Abstract No one doubts the radically transformative power of contemporary technologies and technoscientific practices over the material dimensions of our experience. Yet with the coming of all the exciting changes and the promise of ever better material conditions, what kinds of lives are we implicitly being encouraged to live? One would think that current philosophical studies of technology would make this a central question, and indeed, a few have done so. But many do not. Following the lead of thinkers who (...) have made the so-called “empirical turn,” many demur, usually with some remarks about the question being too abstract and general—too likely to suck us into utopian or dystopian speculations—when what is called for are truly informative and “concrete” studies of what it is like to be with actual technologies. My paper considers the good life question—and the philosophical price one pays for not asking it—in light of Auguste Comte’s theory of the three stages of intellectual development. Comte’s depiction of the third, positive scientific stage is much less dated than one might assume. In fact, it is useful to think of our own era as arriving with a Comtean story attached, that is, a story of life in the “developed” world becoming ever better thanks to modern science and technology. Because this story now seems less deserving of the unqualified optimism Comte had about it, I argue that thinking of our own experience as permeated by Comte’s conception of third-stage life gives us a fresh way to consider our misgivings about this default position without either lapsing into utopian or dystopian speculation, or confining one’s focus to purely postphenomenological or pragmatic studies of technoscientific life as it now “appears.” Content Type Journal Article Category Research Article Pages 1-25 DOI 10.1007/s13347-011-0047-2 Authors Robert C. Scharff, Department of Philosophy, University of New Hampshire, Durham, NH 03824-3574, USA Journal Philosophy & Technology Online ISSN 2210-5441 Print ISSN 2210-5433. (shrink)

The Cartesian concept of nature, which has determined modern thinking until the present time, has become obsolete. It shall be shown that Hegel's objective-idealistic conception of nature discloses, in comparison to that of Descartes, new perspectives for the comprehension of nature and that this, in turn, results in possibilities of actualizing Hegel's philosophy of nature. If the argumentation concerning philosophy of nature is intended to catch up with the concrete Being-of-nature and to meet it in its concretion, then this is (...) impossible for the finite spirit in a strictly a priori sense – this is the thesis supported here which is not at all close to Hegel. As the argumentation rather has to consider the conditions of realization concerning the Being-of-nature, too, it is compelled to take up empirical elements – concerning the organism, for instance, system-theoretical aspects, physical and chemical features of the nervous system, etc. With that, on the one hand, empirical-scientific premises are assumed (e.g. the lawlikeness of nature), which on the other hand become (now close to Hegel) possibly able to be founded in the frame of a Hegelian-idealistic conception. In this sense, a double strategy of empirical-scientific concretization and objective-idealistic foundation is followed up, which represents the methodical basic principle of the developed considerations. In the course of the undertaking, the main aspects of the whole Hegelian design concerning the philosophy of nature are considered – space and time, mass and motion, force and law of nature, the organism, the pro-blem of evolution, psychic being – as well as Hegel's basic thesis concerning the philosophy of nature, that therein a tendency toward coherence and idealization manifests itself in the sense of a (categorically) gradually rising succession of nature: from the separateness of space to the ideality of sensation. In the sense of the double strategy of concretization and foundation it is shown that on the one hand possibilities of philosophical penetration concerning actual empirical-scientific results are opened, and on the other hand – in turn – a re-interpretation of Hegel's theorem on the basis of physical, evolution-theoretical and system-theoretical argumentation also becomes possible. In this mutual crossing-over and elucidation of empirical and Hegelian argumentation not only do perspectives of a new comprehension of nature become visible, but also, at the same time – as an essential consequence of this methodical principle – thoughts on the possibilities of actualizing Hegel's philosophy of nature. (shrink)

Scientific discovery is often regarded as romantic and creative - and hence unanalyzable - whereas the everyday process of verifying discoveries is sober and more suited to analysis. Yet this fascinating exploration of how scientific work proceeds argues that however sudden the moment of discovery may seem, the discovery process can be described and modeled. Using the methods and concepts of contemporary information-processing psychology (or cognitive science) the authors develop a series of artificial-intelligence programs that can simulate the (...) human thought processes used to discover scientific laws. The programs - BACON, DALTON, GLAUBER, and STAHL - are all largely data-driven, that is, when presented with series of chemical or physical measurements they search for uniformities and linking elements, generating and checking hypotheses and creating new concepts as they go along. "Scientific Discovery examines the nature of scientific research and reviews the arguments for and against a normative theory of discovery; describes the evolution of the BACON programs, which discover quantitative empirical laws and invent new concepts; presents programs that discover laws in qualitative and quantitative data; and ties the results together, suggesting how a combined and extended program might find research problems, invent new instruments, and invent appropriate problem representations. Numerous prominent historical examples of discoveries from physics and chemistry are used as tests for the programs and anchor the discussion concretely in the history of science. Pat Langley is an Associate Professor in the Department of Information and Computer Science at the University of California, Irvine.Herbert Simon is a Professor in the Departments of Psychology, Computer Science, and Philosophy at Carnegie-Mellon University. Gary L. Bradshaw is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology and Institute of Cognitive Science at the University of Colorado, Boulder. Jan M. Zytkow is an Associate Professor in the Computer Science Department at Wichita State University. (shrink)

