Bernard Lonergan identified the need and possibility of what he called "generalized empirical method" in science and philosophy. Implementation will be a future community achievement. The book enters into details of a selection of examples in the sciences and philosophy of science. These are provided not to engage in, or blend the present aim with traditional philosophical debate, but as points of entry to help reveal the possibility and need of balanced empirical method. Taking (...) words of Lonergan: "(Q)uestions of method are practical. So my purpose in these (chapters) is not to demonstrate what is necessary. It is not to forecast what is probable. It is... to invite you to share in the exploration of a proposal" (Bernard Lonergan, A Third Collection (1985), 114). The main examples are drawn from biochemistry and biology, although heuristics envisioned will include all sciences. (shrink)

This chapter chronicles the complex relationship between philosophy and science throughout history. It illustrates how they have mutually influenced each other in modern times. Philosophy and science are thought to be polar opposites, but they are not as different as they seem to be. Philosophy is considered part of the humanities and not the sciences. However, it can be argued that schools of science branched off from the domain of philosophy. Scientific studies start (...) as or are inspired by philosophical ideas. Mathematics, the very paradigm of a logical and rational discipline that much of science embodies, is a lot like philosophy in that it involves ideas that have no empirical basis and uses logic. (shrink)

In the sense in which astronomy or botany are sciences, philosophy is not a science. Philosophers have theories, but their theories do not enable them to make predictions; they can not be empirically confirmed or refuted in the way that scientific theories can. But, it will be objected, this is not true of all the sciences. Palaeontologists do not make predictions: in pure mathematics there is no appeal to experience. But even if they are not predictive the propositions (...) which figure in the historical sciences are at any rate empirically testable: and even if the propositions of pure mathematics are not confutable by observation, they are subject to recognized methods of proof. There are standard procedures for deciding whether they are true or false. But where in philosophy are such procedures to be found? If anywhere, in formal logic which has come very close to mathematics. Nowadays, indeed, it is hardly possible to draw a line between them. But by the very process of becoming a science, formal logic detaches itself from philosophy. Philosophers do indeed make use of formal logic. They employ deductive arguments; sometimes they are able to take advantage of the economy and precision of logical symbolism. But the premises on which they reason, the propositions which the use of logical symbolism helps them to state more clearly, are not themselves drawn from formal logic. The truths which can be established by formal logic alone are not philosophical. (shrink)

Proclus, head of the Philosophy School at Athens for fifty years, was one of the leading philosophical figures in Late Antiquity. Lucas Siorvanes here introduces Proclus to English-language readers, discussing his metaphysics and theory of knowledge and focusing in particular on his Neo-Platonism. Proclus lived in the turbulent fifth century A.D., a time of struggles among Christians, Jews, and pagans, the invasion of Attila the Hun, the fall of the Western Roman Empire, and the rise of the Eastern Roman (...) Empire in Byzantium. While Late Antiquity has been regarded as a time of superstition and forbiddingly complex philosophies, recent scholarship has shown it to be full of cultural and intellectual vigor. During Proclus's tenure as head of the Philosophy School, he systematized Neo-Platonism as the summit of ancient Greek thought, brought it to its peak of influence, and became responsible for the form in which it was transmitted to the Byzantine, Western European, and Islamic civilizations. Siorvanes's extensive original research presents Proclus as much more than just a metaphysician. He surveys all of Proclus's philosophical interests—including religion, physics, astronomy, mathematics, and poetry—revealing the philosopher's central concern with the problems of being and knowledge and relating the ideas of Proclus to those of such other major thinkers as Plato, Aristotle, and Ptolemy. To help the newcomer, Siorvanes supplies more than 200 quotations from Proclus's works. He also traces the impact of Proclus's Neo-Platonism across cultures, religions, and centuries, in such diverse areas as Christian and Islamic theologies, Renaissance art, Kepler's astronomy, Romantic poetry, Emerson's thought, modern philosophy and science, and current popular phrases. (shrink)

This textbook describes and explains the fundamentals of applying empirical methods for theory building and theory testing in marketing research. The authors explain the foundations in philosophy of science and the various methodological approaches to readers who are working empirically with the purpose of developing and testing theories in marketing. The primary target group of the book are graduate students and PhD students who are preparing their empirical research projects, e.g. for a master thesis or a (...) dissertation. (shrink)

