Skeptics have cast doubt on the idea that scientific theories give us a true picture of an objective world. Lawrence Sklar examines three kinds of skeptical arguments about scientific truth, and explores the important role they play within foundational science itself. Sklar demonstrates that these kinds of philosophical critique are employed within science, and reveals the clear difference between how they operate in a scientific context and more abstract philosophical contexts. The underlying theme of Theory and Truth (...) is that science and philosophy are essential to one another. Sklar advances the claim that one cannot understand the methods of science without a comprehension of philosophy, and one cannot fruitfully pursue philosophy of science without understanding fundamental science as well. (shrink)

With the growth of neuroscience research, new neuroscience and society (NeuroX) fields like neuroethics, neurolaw, neuroarchitecture, neuroeconomics, and many more have emerged. In this article we report on lessons learned about mentoring students in the interdisciplinary space of neuroscience and society. We draw on our experiences with the recently launched Dana Foundation Career Network in Neuroscience & Society. This resource supports educators and practitioners mentoring students aiming to apply neuroscience in diverse fields beyond medicine and biomedical science. Through our (...) programming, we identified three key lessons: (1) students are interested in exploring a wide range of neuroscience and society intersections; (2) outreach to underserved institutions generates avenues for students to join NeuroX conversations; and (3) by offering free access to online NeuroX resources and a network of subject-matter experts, the Career Network joins many partners helping to bridge the gap between neuroscience and society. (shrink)

This bold and lively essay is one of those rarest of intellectual achievements, a big small book. In its short length are condensed enormous erudition and impressive analytical scope. With verve and self-assurance, it addresses a broad, central question: How can we improve our understanding of the large-scale processes and structures that transformed the world of the nineteenth century and are transforming our world today? Tilly contends that twentieth-century social theories have been encumbered by a nineteenth century heritage of “pernicious (...) postulates.” He subjects each misleading belief to rigorous criticism, challenging many standard social science paradigms and methodologies. As an alternative to those timeless, placeless models of social change and organization, Tilly argues convincingly for a program of concrete, historically grounded analysis and systematic comparison. To illustrate the strategies available for such research, Tilly assesses the works of several major practitioners of comparative historical analysis, making skillful use of this selective review to offer his own speculative, often unconventional accounts of our recent past. Historically oriented social scientists will welcome this provocative essay and its wide-ranging agenda for comparative historical research. Other social scientists, their graduate and undergraduate students, and even the interested general reader will find this new work by a major scholar stimulating and eminently readable. This is the second of five volumes commissioned by the Russell Sage Foundation to mark its seventy-fifth anniversary. "In this short, brilliant book Tilly suggests a way to think about theories of historical social change....This book should find attentive readers both in undergraduate courses and in graduate seminars. It should also find appreciative readers, for Tilly is a writer as well as a scholar." —Choice. (shrink)

All of the chapters have been written especially for the book by the leading scholars in the field.Michael I. Posner is Professor of Psychology at the ...

Kant was centrally concerned with issues in the philosophy of natural science throughout his career. The Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science presents his most mature reflections on these themes in the context of both his 'critical' philosophy, presented in the Critique of Pure Reason, and the natural science of his time. This volume presents a new translation, by Michael Friedman, which is especially clear and accurate. There are explanatory notes indicating some of the main connections between the (...) argument of the Metaphysical Foundations and the first Critique - as well as parallel connections to Newton's Principia. The volume is completed by an historical and philosophical introduction and a guide to further reading. (shrink)

This 1996 book defends the prospects for a science of society. It argues that behind the diverse methods of the natural sciences lies a common core of scientific rationality that the social sciences can and sometimes do achieve. It also argues that good social science must be in part about large-scale social structures and processes and thus that methodological individualism is misguided. These theses are supported by a detailed discussion of actual social research, including theories of agrarian revolution, (...) organizational ecology, social theories of depression, and supply-demand explanations in economics. Professor Kincaid provides a general picture of explanation and confirmation in the social sciences and discusses the nature of scientific rationality, functional explanation, optimality arguments, meaning and interpretation, the place of microfoundations in social explanation, the status of neo-classical economics, the role of idealizations and non-experimental evidence, and other specific controversies. (shrink)

