Ronald Giere and others aspire to 'naturalize science' by examining scientific activity as they would any other natural phenomenon — scientifically. Giere aims to fashion a theory of science that is naturalistic, realistic, and evolutionary, and to thus carve for himself a niche between foundationalist philosophies of science (positing abstract criteria of rationality) on the one hand, and relativist sociologies of science on the other. Giere's approach is appealing because it allows that science is a human endeavor pursued by humans (...) using human cognitive skills. The cognitive skills most salient to science, in Giere's view, are the ability to represent the world more or less accurately, and the ability to choose more or less accurately between available theories. These skills, Giere believes, have been endowed by evolution. We believe that Giere's account is inadequate because it gives short shrift to rationality. Giere places too much emphasis on natural modeling skills and on natural heuristics for judging the relative merits of these models, and too little emphasis on the systematic attempts to reflect on, find fault with, and modify, models that characterize so much of scientific activity. This aspect of science and other human endeavor — the creative, contemplative, reflective, in short the rational aspect of representation — is all but lacking in Giere's study. Thus, Giere's account of science, like other naturalist accounts, excludes precisely that which is most important, and which most needs to be explained, about science. (shrink)

The paper attempts to elucidate and evaluate William Whewell's notion of a "consilience of inductions." In section I Whewellian consilience is defined and shown to differ considerably from what latter-day writers talk about when they use the term. In section II a primary analysis of consilience is shown to yield two types of consilient processes, one in which one of the lower-level laws undergoes a conceptual change (the case aptly discussed in Butts [1977]), and one in which the explanatory theory (...) undergoes conceptual "stretching." In section III both consilient cases are compared to the non-consilient case in reference to L. J. Cohen's method of relevant variables. In section IV we examine the test procedures of the theory in all three cases, and it is shown that in the event of genuine consilience (consilience of the second type) a theory acquires extraordinarily high support. In the final section something is said of the short-comings of standard Bayesian confirmation theories that are highlighted by Whewellian consilience. (shrink)

The PEIRCE EDITION contains large sections of previously unpublished material in addition to selected published works. Each volume includes a brief historical and biographical introduction, extensive editorial and textual notes, and a full chronological list of all of Peirce’s writings, published and unpublished, during the period covered.

O objetivo deste artigo é esboçar um perfil do pensamento racionalista contemporâneo. A tarefa é realizada por meio da leitura de textos selecionados de três autores: J. Haugeland, D. Dennett e R. Brandom. E o trabalho não é feito de uma só vez, mas se desenrola em três etapas. Primeiro, a leitura de Haugeland nos dá uma caricatura do racionalismo: a máquina que joga xadrez. Daí, apoiando-se nesse esboço, a leitura de Dennett amplia os nossos horizontes, abarcando a intencionalidade das (...) atividades práticas. Tomando esse desenho como base, a leitura de Brandom adiciona uma nova dimensão semântica ao esquema: a normatividade. Mas, ao final do trabalho, o que nós obtemos não é uma figura com linhas bem definidas – que demarca e caracteriza o pensamento racionalista contemporâneo. Isso acontece porque, durante todo o trajeto, nós alternamos as tentativas de examinar as suas fronteiras a partir de dentro e a partir de fora – examinando aquilo que os autores têm a dizer e aquilo que eles não dizem; as suas ideias e as limitações do seu ponto de vista. Assim, ao mesmo tempo em que vamos produzindo o nosso retrato, também vamos jogando luz no plano de fundo, examinando aquilo que precisa estar lá para que o racionalismo possa operar. Finalmente, concluímos o artigo apontando para esse elemento que tornaria a história mais completa, utilizando o conceito de dupla determinação. (shrink)

"This volume is a scholarly collection of massive biographical detail, much of which is being revealed for the first time." —Isis A selection of Fisch’s most important articles on these topics is presented here in a convenient format, including revisions and updating and a complete bibliography of Fisch’s published writings.

