Results for 'incommensurability'

967 found
Order:
  1. The Incommensurability of Scientific Theories.Howard Sankey - 1989 - Dissertation, University of Melbourne
    Kuhn and Feyerabend argue that successive or rival scientific theories may be incommensurable due to differences in the concepts and language they employ. The terms employed by such theories are unlike in meaning, and even reference, so they may fail to be translatable from one theory into the other. Owing to such semantical differences, statements from one theory neither agree nor disagree with statements from another theory with which it is incommensurable; so the content of such theories cannot be directly (...)
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  2.  25
    Value Incommensurability: Ethics, Risk. And Decision-Making.Henrik Andersson & Anders Herlitz (eds.) - 2021 - New York, NY: Routledge.
    Incommensurability is the impossibility to determine how two options relate to each other in terms of conventional comparative relations. This book features new research on incommensurability from philosophers who have shaped the field into what it is today, including John Broome, Ruth Chang and Wlodek Rabinowicz. The book covers four aspects relating to incommensurability. In the first part, the contributors synthesize research on the competing views of how to best explain incommensurability. Part II illustrates how (...) can help us deal with seemingly insurmountable problems in ethical theory and population ethics. The contributors address the Repugnant Conclusion, the Mere Addition Paradox and so-called Spectrum Arguments. The chapters in Part III outline and summarize problems caused by incommensurability for decision theory. Finally, Part IV tackles topics related to risk, uncertainty and incommensurability. Value Incommensurability: Ethics, Risk, and Decision-Making will be of interest to researchers and advanced students working in ethical theory, decision theory, action theory, and philosophy of economics. (shrink)
    Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  3. The Incommensurability Thesis.Howard Sankey - 1994 - Abingdon: Taylor and Francis.
    This book presents a critical analysis of the semantic incommensurability thesis of Thomas Kuhn and Paul Feyerabend. In putting forward the thesis of incommensurability, Kuhn and Feyerabend drew attention to complex issues concerning the phenomenon of conceptual change in science. They raised serious problems about the semantic and logical relations between the content of theories which deploy unlike systems of concepts. Yet few of the more extreme claims associated with incommensurability stand scrutiny. The argument of this book (...)
    Direct download (2 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   71 citations  
  4.  40
    Incommensurability and hardness.Chrisoula Andreou - 2024 - Philosophical Studies 181 (12):3253-3269.
    There is growing support for the view that there can be cases of incommensurability, understood as cases in which two alternatives, X and Y, are such that X is not better than Y, Y is not better than X, and X and Y are not equally good. This paper assumes that alternatives can be incommensurable and explores the prominent idea that, insofar as choice situations that agents face qua rational agents involve options that are not rankable as one better (...)
    No categories
    Direct download (3 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   3 citations  
  5. Incommensurability as vagueness: a burden-shifting argument.Luke Elson - 2017 - Theoria 83 (4):341-363.
    Two options are ‘incommensurate’ when neither is better than the other, but they are not equally good. Typically, we will say that one option is better in some ways, and the other in others, but neither is better ‘all things considered’. It is tempting to think that incommensurability is vagueness—that it is (perhaps) indeterminate which is better—but this ‘vagueness view’ of incommensurability has not proven popular. I set out the vagueness view and its implications in more detail, and (...)
    Direct download (6 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   19 citations  
  6. Incommensurability (and incomparability).Ruth Chang - 2013 - In Hugh LaFollette, The International Encyclopedia of Ethics. Hoboken, NJ: Blackwell. pp. 2591-2604.
    This encyclopedia entry urges what it takes to be correctives to common (mis)understandings concerning the phenomenon of incommensurability and incomparability and briefly outlines some of their philosophical upshots.
    Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   21 citations  
  7.  40
    Incommensurability, Music and Continuum: A Cognitive Approach.Luigi Borzacchini - 2007 - Archive for History of Exact Sciences 61 (3):273-302.
    The discovery of incommensurability by the Pythagoreans is usually ascribed to geometric or arithmetic questions, but already Tannery stressed the hypothesis that it had a music-theoretical origin. In this paper, I try to show that such hypothesis is correct, and, in addition, I try to understand why it was almost completely ignored so far.
