Almost everyone has an intuitive notion of what a random number is. For example, consider these two series of binary digits: 01010101010101010101 01101100110111100010 The first is obviously constructed according to a simple rule; it consists of the number 01 repeated ten times. If one were asked to speculate on how the series might continue, one could predict with considerable confidence that the next two digits would be 0 and 1. Inspection of the second series of digits yields no such comprehensive (...) pattern. There is no obvious rule governing the formation of the number, and there is no rational way to guess the succeeding digits. The arrangement seems haphazard; in other words, the sequence appears to be a random assortment of 0's and 1's. (shrink)

What could be more certain than the fact that 2 plus 2 equals 4? Since the time of the ancient Greeks mathematicians have believed there is little---if anything---as unequivocal as a proved theorem. In fact, mathematical statements that can be proved true have often been regarded as a more solid foundation for a system of thought than any maxim about morals or even physical objects. The 17th-century German mathematician and philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz even envisioned a ``calculus'' of reasoning such (...) that all disputes could one day be settled with the words ``Gentlemen, let us compute!'' By the beginning of this century symbolic logic had progressed to such an extent that the German mathematician David Hilbert declared that all mathematical questions are in principle decidable, and he confidently set out to codify once and for all the methods of mathematical reasoning. (shrink)

This paper argues that scientific studies distinguish themselves from other studies by a combination of their processes, their (knowledge) elements and the roles of these elements. This is supported by constructing a process model. An illustrative example based on Newtonian mechanics shows how scientific knowledge is structured according to the process model. To distinguish scientific studies from research and scientific research, two additional process models are built for such processes. We apply these process models: (1) to (...) argue that scientific progress should emphasize both the process of change and the content of change; (2) to chart the major stages of scientific study development; and (3) to define “science”. (shrink)

If you're not sure what to make of all the claims and counterclaims, this new book will help cut through the conflicting reports and contradictory findings. We are bombarded daily with media reports of startling new findings from "just released" studies often in major, authoritative publications on consumer products, medications, foods, alcohol, safety devices, social behavior, public policy, and much more. The decisions of millions of consumers, professionals, and government agencies can be influenced by just one study. Light, humorous, (...) and entertaining, Studies Show reviews sample studies to expose their traps and pitfalls. In plain English, statistics analyst John H. Fennick discusses the methods of good and bad studies to explain how scientific results can differ sometimes radically. Fennick shows that when armed with common sense and critical intelligence, we can understand almost any study. (shrink)

Realism and Russia? Realism is a notion with multiple meanings, so options abound as to how the two might connect with one another. An old Russian proverb conveys a realist message about social properties: "An individual in Rssia was composed of three parts: a body, a soul, and a passport." (Ruben 1985, 83) Having a passport signals the possession of a complex set of social properties, and if these are taken to be real in some appropriate sense, one is inplying (...) a realist view in social ontology. In another sense of the word, realism is a live issues in the study of international relations. Political realism considers the behaviour of states by emphasizing the importance of national interests and the drive for power on the one hand, and the suppression of moral concerns on the other (e.g. Donnelly 2000). Russian realists hold diverse views about the newly emerged unipolar global power structure and Russia's proper strategy for adjusting to this structure (e.g. Shakleyina and Bogaturov 2004). Realism is a family of viewpoints also in the arts (including painting, music and literature) and their study. Socialist realism is a version that used to be an official doctrine in Russia, gently requesting artists to optimistically represent society's march towards communism, glorifying the heroic role of the proletariat in driving the process. Socialist realism was also well known elsewhere. So much so that in the 1970s, a philosophy professor at the University of Helsinki announced to give a lecture course on "scientific realism" but on its way to the university catalogue through the university administration, the title of the course was transformed into "socialist realism". In the spirit of rectifying that old administrative mistake, the remards to follow deal with scientifit realism as a philosophy of science. The general issue to be addressed is how the social sciences relate to the social world, in both directions. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Despite widespread interest in individual life histories, few biographies of scientists make use of insights derived from psychology, another discipline that studies people, their thoughts, and their actions. This essay argues that recent theoretical work in psychology and tools developed for clinical psychological practice can help biographical historians of science create and present fuller portraits of their subjects' characters and temperaments and more nuanced analyses of how these traits helped shape their subjects' scientific work. To illustrate this thesis, (...) the essay examines the early career of James McKeen Cattell—an influential late nineteenth‐ and early twentieth‐century experimental psychologist—through a lens offered by psychology and argues that Cattell's actual laboratory practices derived from an “accommodation” to a long‐standing “cognitive deficit.” These practices in turn enabled Cattell to achieve more precise experimental results than could any of his contemporaries; and their students readily adopted them, along with their behavioral implications. The essay concludes that, in some ways, American psychology's early twentieth‐century move toward a behavioral understanding of psychological phenomena can be traced to Cattell's personal cognitive deficit. It closes by reviewing several “remaining general questions” that this thesis suggests. (shrink)