: While the work of such expositors as Max H. Fisch, James J. Liszka, Lucia Santaella, Anne Friedman, and Mats Bergman has helped bring into sharp focus why Peirce took the third branch of semiotic (speculative rhetoric) to be "the highest and most living branch of logic," more needs to be done to show the extent to which the least developed branch of his theory of signs is, at once, its potentially most fruitful and important. The author of this (...) paper thus begins to trace out even more fully than these scholars have done the unfinished trajectory of Peirce's eventual realization of the importance of speculative rhetoric. In doing so, he is arguing for a shift from the formalist and taxonomic emphasis of so many commentators to a more thoroughly pragmaticist and "rhetorical" approach to interpreting Peirce's theory of signs. (shrink)

The following is a joint report of the Committee on Philosophy in Education of the American Philosophical Association and of the Committee on Cooperation with the American Philosophical Association of the Philosophy of Education Society. The report has been approved by the Executive Committee of the Philosophy of Education Society and by the Board of Officers of the American Philosophical Association. The Committee of the American Philosophical Association was composed of the following: C. W. Hendel, Chairman, H. G. Alexander, R. (...) M. Chisholm, Max Fisch, Lucius Garvin, Douglas Morgan, A. E. Murphy, Charner Perry and R. G. Turnbull. The Committee of the Philosophy of Education Society consisted of Fr. R. J. Henle, S.J., Chairman, and Professors Barton, Clayton, Drake, and Hullfish. The American Philosophical Association subcommittee with primary responsibility for this report was composed of Charner Perry, Chairman, and Douglas Morgan. (shrink)

In the course of history, many individuals have the dubious honor of being remembered primarily for an eponym of which they would disapprove. How many are aware that Joseph-Ignace Guillotin actually opposed the death penalty? Another notable case is that of Maria Agnesi, an Italian woman of privileged, but not noble, birth who excelled at mathematics and philosophy during the eighteenth century. In her treatise of 1748, Instituzioni Analitiche, she provided a comprehensive summary of the current state of knowledge concerning (...) both integral calculus and differential equations. Later in life she was elected to the Bologna Academy of Sciences and, in 1762, was consulted by the University of Turin for an opinion on the work of an up-and-coming mathematician named Joseph-Louis Lagrange. (shrink)

"This volume is a scholarly collection of massive biographical detail, much of which is being revealed for the first time." —Isis A selection of Fisch's most important articles on these topics is presented here in a convenient format, including revisions and updating and a complete bibliography of Fisch's published writings.

For half a century, J. I. Packer's classic has helped Christians everywhere discover the wonder, glory, and joy of knowing God. This fiftieth anniversary edition of a thought-provoking work seeks to renew and enrich our understanding of God, bringing together knowing about God and knowing God through a close relationship with Jesus Christ.