    Direct download (2 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   4 citations  
  8.  25
    L'incommensurable: un concept peut-il changer la vie?François Jullien - 2022 - Paris: Éditions de l'Observatoire.
    Rabattement -- De l'incommensurable -- Évitement -- Il y a de l'incommensurable (la jouissance, l'intime, la mort) -- Dé-commensurabiliser -- Ce qui n'est pas de ce monde, mais qui n'est d'un autre monde -- Un concept peut'il changer la vie? (l'incommensurable déploie l'existence).
    Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  9.  32
    Incommensurability, the sequence argument, and the Pareto principle.Gustaf Arrhenius & H. Orri Stefánsson - 2024 - Philosophical Studies 181 (12):3395-3411.
    Parfit (Theoria 82:110–127, 2016) responded to the Sequence Argument for the Repugnant Conclusion by introducing imprecise equality. However, Parfit’s notion of imprecise equality lacked structure. Hájek and Rabinowicz (2022) improved on Parfit’s proposal in this regard, by introducing a notion of degrees of incommensurability. Although Hájek and Rabinowicz’s proposal is a step forward, and may help solve many paradoxes, it can only avoid the Repugnant Conclusion at great cost. First, there is a sequential argument for the Repugnant Conclusion that (...)
    Direct download (4 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  10. Incommensurable alternatives and rational choice.Chrisoula Andreou - 2005 - Ratio 18 (3):249–261.
    I consider the implications of incommensurability for the assumption, in rational choice theory, that a rational agent’s preferences are complete. I argue that, contrary to appearances, the completeness assumption and the existence of incommensurability are compatible. Indeed, reflection on incommensurability suggests that one’s preferences should be complete over even the incommensurable alternatives one faces.
    Direct download (2 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   7 citations  
  11. Triangulation, incommensurability, and conditionalization.Ittay Nissan-Rozen & Amir Liron - forthcoming - Philosophy of Science.
    We present a new justification for methodological triangulation (MT), the practice of using different methods to support the same scientific claim. Unlike existing accounts, our account captures cases in which the different methods in question are associated with, and rely on, incommensurable theories. Using a nonstandard Bayesian model, we show that even in such cases, a commitment to the minimal form of epistemic conservatism, captured by the rigidity condition that stands at the basis of Jeffrey’s conditionalization, supports the practice of (...)
    Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  12. Incommensurability in Ethics and in the Philosophy of Science.Andrew F. Reeve - 2000 - Dissertation, University of Waterloo (Canada)
    'Incommensurability' has, in the last forty years, gained wide currency in the literature of philosophy. Kuhn and Feyerabend used the term in the early 1960's to describe an issue in the philosophy of science. They suggested that, when scientific theories are introduced that are significantly different from their predecessors, it may happen that the meanings of key terms differ significantly, and to the extent that scientists may be unable to fully comprehend the new theory until they experience a form (...)
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  13. Meta-Incommensurability between Theories of Meaning: Chemical Evidence.Nicholas W. Best - 2015 - Perspectives on Science 23 (3):361-378.
    Attempting to compare scientific theories requires a philosophical model of meaning. Yet different scientific theories have at times—particularly in early chemistry—pre-supposed disparate theories of meaning. When two theories of meaning are incommensurable, we must say that the scientific theories that rely upon them are meta-incommensurable. Meta- incommensurability is a more profound sceptical threat to science since, unlike first-order incommensurability, it implies complete incomparability.
    Direct download (7 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   4 citations  
  14. Incommensurable Goods.Gary Chartier & Jere L. Fox - 2019 - In Jonathan Crowe & Constance Youngwon Lee, Research Handbook on Natural Law Theory. Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar Publishing. pp. 252-65.
    Updates earlier arguments for the plausibility of the thesis that basic aspects of well being are incommensurable, a thesis central to new classical natural law theory. Responds to objections from Jonathan Crowe and Jason Brennan.
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  15. Incommensurability and the discontinuity of evidence.Jed Z. Buchwald & George E. Smith - 2001 - Perspectives on Science 9 (4):463-498.
    Incommensurability between successive scientific theories—the impossibility of empirical evidence dictating the choice between them—was Thomas Kuhn's most controversial proposal. Toward defending it, he directed much effort over his last 30 years into formulating precise conditions under which two theories would be undeniably incommensurable with one another. His first step, in the late 1960s, was to argue that incommensurability must result when two theories involve incompatible taxonomies. The problem he then struggled with, never obtaining a solution that he found (...)