Theory of Mind (ToM), the cognitive capacity to attribute internal mental states to oneself and others, is a crucial component of social skills. Its formal study has become important, witness recent research on reasoning and information update by intelligent agents, and some proposals for its formal modelling have put forward settings based on Epistemic Logic (EL). Still, due to intrinsic idealisations, it is questionable whether EL can be used to model the high-order cognition of ‘real’ agents. This manuscript proposes (...) a framework that takes visibility, memory, perspective and communication as the main factors underpinning mental attributions. This is more in-line with findings in cognitive science and allows us to model well-known False-Belief Tasks that are typically used in testing people's ToM. We discuss some of the framework's technical features, arguing why it does justice to empirical observations. (shrink)

When science makes cognitive progress, who or what is it that improves in the requisite way? According to a widespread and unchallenged assumption, it is the cognitive attitudes of scientists themselves, i.e. the agents by whom scientific progress is made, that improve during progressive episodes. This paper argues against this assumption and explores a different approach. Scientific progress should be defined in terms of potential improvements to the cognitive attitudes of those for whom progress is made, i.e. the (...) receivers rather than the producers of scientific information. This includes not only scientists themselves, but also various other individuals who utilize scientific information in different ways for the benefit of society as a whole. (shrink)

Entrepreneurship is considered a key element for economic and social development, requiring cognitive, attitudinal, and procedural competencies for its realization. This study focuses on a documentary review aimed at answering the following questions: How is research on entrepreneurial capabilities approached in different countries? What is the volume of scientific production on this topic? In light of this, the present work is developed within the inclusion criteria: publications between 2012 and 2022, various types of documents, written in English, and (...) included in the SCOPUS database. To conduct the analysis, a combination of tools such as VOSviewer, Biblioshiny, and Excel was used. These tools allowed for the identification of clusters, co-occurrence frequencies, and network nodes. Based on this, the behavior of authors, countries, journals, and the evolution of the topic over time were examined. The results reveal that the United States is the leading country in publishing research on entrepreneurship. There is an increase in scientific production related to this topic, with the majority of publications concentrated in a limited number of journals (53). Limited collaboration among authors and institutions is also evident. The co-authorship network is divided into 47 clusters, with weak grouping among them. (shrink)

Under this name, on December 12-13, 1998, a scientific conference was held in Ternopil. Co-organizers of the conference were the Ukrainian Association of Religious Studies, the Office for Nationalities, Migration and Religions of the Ternopil Regional State Administration, the Ternopil State Medical Academy named after them. I.Gorbachevsky, Department of Religious Studies, Institute of Philosophy. G.S. Skovoroda, National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, Kremenets State Medical College. The conference was held on the basis of the medical academy, (...) whose rector was Prof. L.Kovalchuk has created all the necessary conditions for her fruitful work. The conference was congratulated by the vice-rector on the scientific work of the academy prof. M.Andreichin There were about 40 scientific reports and reports. The conference was attended by members of the Institute of Religious Studies at Jagiellonian University. (shrink)

