Introduction and Overview Content Type Journal Article Category Introduction Pages 151-163 DOI 10.1007/s10670-011-9288-9 Authors Theo Kuipers, Faculty of Philosophy, University of Groningen, Groningen, The Netherlands Gerhard Schurz, Department of Philosophy, University of Duesseldorf, Universitaetsstrasse 1, Geb. 23.21, 40225 Duesseldorf, Germany Journal Erkenntnis Online ISSN 1572-8420 Print ISSN 0165-0106 Journal Volume Volume 75 Journal Issue Volume 75, Number 2.

Theo Verbeek provides the first book-length examination of the initial reception of Descartes’s written works. Drawing on his research of primary materials written in Dutch and Latin and found in libraries all over Europe, even including the Soviet Union, Theo Verbeek opens a period of Descartes’s life and of the development of Cartesian philosophy that has been virtually closed since Descartes’s death. Verbeek’s aim is to provide as complete a picture as possible of the discussions that accompanied the (...) introduction of Descartes’s philosophy into Dutch universities, especially those in Utrecht and Leiden, and to analyze some of the major problems that philosophy raised in the eyes of Aristotelian philosophers and orthodox theologians. The period covered extends from 1637, the year in which Descartes published his _Discours de la Méthode, _until his death in 1650. Verbeek demonstrates how Cartesian philosophy moved successfully into the schools and universities of Holland and how this resulted in a real evolution of Descartes’s thought beyond the somewhat dogmatic position of Descartes himself. Verbeek further argues that this progression was an essential step in the universal propagation of Cartesian philosophy throughout Europe during the second half of the seventeenth century. As he details the disputes between Cartesians and anti-Cartesians in Holland, Verbeek shows how the questions raised were related on the one hand to religious conflicts between the Remonstrants and the Orthodox Calvinists and on the other hand to political conflicts between more liberal factions fighting for the union of church and state to enhance religious control of society in general. Contending that Descartes and Cartesian philosophy were central to the development of the modern Dutch state, Verbeek illuminates the role they played in Dutch political, religious, and intellectual life. (shrink)

This paper critically examines the argument structure of Fodor's theory of modularity. Fodor claims computational autonomy as the essential properly of modular processing. This property has profound consequences, burdening modularity theory with corollaries of rigidity, non-plasticity, nativism, and the old Cartesian dualism of sensing and thinking. However, it is argued that Fodor's argument for computational autonomy is crucially dependent on yet another postulate of Fodor's theory, viz. his thesis of strong modularity, ie. the view that functionally distinct modules must also (...) have physical counterparts in the neural architecture of the brain. Yet, Fodor offers little or no independent support for this neurological speculation. Moreover, due to the cognitivist underpinnings of Fodor's theory his view of modules as 'mental organs'faces an untenable dilemma that is to be traced back to the earliest history of modem cognitive science, viz. to the rationalist-computationalist research program initiated by Descartes and Male-branche. The tension characteristic for the Cartesian program was one that arose between information correlation and information processing accounts of the transactions between body and mind. Similarly, the tension characteristic for Fodor's theory of modularity is one between a causal account of modules on the model of simple detection mechanisms, and an information processing account of modules on the model of vast and elaborate cognitive systems. It is argued that the resulting concept of a cognitive module Fodorian style constitutes an amalgam of incompatible desiderata that fails to stake out a natural kind for cognitive science. As an alternative account, the final section shows connectionism to be capable of encompassing both Gibsonian and 'new look' accounts of cognitive achievements within one theoretical perspective, thus providing a fruitful interfield theory capable of combining the theoretical resources of the ecological approach with the indispensable theoretical complement provided by psychological processing accounts. This change of perspective would ultimately involve recasting the symbo-functionalist notion of cognitive function along bio-psychological lines. (shrink)