    Direct download (5 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   10 citations  
  16. Incommensurability and Theory Change.Howard Sankey - 2010 - In Steven D. Hales, A Companion to Relativism. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell. pp. 456-474.
    The paper explores the relativistic implications of the thesis of incommensurability. A semantic form of incommensurability due to semantic variation between theories is distinguished from a methodological form due to variation in methodological standards between theories. Two responses to the thesis of semantic incommensurability are dealt with: the first challenges the idea of untranslatability to which semantic incommensurability gives rise; the second holds that relations of referential continuity eliminate semantic incommensurability. It is then argued that (...)
    Direct download (2 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   9 citations  
  17.  6
    L'incommensurable, l'inouï, la vraie vie: dialogues avec François Jullien, II.Étienne Klein (ed.) - 2023 - Paris, France: Descartes & cie.
    L'incommensurable fait apparaître qu'il est des fêlures irréductibles dans notre expérience révélant de l'infini du sein même de cette expérience: entre le plaisir et la jouissance ou bien le rapport social et l'intime. L'inouï dit, non pas l'extraordinaire ou l'insolite, mais ce qui peut être au contraire le plus commun de notre expérience--mais que nous n'entendons pas parce que nous ne savons pas déborder les cadres figés de cette expérience. La vraie vie fait signe vers ce que, tout en étant (...)
    No categories
    Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  18. Incommensurability and vagueness in spectrum arguments: options for saving transitivity of betterness.Toby Handfield & Wlodek Rabinowicz - 2018 - Philosophical Studies 175 (9):2373-2387.
    The spectrum argument purports to show that the better-than relation is not transitive, and consequently that orthodox value theory is built on dubious foundations. The argument works by constructing a sequence of increasingly less painful but more drawn-out experiences, such that each experience in the spectrum is worse than the previous one, yet the final experience is better than the experience with which the spectrum began. Hence the betterness relation admits cycles, threatening either transitivity or asymmetry of the relation. This (...)
    Direct download (5 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   16 citations  
  19.  49
    Incommensurability and Related Matters.Paul Hoyningen-Huene & Howard Sankey (eds.) - 2001 - Kluwer Academic Publishers.
    Incommensurability and Related Matters draws together some of the most distinguished contributors to the critical literature on the problem of the incommensurability of scientific theories. It addresses all the various problems raised by the problem of incommensurability, such as meaning change, reference of theoretical terms, scientific realism and anti-realism, rationality of theory choice, cognitive aspects of conceptual change, as well as exploring the broader implications of incommensurability for cultural difference. While it offers new work, and new (...)
    Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   33 citations  
  20. (1 other version)Incommensurability and measurement.Brigitte Falkenburg - 1997 - Theoria 12 (3):467-491.
    Does incommensurability threaten the realist’s claim that physical magnitudes express properties of natural kinds? Some clarification comes from measurement theory and scientific practice. The standard (empiricist) theory of measurement is metaphysically neutral. But its representational operational and axiomatic aspects give rise to several kinds of a one-sided metaphysics. In scientific practice. the scales of physical quantities (e.g. the mass or length scale) are indeed constructed from measuring methods which have incompatible axiomatic foundations. They cover concepts which belong to incomensurable (...)
    Direct download (2 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   4 citations  
  21.  71
    Incommensurability in Global Ethics, The Case of Islamic Aniconism and Freedom of Speech.Hamid Andishan - 2017 - Cultura 14 (2):37-48.
    Can all values be reduced to one or a few fundamental ones? Two values may neither exceed the other in importance nor be equal. In such situation, they cannot be reduced to each other or to a third value, and we can call such values as ”incommensurable”. Drawing on the concept of incommensurable values and what recently is called ”global ethics”, I will argue that if two values from two different cultures conflict, one must pay enough attention to the idea (...)
    Direct download (3 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  22. Incommensurability in Population Ethics.Jacob Nebel - 2015 - Dissertation, University of Oxford
    Values are incommensurable when they cannot be measured on a single cardinal scale. Many philosophers suggest that incommensurability can help us solve the problems of population ethics. I agree. But some philosophers claim that populations bear incommensurable values merely because they contain different numbers of people, perhaps within some range. I argue that mere differences in how many people exist, even within some range, do not suffice for incommensurability. I argue that the intuitive neutrality of creating happy people (...)
    Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   4 citations  
  23. Incommensurability, relativism, scepticism: Reflections on acquiring a concept.Nathaniel Goldberg & Matthew Rellihan - 2008 - Ratio 21 (2):147–167.
    Some opponents of the incommensurability thesis, such as Davidson and Rorty, have argued that the very idea of incommensurability is incoherent and that the existence of alternative and incommensurable conceptual schemes is a conceptual impossibility. If true, this refutes Kuhnian relativism and Kantian scepticism in one fell swoop. For Kuhnian relativism depends on the possibility of alternative, humanly accessible conceptual schemes that are incommensurable with one another, and the Kantian notion of a realm of unknowable things-in-themselves gives rise (...)
    Direct download (3 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   4 citations  
  24.  31
    Incommensurability and healthcare priority setting.Anders Herlitz - 2024 - Philosophical Studies 181 (12):3347-3365.
    This paper argues that accepting incommensurability can be a useful step for developing attractive hybrid theories to how to distribute scarce health-related resources. If one provides opportunity for distributive options to be incommensurable with respect to substantive criteria, one can hold on to substantive criteria while also providing room for decision processes to play a significant role. The paper also argues that the strategy of accepting incommensurability is preferable to the strategy of having substantive criteria establish sets of (...)
    No categories
    Direct download (3 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  25. (1 other version)Incommensurability, realism, and meta-incommensurability.Eric Oberheim & Paul Hoyningen-Huene - 1997 - Theoria 12 (3):447-465.
    The essay begins with a detailed consideration of the introduction of incommensurability by Feyerabend in 1962 which exposes several historically inaccurate claims about incommensurability. Section 2 is a coneise argument against causal theories of reference as used as arguments against incommensurability. We object to this strategy because it begs the question by presupposing realism. Section 3 introduces and discusses a hypothesis that w'e call meta-incommensurability which provides the reason for the wide-spread accusation of question-begging and use (...)
    Direct download (2 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   19 citations  
  26. Incommensurability: Its Implications for the Patient/Physician Relation.R. M. Veatch & W. E. Stempsey - 1995 - Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 20 (3):253-269.
    Scientific authority and physician authority are both challenged by Thomas Kuhn's concept of incommensurability. If competing “paradigms” or “world views” cannot rationally be compared, we have no means to judge the truth of any particular view. However, the notion of local or partial incommensurability might provide a framework for understanding the implications of contemporary philosophy of science for medicine. We distinguish four steps in the process of translating medical science into clinical decisions: the doing of the science, the (...)
    Direct download (4 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   7 citations  
  27.  52
    Incompatibility, Incommensurability, and Rationality in Value Pluralism: Isaiah Berlin’s Case.Andrés Tutor de Ureta - 2018 - The European Legacy 24 (2):146-161.
    ABSTRACTIsaiah Berlin’s idea of value pluralism has been extensively discussed in recent decades. However, there is still much controversy about the actual meaning and implication of the terms “incompatibility” and “incommensurability” when applied to values. This article analyses the Berlinian concept of value pluralism from a theoretical point of view and argues that, following Berlin’s work, incompatibility should be defined as the impossibility of two ends being combined at a maximum level―though it is possible to find compromises between them (...)
    No categories
    Direct download (4 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  28.  25
    The Incommensurability of Rival Legal Abductions.John Woods - unknown
    The totality of evidence heard in a trial is usually collectively inconsistent, indeed often jointly incoherent. In those cases in which each party offers its own theory of the evidence, an abduction is forwarded which best explains a coherent subset of the evidence. Since these are themselves often jointly incoherent subsets S and S*, we have the following difficulty. Opposing theories are those which purport best to explain different sets of the evidence. In that sense, they aren’t rival theories. How (...)
    No categories
    Direct download (3 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  29. Incommensurability, translation and understanding.Howard Sankey - 1991 - Philosophical Quarterly 41 (165):414-426.
    This paper addresses the issue of how it is possible to understand the language of an incommensurable theory. The aim is to defend the idea of translation failure against the objection that it incoherently precludes understanding.