The typical empirical approach to studying consciousness holds that we can only observe the neural correlates of experiences, not the experiences themselves. In this paper we argue, in contrast, that experiences are concrete physical phenomena that can causally interact with other phenomena, including observers. Hence, experiences can be observed and scientifically modelled. We propose that the epistemic gap between an experience and a scientific model of its neural mechanisms stems from the fact that the model is merely a (...) theoretical construct based on observations, and distinct from the concrete phenomenon it models, namely the experience itself. In this sense, there is a gap between any natural phenomenon and its scientific model. On this approach, a neuroscientific theory of the constitutive mechanisms of an experience is literally a model of the subjective experience itself. We argue that this metatheoretical framework provides a solid basis for the empirical study of consciousness. (shrink)

This collection of essays examines the ways in which disputes and controversies about the application of scientific knowledge are resolved. Four concrete examples of public controversy are considered in detail: the efficacy of Laetrile, the classification of homosexuality as a disease, the setting of safety standards in the workplace, and the utility of nuclear energy as a source of power. The essays in this volume show that debates about these cases are not confined to matters of empirical fact. (...) Rather, as is seen with most scientific and technical controversies, they focus on and are structured by complex ethical, economic, and political interests. Drs. Engelhardt and Caplan have brought together a distinguished group of scholars from the sciences and humanities, who sketch a theory of scientific controversy and attempt to provide recommendations about the ways in which both scientists and the public ought to seek more informed resolutions of highly contentious issues in science and technology. Scientific Controversies is offered as a contribution to the better understanding of the roles of both science and nonscientific interests in disputes and controversies pertaining to science and technology. (shrink)

Moral rationalism has long been an attractive position within moral philosophy. However, among empirical-minded philosophers, it is widely dismissed as scientifically untenable. In this essay, I argue that moral rationalism’s lack of uptake in the empirical domain is due to the widespread supposition that moral rationalists must hold that moral judgments and actions are produced by rational capacities. But this construal is mistaken: moral rationalism’s primary concern is not with the relationship between moral judgments and rational capacities per (...) se, but rather with developing a conception objectivity normativity that avoids Platonism. In light of this, I develop an alternative approach to translating moral rationalism into the empirical domain that builds on the common rationalist view that normative requirements are explained by the relationship between agents and the social structures and practices in which they are embedded. I propose that this social conception of normativity can be translated into a scientific framework by interpreting it as a claim about the importance of constraint-based explanation when accounting for norm-governed behavior. In order to develop this point more concretely and show that it is empirically tractable, I turn to research on macaque social organization that highlights the ways in which normative standards are generated by empirically observable social structures. The insights garnered from the macaque case allow me to then locate moral rationalism’s core claims about the relationship between morality and the standards of practical rationality within an empirically plausible framework. (shrink)

Traditional Chinese Medicine is often considered an “experiential medicine.” As such, it is seen as in need of conceptual elevation by scientific experiments and theorization, which actualize and undermine scientized forms of TCM. This essay argues that the predicaments of TCM are thoroughly modern and must be understood within the “Modern Constitution” in which the production and proliferation of asymmetries are both constitutive of and obscured by modern knowledge production. This essay dislodges these asymmetries through transdisciplinary engagements with TCM. (...) This transdisciplinary approach, as I will show, allows us to animate the experiential in order to unsettle the relations between the empirical and the conceptual, the concrete and the abstract, and the contingent and the universal. Most importantly, it enables reconsiderations of the experiential and the empirical as conditions for thinking, doing, and being that insist on immanence, move analogously, and travel sideways. Thus, rather than wanting conceptual uplifting, TCM as an experiential medicine could not only work as a critique of the Modern Constitution but also force a conceptual disruption from within by insisting on the empirical as conceptual. (shrink)

This chapter relocates the debate about the theoretical virtues to the empirical level and argues that the question of whether the virtues (and what virtues, if any) have epistemic import is best answered empirically, through an examination of actual scientific theories and hypotheses in the history of science. As a concrete example of this approach, the chapter discusses a case study from the mid-nineteenth-century debate about the transmissibility of puerperal fever. It argues that this case shows that the (...) virtues are at least sometimes epistemic, but also that neither scientific realists nor anti-realists get it quite right: the virtues, even if epistemic, are not necessarily truth-conducive, but neither are they merely pragmatic. It also argues that the discussion of puerperal fever shows that the virtue question, as it is currently featured in the scientific realism debate, ought to be reformulated. We should examine not just whether a given scientific theory has virtues or not, but rather how debates among competing theories, all of which have some virtues, get resolved. (shrink)