Why is evolutionary theory controversial among members of the American public? We propose a novel explanation: allegiance to different criteria for belief. In one interview study, two online surveys, and one nationally representative phone poll, we found that evolutionists and creationists take different justifications for belief as legitimate. Those who accept evolution emphasize empirical evidence and scientific consensus. Creationists emphasize not only the Bible and religious authority, but also knowledge of the heart. These criteria for belief remain (...) predictive of views about evolution even when taking into account other related factors like religion, political affiliation, and education. Each view is supported by its own internally specified criteria for what constitutes a justified belief. Changing minds may thus require changing epistemic norms. (shrink)

According to the foundationalist picture, shared by many rationalists and positivist empiricists, science makes cognitive progress by accumulating justified truths. Fallibilists, who point out that complete certainty cannot be achieved in empirical science, can still argue that even successions of false theories may progress toward the truth. This proposal was supported by Karl Popper with his notion of truthlikeness or verisimilitude. Popper’s own technical definition failed, but the idea that scientific progress means increasing truthlikeness can be expressed by defining (...) degrees of truthlikeness in terms of similarities between states of affairs. This paper defends the verisimilitude approach against Alexander Bird who argues that the “semantic” definition is not sufficient to define progress, but the “epistemic” definition referring to justification and knowledge is more adequate. Here Bird ignores the crucial distinction between real progress and estimated progress, explicated by the difference between absolute degrees of truthlikeness and their evidence-relative expected values. Further, it is argued that Bird’s idea of returning to the cumulative model of growth requires an implausible trick of transforming past false theories into true ones. (shrink)

Human beings are strange animals. Although evolutionary theory has brilliantly accounted for the features we share with other creatures—from the genetic code that directs the construction of our bodies to the details of how our muscles and neurons work—we still stand out in countless ways. Our brains are exceptionally large, we alone have truly grammatical language, and we alone compose symphonies, drive cars, eat spaghetti with a fork and wonder about the origins of the universe.

It's Still Debatable! encourages scientific literacy by showing you how to teach the content and thinking skills K- 5 students need to explore real-world questions like these: - Is football too dangerous for kids? - Do we need zoos? - Should distracted walking be illegal? At the core of the exploration is the Socioscientific Issues Framework. It uses debatable, science-related societal questions, or socioscientific issues, to address science content, help children learn to apply the content, and encourage them to (...) become informed citizens. The book supports the Next Generation Science Standards; links to the Common Core State Standards, National Curriculum Standards for Social Studies, and C3 Framework; and is developmentally appropriate for diverse elementary classrooms. It also includes a chapter especially for use in methods courses and professional development programs. The framework gives students practice in the research, analysis, and argumentation necessary to grapple with difficult questions with roots in life, physical, Earth, and environmental science. After introducing the framework and explaining how it supports the standards, the book shows you how to implement the concept through 14 lessons. Because the book is specifically for elementary grades, the author made it a teach-ready resource that integrates science into your packed school days. You get clear and accessible background information, practical guidance on how to use the lessons, and developmentally appropriate assessments and handouts. You even find out how to develop your own socioscientific issues curriculum. (shrink)

I argue that it was rational for chemists to eliminate phlogiston, but that it also would have been rational for them to retain it. I do so on the grounds that a number of prominent phlogiston theorists identified phlogiston with hydrogen in the late 18th century, and this identification became fairly well entrenched by the early 19th century. In light of this identification, I critically evaluate Hasok Chang’s argument that chemists should have retained phlogiston, and that doing so would have (...) benefited science. I argue that these benefits would have been unlikely, and I go on to consider some more likely benefits and harms of retaining phlogiston. I conclude that there is a sense in which scientific rationality concerns what is permissible, as opposed to what is required, so that retention and elimination may, at least sometimes, both be rationally permissible options. (shrink)

