carl Christian [End Page 447] Erhard Schmid, the author of a dictionary for the "easier use" of Kant's writings that went through several editions in the late 1780s and 1790s.This brief sketch of Sassen's book gives only an inadequate idea of its richness and usefulness. Her introduction, which is thorough and informative, patiently sorts out the various players in the debates of the 1780s, outlines their arguments with Kant and one another, and even describes the nature of periodical publication in late eighteenth-century Germany. The editorial apparatus includes short biographies of the participants in the debates as well as the other authors mentioned throughout the book... (shrink)

This collection provides a thorough grounding in the philosophy of American pragmatism by examining the views of four principal thinkers - Charles S. Peirce, William James, John Dewey, and George Herbert Mead - on issues of central and enduring importance to life in human society. Pragmatism emerged as a characteristically American response to an inheritance of British empiricism. Presenting a radical reconception of the nature of experience, pragmatism represents a belief that ideas are not merely to be contemplated but (...) must be put into action, tested and refined through experience. At the same time, the American pragmatists argued for an emphasis on human community that would offset the deep-seated American bias in favor of individualism. Far from being a relic of the past, pragmatism offers a dynamic and substantive approach to questions of human conduct, social values, scientific inquiry, religious belief, and aesthetic experience that lie at the center of contemporary life. This volume is an invaluable introduction to a school of thought that remains vital, instructive, and provocative. (shrink)

The philosophy of logical empiricism has largely determined the direction and the range of problems of the philosophy, which later became known as analytic philosophy. Philosophers of the Vienna Circle and their followers had to dissociate their program from other philosophies predominant in the early twentieth century (particularly from neo-Kantianism and neo-Hegelianism). As a part of this task the revision of the concepts of classical epistemology, including the concept of apriori was carried out. The paper examines how, in (...) the framework of logical empiricism, apriority became identified with analyticity, and discusses alternative theories of the a priori, which resulted of this identification. (shrink)