There are currently two different views about the relation between philosophy and the empirical sciences. One of them – the “Quinean” view – holds that there is only a difference in degree: both are trying to gain insights in parts of the world, but philosophy, in opposition to the empirical sciences, which deal with concrete parts of the world, tries to find out insights of a very general type. The other view – which has a century (...) old history, beginning with Socrates/Plato and ending, in a certain sense, with the late Wittgenstein – holds that philosophy and the empirical sciences are separated by a sharp categorical difference: Empirical sciences deal with parts of the world, and philosophy deals with concepts, that is with our habits of distinguishing and classifying things, which enable us to deal empirically with the world. This paper tries to develop some arguments in favour of the second view, and, furthermore, tries to suggest some implications of this view. One of these implications is that there are three special tasks of philosophy as a concept-reflecting enterprise: the descriptive, the explanatory and the critical. It is remarkable to see that within these aims empirical insights come again to play a certain, although limited role. (shrink)

The author discusses the concept of an ideal object. The statement of O.I. Genisaretsky is quoted and problematized, stating that the obligatory feature that has been preserved for the object and the terms "object" and "ideal object" is, apparently, its representability or visibility. The author shows that ideal objects began to be created during the formation of ancient philosophy and thinking. Faced with contradictions, ancient thinkers dealt with this situation in different ways. If Protogoras recognized the right of the (...) reasoners to receive contradictions and, accordingly, to consider the world contradictory, then Parmenides considered the world consistent, arguing that the criterion for the correctness (truth) of knowledge is not a reasoning person, but this world, existence, which still needs to be reached with the help of correct thought. It was within the framework of the implementation of the Parmenides program that ideal objects began to be created, which, as the author shows, performed three main functions: they allowed us to think consistently, to know the world and its phenomena, to comprehend and interpret empirical phenomena (facts) in a different way. Based on the case of Plato's "Feast", the semiotic schemes on the basis of which Plato creates ideal objects are analyzed. It is argued that it is impossible to build ideal objects, bypassing schemes, since their inventors (creators) are people. By solving problems, they synthesize meanings belonging to different areas of consciousness. The analysis of Galileo's "Conversations" allowed the author to suggest that the construction of ideal objects is due to the historical type of philosophical or scientific thinking. The author considers it necessary, before claiming to create a modern doctrine of ideal objects, to analyze the main typical cases of the construction of these objects in philosophy and science, and such an analysis can make significant adjustments to the understanding of the nature and features of this concept. Nevertheless, he suggests, it is already clear that the construction of ideal objects is an important link in philosophical, scientific and a number of other types of thinking. (shrink)

This look at Gassendi’s philosophy and science illuminates his contributions to early modern thought and to the broader history of philosophy of science. Two keys to his thought are his novel picture of acquiring and judging empirical belief, and his liberal account of criteria for counting empirical beliefs as parts of warranted physical theories. By viewing his philosophical and scientific pursuits as part of one and the same project, Gassendi’s arguments on behalf of atomism (...) can be fruitfully explained as licensed by his empiricism. (shrink)

Recent decades are marked by the upswing of the use of the term “normativity“ not only in philosophical discussions, but increasingly also within reports of empirical scientists. This may invoke the question how far these developments overlap and in how far they go past each other. A significant overlap might lead to an interesting coalescence of the two approaches to norms, which may provide for a ”naturalization” of some philosophical speculations about normativity, putting them on a firmer foundation, while (...) offering the empirical scientists some new impulses for directing their research. In this paper I give an overview of some recent empirical results concerning human normativity and I point out a certain philosophical tradition, rooted especially in the works of Wittgenstein, Sellars and Brandom, which treats normativity so that it becomes more or less compatible with these results. (shrink)

The book examines the emerging approach of using qualitative methods, such as interviews and field observations, in the philosophy of science. Qualitative methods are gaining popularity among philosophers of science as more and more scholars are resorting to empirical work in their study of scientific practices. At the same time, the results produced through empirical work are quite different from those gained through the kind of introspective conceptual analysis more typical of philosophy. This volume (...) explores the benefits and challenges of an empirical philosophy of science and addresses questions such as: What do philosophers gain from empirical work? How can empirical research help to develop philosophical concepts? How do we integrate philosophical frameworks and empirical research? What constraints do we accept when choosing an empirical approach? What constraints does a pronounced theoretical focus impose on empirical work? Nine experts discuss their thoughts and empirical results in the chapters of this book with the aim of providing readers with an answer to these questions. (shrink)

The chapter places Kant's discussions of empirical and rational psychology in the context of previous discussions in Germany. It also considers the status of what might be called his "transcendental psychology" as an instance of a special kind of knowledge: transcendental philosophy. It is divided into sections that consider four topics: the refutation of traditional rational psychology in the Paralogisms; the contrast between traditional empirical psychology and the transcendental philosophy of the Deduction; Kant's appeal to an (...) implicit psychology in his taxonomy and theory of cognitive faculties throughout the Critique of Pure Reason; and his new definitions of and support for empirical and rational psychology in the Doctrine of Method. (shrink)