The Foundations of Science and the Concepts of Psychology and Psychoanalysis was first published in 1956. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions. This first volume of Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science presents some of the relatively more consolidated research of the Minnesota Center for Philosophy of Science. The work of the Center, which was established in (...) 1953 through a grant from the Louis W. and Maud Hill Family Foundation, has so far been devoted largely to the philosophical, logical, and methodological problems of psychology. Some of the twelve papers in this volume are concerned with broad philosophical foundations; others consider specific problems of method or interpretation. The contributors, some of whom are represented in the authorship of more than one paper, are Herbert Feigl, director of the Center; Rudolf Carnap; B.F. Skinner; Michael Scriven; Albert Ellis; Antony Flew; L. J. Cronbach; Paul E. Meehl; R. C. Buck; and Wilfrid Sellars. (shrink)

Inspired by a debate between Noam Chomsky and Jean Piaget, this work traces the development of natural history from Aristotle to Darwin, and demonstrates how the science of plants and animals has emerged from the common conceptions of folkbiology.

The Foundations of Cognitive Science is a set of thirteen new essays on key topics in this lively interdisciplinary field, by a stellar international line-up of authors. Philosophers, psychologists, and neurologists here come together to investigate such fascinating subjects as consciousness; vision; rationality; artificial life; the neural basis of language, cognition, and emotion; and the relations between mind and world, for instance our representation of numbers and space. The contributors are Ned Block, Margaret Boden, Susan Carey, Patricia Churchland, Paul (...) Churchland, Antonio Damasio, Hanna Damasio, Donald Davidson, Daniel Dennett, Ilya Farber, James Higginbotham, Christopher Peacocke, Will Peterman, Zenon Pylyshyn, John Searle. Anyone interested in the exploration of the human mind will enjoy this book. (shrink)

This concise book derives from a series of the John Locke Lectures given at the University of Oxford in 1998. Sklar argues in it, in an original and interesting way, for the familiar idea of essential inextricability or continuity of science and philosophy. In particular, he is concerned to show that a number of key problems about science, discussed in a very abstract way by philosophers, are the very problems that face scientists doing research in the foundations of (...) physics. When one realizes that and focuses one’s attention upon those scientific problems, one will be able to shed new light upon abstractly pursued philosophy of science. By the same token, a convincing case will be made against “quietist” or “naturalistic” views that regard scientific practice and scientific theories as complete and self-explanatory, as well as hold that they do not require any external philosophical interpretation. (shrink)

This short and engaging book, based upon Sklar’s 1998 Locke Lectures, addresses three sorts of considerations which have been thought to undercut any claim physics has, or could have, to be getting at the truth. The overarching theme is that these considerations gain their plausibility from being deployed in arguments concerning the representational fidelity of particular physical theories, and that much is lost in the philosophical process of globalisation which converts them into doubts about the representational fidelity of all physical (...) theory. Theory and Truth ought to generate some overdue discussion among philosophers of physics and general philosophers of science concerning the relation between their respective specialties. (shrink)

This book is a sustained examination of issues in the philosophy of ecology that have been a source of controversy since the emergence of ecology as an explicit scientific discipline. The controversies revolve around the idea of a balance of nature, the possibility of general ecological knowledge and the role of model-building in ecology. The Science of the Struggle for Existence is also a detailed treatment of these issues that incorporates both a comprehensive investigation of the relevant ecological literature (...) and the development of an explicit theoretical framework in the philosophy of science. It addresses issues in the philosophy of ecology that are of particular importance for the deployment of ecology in the solution of environmental problems. It will have a cross-disciplinary appeal and will interest students and professionals in science, the philosophy of science, and environmental studies as well as policy-makers. (shrink)

When stripped to the bare bone, there are only 11 foundational paradigms in social sciences. These foundational paradigms are like flashlights that can be utilized to shed light on different aspects of human society, but each of them can only shed light on a limited area of human society. Different schools in social science result from different but often incomplete combinations of these foundational paradigms. To adequately understand human society and its history, we need to deploy (...) all 11 foundational paradigms, although more limited combinations of them may be adequate for understanding more specific social facts. (shrink)