There are no signs of waning interest in William James's classic work, The Principles of Psychology as we enter the second century after its original publication in 1890. I think the time is right for undertaking the task of reconstructing his psychology, that is, his concrete or phenomenal findings, in light of his radically empiricist philosophical insights. The immediate problem for such a reappropriation is that James sharply distinguished between scientifically neutral descriptions of reality, such as are found in Principles, (...) and metaphysical or epistemological reconstructions of such findings, such as he undertakes in his philosophy of radical empiricism. In this essay I will show that James's profound ambivalence about whether we find or create experienced objects must be explicitly raised and resolved before the concrete methodology and findings of Principles can be fully integrated into his radically empirical hermeneutics of praxis and thus constitute his concrete analysis of experience. (shrink)

There are no signs of waning interest in William James's classic work, The Principles of Psychology as we enter the second century after its original publication in 1890. I think the time is right for undertaking the task of reconstructing his psychology, that is, his concrete or phenomenal findings, in light of his radically empiricist philosophical insights. The immediate problem for such a reappropriation is that James sharply distinguished between scientifically neutral descriptions of reality, such as are found in Principles, (...) and metaphysical or epistemological reconstructions of such findings, such as he undertakes in his philosophy of radical empiricism. In this essay I will show that James's profound ambivalence about whether we find or create experienced objects must be explicitly raised and resolved before the concrete methodology and findings of Principles can be fully integrated into his radically empirical hermeneutics of praxis and thus constitute his concrete analysis of experience. (shrink)

Attempts by 20th century philosophers of science to define inductive concepts and methods concerning the support provided to scientific theories by empirical data have been unsuccessful. Although 20th century philosophers of science largely ignored statistical methods for testing theories, when they did address them they argued against rather than for their use. In contrast, this study demonstrates that traditional statistical methods used for validating computer simulation models provide tests of the scientific theories that those models may embody. (...) This study shows that these statistical methods are applicable regardless of whether the scientific theory or model is deterministic, stochastic, or chaos-based in nature. Traditional statistical methods, such as hypothesis testing, test theories by providing measures of their goodness-of-fit with the portion of the world the theories describe. Nothing more is needed to portray the agreement between theory and the world. Furthermore, the statistical measures of goodness-of-fit are not ampliative inductive measures. Therefore, the ultimate value and direction of the 20 th century ampliative inductive program within philosophy of science is thrown into question. This study also suggests that advanced statistical, visualization, and hybrid quantitative qualitative methods hold promise for offering scientists additional methods for testing scientific theories through validating their computer model representations. As a prerequisite to the above discussions, this study proves that scientific theories, when applied to concrete physical systems, can indeed be represented by computer models. (shrink)

In this dissertation, I present a novel account of the components that have a peculiar epistemic role in our scientific inquiries, since they contribute to establishing a form of coordination. The issue of coordination is a classic epistemic problem concerning how we justify our use of abstract conceptual tools to represent concrete phenomena. For instance, how could we get to represent universal gravitation as a mathematical formula or temperature by means of a numerical scale? This problem is particularly pressing (...) when justification for using these abstract tools comes, in part or entirely, from knowledge which is not independent from them, thus leading to threats of circularity. Achieving coordination between some abstract conceptual tools and the concrete phenomena that they are supposed to represent is usually a complex process, which involves several epistemic components. Some of these components eventually provide stable conditions for applying those abstract representations to concrete phenomena. It is in this sense of providing certain conditions of applicability that different philosophical traditions, as well as some contemporary reappraisals, view these components as constitutive or a priori. In this work, I present a new gradualist, contextualist, and relational approach to understand these constitutive components of scientific inquiry. It is gradualist inasmuch as the degree to which some component is constitutive depends on three quantifiable features: quasi-axiomaticity, generative potential, and empirical shielding. Since the quantification of these three features impinges on the history and practice of using these components in a scientific context, my approach is a contextualist one. Finally, my approach is relational in a double sense: first, it identifies ordinal relationships among epistemic components with respect to their constitutive character; second, these relationships are relative to a scientific framework of inquiry. After introducing my account and a classic example of constitutively a priori principles, i.e., Friedman’s (2001) analysis of Newtonian mechanics, I turn to my own case studies to demonstrate the advantages of my approach. Firstly, I discuss Okasha’s (2018) view of endogenization as a pervasive theoretical strategy in evolutionary biology and suggest that the constitutive character of the core Darwinian principles progressively increases with endogenization. Secondly, I apply a conceptual distinction between two varieties or scopes of coordination – general coordination and coordination in measurement – to Ohm’s work on electrical conductivity. This distinction allows me to pinpoint to what extent components along different dimensions (e.g., instrumentation, measurement, theorising, etc.) were constitutive of the forms of coordination which Ohm relied on. Thirdly, I discuss the epistemic function of the Hardy-Weinberg principle in the history and practice of population genetics. I assess this principle in terms of my account and identify approximation and stability as two components that are highly constitutive, in that they contribute to justifying its use in population genetics. Finally, applying my account to these case studies enables me to identify at least three qualitatively different types of constitutive components: domain-specific theoretical principles, material components, and domain-independent assumptions underlying reasoning abilities. In the light of my results, I draw some general conclusions on epistemic justification and scientific knowledge. (shrink)