Grand debates over reduction and emergence are playing out across the sciences, but these debates have reached a stalemate, with both sides declaring victory on empirical grounds. In this book, Carl Gillett provides new theoretical frameworks with which to understand these debates, illuminating both the novel positions of scientific reductionists and emergentists and the recent empirical advances that drive these new views. Gillett also highlights the flaws in existing philosophical frameworks and reorients the discussion to reflect the new (...) scientific advances and issues, including the nature of 'parts' and 'wholes', the character of aggregation, and thus the continuity of nature itself. Most importantly, Gillett shows how disputes about concrete scientific cases are empirically resolvable and hence how we can break the scientific stalemate. Including a detailed glossary of key terms, this volume will be valuable for researchers and advanced students of the philosophy of science and metaphysics, and scientific researchers working in the area. (shrink)

This paper examines the role of ideology in the emergence of the empirical sciences and the evolution of philosophy. It argues that the orientation of the religious ideology, Christianity, at the epistemological and ontological levels was very instrumental in the emergence of the empirical sciences in the area dominated by the culture of the Western (Latin) church. This claim is demonstrated by an analysis of the theoretical and methodological orientation of pre-Christian Europe, the epistemological and other philo- (...) sophical values sponsored by Christianity, as well as a comparative analysis of other cultural regions where such philosophical values did not exist. The paper then explores the evolution of philosophy after the emergence of the empirical sciences. It points out that the progress of philosophy along rational lines and the generation of knowledge thereof is not equivalent to embracing the method of the empirical sciences (scientism), but rather is a rediscovery of the rational attitude bearing in mind the context in which it has to operate. (shrink)

There has been much discussion in scholarly literature of the applicability of the concept of 'science' as understood in contemporary English to ancient Greek thought, and of the influence of philosophy and the individual sciences on each other in antiquity. This book focuses on how the ancients themselves saw the issue of the relation between philosophy and the individual sciences. Contributions, from a distinguished international panel of scholars, cover the whole of antiquity from the beginnings of both (...) philosophy and science to the later Roman Empire. (shrink)

The fact that philosophy has not made much progress in finding answers to its big questions is often demonstrated with a comparison to natural sciences. Some have recently argued that the state of progress in philosophy is not so different than the sciences: there are many unresolved big questions in the sciences too, and philosophy has made progress on its smaller questions just like the sciences. I argue that this comparison is misleading: the situation in the two (...) fields looks similar only if we focus on unresolved scientific questions that have philosophical import. The sciences have made progress on many questions that are significant but that are not ‘big’ in a philosophical sense, while philosophy has made less progress on its own significant questions. Moreover, ‘smaller’ questions in the sciences are significant in themselves, while smaller questions in philosophy do not have much significance beyond their contribution to the bigger debates. I conclude with brief remarks about what underlies the disparity between the two fields: to understand the slow pace of progress in philosophy we should pay attention to factors that are at the intersection of the nature of philosophical questions, current philosophical methodology and the sociology of academic philosophy. (shrink)

Social science, history, and philosophy have often been neglect in thinking through their fundamentally intertwined relationship. The result is often an inattention to philosophy where social science and history is concerned, or a neglect of historicity and social analysis where philosophy is concerned. Meanwhile, the place of values in research is often uneasily passed over in silence. The inattention to, and loss of, the intersection between these different disciplines and their subject matters, leaves our investigations (...) all the more impoverished as a result. In resolving these problems, it is not enough to strive for cooperation or integration, but to rethink of the nature of the disciplines themselves; their interests, purposes, and presuppositions. In this volume, contributors explore different facets of these relationships, and move beyond the problematics erected by positivism often cast in terms of value-free or value-neutral science, that is, a science obsessed with empirical data, schematic classifications, and the pursuit of law-like forms. While positivism has been subject to critique, the influence and legacy of positivism remains. It remains in the way in which we often think about science; the line drawn between the sciences and the humanities; the norms researchers should follow; what a successful explanation looks like; and the ethical, normative, and political implications of scientific research. Aimed at students and researchers of philosophy, history and the social sciences, this book is driven by a desire to revindicate questions concerning ontology and social ontology, to rethink the nature of explanation, and to resituate normativity and values within scientific, social scientific, and historical pursuits. (shrink)