Fueled by ever-growing amounts of (digital) data and advances in artificial intelligence, decision-making in contemporary societies is increasingly delegated to automated processes. Drawing from social science theories and from the emerging body of research about algorithmic appreciation and algorithmic perceptions, the current study explores the extent to which personal characteristics can be linked to perceptions of automated decision-making by AI, and the boundary conditions of these perceptions, namely the extent to which such perceptions differ across media, (public) health, and judicial (...) contexts. Data from a scenario-based survey experiment with a national sample (N = 958) show that people are by and large concerned about risks and have mixed opinions about fairness and usefulness of automated decision-making at a societal level, with general attitudes influenced by individual characteristics. Interestingly, decisions taken automatically by AI were often evaluated on par or even better than human experts for specific decisions. Theoretical and societal implications about these findings are discussed. (shrink)

In this paper it is argued that Hintikka's game theoreticalsemantics for Independence Friendly logic does not formalize theintuitions about independent choices; it rather is aformalization of imperfect information. Furthermore it is shownthat the logic has several remarkable properties (e.g.,renaming of bound variables is not allowed). An alternativesemantics is proposed which formalizes intuitions aboutindependence.

In this paper it is shown that there is a natural way of dealing with analogy by similarity in inductive systems by extending intuitive ways of introduction of systems without analogy. This procedure leads to Carnap-like systems, with zero probability for contingent generalizations, satisfying a general principle of so-called virtual analogy. This new principle is different from, but compatible with, Carnap's principle. It will be shown that the latter principle is satisfied, and should only be satisfied, if the underlying distance (...) function is such that all predicates have the same "predicate-environment". Finally, the claim that the new systems have the property of order indifference only with respect to the past will be defended. (shrink)

The Knowledge-Based Bio-Economy has gained prominence as an agricultural R&D agenda of the European Union. Specific research policies are justified as necessary to create a KBBE for societal progress. Playing the role of a master narrative, the KBBE attracts rival visions; each favours a different diagnosis of unsustainable agriculture and its remedies in agro-food innovation. Each vision links a technoscientific paradigm with a quality paradigm: the dominant life sciences vision combines converging technologies with decomposability, while a marginal one combines agro-ecology (...) with integral product integrity. From these divergent visions, rival stakeholder networks contend for influence over research policies and priorities, especially within the Framework Programme 7 on Food, Agriculture, Fisheries and Biotechnology, which has aimed to promote a Knowledge-Based Bio-Economy. Although the FAFB programme has favoured a life sciences vision, agro-ecological approaches have gained a presence, thus overcoming their general lock-out from agricultural research agendas. In their own way, each rival paradigm emphasises the need for collective systems to gather information for linking producers with users, as a rationale for the public sector to fund distinctive research priorities. (shrink)

This monograph presents new ideas in nomic truth approximation. It features original and revised papers from a philosopher of science who has studied the concept for more than 35 years. Over the course of time, the author's initial ideas evolved. He discovered a way to generalize his first theory of nomic truth approximation, viz. by dropping an unnecessarily strong assumption. In particular, he first believed to have to assume that theories were maximally specific in the sense that they did not (...) only exclude certain conceptual possibilities, but also that all non-excluded possibilities were in fact claimed to be nomically possible. Now, he argues that the exclusion claim alone, or for that matter the inclusion claim alone, is sufficient to motivate the formal definition of being closer to the nomic truth. The papers collected here detail this generalized view of nomic truthlikeness or verisimilitude. Besides this, the book presents, in adapted form, the relation with several other topics, such as, domain revision, aesthetic progress, abduction, inference to the best explanation, pragmatic aspects, probabilistic methods, belief revision and epistemological positions, notably constructive realism. Overall, the volume presents profound insight into nomic truth approximation. This idea seeks to determine how one theory can be closer to, or more similar to, the truth about what is nomically, e.g. physically, chemically, biologically, possible than another theory. As a result, it represents the ultimate goal of theory oriented empirical science. Theo Kuipers is the author of Studies in Inductive Probability and Rational Expectation, From Instrumentalism to Constructive Realism and Structures in Science. He is the volume-editor of the Handbook on General Philosophy of Science. In 2005 there appeared two volumes of Essays in Debate with Theo Kuipers, entitled Confirmation, Empirical Progress, and Truth Approximation and Cognitive Structures in Scientific Inquiry. (shrink)