For historical epistemology to succeed, it must adopt a defensible set of categories to characterise scientific activity over time. In historically orientated philosophy of science during the twentieth century, the original categories of theory and observation were supplemented or replaced by categories like paradigm, research program and research tradition. Underlying all three proposals was talk about conceptual systems and conceptual structures, attributed to individual scientists or to research communities, however there has been little general agreement on the nature of (...) these structures. Recent experimental research in cognitive science has considerably refined the theory of concepts. Drawing upon the results of that research, philosophers can construct more concrete and empirically defensible representations of conceptual systems. I will suggest that this research supports a modest and useful sense of both normal and revolutionary science, not as epistemological continuities or discontinuities, but as particular patterns of conceptual change. (shrink)

Appeals to human nature are ubiquitous, yet historically many have proven ill-founded. Why? How might frequent errors be remedied towards building a more robust and reliable scientific study of human nature? Our aim is neither to advance specific scientific or philosophical claims about human nature, nor to proscribe or eliminate such claims. Rather, we articulate through examples the types of errors that frequently arise in this field, towards improving the rigor of the scientific and social studies. We (...) seek to analyze such claims rhetorically, cognitively, and epistemically. Namely, how do we think about human nature? Claims about human nature, we show, are susceptible to widely exhibited deficits in cognitive tendencies such as framing, confirmation bias, satisficing, and teleological perspectives, as well as motivated reasoning. Such missteps foster methodological, empirical, and psychological mistakes and biases. Specifically, they promote the naturalizing error, whereby cultural ideology and values are projected onto an apparently objective description of nature. Concrete remedies are offered to aid scientists in conducting and reporting their research goals and findings more responsibly and effectively (relevant also to educators and other communicators who convey these findings publicly). Recommendations include acknowledging that human nature claims are often context-dependent, seeking multiple critical perspectives, and explicitly labeling uncertainties. (shrink)

In the last two sections of Structure, Thomas Kuhn first develops his famous threefold conception of the incommensurability of scientific paradigms and, subsequently, a conception of scientific progress as growth of empirical strength. The latter conception seems to be at odds with the former in that semantic incommensurability appears to imply the existence of situations where scientific progress in Kuhns sense can no longer exist. In contrast to this seeming inconsistency of Kuhns conception, we will try (...) to show in this study that the semantic incommensurability of scientific terms appears to be fully compatible with scientific progress. Our argumentation is based on an improved version of the formalization of Kuhns conception as developed in the 1970s by Joseph Sneed and Wolfgang Stegmüller: In order to be comparable, incommensurable theories need the specification of relations that refer to the concrete ontologies of these theories and involve certain truth claims. The original structuralist account of reduction fails to provide such relations, because (1) it is too structural and (2) it is too wide. Moreover, the original structuralist account also fails to cover important cases of incommensurable theories in being too restrictive for them. In this paper, we develop an improved notion of “reduction” that allows us to avoid these shortcomings by means of a more flexible device for the formalization of (partially reductive) relations between theories. For that purpose, we use a framework of rigid logic, i.e., logic that is based on a fixed collection of objects. (shrink)

While the pursuitworthiness of philosophical ideas has changed over time, philosophical practice and methodology have not kept pace. The worthiness of a philosophical pursuit includes not only the ideas and objectives one pursues but also the methods with which one pursues them. In this paper, we articulate how empirical approaches benefit philosophy of science, particularly advocating for the use of qualitative methods for understanding the social and normative aspects of scientific inquiry. After situating qualitative methods within empirical (...) philosophy of science, we discuss how to adapt these traditionally sociological methods to empirically inform philosophical questions. Our aim is to normalize and legitimize qualitative methods for philosophical purposes and discuss how they can elucidate descriptive and normative components of scientific practice in a more generalizable non-idealized manner. We contend that qualitative methods are particularly well suited to philosophical interest in the social norms of science, their achievability, and their mutability. Furthermore, unlike more historical case studies in philosophy, qualitative methods enable more confidence in generalizability, albeit limited, from a concrete sample to a larger class. We conclude by addressing anxieties about the distinctness of empirical philosophy of science from social epistemology and from sociology of science. (shrink)

After a brief comparison of Aliseda’s account with different approaches to abductive reasoning, I relate abduction, as studied by Aliseda, to idealization, a notion which also occupies a very important role in scientific change, as well as to different ways of dealing with the growth of scientific knowledge understood as a particular kind of non-monotonic process. A particularly interesting kind of abductive reasoning could be that of finding an appropriate concretization case for a theory, originally revealed as (...) extraordinarily success-ful but later discovered to be strictly false or only approximately or ideally true. I try to show this with the example of the Kepler-Newton relation. At the end of the paper, I give criteria in order to construe abduc-tive explanations in correspondence with a reasonable account of empirical progress. (shrink)

Proponents of the explanatory indispensability argument for mathematical platonism maintain that claims about mathematical entities play an essential explanatory role in some of our best scientific explanations. They infer that the existence of mathematical entities is supported by way of inference to the best explanation from empirical phenomena and therefore that there are the same sort of empirical grounds for believing in mathematical entities as there are for believing in concrete unobservables such as quarks. I object that (...) this inference depends on a false view of how abductive considerations mediate the transfer of empirical support. More specifically, I argue that even if inference to the best explanation is cogent, and claims about mathematical entities play an essential explanatory role in some of our best scientific explanations, it doesn’t follow that the empirical phenomena that license those explanations also provide empirical support for the claim that mathematical entities exist. (shrink)