Questions of objectivity involve many general philosophy of science issues; when directed toward the social sciences, even more complex issues surface about the status of the social sciences, e.g. can they be sciences as are the natural sciences? This paper does not take on this mass of issues directly, but instead argues for more restricted theses, in particular that questions about objectivity in the social sciences are often usefully seen as local empirical issues. I look at arguments (...) around underdetermination, value ladenness, the indeterminancy or nonquantitative nature of social science categories or attributes, and traditional ontological debates over materialism and idealism. I show that in all these cases some of the key issues about objectivity are specific empirical issues in the social sciences. (shrink)

Contemporary philosophers have paid increasing attention to the empirical research on emotions that has blossomed in many areas of the social sciences. In this paper, I first sketch the common roots of science and philosophy in Ancient Greek thought. I illustrate the way that specific empirical sciences can be regarded as branching out from a central trunk of philosophical speculation. On the basis of seven informal characterizations of what is distinctive about philosophical thinking, I then draw (...) attention to the fact that scientific progress frequently requires one to make adjustments to the way its basic terms are conceptualized, and thus cannot avoid philosophical thought. The character of emotions requires attention from many disciplines, and the links among those disciplines inevitably require a broader philosophical perspective to be understood. Thus, emotion science, and indeed all of science, is inextricably committed to philosophical assumptions that demand scrutiny. (shrink)

While the empirical evidence pointing to a gender gap in professional, academic philosophy in the English-speaking world is widely accepted, explanations of this gap are less so. In this paper, we aim to make a modest contribution to the literature on the gender gap in academic philosophy by taking a quantitative, corpus-based empirical approach. Since some philosophers have suggested that it may be the argumentative, “logic-chopping,” and “paradox-mongering” nature of academic philosophy that explains the underrepresentation (...) of women in the discipline, our research questions are the following: Do men and women philosophers make different types of arguments in their published works? If so, which ones and with what frequency? Using data mining and text analysis methods, we study a large corpus of philosophical texts mined from the JSTOR database in order to answer these questions empirically. Using indicator words to classify arguments by type, we search through our corpus to find patterns of argumentation. Overall, the results of our empirical study suggest that women philosophers make deductive, inductive, and abductive arguments in their published works just as much as male philosophers do, with no statistically significant differences in the proportions of those arguments relative to each philosopher’s body of work. (shrink)

This book offers a systematic interpretation of the relation between natural science and metaphysics in Husserl's phenomenology. It shows that Husserl's account of scientific knowledge is a radical alternative to established methods and frameworks in contemporary philosophy of science. The author's interpretation of Husserl's philosophy offers a critical reconstruction of the historical context from which his phenomenological approach developed, as well as new interpretations of key Husserlian concepts such as metaphysics, idealization, life-world, objectivism, crisis of the (...) sciences, and historicity. The development of Husserl's philosophical project is marked by the tension between natural science and transcendental phenomenology. While natural science provides a paradigmatic case of the way in which transcendental phenomenology, ontology, empirical science, and metaphysics can be articulated, it has also been the object of philosophical misunderstandings that have determined the current cultural and philosophical crisis. This book demonstrates the ways in which Husserl shows that our conceptions of philosophy and of nature are inseparable. Philosophy's Nature will appeal to scholars and advanced students who are interested in Husserl and the relations between phenomenology, natural science, and metaphysics. (shrink)

While the pursuitworthiness of philosophical ideas has changed over time, philosophical practice and methodology have not kept pace. The worthiness of a philosophical pursuit includes not only the ideas and objectives one pursues but also the methods with which one pursues them. In this paper, we articulate how empirical approaches benefit philosophy of science, particularly advocating for the use of qualitative methods for understanding the social and normative aspects of scientific inquiry. After situating qualitative methods within (...) class='Hi'>empirical philosophy of science, we discuss how to adapt these traditionally sociological methods to empirically inform philosophical questions. Our aim is to normalize and legitimize qualitative methods for philosophical purposes and discuss how they can elucidate descriptive and normative components of scientific practice in a more generalizable non-idealized manner. We contend that qualitative methods are particularly well suited to philosophical interest in the social norms of science, their achievability, and their mutability. Furthermore, unlike more historical case studies in philosophy, qualitative methods enable more confidence in generalizability, albeit limited, from a concrete sample to a larger class. We conclude by addressing anxieties about the distinctness of empirical philosophy of science from social epistemology and from sociology of science. (shrink)