    Direct download (6 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   13 citations  
  30. Incommensurability, Comparability, and Non-reductive Ontological Relations.José L. Falguera & Xavier Donato-Rodríguez - 2016 - Journal for General Philosophy of Science / Zeitschrift für Allgemeine Wissenschaftstheorie 47 (1):37-58.
    We begin by highlighting some points related to Kuhn’s later thoughts on the incommensurability thesis and then show to what extent the standard version of the thesis given by the structuralist metatheory allows us to capture Kuhn’s ideas. Our main aim is to establish what constitutes the basis of comparability between incommensurable theories, even in cases of incommensurability with respect to theoretical and non-theoretical terms. We propose that comparability between incommensurable theories requires some connection between their respective ontologies (...)
    Direct download (2 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  31. Verballed? Incommensurability 50 years on.Fred D’Agostino - 2014 - Synthese 191 (3):517-538.
    Someone is “verballed” in the Anglo-Australian idiom if they have attributed to them statements they did not actually make and indeed have explicitly denied. We will examine the evidence that Kuhn and Feyerabend were verballed in this sense by their critics and that the role of the idea of incommensurability in their argumentation has been systematically misunderstood and -represented. In particular, we will see that neither Kuhn nor Feyerabend, despite what their critics often say about them, held that (...) of theories implies the rational incomparability of theories. This is especially clear in the case of Feyerabend, whose argument is NOT that theories in a scientific tradition are on occasion incommensurable, but, rather, that, when the relations of theories in a tradition are represented in a particular way, they may on occasion be incommensurable according to that representation and hence incomparable if that representation is taken as providing the mechanisms of comparison. And the point of this claim is not to establish something about science, but, rather, to establish something about the representations of science which yield this result (i.e. that two theories might be incommensurable). Feyerabend in other words invokes incommensurability (according to the standards of a particular representation) as a reductio of that mode of representation. And this argument in fact depends precisely on the comparability of theories which are, according to the representation, incommensurable. Feyerabend’s argument is about the ways in which we should understand progress in science and he is concerned, in particular, to establish that a historically informed approach is superior to an approach which, if applicable, is applicable only to what he calls “abstract traditions”. Kuhn’s work, especially in the Postscript—1969, provides complementary materials, especially in relation to a collectivised and non-“algorithmic” account of theory choice across formally incommensurable paradigms. (shrink)
    Direct download (7 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   3 citations  
  32.  37
    Convergence, Incommensurability, Contradiction, or Overlapping Consensus? A Response to Daniel Weiss.James E. Helmer - 2013 - Studies in Christian Ethics 26 (2):196-204.
    Contemporary religious and scientific perspectives make various metaphysical truth claims that are frequently perceived to be either competitive or contradictory. Two dominant approaches that have been employed to explain and to resolve such conflicts are those of convergence, where one view trumps over and assimilates the other, and incommensurability, where the views in question come to be regarded as actually non-competitive. Drawing on recent models of inter-religious dialogue, in his essay, ‘The Fruits of Contradiction: Evolution, Cooperation and Ethics in (...)
    Direct download (2 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  33.  81
    (1 other version)Overcoming Incommensurability through Intercultural Dialogue.Paul Healy - 2013 - Cosmos and History 9 (1):265-281.
    Is universalism necessarily ethnocentric? Are there inevitably incommensurable differences between diverse cultures and traditions? While these questions may appear highly theoretical at first sight, they inevitably have significant practical consequences as witnessed by the prominent contemporary discourse about a “clash of civilizations” , on the one hand, and by the challenges confronting multicultural, on the other. As these debates attest, the foregoing questions are truly significant because, if there is no genuine possibility of overcoming incommensurability by finding and building (...)
    Direct download (4 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  34.  33
    (1 other version)Local Incommensurability and Communicability.Xiang Chen - 1990 - PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association 1990:67 - 76.
    Kuhn regards local incommensurability as an unavoidable result of changes in worldview, but his account fails to explain both historical cases in which rivals with different paradigms obtained consensus, and psychological experiments in which people with different cultural backgrounds accurately presented other points of view. Although the conditions required to generate local incommensurability were present in the dispute between Brewster and Herschel on light absorption, they succeeded in communicating. Ultimately Brewster understood his opponent's position, in the same way (...)
    Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   6 citations  
  35.  90
    Is there an incommensurability between superseding theories?A. Polikarov - 1993 - Journal for General Philosophy of Science / Zeitschrift für Allgemeine Wissenschaftstheorie 24 (1):127 - 146.
    According to the Incommensurability Thesis (IT) superseding scientific theories (paradigms) are incommensurable. Unlike many authors we do not discuss whether there is a relationship of this kind. We take for granted that this may be the case, and see the problem in the endeavour to establish the domain of validity of the IT. The notion incommensurability (Ic) is derivative from the concepts of scientific paradigm (P) and scientific revolution (R). There are several concepts of P, as well as (...)
    Direct download (4 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  36. Incommensurability and the Bonfire of the Meta-Theories: Response to Mizrahi.Lydia Patton - 2015 - Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective 4 (7):51-58.
    Scientists working within a paradigm must play by the rules of the game of that paradigm in solving problems, and that is why incommensurability arises when the rules of the game change. If we deny the thesis of the priority of paradigms, then there is no good argument for the incommensurability of theories and thus for taxonomic incommensurability, because there is no invariant way to determine the set of results provable, puzzles solvable, and propositions cogently formulable under (...)
    Direct download (4 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   5 citations  
  37.  48
    The incommensurability of nursing as a practice and the customer service model: an evolutionary threat to the discipline.Wendy J. Austin - 2011 - Nursing Philosophy 12 (3):158-166.
    Corporate and commercial values are inducing some healthcare organizations to prescribe a customer service model that reframes the provision of nursing care. In this paper it is argued that such a model is incommensurable with nursing conceived as a moral practice and ultimately places nurses at risk. Based upon understanding from ongoing research on compassion fatigue, it is proposed that compassion fatigue as currently experienced by nurses may not arise predominantly from too great a demand for compassion, but rather from (...)
    Direct download (2 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   16 citations  
  38. Methodological Incommensurability and Epistemic Relativism.Howard Sankey - 2013 - Topoi 32 (1):33-41.
    This paper revisits one of the key ideas developed in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. In particular, it explores the methodological form of incommensurability which may be found in the original edition of Structure. It is argued that such methodological incommensurability leads to a form of epistemic relativism. In later work, Kuhn moved away from the original idea of methodological incommensurability with his idea of a set of epistemic values that provides a basis for rational theory choice, (...)
    Direct download (6 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   6 citations  
  39. Incommensurable values.John Broome - 2000 - In Roger Crisp & Brad Hooker, Well-Being and Morality: Essays in Honour of James Griffin. New York: Clarendon Press. pp. 21--38.
    Two options are incommensurate in value if neither is better than the other, and if a small improvement or worsening of one does not necessarily make it determinately better or worse than the other. If a person faces a sequence of choices between incommensurate options, she may end up with a worse options than she could have had, even though none of her choices are irrational. Yet it seems that rationality should save her from this bad outcome. This is the (...)
    Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   29 citations  
  40.  25
    Incommensurability.Joseph Raz - 1986 - In The Morality of Freedom. Oxford, GB: Oxford University Press.
    Two options are incommensurable if it is neither true that one of them is better than the other, nor true that they are of equal value. A test of incommensurability between two options, which yields a sufficient but not necessary condition of incommensurability, is that there is, or could be, another option that is better than one but is not better than the other. Two incommensurable options may be of roughly equal value, but do not have to be. (...)
    No categories
    Direct download (3 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  41. Incommensurability: An Overview.Howard Sankey - 1999 - Divinatio 10:135-48.
    Opening remarks delivered at "Incommensurability (and related matters)" conference, Hanover, June 1999.
    Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  42. Incommensurability: The current state of play.Howard Sankey - 1997 - Theoria 12 (3):425-445.
    The incommensurability thesis is the thesis that the content of some alternative scientific theories is incomparable due to translation failure between the vocabulary the theories employ. This paper presents an overview of the main issues which have arisen in the debate about incommensurability. It also briefly outlines a response to the thesis based on a modified causal theory of reference which allows change of reference subsequent to initial baptism, as well as a role to description in the determination (...)