This chapter presents a new semantics for inductive empirical knowledge. The epistemic agent is represented concretely as a learner who processes new inputs through time and who forms new beliefs from those inputs by means of a concrete, computable learning program. The agent’s belief state is represented hyper-intensionally as a set of time-indexed sentences. Knowledge is interpreted as avoidance of error in the limit and as having converged to true belief from the present time onward. Familiar topics are re-examined (...) within the semantics, such as inductive skepticism, the logic of discovery, Duhem’s problem, the articulation of theories by auxiliary hypotheses, the role of serendipity in scientific knowledge, Fitch’s paradox, deductive closure of knowability, whether one can know inductively that one knows inductively, whether one can know inductively that one does not know inductively, and whether expert instruction can spread common inductive knowledge—as opposed to mere, true belief—through a community of gullible pupils. (shrink)

Contents: PART 1. MODELS IN SCIENTIFIC PROCESSES. Joseph AGASSI: Why there is no theory of models. Ma??l??gorzata CZARNOCKA: Models and symbolic nature of knowledge. Adam GROBLER: The representational and the non-representational in models of scientific theories. Stephan HARTMANN: Models as a tool for the theory construction; some strategies of preliminary physics. William HERFEL: Nonlinear dynamical models as concrete construction. Elzbieta KA??L??USZY??N??SKA: Styles of thinking. Stathis PSILLOS: The cognitive interplay between theories and models: the case of 19th century optics. (...) PART 2. TOOLS OF SCIENCE. Nancy D. CARTWRIGHT, Towfic SHOMAR, Maricio SUAREZ: The tool-box of science. Javier ECHEVERRIA: The four contexts of scientific activity. Katline HAVAS: Continuity and change; kinds of negation in scientific progress. Matthias KAISER: The independence of scientific phenomena. W??l??adys??l??aw KRAJEWSKI: Scientific meta-philosophy. Ilkka NIINILUOTO: The emergence if scientific specialities: six models. Leszek NOWAK: Antirealism, realism and idealization. Rinat M. NUGAYEV: Classic, modern and postmodern scientific unification. Veikko RANTALA: Translation and scientific change. Gerhard SCHURZ: Theories and their applications - a case of nonmonotonic reasoning. Witold STRAWI??N??SKI: The unity of science today. Vardan TOROSIAN: Are the ethic and logic of science compatible. PART 3. UNSHARP APPROACHES IN SCIENCE. Ernest W. ADAMS: Problems and prospects in a theory of inexact first-order theories. Wolfgang BALZER and Gerhard ZOUBEK: On the comparison of approximative empirical claims. Gianpierro CATTANEO, Maria Luisa DALLA CHIARA, Roberto GIUNTINI: The unsharp approaches to quantum theory. Theo A.F. KUIPERS: Falsification versus efficient truth approximation. Bernhard LAUTH: Limiting decidability and probability. Jaros??l??aw PYKACZ: Many-valued logics in foundations of quantum mechanics. Roman R. ZAPATRIN: Logico-algebraic approach to spacetime quantization. (shrink)

This paper considers the relation between philosophical discussions of, and social-scientific research into popular beliefs about, distributive justice. The first part sets out the differences and tensions between the two perspectives, identifying considerations which tend to lead adherents of each discipline to regard the other as irrelevant to its concerns. The second discusses four reasons why social scientists might benefit from philosophy: problems in identifying inconsistency, the fact that non-justice considerations might underlie distributive judgments, the way in which different (...) principles of justice can yield the same concrete distributive judgments, and the ambiguity of key terms. The third part distinguishes and evaluates three versions of the claim that normative theorising about justice can profit from empirical research into public opinion: that its findings are food for thought, that they amount to feasibility constraints, and that they are constitutive of normatively justified principles of justice. The view that popular opinion about justice has a strongly constitutive role to play in justifying principles of distributive justice stricto sensu is rejected, but it is argued that what the people think (and what they can reasonably be expected to come to think) on distributive matters can be an important factor for the political theorist to take into account, for reasons of legitimacy, or feasibility, or both. (shrink)

lnek je zamen na vybran implikace mezi sociologickou hermeneutikou (pstup) a analzou metafor (analytick koncept). Konkrtn je een vztah lingvistickho kontextu textu (jako empirickho korpusu) a vyplvajcch (skrytch) implikac, kter jsou odhaliteln dky kontextu metaforickho vznamu. Uren vztah me pomoci k zpesnn role sociologick hermeneutiky v socilnch vdch, konkrtn k monosti volby v kvalitativnch metodch skrze kritickou metodologii. Vstupem lnku je konstatovn siln vazby mezi tvorbou kontextulnch metafor a postavenm polysmickho slova ve vt, kter dky tomu tvo zkladnm referenn objekt (...) empirickho korpusu pro samotnou analzu. (shrink)