This book presents the first accessible analysis of Spinoza's Tractatus Theologico-politicus, situating the work in the context of Spinoza’s general philosophy and its 17th-century historical background. According to Spinoza it is impossible for a being to be infinitely perfect and to have a legislative will. This idea, demonstrated in the Ethics, is presupposed and further elaborated in the Tractatus Theologico-politicus. It implies not only that on the level of truth all revealed religion is false, but also that all authority is (...) of human origin and that all obedience is rooted in a political structure. The consequences for authority as it is used in a religious context are explored: the authority of Scripture, the authority of particular interpretations of Scripture, and the authority of the Church. Verbeek also explores the work of two other philosophers of the period - Hobbes and Descartes - to highlight certain peculiarities of Spinoza's position, and to show the contrasts between their theories. (shrink)

The successful decoding of human genome and subsequent advances in new life sciences innovation create technological presuppositions of a new possibility of justice i.e. the just distribution of both social and natural goods. Although Rawlsians attempt to expand their theory to include this new possibility, they fail to provide plausible metrics of social justice in the genomics and post-genomics era. By contrast, Senians seem to succeed to do so through their index of basic capabilities. This paper explores what might be (...) regarded as a Senian perspective of distributive justice in new life sciences innovation. The argument is that, by comparing freedoms instead of primary goods, the capability theory allows not only for the identification of injustices linked to natural lottery but also for their elimination through the use of new genomic technologies, including gene-based diagnostics, gene therapy, somatic cell engineering and germ-line engineering. These innovative technologies seem to have the potential to reduce variability in natural goods and therefore enable individuals to convert social goods into well-being or welfare. (shrink)

David Theo Goldberg engages Achille Mbembe in a wide-ranging conversation on the key lines of analysis of Mbembe’s book, The Critique of Black Reason. The discussion ranges across a broad swath of key themes: the constitutive feature of racisms in the making of modernity and modern capitalism as conceived through the global black experience; the African and French archives in constituting, resisting, and refashioning ‘black reason’ and its multiple registers; the centrality of slavery to this constitution and resistance; thinghood (...) and humanity; liberalism as the basis for racial pessimism. The discussion closes with Mbembe’s plea for a shared being and an exchange about repair and reparation. (shrink)