Only a decade ago, the topic of scientific understanding remained one that philosophers of science largely avoided. Earlier discussions by Hempel and others had branded scientific understanding a mere subjective state or feeling, one to be studied by psychologists perhaps, but not an important or fruitful focus for philosophers of science. Even as scientific explanation became a central topic in philosophy of science, little attention was given to understanding. Over the last decade, however, this situation has (...) changed. Analyses of scientific understanding that do not treat it as a subjective state or feeling have been offered and debated, and both the epistemic value and the pitfalls of purported psychological .. (shrink)

Objective: To present a narrative review of the history of bioethics in Latin America and of scientific output in this interdisciplinary field. Methods: This was a mixed-methods study. Results: A total of 1458 records were retrieved, of which 1167 met the inclusion criteria. According to the Web of Science classification, the predominant topics of study were medical ethics, social sciences and medicine, and environmental and public health topics. Four themes of bioethics output in the Latin American (...) literature have emerged: issues involving the beginning and end of life, ethics in human research, patient–provider relationships, and ethics training for health professionals. Conclusion: Although bioethics is a growing interdisciplinary field in Latin America, its academic impact is still very low, and programmes are highly concentrated in large urban centres in a few countries. Challenges includes the regional and international impact of local scientific output. (shrink)

Religion in Multidisciplinary Perspective provides the first comprehensive treatment of the work of Wesley J. Wildman, one of the most inventive thinkers in the field of religious studies. Scholars with expertise in philosophical, theological, and scientific approaches to the study of religion offer critical and constructive engagements with Wildman's astonishingly creative and integrative oeuvre. The essays address themes that will be of interest to those concerned with the current state of scholarship on religion from a variety of (...) disciplines, including philosophy, theology, ethics, psychology, sociology, anthropology, and others. The volume concludes with a response by Wildman"-- Back ocover. (shrink)

It is generally accepted among philosophers of science that hypothesis testing is a key methodological feature of science. As far as philosophical theories of confirmation are con...

Animal welfare scientific literature has accumulated rapidly in recent years, but bias may exist which influences understanding of progress in the field. We conducted a survey of articles related to animal welfare or well being from an electronic database. From 8,541 articles on this topic, we randomly selected 115 articles for detailed review in four funding categories: government; charity and/or scientific association; industry; and educational organization. Ninety articles were evaluated after unsuitable articles were rejected. The welfare states of (...) animals in new treatments, conventional treatments or control groups with no treatment were classified as high, medium or low according to one or more. More articles were published in which the welfare of animals in new treatments was better than that of animals in the conventional or no treatment groups, demonstrating a positive result bias. Failure to publish studies with negative or inconclusive results may lead to other scientists unnecessarily repeating the research. The authors’ assessments of the welfare state of the groups were similarly rated high, medium or low, and it was found that new treatments were rated lower if the research was funded by industry, and higher when funded by charities, with government funding agencies intermediate. These differences were not evident in the Five Freedoms assessment, demonstrating an authors’ assessment bias that appeared to support the funding agencies’ interests. North American funded publications rated the welfare of animals in New treatments higher and those in a Conventional or No Treatment lower, compared with European-funded publications. It is concluded that preliminary evidence was provided of several forms of publication bias in animal welfare science. (shrink)