In this article, I develop three conceptual innovations within the area of formal metatheory, and present a computer program, called Reconstructor, that implements those developments. The first development consists in a methodology for testing formal reconstructions of scientific theories, which involves checking both whether translations of paradigmatically successful applications into models satisfy the formalisation of the laws, and also whether unsuccessful applications do not. I show how Reconstructor can help carry this out, since it allows the end-user to specify (...) a formal language, input axioms and models formulated in that language, and then ask if the models satisfy the axioms. The second innovation is the introduction of incomplete models (for which the denotation of some terms is missing) into scientific metatheory, in order to represent cases of missing information. I specify the paracomplete semantics built into Reconstructor to deal with sentences where denotation failures occur. The third development consists in a new way of explicating the structuralist notion of a determination method, by equating them with algorithms. This allows determination methods to be loaded into Reconstructor and then executed within a model to find out the value of a previously non-denoting term (i.e. it allows the formal reconstruction to make predictions). This, in turn, can help test the reconstruction in a different way. Finally, I conclude with some suggestions about additional uses the program may have. (shrink)

Scientific realism driven by inference to the best explanation (IBE) takes empirically confirmed objects to exist, independent, pace empiricism, of whether those objects are observable or not. This kind of realism, it has been claimed, does not need probabilistic reasoning to justify the claim that these objects exist. But I show that there are scientific contexts in which a non-probabilistic IBE-driven realism leads to a puzzle. Since IBE can be applied in scientific contexts in which empirical (...) confirmation has not yet been reached, realists will in these contexts be committed to the existence of empirically unconfirmed objects. As a consequence of such commitments, because they lack probabilistic features, the possible empirical confirmation of those objects is epistemically redundant with respect to realism. (shrink)

We give a brief overview of the evolution of mathematics, starting from antiquity, through Renaissance, to the 19th century, and the culmination of the train of thought of history’s greatest thinkers that lead to the grand unification of geometry and algebra. The goal of this paper is not a complete formal description of any particular theoretical framework, but to show how extremisation of mathematical rigor in requiring everything be drivable directly from first principles without any arbitrary assumptions actually leads to (...) relaxing the computational difficulty along with maximal conceptual clarity. With this, we consider a revision of the foundations of elementary geometry and algebra based on the work of Grassmann and Clifford and apply it to conceptual and practical problems of past and present modern mathematics and mathematical physics. (shrink)

We report the results of a study that investigated the views of researchers working in seven scientific disciplines and in history and philosophy of science in regard to four hypothesized dimensions of scientific realism. Among other things, we found that natural scientists tended to express more strongly realist views than social scientists, that history and philosophy of science scholars tended to express more antirealist views than natural scientists, that van Fraassen’s characterization of scientific realism failed to cluster (...) with more standard characterizations, and that those who endorsed the pessimistic induction were no more or less likely to endorse antirealism. (shrink)

Ethicists differ considerably in their reasons for using empirical data. This paper presents a brief overview of four traditional approaches to the use of empirical data: “the prescriptive applied ethicists,” “the theorists,” “the critical applied ethicists,” and “the particularists.” The main aim of this paper is to introduce a fifth approach of more recent date (i.e. “integrated empirical ethics”) and to offer some methodological directives for research in integrated empirical ethics. All five approaches are presented in (...) a table for heuristic purposes. The table consists of eight columns: “view on distinction descriptive-prescriptive sciences,” “location of moral authority,” “central goal(s),” “types of normativity,” “use of empirical data,” “method,” “interaction empirical data and moral theory,” and “cooperation with descriptive sciences.” Ethicists can use the table in order to identify their own approach. Reflection on these issues prior to starting research in empirical ethics should lead to harmonization of the different scientific disciplines and effective planning of the final research design. Integrated empirical ethics (IEE) refers to studies in which ethicists and descriptive scientists cooperate together continuously and intensively. Both disciplines try to integrate moral theory and empirical data in order to reach a normative conclusion with respect to a specific social practice. IEE is not wholly prescriptive or wholly descriptive since IEE assumes an interdepence between facts and values and between the empirical and the normative. The paper ends with three suggestions for consideration on some of the future challenges of integrated empirical ethics. (shrink)

Against the well-known objection that in the history of science there are many theories that are successful but false, Psillos offers a three-pronged defense of scientific realism as the best explanation for the success of science. Focusing on these, I criticize Psillos’ defense, arguing that each prong is weakened when we recognize that according to realist rebuttals of the underdetermination argument and versions of empiricism, realists are committed to accounting for the explanatory success of theories, not their mere (...) class='Hi'>empirical adequacy or instrumental reliability. I conclude by indicating how ‘explanationist’ realism might be recast to accommodate my arguments. (shrink)