We propose as a UCGIS research priority the topic of “Ontological Foundations for Geographic Information.” Under this umbrella we unify several interrelated research subfields, each of which deals with different perspectives on geospatial ontologies and their roles in geographic information science. While each of these subfields could be addressed separately, we believe it is important to address ontological research in a unitary, systematic fashion, embracing conceptual issues concerning what would be required to establish an exhaustive ontology of the geospatial (...) domain, issues relating to the choice of appropriate methods for formalizing ontologies, and considerations regarding the design of ontology-driven information systems. This integrated approach is necessary, because there is a strong dependency between the methods used to specify an ontology, and the conceptual richness, robustness and tractability of the ontology itself. Likewise, information system implementations are needed as testbeds of the usefulness of every aspect of an exhaustive ontology of the geospatial domain. None of the current UCGIS research priorities provides such an integrative perspective, and therefore the topic of “Ontological Foundations for Geographic Information Science” is unique. (shrink)

This monograph introduces a meta-framework for conducting interdisciplinary research in the science of emotion, as well as a framework for a particular kind of theory of emotion. It can also be understood as a “cross-over” book that introduces neophytes to some of the current discourse and major challenges for an interdisciplinary approach to the science of emotion, especially from a philosophical perspective. It also engages experts from across the disciplines who are interested in conducting an interdisciplinary approach to (...) research and theorizing in the science of emotion, and introduces to them some of the contemporary debates in the philosophy of emotion. It does so by providing a taxonomy of theories of emotion which allows one to understand the contemporary interdisciplinary discourse in the science of emotion as a debate between four fundamental types of theories of emotion—realism, instrumentalism, eliminative-realism, and eliminativism—and which can be found or potentially found across the disciplines, and by arguing for foundational principles which can unify, without consilience, these four kinds of approaches as perspectives about the same object of inquiry. It also covers a wide range of concerns, including the problem of skepticism in the science of emotion, the problem of the underdetermination of a theory by the evidence, the question of the place of ordinary intuitions and ordinary language for a science of emotion, the mind-body problem, the hard problem of consciousness, the meta-hard problem of consciousness, the problem of intentionality, questions about the rationality of emotions and whether emotions can be a vehicle for knowledge, and the debate between cognitive and noncognitive theories in the philosophy of emotion. (shrink)

This book, explores the conceptual foundations of Einstein's theory of relativity: the fascinating, yet tangled, web of philosophical, mathematical, and physical ideas that is the source of the theory's enduring philosophical interest. Originally published in 1986. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These paperback editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback editions. The goal of (...) the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905. (shrink)

There is a growing consensus among philosophers of science that core parts of the scientific process involve non-epistemic values. This undermines the traditional foundation for public trust in science. In this article I consider two proposals for justifying public trust in value-laden science. According to the first, scientists can promote trust by being transparent about their value choices. On the second, trust requires that the values of a scientist align with the values of an individual member of (...) the public. I argue that neither of these proposals work and suggest an alternative that does better. When scientists must appeal to values in the course of their research, they should appeal to democratic values: the values of the public or its representatives. (shrink)

Open peer commentary on the article “Going Beyond Theory: Constructivism and Empirical Phenomenology” by Urban Kordeš. Upshot: I discuss three of the target article’s topics that I find either problematic or important. First, I discuss a potentially dangerous consequence of claiming that empirical phenomenology necessarily calls for a constructivist foundation. Second, I consider the threat to intersubjective validation and the related problem that the author does not specify what technique one should use for training and collecting data in research on (...) experience. Third, I briefly touch upon the question of the integration of empirical phenomenology and cognitive science. (shrink)