This article examines two empirical research traditions—experimental economics and the social identity approach in social psychology—that may be seen as attempts to falsify and verify the theory of collective intentionality, respectively. The article argues that both approaches fail to settle the issue. However, this is not necessarily due to the alleged immaturity of the social sciences but, possibly, to the philosophical nature of intentionality and intentional action. The article shows how broadly Davidsonian action theory, including Hacking’s notion of the (...) looping effect of the human sciences, can be developed into an argument for the view that there is no theory-independent true nature of intentional action. If the Davidsonian line of thought is correct, the theory of collective intentionality is, in a sense, true if we accept the theory. Key Words: collective intentionality • experimental economics • social identity theory • Donald Davidson • Ian Hacking • constructivism • action • agency • philosophy of the social sciences. (shrink)

This text derives from a recording, and transcripts, of the introduction which Althusser gave on 6 December 1963, to a seminar for students in the École Normale Supérieure, Paris, offered at his invitation by Pierre Bourdieu and Jean-Claude Passeron. Althusser takes the opportunity to raise questions about the status of social science and suggests that Bourdieu and Passeron represent slightly different strands of contemporary research practice, partly as a result of their different formation and practice since themselves leaving the (...) École. Althusser first considers the relation between the human sciences and the traditionally instituted Faculty of Letters or Humanities. What is the origin of the compulsion to constitute a science of human relations? Given that the social sciences have established themselves, Althusser then tries to define their nature. He suggests that they have three forms: as abstract and general theory, as ethnology, and as empirical sociology. He discusses the pros and cons of each in some detail. Althusser then asks what are the features which constitute sciences and concludes that they must always possess discrete theoretical perspectives corresponding with discrete components of reality but must also possess an element of self-referentiality or, as he puts it, must be objects to themselves. Althusser suggests that his contemporary social sciences are not philosophically adequate by the criteria which he advances. He proceeds to introduce Bourdieu and Passeron in such a way as to invite consideration of whether their practices meet his criteria. (shrink)

Empirical philosophers of science aim to base their philosophical theories on observations of scientific practice. But since there is far too much science to observe it all, how can we form and test hypotheses about science that are sufficiently rigorous and broad in scope, while avoiding the pitfalls of bias and subjectivity in our methods? Part of the answer, we claim, lies in the computational tools of the digital humanities, which allow us to analyze large volumes (...) of scientific literature. Here we advocate for the use of these methods by addressing a number of large-scale, justificatory concerns—specifically, about the epistemic value of journal articles as evidence for what happens elsewhere in science, and about the ability of DH tools to extract this evidence. Far from ignoring the gap between scientific literature and the rest of scientific practice, effective use of DH tools requires critical reflection about these relationships. (shrink)

Levine claims that Locating Consciousness does not seriously address the problem of the explanatory gap; instead it merely provides lots of data. Here I argue that, contrary to the intuitions of some philosophers, the best remedy for our gaps in explanation and understanding is in fact through empirical investigation.

In this article, I discuss calls for access to empirical data within controversies about climate science, as revealed and highlighted by the publication of the e-mail correspondence involving scientists at the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia in 2009. I identify several arguments advanced for and against the sharing of scientific data. My conclusions are that, whereas transparency in science is to be valued, appeals to an unproblematic category of ‘empirical data’ in climate (...) science do not reflect the complexities of scientific practice in this field. (shrink)

[Excerpt from first lines] In answer to a friend's query about my current pursuits, I hoisted Lakoff and Johnson's six-hundred-page magnum opus into his hands. "Reviewing this." Thoughtfully weighing the imposing book in one palm, he pronounced: " Philosophy in the Flesh? It needs to go on a diet!" I laughingly agreed, then in good philosopher's form analyzed his joke. He had conceived the book metaphorically as a person, as when we speak of books "inspiring" us or being "great (...) company" and even as being "fat" or "thin." His cleverness lay in perceiving a novel entailment of this metaphor: just as an overweight person may need to diet, a long book may need to be shortened. In addition, he used a conventional metaphor in which means are conceived as paths, thus one may "go on" a diet for the purpose of losing weight as one goes on a path toward a destination. All in the spirit of Lakoff and Johnson. "The question is clear," they say. "Do you choose empirical responsibility or a priori philosophical assumptions? Most of what you believe about philosophy and much of what you believe about life will depend on your answer". Choosing the path of empirical responsibility, we are primed to accept three central findings about the mind and language that have emerged from "second generation" cognitive science …. (shrink)