The so‐called “empirical turn” in bioethics gave rise to extensive theoretical and methodological debates and has significantly shaped the research landscape from two decades ago until the present day. Attentive observers of the evolution of the bioethical research field now notice a new trend towards the inclusion of data science methods for the treatment of ethical research questions. This new research domain of “digital bioethics” encompasses both studies replacing (or complementing) socio‐empirical research on bioethical topics (“empirical digital (...) bioethics”) and argumentative approaches towards normative questions in the healthcare domain (“argumentative digital bioethics”). This article draws on insights taken from the debate on the “empirical turn” for sounding out perspectives for the newly developing field of “digital bioethics.” We particularly discuss the disciplinary boundaries, chances and challenges, and potentially undesirable developments of the research field. The article closes with concrete suggestions on which debates need to be initiated and which measures need to be taken so that the path forward of “digital bioethics” will be a scientific success. (shrink)

This paper explores the options available to the anti-realist to defend a Quinean empirical under-determination thesis using examples of dualities. I first explicate a version of the empirical under-determination thesis that can be brought to bear on theories of contemporary physics. Then I identify a class of examples of dualities that lead to empirical under-determination. But I argue that the resulting under-determination is benign, and is not a threat to a cautious scientific realism. Thus dualities are (...) not new ammunition for the anti-realist. The paper also shows how the number of possible interpretative options about dualities that have been considered in the literature can be reduced, and suggests a general approach to scientific realism that one may take dualities to favour. (shrink)

The scientific realism debate in philosophy of science raises some intriguing methodological issues. Scientific realism posits a link between a scientific theory's observational and referential success. This opens the possibility of testing the thesis empirically, by searching for evidence of such a link in the record of theories put forward in the history of science. Many realist philosophers working today propose case study methodology as a way of carrying out such a test. This article argues that a (...) qualitative method such as case study methodology is not adequate for this purpose, for two reasons: to test scientific realism is to pose an effects‐of‐causes question, and observational and referential success are quantities that theories possess to a greater or lesser degree. The article concludes that an empirical test of scientific realism requires a quantitative method. (shrink)

A scientific theory, in order to be accepted as a part of theoretical scientific knowledge, must satisfy both empirical and non-empirical requirements, the latter having to do with simplicity, unity, explanatory character, symmetry, beauty. No satisfactory, generally accepted account of such non-empirical requirements has so far been given. Here, a proposal is put forward which, it is claimed, makes a contribution towards solving the problem. This proposal concerns unity of physical theory. In order to satisfy (...) the non-empirical requirement of unity, a physical theory must be such that the same laws govern all possible phenomena to which the theory applies. Eight increasingly demanding versions of this requirement are distinguished. Some implications for other non-empirical requirements, and for our understanding of science are indicated. (shrink)

The aim of the article is to outline an understanding of mediatization that might be a reference point for empirical research in various fields and contexts of present media cultures and societies. Therefore, present ideas and approaches of theorizing media-tization like for example the concept of the media logic are discussed critically. Based on this, an understanding of mediatization is outlined that focuses on the media as modifiers of communication. Such a reflection makes it possible to substantiate mediatization research (...) as the empirical investigation of mediatized worlds. (shrink)

In a 1993 paper, I argued that empirical treatments of the epistemologyused by scientists in experimental work are too abstract in practice tocounter relativist efforts to explain the outcome of scientificcontroversies by reference to sociological forces. This was because, atthe rarefied level at which the methodology of scientists is treated byphilosophers, multiple mutually inconsistent instantiations of theprinciples described by philosophers are employed by contestingscientists. These multiple construals change within a scientificcommunity over short time frames, and these different versions ofscientific (...) methodology can determine the outcome of a controversy. Iillustrated with a comparatively detailed analysis of the methodologyused by biologists debating the existence of an entity called thebacterial mesosome between the mid-1950s and the mid-1970s. This 1993piece has drawn several critiques in the philosophical literature. Inthis present piece I respond to these critiques and argue that they failto address the core argument of the original paper, and I reflectfurther on the methodologies of philosophers of science pursuingempirical or `naturalistic' epistemology. (shrink)

We argue that the societal consequences of the scientific realism debate, in the context of science-to-public communication are often overlooked and careful theorizing about it needs further empirical groundwork. As such, we conducted a survey experiment with 130 academics (from physics, chemistry, and biology) and 137 science communicators. We provided them with an 11-item questionnaire probing their views of scientific realism and related concepts. Contra theoretical expectations, we find that (a) science communicators are generally more inclined towards (...) scientific antirealism when compared to scientists in the same academic fields, though both groups show an inclination towards realism and (b) academics who engage in more theoretical work are not less (or more) realist than experimentalists. Lastly, (c), we fail to find differences with respect to selective realism but find that science communicators are significantly less epistemically voluntarist compared to their academic counterparts. Overall, our results provide first empirical evidence on the views of scientists and science communicators on scientific realism, with some results running contra to the theoretical expectations, opening up new empirical and theoretical research directions. (shrink)