In May of 1973 we organized an international research colloquium on foundations of probability, statistics, and statistical theories of science at the University of Western Ontario. During the past four decades there have been striking formal advances in our understanding of logic, semantics and algebraic structure in probabilistic and statistical theories. These advances, which include the development of the relations between semantics and metamathematics, between logics and algebras and the algebraic-geometrical foundations of statistical theories (especially in the sciences), have (...) led to striking new insights into the formal and conceptual structure of probability and statistical theory and their scientific applications in the form of scientific theory. The foundations of statistics are in a state of profound conflict. Fisher's objections to some aspects of Neyman-Pearson statistics have long been well known. More recently the emergence of Baysian statistics as a radical alternative to standard views has made the conflict especially acute. In recent years the response of many practising statisticians to the conflict has been an eclectic approach to statistical inference. Many good statisticians have developed a kind of wisdom which enables them to know which problems are most appropriately handled by each of the methods available. The search for principles which would explain why each of the methods works where it does and fails where it does offers a fruitful approach to the controversy over foundations. (shrink)

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work.This work is in the public domain in (...) the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work.As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

Cognitive science is the interdisciplinary study of minds and intelligent behavior in human beings and animals. The challenge of integrating a study of the mind with a scientific world view has only recently attracted sustained effort. In this course, we will examine the various scientific methodologies that have been brought to bear to uncover the nature of the mind. We will critically assess the data and theoretical results that define contemporary cognitive science. Beyond the results of experiments and (...) the theories that are based on them, cognitive science proposes that there is an underlying framework that unifies the diverse methodologies we appeal to. We seek to understand this foundation. (shrink)

_Why efforts to create a scientific basis of morality are doomed to fail_ In this illuminating book, James Davison Hunter and Paul Nedelisky recount the centuries-long, passionate quest to discover a scientific foundation for morality. The "new moral science" led by such figures as E.O. Wilson, Patricia Churchland and Joshua Greene is only the newest manifestation of an effort that has failed repeatedly. Though claims for its accomplishments are often wildly exaggerated, this new iteration has been no more successful (...) than its predecessors. Hunter and Nedelisky argue that in the end, science cannot tell us how we should live or why we should be good and not evil, and this is for both philosophical and scientific reasons. In the face of this failure, the new moral science has taken a surprising turn. Whereas earlier efforts sought to demonstrate what is right and wrong, the new moral scientists have concluded that right and wrong, because they are not amenable to scientific study, don’t actually exist. Their moral nihilism turns the science of morality into a social engineering project. If there is nothing moral for science to discover, the science of morality becomes, at best, a program to achieve arbitrary societal goals. Concise and rigorously argued, _Science and the Good _is a major critique of a would-be science that has gained too much influence in today’s public discourse, and an exposé of that project’s darker turn. (shrink)

This is a revised version of the introductory essay in C. Eschenbach, C. Habel and B. Smith (eds.), Topological Foundations of Cognitive Science, Hamburg: Graduiertenkolleg Kognitionswissenschaft, 1994, the text of a talk delivered at the First International Summer Institute in Cognitive Science in Buffalo in July 1994.

The Fifth International Congress of Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science was held at the University of Western Ontario, London, Canada, 27 August to 2 September 1975. The Congress was held under the auspices of the International Union of History and Philosophy of Science, Division of Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science, and was sponsored by the National Research Council of Canada and the University of Western Ontario. As those associated closely with the work of the Division (...) over the years know weIl, the work undertaken by its members varies greatly and spans a number of fields not always obviously related. In addition, the volume of work done by first rate scholars and scientists in the various fields of the Division has risen enormously. For these and related reasons it seemed to the editors chosen by the Divisional officers that the usual format of publishing the proceedings of the Congress be abandoned in favour of a somewhat more flexible, and hopefully acceptable, method of pre sentation. Accordingly, the work of the invited participants to the Congress has been divided into four volumes appearing in the University of Western Ontario Series in Philosophy of Science. The volumes are entitled, Logic, Foundations of Mathematics and Computability Theory, Foun dational Problems in the Special Sciences, Basic Problems in Methodol ogy and Linguistics, and Historical and Philosophical Dimensions of Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science. (shrink)