Theo C. Meyering, in “Mind Matters: Physicalism and the Autonomy of the Person,” takes yet a third approach to the issue of reduction. He states that “if (true, downward) mental causation implies nonreducibility [as Stoeger and Murphy argue] and physicalism implies the converse, it is hard to see how these two views could be compatible.” Meyering distinguishes three versions of reductionism: radical (industrial strength) physicalism; ideal (regular strength) physicalism, and mild or token physicalism. Radical physicalism asserts that all special (...) sciences are reducible to physics in the sense that their laws can be deduced via bridge laws from those of physics. Ideal physicalism asserts that while it is practically impossible to reduce the special sciences, such reduction would be possible were there an ideally complete physics" (Note: This distinction parallels Stoeger’s recognition that epistemological reducibility is relative to the meaning of “laws of nature). Token physicalism is ontologically reductionist: there are no events that are not “token-identical” with some physical event or other (Note: See above, sec. 3.3). However, there are no identities between higher-level and lower- level types of events; consequently some events described by the special sciences have no physical explanation at all. -/- All of these reductionist positions are to be contrasted with compositional (milder than mild) physicalism, which asserts that some higher-level events are not even token-identical with physical events because the higher-level event (say, a crash in the stock market) is constituted by innumerable physical particulars in all sorts of states and interactions. -/- Meyering then surveys some of the existing arguments for the nonreducibility of the special sciences. One of the most important is the argument from multiple realizability. The claim is that economics, for example, is not reducible to physics because economic concepts (for example, monetary exchange) are “wildly multiply realizable” (for example, using coins, strings of wampum, signing a check). Thus, there can be no bridge laws and no reduction. Such an argument, however, only cuts against radical physicalism, not the weaker (and a priori more plausible) ideal physicalism. -/- A stronger argument for the indispensability of special-science explanations is based on the role of functional explanations. For example, the functional description of aspirin as an analgesic is in some instances a more useful explanation of its causal role (relieving a headache) than is its description as the chemical level. -/- Meyering’s own contribution focuses neither on multiple realizability of supervenient properties nor on multiple “fillers” of functional roles, but on “multiple supervenience.” In particular, a single subvenient state of affairs (for example, a cloud of free electrons permeating the metal of which a ladder is constructed) may realize a variety of supervenient dispositional properties (in this case, electrical conductivity, thermal conductivity, opacity). An explanation (say, of the cause of a deadly accident) requires reference to the dispositional property (electrical conductivity), not merely to the subvenient property. Meyering argues that it is this possibility of multiple supervenience, not multiple realizability, that gives arguments against reduction based on functional properties their real force. Downward causation, then, can be understood in terms of selective activation of one of several dispositional properties of a lower-level state, and thus can be assigned a stable place in our picture of how the world is organized without upsetting our conception of physics as constituting a closed and complete system of physical events. (shrink)

An interesting consequence of the structuralist theory of truth approximation, as developed in my From Instrumentalism to Constructive Realism, henceforth ICR, concerns so-called ‘inference to the best explanation’. It will be argued that this popular rule among scientific realists can better be replaced by, various kinds of, ‘inference to the best theory’.

Why do agent-relative reasons have authority over us, reflective creatures? Reductive accounts base the normativity of agent-relative reasons on agent-neutral considerations like ‘having parents caring especially for their own children serves best the interests of all children’. Such accounts, however, beg the question about the source of normativity of agent-relative ways of reason-giving. In this paper, I argue for a non-reductive account of the reflective necessity of agent-relative concerns. Such an account will reveal an important structural complexity of practical reasoning (...) in general. Christine Korsgaard relates the rational binding force of practical reasons to the various identities or self-conceptions under which we value ourselves. The problem is that it is not clear why such self-conceptions would necessitate us rationally, given the fact that most of our identities are simply given. Perhaps, Harry Frankfurt is right in arguing that we are not only necessitated by reason, but also, and predominantly by what we love. I argue, however, that “the necessities of love” (in Frankfurt’s phrase) are not to be separated from, but should be seen as belonging to the necessities of reason. Our loves, concerns and related identities provide for a specific and important structure to practical reflection. They function on the background of reasoning, having a specific default role: they would lose their character as concerns, if there was a need for them to be cited on the foreground of deliberation or if there was a need to justify them. This does not mean that our deep concerns cannot be scrutinised. They can only be scrutinised in an indirect way, however, which explains their role in grounding the normativity of agent-relative reasons. It appears that this account can provide for a viable interpretation of Korsgaard’s argument about the foundational role of practical identities. (shrink)

INTRODUCTION When Karl Popper published in' his definition of closer-to-the- truth this was an important intellectual event, but not a shocking one. ...

Standard accounts of the micro-reduction of phenomenological to kinetic thermostatics, based on the postulate relating empirical absolute temperature to mean kinetic energy ū=(3/2)kT, face two problems. The standard postulate also allows 'reduction' in the other direction and it can be criticized from the point of view that reduction postulates need to be ontological identities. This paper presents a detailed account of the reduction, based on the postulate that thermal equilibrium is ontologically identical to having equal mean kinetic energy. In particular, (...) it is shown that this postulate enables reduction only in the appropriate direction, but leaves room for 'evidence transport' in the other. Moreover, it makes possible the derivation (explanation) of the standard postulate, using the existential kinetic hypothesis and phenomenological laws with which it turns out to be laden. (shrink)