It is a common view among philosophers of science that theoretical virtues (also known as epistemic or cognitive values), such as simplicity and consistency, play an important role in scientific practice. In this article, I set out to study the role that theoretical virtues play in scientific practice empirically. I apply the methods of data science, such as text mining and corpus analysis, to study large corpora of scientific texts in order to uncover patterns of usage. These (...) patterns of usage, in turn, might shed some light on the role that theoretical virtues play in scientific practice. Overall, the results of this empirical study suggest that scientists invoke theoretical virtues explicitly, albeit rather infrequently, when they talk about models (less than 30%), theories (less than 20%), and hypotheses (less than 15%) in their published works. To the extent that they are mentioned in scientific publications, the results of this study suggest that accuracy, consistency, and simplicity are the theoretical virtues that scientists invoke more frequently than the other theoretical virtues tested in this study. Interestingly, however, depending on whether they talk about hypotheses, theories, or models, scientists may invoke one of those theoretical virtues more than the others. (shrink)

[First paragraph] A widespread image of science is founded upon a basic dichotomy: there are empirical facts, obtained by observation and experiment, on the one hand, and theories and explanations, obtained by reasoning, speculation and creativity, on the other. Whether scientific reasoning should take the inductive path, or the hypothetical-deductive approach, has long been a mat-ter of debate, but the basic dichotomist picture has been left untouched. And there is the concomitant idea that theories may come and go, (...) while facts form the stable, unshaken and ever growing foundation of science. This picture is often advanced in science education, for example in experimental physics courses and their textbooks. Additionally, the use of lan-guage reinforces that picture: we say that we "discover" facts (such as the cosmic micro-wave background, the variability of species), while we create, form and eventually discard theories (like the standard model of elementary particles, string theory, theories of develop-mental biology and so on). Something that has been "discovered" is attributed a different status than something that has been created and formed. (shrink)

Some desiderata for scientific confirmation are formulated in the light of a tentative scientific world view. Bayesian confirmation theories generically satisfy most of these desiderata, but one of them, "the strategy of ascent," fits best in a tempered personalist version of Bayesianism. There are both empirical and rational components, dialectically combined, in tempered personalism. The question of explanation vs. prediction is treated in a Bayesian manner, and it is found that both operations are susceptible to characteristic systematic (...) errors. If these are eliminated, however, then explanation and prediction provide equally good evidential support for hypotheses. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to contribute to the debate over the nature of scientific progress in philosophy of science by taking a quantitative, corpus-based approach. By employing the methods of data science and corpus linguistics, the following philosophical accounts of scientific progress are tested empirically: the semantic account of scientific progress, the epistemic account of scientific progress, and the noetic account of scientific progress. Overall, the results of this quantitative, corpus-based study lend some (...) empirical support to the epistemic and the noetic accounts over the semantic account of scientific progress, for they suggest that practicing scientists use the terms ‘knowledge’ and ‘understanding’ significantly more often than the term ‘truth’ when they talk about the aims or goals of scientific research in their published works. But the results do not favor the epistemic account over the noetic account, or vice versa, for they reveal no significant differences between the frequency with which practicing scientists use the terms ‘knowledge’ and ‘understanding’ when they talk about the aims or goals of scientific research in their published works. (shrink)

Modeling is an important scientific practice, yet it raises significant philosophical puzzles. Models are typically idealized, and they are often explored via imaginative engagement and at a certain “distance” from empirical reality. These features raise questions such as what models are and how they relate to the world. Recent years have seen a growing discussion of these issues, including a number of views that treat modeling in terms of indirect representation and analysis. Indirect views treat the model as (...) a bona fide object, specified by the modeler and used to represent and reason about some portion of the concrete empirical world. On some indirect views, model systems are abstract entities, such as mathematical structures, while on other views they are concrete hypothetical things. Here I assess these views and offer a novel account of models. I argue that regarding models as abstracta results in some significant tensions with the practice of modeling, especially in areas where non-mathematical models are common. Furthermore, viewing models as concrete hypotheticals raises difficult questions about model-world relations. The view I argue for treats models as direct, albeit simplified, representations of targets in the world. I close by suggesting a treatment of model-world relations that draws on a recent work by Stephen Yablo concerning the notion of partial truth. (shrink)

http://dx.doi.org/10.5007/1808-1711.2008v12n1p35 This paper aims to show that Bas van Fraassen’s constructive empiricism, such as it is expounded in The Scientific Image , ends up in considerable difficulties in the philosophy of science. The main problem would be the exclusion of mathematics from the conception of science, given its clear absence of empirical adequacy, which is the most important requirement of his formulation. In this sense, it is suggested a more inclusive formulation of scientific theory, aroused from the (...) notion of Da Costa’s (1999) simple structure , considering the notion of scientific discovery in a strict sense, and the validity limit of a theory and the formalism used in a temporal context. (shrink)

This paper aims to show that Bas van Fraassen’s constructive empiricism, such as it is expounded in The Scientific Image, ends up in considerable difficulties in the philosophy of science. The main problem would be the exclusion of mathematics from the conception of science, given its clear absence of empirical adequacy, which is the most important requirement of his formulation. In this sense, it is suggested a more inclusive formulation of scientific theory, aroused from the notion of (...) Da Costa’s simple structure, considering the notion of scientific discovery in a strict sense, and the validity limit of a theory and the formalism used in a temporal context. (shrink)

The author critiques one of the arguments commonly used by opponents of scientific realism—namely, the thesis that scientific theories are underdetermined by empirical data.