    Direct download (2 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   31 citations  
  43. A Davidsonian argument against incommensurability.Igor Douven & Henk W. De Regt - 2002 - International Studies in the Philosophy of Science 16 (2):157 – 169.
    The writings of Kuhn and Feyerabend on incommensurability challenged the idea that science progresses towards the truth. Davidson famously criticized the notion of incommensurability, arguing that it is incoherent. Davidson's argument was in turn criticized by Kuhn and others. This article argues that, although at least some of the objections raised against Davidson's argument are formally correct, they do it very little harm. What remains of the argument once the objections have been taken account of is still quite (...)
    Direct download (2 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  44. Incommensurability.Muhammad Ali Khalidi - 1999 - In W. Newton-Smith, A Companion to Philosophy of Science. Malden, Mass.: Blackwell. pp. 172-80.
    Along with “paradigm” and “scientific revolution,” “incommensurability” is one of the three most influential expressions associated with the “new philosophy of science” first articulated in the early 1960s by Thomas Kuhn and Paul Feyerabend. But, despite the fact that it has been widely discussed, opinions still differ widely as to the content and significance of the claim of incommensurability.
    Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  45.  55
    Incommensurability and Balancing.Francisco J. Urbina - 2015 - Oxford Journal of Legal Studies 35 (3):575-605.
    A common objection to the use of balancing tests in human rights adjudication is that it is not possible to perform a quantitative comparison between gains and losses for rights or the public good by means only of rational criteria. Here I provide a general account of the incommensurability objection, with the aim of making explicit its scope, and of dispelling some common misconceptions surrounding it. Relying on this account, I engage with recent defences of balancing against the (...) objection. (shrink)
    Direct download (4 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   4 citations  
  46.  26
    Salvaging Incommensurability.Syed Sayeed - 2019 - Journal of the Indian Council of Philosophical Research 36 (1):97-124.
    This article argues that the concept of incommensurability (of conceptual frameworks) is not as incoherent as has been sometimes argued, and that it is possible to formulate this notion in such a way that it can be meaningful. The article suggests that it is worthwhile to salvage the concept of incommensurability because it is a very useful concept, almost indispensable in explaining certain situations.
    No categories
    Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  47. Difference, incommensurability, decision.Clint Shinn - 2009 - Emergent Australasian Philosophers 2 (1):1-19.
    The purpose of the paper is to discuss how the possibility of understanding difference relates to political decision making. We will see , using Althusser, it is possible to establish and maintain difference without those differences becoming incommensurable; that it is possible to understand the differences of others. We‟ll then see that this ability is of little use when it comes time to act, for example, making a decision; that many differences are excluded from the process of decision making in (...)
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  48.  89
    Practical incommensurability and the phenomenological basis of robust realism.Mark A. Wrathall - 1999 - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 42 (1):79 – 88.
    This paper develops a modification of the notion of incommensurable worlds upon which Dreyfus and Spinosa base their robust realism. In particular, I argue that we cannot make sense of a conception of incommensurability according to which incommensurable worlds entail cognitively incompatible claims. Instead, as Dreyfus and Spinosa sometimes suggest, incommensurable worlds should be understood as being practically incompatible, meaning that the inhabitants of one world cannot, given their practices for dealing with some things, engage in practices central to (...)
    Direct download (3 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  49. Incommensurability.Harold I. Brown - 1983 - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 26 (1):3 – 29.
    The thesis that certain competing scientific theories are incommensurable was introduced by Kuhn and Feyerabend in 1962 and has been a subject of widespread critique. Critics have generally taken incommensurable theories to be theories which cannot be compared in a rational manner, but both Kuhn and Feyerabend have explicitly rejected this interpretation, and Feyerabend has discussed ways in which such comparisons can be made in a number of his writings. This paper attempts to clarify the incommensurability thesis through the (...)
    Direct download (2 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   19 citations  
  50. Incommensurability and vagueness.Wlodek Rabinowicz - 2009 - Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 83 (1):71-94.
    This paper casts doubts on John Broome's view that vagueness in value comparisons crowds out incommensurability in value. It shows how vagueness can be imposed on a formal model of value relations that has room for different types of incommensurability. The model implements some basic insights of the ‘fitting attitudes’ analysis of value.
    Direct download (9 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   32 citations  
1 — 50 / 967