L'eschatologie a marqué la théologie chrétienne du XXe siècle. Initiateur en ce domaine, R. Bultmann entreprend une herméneutique « existentiale » et « démythologisante » de la prédication apocalyptique de Jésus, mise en lumière par J. Weiss et A. Schweitzer : en Jésus Dieu prononce la parole définitive qui m'appelle aujourd'hui à la décision de foi et à l'existence authentique. La théologie apprend ainsi à parler de Dieu avec sens en parlant de l'homme. Avec J. Moltmann, le futur est désenclavé (...) du présent où le laissait Bultmann, et l'eschatologie se fait résolument christologique en même temps qu'historique ; mais le passage de la Théologie de l’espérance au Dieu crucifié pose le problème redoutable du lien entre l’horizon de l’espérance et l'histoire abandonnée à la souffrance. Pour J. Moingt, la résurrection, fondement de la christologie, permet de relire la vie de Jésus comme l’histoire de Dieu menant avec les hommes depuis la création le combat eschatologique de la vie contre la mort.La pensée eschatologique s’élabore aussi dans la ligne des théologiens de l'histoire. O. Cullmann fait du Christ le centre de l’histoire du salut, entre un « déjà là » et un « pas encore ». Avec plus d’ambition mais aussi d’ambiguïté, W. Pannenberg situe la résurrection de Jésus, en tant qu’événement historique, au regard de l'histoire universelle dont elle anticipe la fin. La pensée eschatologique ne laisse pas de travailler également d’autres théologies, davantage marquées par les problématiques traditionnelles.Twentieth century Christian theology has been marked by eschatology. R. Bultmann, initiator in this field, underlook an “existential” and “demythologising” hermeneutic of the apocalyptic preaching of Jesus, which had been brought. to light by J. Weiss and A. Schweitzer : in Jesus God pronounces the definitive word that calls me to a decision of faith and authentic existence today. Theology thus learns to speak of God with meaning by speaking of man. With J. Moltmann, the future is freed from present, where Bultmann had left it, and eschatology became resolutely Christological at the same time as historical. But the passage from the Theology of Hope to the Crucified God poses the difficult problem of the connection between the horizon of hope and history left to suffering. For J. Moingt, the resurrection, foundation of Christology, permits a rereading of the life of Jesus as the history of God, who, from the time of creation, leads humanity in the eschatological combat of life against death.Eschatological thought also develops in the direction of theologies of history. O. Cullmann makes Christ the center of the history of salvation, between an “already here” and a “not yet”. With greater ambition but also ambiguity, W Pannenberg places the resurrection of Jesus as a historical event, in comparison with universal history, of which it anticipates the end. Eschatological thought does not fail to also influence others theologies, more marked by traditional problematics. (shrink)

Michael Walzer is one of the world's most important political thinkers. In this book, Toby J. Reiner provides the most wide-ranging and up-to-date introduction to his work available. Examining Walzer's multivarious writings and work, Reiner develops an illuminating new interpretation of his thought that no political theorist can afford to miss.

International array of contributors, bringing together both traditional and more recent approaches to provide valuable insights into the poets’ use of language.Covers authors from Lucilius to Juvenal.Of the peoples of ancient Italy, only the Romans committed newly composed poems to writing, and for 250 years Latin-speakers developed an impressive verse literature.The language had traditional resources of high style, e.g., alliteration, lexical and morphological archaism or grecism, and of course metaphor and word order; and there were also less obvious resources in (...) the technical vocabularies of law, philosophy and medicine.The essays in this volume show how the poets in the classical period combined these elements, and so created a poetic medium that could comprehend satire, invective, erotic elegy, drama, lyric, and the grandest heroic epos. (shrink)

Although the theory of definability had many important antecedents—such as the descriptive set theory initiated by the French semi-intuitionists in the early 1900s—the main ideas were first laid out in precise mathematical terms by Alfred Tarski beginning in 1929. We review here the basic notions of languages, explicit definability, and grammatical complexity, and emphasize common themes in the theories of definability for four important languages underlying, respectively, descriptive set theory, recursive function theory, classical pure logic, and finite-universe logic. We review (...) the history of previous studies of the similarities and differences in the theories of definability of the first three of these four languages. A seminal role leading toward unification of the theories has been played by the separation principles introduced by Nikolai Luzin in 1927. Emphasizing analogies and driving toward further unification embracing finite-universe logic we concentrate on a simple example—the first and second separation principles for existential-universal first-order sentences . Using this as a test case for the fundamental problem of how to “finitize” arguments in classical pure logic to the finite-universe case, we are led to the analogous negative solution by using the theory of certain special graphs: a graph is - special for any positive integers m , n , p , q iff it is bipartite with m red points and n blue points and for every p -tuple of red points there is a blue point to which they are all connected . As an aside we introduce for further study a natural “Ramseyesque” increasing sequence A of positive integers, where A is the least positive integer n for which an -special graph exists. (shrink)