The present essay outlines the metaphilosophical foundations necessary for an analysis of science’s dependence on culture. It shows that the matter cannot be approached on a purely objective level as all studies and conclusions are perforce relativized by adopted cultural and scientific norms. The multifariousness of science and culture—which lies at the root of the whole problem—results in a broad network of relations between the two.The enclosed studies on the loading of science by culture lead to rather (...) integristic conclusions as to the essence of culture. This integristic position is in a sense a “third road” halfway between the two known radical approaches—one proclaiming that culture is totally diversified, the other that it is one. The “third path” underscores the universal fundament of culture in all its varieties and views science as universal despite its cultural load and the diversity of existing cultures—precisely because of its rooting in this fundament. (shrink)

Foundational work in mathematics by some of the other participants in the symposium helps towards answering the question whether a heterodox mathematics could in principle be used as successfully as is orthodox mathematics in scientific applications. This question is turn, it will be argued, is relevant to the question how far current science is the way it is because the world is the way it is, and how far because we are the way we are, which is a (...) central question, if not the central question, of philosophy of science. (shrink)

John W. Burgess was one of the indisputable founders of the discipline of political science in the United States. Two crucial influences on the development of Burgess's political thought were the American Civil War and the Franco-Prussian War. His interest in these historical events, which he saw as central to understanding the importance of the nation-state, deeply influenced the Foundations of Political Science, his most compact exposition of what he believed to be the core principles of political (...) class='Hi'>science. (shrink)

At the 1969 annual meeting of the American Association for the Ad vancement ofScience, held in Boston on December 27-29, a sequence of symposia on the philosophical foundations of science was organized jointly by Section L of the Association and the Boston Colloquium for the Philosophy of Science. Section L is devoted to the history, philos ophy, logic and sociology of science, with broad connotations extended both to 'science' and to 'philosophy'. With collaboration generously extended by (...) other and more specialized Sections of the AAAS, the Section L program took an unusually rich range of topics, and indeed the audiences were large, and the discussions lively. This book, regrettably delayed in publication, contains the major papers from those symposia of 1969. In addition, it contains the distin guished George Sarton Memorial Lecture of that meeting, 'Boltzmann, Monocycles and Mechanical Explanation' by Martin J. Klein. Some additions and omissions should be noted: In Part 1, dedicated to the 450th anniversary of the birth of Leonardo da Vinci, we have been una bie to include a contrihution by Elmer Belt who was prevented by storms from participating. In Part II, on physics and the explanation of life, we were unable to persuade Isaac Asimov to overcome his modesty about the historical remarks he made under the title 'Arrhenius Revisited'. (shrink)

The central aim of this thesis is to confront the world-view of positivistic materialism with its nihilistic implications and to develop an alternative world-view based on process philosophy, showing how in terms of this, science and ethics can be reconciled. The thesis begins with an account of the rise of positivism and materialism, or ‘scientism’, to its dominant position in the culture of Western civilization and shows what effect this has had on the image of man and consequently on (...) ethical views. After having shown the basic weaknesses of this world-view, the positivist account of science is criticised and an alternative epistemology is developed in which the aim of disciplined inquiry is seen to be understanding. It is argued on the basis of this epistemology that science and metaphysics are indissociable, and that the materialist conception of being is open to challenge from a different ontology. Having reviewed the various conceptions of being which have been developed in the past, a version of process philosophy is outlined and it is argued that this promises to be far more effective than materialism as a foundation for the natural sciences. In particular it is shown how in terms of process philosophy it is possible to conceive of living, sentient organisms as having emerged from inanimate being. This provides the basis for the development of a conception of humanity as an emergent form of life. The human order is then seen as a process of becoming within nature with its own unique dynamics, irreducible to any other processes, involving both intentional and unintentional processes. It is shown how on the basis of this conception of humanity it is possible to develop an ethical theory and a critical social science, and in this way, to transcend the disjunction between science and ethics. -/- . (shrink)

For centuries, science was considered as something radically different from religion. Yet, the foundations of true science are deeply religious in nature. This paper seeks to show how religion is the only foundation needed for the formulation of scientific theories, since it provides the core principles on which the building of exact sciences is based upon. Our need to understand the cosmos and our faith in us being able to do so, are the main prerequisites for conducting (...) class='Hi'>science; prerequisites that are derived from our belief in us being the sons of God and, thus, being able to read His mind. From its birth on 7 March 1277 up to today, science seems to be the only logical attitude of religious people towards the unknown cosmos. (shrink)