Although human well-being is a topic of much contemporary philosophical discussion, there has been comparatively little theoretical discussion in philosophy of (nonhuman) animal well-being. Animal welfare science is a well-established scientific discipline that studies animal well-being from an empirical standpoint. This article examines parts of this literature that may be relevant to philosophical treatments of animal well-being and to other philosophical issues. First, I explain the dominant conceptions of well-being in animal welfare science and survey some (...) debates in that literature surrounding these competing conceptions. Second, I explain the empirical methods used to measure animal well-being. Third, I argue for the philosophical relevance of the research in animal welfare science and outline some philosophical issues concerning animal welfare and its science that I claim are worthy of attention by philosophers. (shrink)

In this paper, I will focus on the role that findings of the empirical sciences might play in justifying normative claims in political philosophy. In the first section, I will describe how political theory has become a discipline divorced from empirical sciences, against a strong current in post-war political philosophy. I then argue that Rawls’s idea of reflective equilibrium, rightly interpreted, leads to a perspective on the matter of justification that takes seriously empirical findings regarding (...) currently held normative beliefs of people. I will finally outline some functions that empirical studies might have in political philosophy. (shrink)

The article is devoted to the problem of the demarcation of social sciences from social philosophy. The author proposes to model the relations between these two disciplines as a continuum instead of binary opposition - a continuum in which certain authors and concepts are located depending on the nature of their statements and the amount of empirical data involved. To illustrate a number of this continuum’s positions and features, the concept of the sacred is brought: emerging in Modern (...) history as a cultural idea, in the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries in the works of French sociologists it becomes an empirical model that describes both the effect of social solidarity and the particular forms of religious existence. However, later, in the College of Sociology and in the works of such thinkers as G. Bataille, R. Caillois, etc., the concept acquires value meanings and becomes socio-philosophical. The absence of a clear boundary between the two statement formats, it makes possible both the “drifting” from one to another over time and the ambiguity of any critics of social science from social philosophy’s position and vice versa. At the same time, the historical “load” of the concept could be discarded in order to use it within the framework of “pure” social science or philosophy. (shrink)

There is an ongoing methodological debate in philosophy of science concerning the use of case studies as evidence for and/or against theories about science. In this paper, I aim to make a contribution to this debate by taking an empirical approach. I present the results of a systematic survey of the PhilSci-Archive, which suggest that a sizeable proportion of papers in philosophy of science contain appeals to case studies, as indicated by the occurrence of (...) the indicator words “case study” and/or “case studies.” These results are confirmed by data mined from the JSTOR database on research articles published in leading journals in the field: Philosophy of Science, the British Journal for the Philosophy of Science (BJPS), and the Journal for General Philosophy of Science (JGPS), as well as the Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association (PSA). The data also show upward trends in appeals to case studies in articles published in Philosophy of Science, the BJPS, and the JGPS. The empirical work I have done for this paper provides philosophers of science who are wary of the use of case studies as evidence for and/or against theories about science with a way to do philosophy of science that is informed by data rather than case studies. (shrink)

An increasing number of moral realists and anti-realists have recently attempted to support their views by appeal to science. Arguments of this kind are typically criticized on the object-level. In addition, however, one occasionally also comes across a more sweeping metatheoretical skepticism. Scientific contributions to the question of the existence of objective moral truths, it is claimed, are impossible in principle; most prominently, because such arguments impermissibly derive normative from descriptive propositions, such arguments beg the question against non-naturalist moral (...) realism, science cannot inform conceptual accounts of moral judgements, and the conceptual is logically prior to the empirical. My main aim in this paper is to clarify and critically assess these four objections. Moreover, based on this assessment, I will formulate four general requirements that science-based arguments in favor of moral realism and anti-realism should meet. It will turn out that these arguments are limited in several ways, and that some existing arguments have been unsound. Yet it is still possible in principle for the empirical sciences to contribute to the moral realism/anti-realism debate. (shrink)

Ancient Greek philosophers claimed that the adequate understanding of a particular subject can be achieved only when its nature, or essence, is properly defined. This view furnished the core teachings of late medieval natural philosophers, and was often reaffirmed by early modern philosophers such as Bacon and Descartes. Yet during the second half of the seventeenth century, a radical transformation was to take place that led a to the emergence of a recognisably modern cultures of empirical research.Experimental Philosophy (...) and the Birth of Empirical Science focuses on the works of Robert Boyle, John Locke, and Isaac Newton, the most notable exponents of the experimental philosophy in the late seventeenth century, and explores this transformation to a modern viewpoint that seeks to understand phenomena by seeking explanatory correlations between the empirical properties of the universe.Experimental Philosophy and the Birth of Empirical Science offers a novel solution to one of the major problems in the history of early modern science and philosophy, while addressing received views concerning these problems. It provides a new perspective on the Scientific Revolution and the rise of modern science and offers new tools for science studies in general, by showing how the problem of human understanding and the problem of explanation are central to the evolution of science, and how we can combine historical and sociological approaches to study modern science from this perspective. (shrink)