In this article I give a naturalistic-cum-formal analysis of the relation between beauty, empirical success, and truth. The analysis is based on the one hand on a hypothetical variant of the so-called 'mere-exposure effect' which has been more or less established in experimental psychology regarding exposure-affect relationships in general and aesthetic appreciation in particular (Zajonc 1968; Temme 1983; Bornstein 1989; (Ye 2000). On the other hand it is based on the formal theory of truthlikeness and truth approximation as presented in (...) my From Instrumentalism to Constructive Realism (2000). The analysis supports the findings of James McAllister in his beautiful Beauty and Revolutiorl in Science (1996), by explaining and justifying them. First, scientists are essentially right in regarding aesthetic criteria useful for empirical progress and even for truth approximation, provided they conceive of them as less hard than empirical criteria. Second, the aesthetic criteria of the time, the 'aesthetic canon', may well be based on 'aesthetic induction' regarding nonempirical features of paradigms of successful theories which scientists have come to appreciate as beautiful. Third, aesthetic criteria can play a crucial, schismatic role in scientific revolutions. Since they may well be wrong, they may, in the hands of aesthetic conservatives, retard empirical progress and hence truth approximation, but this does not happen in the hands of aesthetically flexible, 'revolutionary' scientists. (shrink)

A sharp contrast had recently been drawn by one of our Cambridge Professors between Bertrand Russell and Broad1 in respect of their characters and their intellectual and moral careers. We have been told that Russell was several times in prison, married and divorced several times, had several mistresses, was frequently short of money, and very unstable in changing his philosophical views. As far as I know Broad was never in prison for anything. Again, so far from marrying several times, he (...) tells us with some satisfaction in his Autobiography that there was ‘never any risk’ of his ‘catching his foot in the man-trap of matrimony.’ This was one of the reasons why, in contrast with Russell, he was never short of money. Other reasons were that his tastes were simple, and that like his West Country philosophical forerunner, John Locke, and evidently like his Director of Studies, McTaggart, he paid great attention to investment. He was determined to save and invest enough to make himself ‘as soon as possible independent of the vicissitudes of employment’. (shrink)

This collection of 21 essays explores the creative interaction among the cognitive neurosciences, philosophy, and theology. It is the result of an international research conference co-sponsored by the Vatican Observatory, Rome, and the Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences, Berkeley.

This paper supplies a structuralist reconstruction of the Modigliani-Miller theory and shows that the economic literature following their results reports on research with an implicit strategy to come "closer-to-the-truth" in the modern technical sense in philosophy of science.

3 in philosophy, and therefore in metaphilosophy, cannot be based on rules that avoid spending time on pseudo-problems. Of course, this implies that, if one succeeds in demonstrating convincingly the pseudo-character of a problem by giving its 'solution', the time spent on it need not be seen as wasted. We conclude this section with a brief statement of the criteria for concept explication as they have been formulated in several places by Carnap, Hempel and Stegmiiller. Hempel's account is still very (...) adequate for a detailed introduction. The process of explication starts with the identification of one or more vague and, perhaps, ambiguous concepts, the so-called explicanda. Next, one tries to disentangle the ambiguities. This, however, need not be possible at once. Ultimately the explicanda are to be replaced by certain counterparts, the so-called explicata, which have to conform to four requirements. They have to be as precise as possible and as simple as possible. In addition, they have to be useful in the sense that they give rise to the formulation of theories and the solution of problems. The three requirements of preciseness, simplicity and usefulness. have of course to be pursued in all concept formation. (shrink)

The naive structuralist definition of truthlikeness is an idealization in the sense that it assumes that all mistaken models of a theory are equally bad. The natural concretization is a refined definition based on an underlying notion of structurelikeness.In Section 1 the naive definition of truthlikeness of theories is presented, using a new conceptual justification, in terms of instantial and explanatory mistakes.