Abstract.The thesis that the sciences are value neutral has recently been criticized severely. However, both the critics of the value‐neutrality thesis and its upholders share the separatist position that there is a fundamental dichotomy between fact and value, differing only on the degree to which science is impregnated with values. Skinner's claim that the science of operant behavior is the science of values rejects this dichotomy and is opposed to both the value‐neutrality thesis and criticisms of it. (...) I examine Skinner's claim that psychology is value‐laden in the radical sense of providing a foundation for a theory of values and conclude that Skinner is arguing for an ethics and theory of values which is naturalistic, teleological, and both substantively and methodologically objective. (shrink)

This is an overview of recent philosophical discussion about connectionism and the foundations of cognitive science. Connectionist modeling in cognitive science is described. Three broad conceptions of the mind are characterized, and their comparative strengths and weaknesses are discussed: (1) the classical computation conception in cognitive science; (2) a popular foundational interpretation of connectionism that John Tienson and I call “non‐sentential computationalism”; and (3) an alternative interpretation of connectionism we call “dynamical cognition.” Also discussed are two (...) recent philosophical attempts to enlist connectionism in defense of eliminativism about folk psychology. (shrink)

Recoge: 1. Crisis as historical specificity -- 2. The history of science as the history of crisis.

At some point during the 1950s, mainstream American philosophy of science began increasingly to avoid questions about the role of non-cognitive values in science and, accordingly, increasingly to avoid active engagement with social, political and moral concerns. Such questions and engagement eventually ceased to be part of the mainstream. Here we show that the eventual dominance of 'value-free' philosophy of science can be attributed, at least in part, to the policies of the U.S. National Science Foundation's (...) "History and Philosophy of Science" sub-program. In turn, the sub-program's policies were set by logical empiricists who espoused value-free philosophy of science; these philosophers' actions, we also point out, fit a broad pattern, one in which analytic philosophers used institutional control to marginalize rival approaches to philosophy. We go on to draw on existing knowledge of this pattern to suggest two further, similar, contributors to the withdrawal from value-laden philosophy of science, namely decisions by the editors of Philosophy of Science and by the editors of The Journal of Philosophy. Political climate was, we argue, at most an indirect contributor to the withdrawal and was neither a factor that decided whether it occurred nor one that was sufficient to bring it about. Moreover, we argue that the actions at the National Science Foundation went beyond what was required by its senior administrators and are better viewed as part of what drove, rather than as what was being driven by, the adoption of logical empiricism by the philosophy of science community. (shrink)

(2005). Frameworks & foundations. Angelaki: Vol. 10, continental philosophy and the sciences the german traditionissue editor: damian veal, pp. 201-218.

When von Neumann's and Morgenstern's Theory of Games and Economic Behavior appeared in 1944, one thought that a complete theory of strategic social behavior had appeared out of nowhere. However, game theory has, to this very day, remained a fast-growing assemblage of models which have gradually been united in a new social theory - a theory that is far from being completed even after recent advances in game theory, as evidenced by the work of the three Nobel Prize winners, John (...) F. Nash, John C. Harsanyi, and Reinhard Selten. Two of them, Harsanyi and Selten, have contributed important articles to the present volume. This book leaves no doubt that the game-theoretical models are on the right track to becoming a respectable new theory, just like the great theories of the twentieth century originated from formerly separate models which merged in the course of decades. For social scientists, the age of great discover ies is not over. The recent advances of today's game theory surpass by far the results of traditional game theory. For example, modem game theory has a new empirical and social foundation, namely, societal experiences; this has changed its methods, its "rationality. " Morgenstern (I worked together with him for four years) dreamed of an encompassing theory of social behavior. With the inclusion of the concept of evolution in mathematical form, this dream will become true. Perhaps the new foundation will even lead to a new name, "conflict theory" instead of "game theory. (shrink)