Like any social science, management and organization sits astride two literary and epistemic disciplines; the empirical and the conceptual. I argue that emphasizing the former to the detriment of the latter, as is often the case in management and organization research, creates a conceptual blindness that compromises progress in the field. I show how adopting a more philosophically attuned methodology buttresses the conceptual tools of management and organization research via deduction, induction, normative grounding, and overcoming the illusion of (...) unanimity. (shrink)

K. R. Popper distinguished between two main uses of logic, the demonstrational one, in mathematical proofs, and the derivational one, in the empirical sciences. These two uses are governed by the following methodological constraints: in mathematical proofs one ought to use minimal logical means (logical minimalism), while in the empirical sciences one ought to use the strongest available logic (logical maximalism). In this paper I discuss whether Popper’s critical rationalism is compatible with a revision of logic in the (...) empirical sciences, given the condition of logical maximalism. Apparently, if one ought to use the strongest logic in the empirical sciences, logic would remain immune to criticism and, thus, non-revisable. I will show that critical rationalism is theoretically compatible with a revision of logic in the empirical sciences. However, a question that remains to be clarified by the critical rationalists is what kind of evidence would lead them to revise the system of logic that underlies a physical theory, such as quantum mechanics? Popper’s falsificationist methodology will be compared with the recently advocated extension of the abductive methodology from the empirical sciences to logic by T. Williamson, since both of them arrive at the same conclusion concerning the status of classical logic. (shrink)

This article reports on an empirical qualitative study on applying a Philosophy for Children (P4C) modeled science story to support the teaching of basic science process skills of classification, observation, and inference to a group of fifth-grade science students. The science story was written to model the skills for the children. From individual interviews with a focus group of 10 students, the findings show that the story modeled the understanding of classification, observation, and inference (...) skills for the children as well as encouraged reflection on the meaning of inference. The majority of the students identified with the fictional characters, particularly regarding traits such as cleverness and inquisitiveness, and with the learning context of the story. Implications for the theory and practice of P4C are discussed. (shrink)

This chapter examines the influence of the empirical sciences (e.g., physics, biology, psychology) in contemporary analytic philosophy, with focus on philosophical theories that are guided by findings from the empirical sciences. Scientific approaches to philosophy follow a tradition of philosophical naturalism associated with Quine, which strives to ally philosophical methods and theories more closely with the empirical sciences and away from a priori theorizing and conceptual analysis.

What are the differences between philosophy and science, or between the methods of philosophy and the methods of science? Unlike some philosophers we do not find philosophy and the methods of philosophy to be sui generis. Science, and in particular neuroscience, has much to tell us about the nature of the world and the concepts that we must use to understand and explain it. Yet science cannot function well without reflective analysis of (...) the concepts, methods, and practices that constitute it. For example, experimental methods and their resulting empirical data are essential for understanding the world, yet such data is not a-conceptual. Understanding how and what theoretical assumptions, conceptual assumptions, and practical knowledge guide the use of experimental methods is relevant to understanding the results of that use. In this way, philosophy – whether done by philosophers or scientists – has a role to play in understanding the world. Neuroscience is typically individualistic in focus; nonetheless, the mechanisms of learning and linguistic ability that some neuroscientists study also have a role to play in understanding communication. Philosophy cannot offer adequate understanding, even conceptual clarity, in isolation from empirical investigation. Yet, this does not require that science or scientific concepts will replace or reduce philosophical concepts, let alone those of ordinary language. (shrink)

Part I presents a model of interactive computation and a metric for expressiveness, Part II relates interactive models of computation to physics, and Part III considers empirical models from a philosophical perspective. Interaction machines, which extend Turing Machines to interaction, are shown in Part I to be more expressive than Turing Machines by a direct proof, by adapting Gödel's incompleteness result, and by observability metrics. Observation equivalence provides a tool for measuring expressiveness according to which interactive systems are more (...) expressive than algorithms. Refinement of function equivalence by observation of outer interactive behavior and inner computation steps is examined. The change of focus from algorithms specified by computable functions to interaction specified by observation equivalence captures the essence of empirical computer science. Part II relates interaction in models of computation to observation in the natural sciences. Explanatory power in physics is specified by the same observability metric as expressiveness in interactive systems. Realist models of inner structure are characterized by induction, abduction, and Occam's Razor. Interactive realism extends the hidden-variable model of Einstein to hidden interfaces that provide extra degrees of freedom to formulate hypotheses with testable predictions conforming with quantum theory. Greater expressiveness of collaborative computational observers (writers) than single observers implies that hidden-interface models are more expressive than hidden-variable models. By providing a common foundation for empirical computational and physical models we can use precise results about computational models to establish properties of physical models. Part III shows that the evolution in computing from algorithms to interaction parallels that in physics from rationalism to empiricism. Plato's cave metaphor is interactively extended from Platonic rationalism to empiricism. The Turing test is extended to TMs with hidden interfaces that express interactive thinking richer than the traditional Turing test. Interactive (nonmonotonic) extensions of logic such as the closed-world assumption suggest that interactiveness is incompatible with monotonic logical inference. Procedure call, atomicity of transactions, and taking a fixed point are techniques for closing open systems similar to "preparation" followed by "observation" of a physical system. Pragmatics is introduced as a framework for extending logical models with a fixed syntax and semantics to multiple-interface models that support collaboration among clients sharing common resources. (shrink)