Of this article's seven experiments, the first five demonstrate that virtually no Americans know the basic global warming mechanism. Fortunately, Experiments 2–5 found that 2–45 min of physical–chemical climate instruction durably increased such understandings. This mechanistic learning, or merely receiving seven highly germane statistical facts, also increased climate-change acceptance—across the liberal-conservative spectrum. However, Experiment 7's misleading statistics decreased such acceptance. These readily available attitudinal and conceptual changes through scientific information disconfirm what we term “stasis theory”—which some researchers and many (...) laypeople varyingly maintain. Stasis theory subsumes the claim that informing people about climate science may be largely futile or even counterproductive—a view that appears historically naïve, suffers from range restrictions, and/or misinterprets some polarization and correlational data. Our studies evidenced no polarizations. Finally, we introduce HowGlobalWarmingWorks.org—a website designed to directly enhance public “climate-change cognition.”. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Rhetoric 33.2 (2000) 182-186 [Access article in PDF] Book Review Rhetoric and Community: Studies in Unity and Fragmentation Rhetoric and Community: Studies in Unity and Fragmentation. Studies in Rhetoric/Communication. Ed. J. Michael Hogan. Series ed. Thomas W. Benson. Columbia, SC: U of South Carolina P, 1998. Pp. xxxviii + 315. $39.95. Based on papers and critical responses presented at the Fourth Biennial Public Address Conference, which was (...) held at Indiana University in 1994, this collection of fourteen essays by leading rhetoric scholars concentrates on the relationships among rhetoric, community, and fragmentation. Organized into three broad sections entitled "Race, Gender, and Community," "War and Community," and "Artistic and Scientific Community," the book contributes to ongoing conversations about the roles of language, symbolism, differences, metaphors, myths, hegemony, economic class, pluralism, and multiple consciousness in unifying the United States. A preface and a conclusion by J. Michael Hogan, who edited the collection, provides an orientation and summary for this new volume in the University of South Carolina Press series devoted to Studies in Rhetoric/Communication.The preface frames the book's contribution as a response to a belief that "a growing number of social and political commentators fear that the United States has lost all sense of 'community'--that repository of shared purpose, values, and traditions which historically has defined the American character" (xii). Hogan amplifies, "The signs of stress and fragmentation appear everywhere, not just in our national political and cultural dialogue but in all of the various communities that define our social lives--our families, our neighborhoods, our towns and cities, our professions, and our social and cultural associations" (xii). The preface situates the book in this concern about a "lost" unity that once upon a time typified the United States. But this "lost" community is a mythic representation of a past that has never existed in the United States, except possibly in the imaginations of people habituated to dominant roles. Stephen H. Browne's comments about restoration projects in general are germane: "The work of restoration has [End Page 182] never come easy for Americans, not least of all because it presumes a state that never existed and the appeal to which is almost always self-interested" (75).Describing the fourteen contributors as sharing "a common bond," Hogan asserts, "recognizing that communities are largely defined, and rendered healthy or dysfunctional, by the language they use to characterize both themselves and others, all share an abiding concern with how communities are constituted and sustained--or, in some cases, threatened and disrupted--by the words their leaders choose to characterize both themselves and others" (xv). Hogan emphasizes a question that he reiterates with slight changes in the conclusion: "Can feminist or ethnic and racial communities successfully sustain and celebrate their own identities without alienating themselves from the larger community?" (295; similarly, xxiii). But if all members of a community are responsible for unity and fragmentation, if we are unwilling to assign responsibility for fragmentation to subordinated community members, it may be necessary, consciously, to reverse the dynamics of power implicit in Hogan's question, by asking: "Can groups that have had a history of dominating others--both beyond and within the borders--sustain their own identities and still relate productively to the community?" In addition, because the English language is a communal inheritance, it may be revealing to ask, in a reversal of the book's focus on "community," how are notions of individualism sustained in the United States?Roderick P. Hart's introduction, "Community by Negation--An Agenda for Rhetorical Inquiry," focuses on a rhetoric of hate as practiced by both the political right and the political left. Hart inquires "whether it is possible to have community without hate" (xxv). This question is necessary in any serious discussion of rhetoric, fragmentation, and community; yet calculated opportunism and economic exploitation may be misnamed and obfuscated in language depicting a rhetoric of "hate." Indeed, Lu-in Wang, a legal scholar, suggests that these other motives may be more common than animus in so-called "hate crimes." Live interviews with convicted killers... (shrink)

In recent years, there has been increasing interest in investigating science communication. Some studies that address this issue attempt to develop a model to determine the level of confidence that an author or a scientific community has at a given time towards a theory or a group of theories. A well-established approach suggests that, in order to determine the level of certainty authors have with regard to the statements they make, one can identify specific lexical and morphosyntactical markers which (...) indicate their epistemic attitudes. This method is considered particularly appealing because it permits the development of an algorithmic model based on the quantitative analysis of the occurrence of these markers to assess automatically and objectively the opinion of an author or the predominant opinion of a scientific community on a topic at a given time. In this contribution we show that this line of research presents many kinds of problems especially when it is applied to research articles. To this aim, we propose two main lines of reasoning. The first one relies generally on the argumentative structure of scientific articles and shows that certainty/uncertainty markers are used differently in different argument forms and that therefore their number/frequency of use does not offer reliable indications for determining whether the topic at issue is considered by the authors to be more or less factual/speculative. The second one is based on the analysis of a sample of psychiatric research articles on homosexuality written over a long time span and taken from The British Journal of Psychiatry. Since the psychiatric perspective on homosexuality changed radically during the decades in which these articles were published, they offer an inventory of various kinds of argumentative strategies directed both at defending and confuting dominant as well as marginal positions. We focus especially on uncertainty markers and show that frequently the positions stated using expressions indicating uncertainty are actually not considered as conjectural or speculative by their authors, but that the use of uncertainty markers is motivated by a number of different and often incongruent rhetorical strategies. (shrink)

Over the last three decades, an escalating portion of U.S. school children has been classified for special education; those with diagnoses entitled to services now number 15 percent of all public school pupils. At the same time, American scientists have focused increasingly on juvenile brains, studying what one psychiatric epidemiologist labeled ‘‘social incapacities.’’ This article reports on the laboratory labors of two scientific groups: neuroscientists who scan children’s brains in search of resting state differences according to diagnosis (...) and psychiatric epidemiologists who look to epigenetics to distinguish differential diagnostic populations. The article focuses on the medicalization of childhood differences and the harmonies and discordances between what researchers and parents understand to be at the root of children’s learning and social capacities. (shrink)

This editorial introduces the Journal of Consciousness Studies special issue on "Animal Consciousness". The 15 contributors and co-editors answer the question "How should we study animal consciousness scientifically?" in 500 words or fewer.

In this essay I review four recent monographs on Chinese American history: Xiao-huang Yin's Chinese American Literature since the 1850s, Madeline Hsu's Dreaming of Gold, Dream of Home: Transnationalism and Migration Between the United States and South China, Young Chen's Chinese San Francisco 1850-1943: A Trans-Pacific Community, and Xiaojian Zhao's Remaking Chinese America: Immigration, Family, and Community, 1940-1965. Based on both English- and Chinese-language sources, the authors of these four books explore migration processes and the social origins of (...) Chinese immigrants from an international perspective and they reinterpret the cultural values of immigrants as fundamentally open, engaged, and cosmopolitan. Moreover, they characterize the Chinese American community as a dynamic, fluid, and flexible global network and place Chinese America in a larger historical context beyond that of a single nation. They have seriously challenged the American-centered and nation-based research paradigm and promoted a more transnational, transcultural, and multilingual approach to the history of Asian American experience. (shrink)

This article concerns the way in which philosophers study the epistemology of scientific thought experiments. Starting with a general overview of the main contemporary philosophical accounts, we will first argue that two implicit assumptions are present therein: first, that the epistemology of scientific thought experiments is solely concerned with factual knowledge of the world; and second, that philosophers should account for this in terms of the way in which individuals in general contemplate these thought experiments in thought. (...) Our goal is to evaluate these assumptions and their implications using a particular case study: Albert Einstein's magnet-conductor thought experiment. We will argue that an analysis of this thought experiment based on these assumptions – as John Norton (1991) provides – is, in a sense, both misguided (the thought experiment by itself did not lead Einstein to factual knowledge of the world) and too narrow (to understand the thought experiment's epistemology, its historical context should also be taken into account explicitly). Based on this evaluation we propose an alternative philosophical approach to the epistemology of scientific thought experiments which is more encompassing while preserving what is of value in the dominant view. (shrink)