In his 1983 article, Paul A. Roth defends the Quinean project of naturalized epistemology from the criticism presented in my 1980 article. In this note I would like to respond to Roth's effort. I will argue that, while helpful in advancing and clarifying the issues, Roth's defense of naturalized epistemology does not succeed. The primary topic to be clarified is Quine's "no first philosophy" doctrine; but I will address myself to other points as well.

This paper is a response to Henk ten Have's Genetics and Culture: The Geneticization thesis . In it, I refute Ten Have's suggestion that geneticization is not the sort of process that can be measured and commented on in terms of empirical evidence,even if he is correct in suggesting that it should be seen as part of ‘philosophical discourse’. At the end, I relate this discussion to broader debates within bioethics between the social science and philosophy, and (...) suggest the need for philosophical approaches to take the social sciences seriously. (shrink)

Several key substantive, methodological, and science-practice issues that concern the field designated as empirical psycho-aesthetics were examined in part I (in the Winter 2012 issue of JAE) of this two-part article. Also presented was an outline of the discipline's origin and its relationship with elder and younger "sisters"—philosophical aesthetics, experimental philosophy, cognitive-science-and-art, (cognitive) neuroscience of art, and neuroaesthetics. The comparative goal was in part approached through the analysis of several recent significant controversies and debates.Here, in the (...) six sections of part II of the article, empirical work on various problems that are relevant to the discussion initiated in part .. (shrink)

Design research has been positioned as an important methodological contribution of the learning sciences. Despite the publication of a handbook on the subject, the practice of design research in education remains an eclectic collection of specific approaches implemented by different researchers and research groups. In this paper, I examine the learning sciences as a design science to identify its fundamental goals, methods, affiliations, and assumptions. I argue that inherent tensions arise when attempting to practice design research as an analytic (...) science. Drawing inspiration and insight from Chinese philosophy and the practice of Chinese medicine, I propose that the learning sciences may better attain its claims to science through greater reliance on inductive synthesis rather than linear causal analysis. In so doing, I reposition the endeavor of science making within the metaphysics of process philosophy instead of classical Western philosophy. I suggest that theory building will be strengthened empirically and pragmatically by more careful observation and systematic generalization of the stability patterns of design related phenomena. It also needs to be more situated in its orientation. (shrink)

Are there things that are objectively right, wrong, good, bad, etc.: moral properties that are had independently of what we ourselves, our culture, God or any other subjects think about them? Philosophers have traditionally addressed this question from the “armchair.” In recent years, however, more and more participants of the debate have begun to appeal to evidence from science as well. This thesis examines such novel approaches. In particular, it asks what the empirical sciences can contribute to the (...) moral realism/anti-realism debate. My first aim is to show that it is possible for scientific evidence to bear on the question of the existence of objective moral properties. To see whether such contributions are also likely, I will then consider various prominent particular realist and anti-realist arguments: arguments based on hypotheses about ordinary people’s moral experience, the prevalence and persistence of moral disagreement, the evolution of morality, the relation of moral judgements to emotions, and the projection of values. If true, some of these empirical hypotheses would have metaethical implications. The problem with the arguments is, however, that the available scientific evidence does not support, or even contradicts these hypotheses. Only in ways other than have been suggested so far does the evidence considered in this thesis allow for a substantial metaethical conclusion. Finally, I will show that the relation between the empirical sciences and the question of the reality of moral values is actually much closer than commonly assumed. Not only do scientific hypotheses bear on metaethics, metaethical issues bear on the investigation of scientific hypotheses about morality as well. In order to further increase our understanding of what morality is, philosophers and scientists should therefore join forces and work together more closely than they have done so far. (shrink)