The blink response to visual threat is a standard bedside method for testing visual processing. In response to a sudden gesture directed toward the eyes, a person with a normal blink response will promptly contract both orbicularis oculi muscles to close the eyelids momentarily. There is no consensus as to whether blinking to visual threat (BVT) is purely reflex1 or a cognitively mediated behavior that heralds consciousness; i.e., is incompatible with the diagnosis of the vegetative state (VS).2,3 Some authors (...) stated that “one should be extremely cautious in making the diagnosis of the VS when there is . . . response to threatening gestures.”4 Others stated that “react(ion) to visual threat” is a “compatible but atypical feature” of VS.5 Similarly, other guidelines stated that the “threat response is usually absent” in VS.6 Finally, BVT was not mentioned in some workgroup criteria on the minimally conscious state.7 The aim of the study was to determine the incidence of BVT in patients whose clinical features are in all other respects typical of the VS, as assessed by means of validated testing.7 We also investigated whether the presence of BVT in patients considered vegetative is predictive of recovery of consciousness. (shrink)

Humanity is facing a crisis of survival. In order to save humanity and nature, we must rebuild their foundations. This paper proposes integral studies and integral practices as a possible new paradigm for the 21st century. First, we investigated the necessity of integral studies and integral practices, which were suggested by the following three evidences: (1) limitations of the Spiritual Revolution and modern philosophy, (2) limitations of the Scientific Revolution and modern science, and (3) contemporary practical problems that threaten (...) the future of humanity and nature. Second, we investigated the purpose and the principle of integral studies and integral practices from a viewpoint of the nature of both human beings and universe. One of the fundamental questions for humanity is how to overcome the egoism of individuals as well as the entire human race. In this avenue, we think the first step is to transcend toraware, which is a Japanese word meaning both “states of being caught” and “what catches us”. The state of being caught manifests itself when the ego emerges while we begin to distinguish between the self and others. Therefore, integrity and intrinsic nature become principles of integral studies and integral practices. Consequently, integral studies and integral practices serve for the sake of nature including humanity. Third, we discussed the methodology of integral studies and integral practices. We argue its core is integral exploration and reframing of the self and others, ourselves and the world (universe), and humanity and nature. It consequently reveals integrity and harmonizes intellect, emotion, and volition as well as goodness, truth, and beauty while revealing integrity and opening up or unfolding the intrinsic nature of the individual and the collective. Finally, we addressed limitations and future agendas of integral studies and integral practices. We suggest it is essential to raise and discuss fundamental questions on humanity and nature as well as to elucidate the truly unknown, which cannot be understood within existing frameworks. However, whether it is correct or not will come to be verified over time. No one in the history of humanity has ever attained universal truth, which is absolutely true in light of absolute criteria that are not relativized by differences in space, time, or people, or which is absolutely true even without referring to any criteria. Therefore, it is necessary for each of us to discern what is right and maintain a critical gaze. (shrink)

This paper investigates the working-method of three important philosophers of explanation: Carl Hempel, Philip Kitcher and Wesley Salmon. We argue that they do three things: construct an explication in the sense of Carnap, which then is used as a tool to make descriptive and normative claims about the explanatory practice of scientists. We also show that they did well with respect to, but that they failed to give arguments for their descriptive and normative claims. We think it is the responsibility (...) of current philosophers of explanation to go on where Hempel, Kitcher and Salmon failed. However, we should go on in a clever way. We call this clever way the “pragmatic approach to scientific explanation.” We clarify what this approach consists in and defend it. (shrink)

We would like to open some questions here about the institutional and cultural conditions of anything that might be called cultural studies or multiculturalism. By introducing cultural studies and multiculturalism many intellectuals aim at a more democratic culture. We share this aim. In this essay, however, we would like to argue that the projects of cultural studies and multiculturalism require: a more international model of cultural studies than the dominant Anglo-American versions; renewed attention to the institutional environments of cultural (...) studies; and a questioning of the relations between multiculturalism and identity politics. We seek less to “fix” these problems than to provide a critical analysis of the languages, the methods of criticism, and the assumptions about identity, culture, and politics that present the problems to us. Because the thickets entangling what our group calls cultural studies are so deeply rooted in Western academia, which to a large degree constitutes our own group, the counterexample of cultural criticism in other contexts can be more than usually instructive. We begin by considering the position of cultural studies in China, since our group includes a number of Chinese intellectuals, on whose experience the following section is largely based. The Chicago Cultural Studies Group began meeting in June 1990. It includes Lauren Berlant, David Bunn, Vinay Dharwadker, Norma Field, Dilip Gaonkar, Marilyn Ivy, Benjamin Lee, Leo Ou-fan Lee, Xinmin Liu, Mathew Roberts, Sharon Stephens, Katie Trumpener, Greg Urban, Michael Warner, Jianyang Zha, and Jueliang Zhou. (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)

Modeling is a relatively new topic in biblical and related subjects—it was first introduced in the 1970s—and it is controversial because the application of social-scientific models raises the difficult question of the cultural gap between the present societies, where the models are usually developed, and the ancient cultural context to which the models are applied.Because biblical and related studies may not belong to the most familiar scholarly fields of the readers of this journal, I first sketch an overall picture (...) of the development of the discipline and its main methods (Section 2). The subsequent sections summarize the arguments presented for and against modeling in biblical studies (Section 3), and discuss .. (shrink)

The paper delves into scientific atheism, distinguishing between atheist thought as mere opinion and its development into a comprehensive worldview under Marxist-Leninist influence. It explores scientific atheism’s role as both a philosophical discipline and an ideology that has significantly impacted philosophers from our region across generations. Initially, scientific atheism represented an ideological commitment to materialism and rationalism. However, for subsequent generations, it evolved into a pragmatic strategy for consolidating political power, fostering social unity, and enhancing state (...) control. This study not only outlines the integration of dialectical and historical materialism into Czechoslovakia’s mid-20th-century scientific and education systems but also examines the shifting perception of scientific atheism through different philosophical generations, highlighting its practical significance in Marxist-Leninist-dominated regions. (shrink)

This book offers a superbly clear analysis of the standard arguments for and against scientific realism. In surveying claims on both sides of the debate, Kukla organizes them in ways that expose unnoticed connections. He identifies broad patterns of error, reconciles seemingly incompatible positions, and discovers unoccupied positions with the potential to influence further debate. Kukla's overall assessment is that neither the realists nor the antirealists may claim a decisive victory.

Abstract:Latin American modernity/coloniality studies emerged in the early 1990s from a network of scholars focused on charting the nature and consequences of causal connections between the first appearances of modernity in Europe and Spanish and Portuguese colonialism in the Americas beginning in 1492. In this article, I address primarily epistemological and ontological issues raised by this literature for issues pertaining to the history and philosophy of science. The first section briefly summarizes the sixteenth century differences that were the starting (...) point of the modernity/coloniality analyses and points to just a few of the still-emerging feminist issues about this early era. The second section focuses on the distinctive epistemic and political stances that Latin American decolonial theorists use today to frame such analyses: they intend to do theory “otherwise.” This Latin American project has been conceptualized through Gloria Anzaldúa's influential “borderlands” thinking and aligns with the feminist standpoint methodology and other knowledge-from-below projects that have appeared in all of the social justice movements. (shrink)

Human germline gene editing is often debated in hypothetical terms: if it were safe and efficient, on what further conditions would it then be ethically acceptable? This paper takes another course. The key question is: how can scientists reduce uncertainty about safety and efficiency to a level that may justify initiation of first-time clinical trials? The only way to proceed is by well-designed preclinical studies. However, what kinds of investigation should preclinical studies include and what specific conditions should they satisfy (...) in order to be considered well-designed? It is argued that multispecies and multigenerational animal studies are needed as well as human embryo editing without implantation. In order to be possible to translate to first-time clinical trials, animal studies need to satisfy strict conditions of validity. Moreover, embryo studies intended for translation to first-time clinical trials need to correspond to the animal studies in experimental design. Only in this way can uncertainty about risk for harm and prospect of benefit in first-time clinical trials be reduced to a modest level. If uncertainty is not reduced to such a level, first-time clinical trials in germline gene editing should not be initiated. (shrink)