This paper argues that many philosophical arguments within the education discourse are too little embedded in their own historical contexts. Starting out from the obvious fact that philosophers of education use sources from the past, the paper asks how we can deal with the arguments that these sources contain. The general attitude within philosophy of education, which views arguments as timeless, is being challenged by the insight that arguments always depend upon their own contexts. For this reason, citing past authors, (...) heroes, or enemies without respecting the context says more about our interest at the present time than it does about the times of the authors examined. Conversely, the contextual approach helps us to avoid believing that ‘timeless truths’ are to be found in different texts of different ages. However, the present contribution in no way advocates a total relativization of statements. Quite the contrary; it claims that the contextual approach helps us to understand the traditions and contexts within which we ourselves, as researchers, are positioned. And this self‐awareness is believed to be the proper starting position for theoretical statements about education. (shrink)

This article responds to those critiques addressed to Badiou's work by the Anglo-Saxon commentators that concern the schematism and formalism of his set-theory based ontology, which is considered to not be able to describe concrete empirical situations. Discussing the work of Carnap and Quine, the author poses the question what these concepts actually mean within the analytical philosophical tradition and if equivalents of the concepts of concrete and empirical can be found in Badiou's philosophy. The concepts of the event and (...) the truth procedure respectively can be seen as such. However, since Badiou is not an empiricist nor a pragmatist, but a materialist, these questions can only find their answers from within the horizon of materialist dialectics. (shrink)

Behaviorist theories of language acquisition are the most prominent among current empiricist theories of language. But the inherent weaknesses of behaviorism—whether or not applied to language acquisition or linguistic meaning or the like—do not as such call into question the adequacy of the empiricist conception of language. The issue is central to contemporary speculation about the nature of linguistic competence and the infant's acquisition of language. Empiricism has, in fact, been vigorously challenged in the most sustained way, in a (...) variety of publications, by Noam Chomsky. “From a formal point of view,” Chomsky holds, the grammar that is internalized by every normal human can be described as a theory of his language, a theory of a highly intricate and abstract form that determines, ultimately, a connection between sound and meaning by generating structural descriptions of sentences (“potential percepts”), each with its phonetic, semantic, and syntactic aspects. From this point of view, one can describe the child's acquisition of knowledge of language as a kind of theory construction. Presented with highly restricted data, he constructs a theory of the language of which this data is a sample (and, in fact, a highly degenerate sample, in the sense that much of it must be excluded as irrelevant and incorrect—thus the child learns rules of grammar that identify much of what he has heard as ill-formed, inaccurate, and inappropriate). The child's ultimate knowledge of language obviously extends far beyond the data presented to him. In other words, the theory he has in some way developed has a predictive scope of which the data on which it is based constitute a negligible part.The normal use of language characteristically involves new sentences, sentences that bear no point-by-point resemblance or analogy to those in the child's experience. Furthermore, the task of constructing this system is carried out in a remarkably similar way by all normal language learners, despite wide differences in experience and ability. The theory of human learning must face these facts. I think that these facts suggest a theory of human intelligence that has a distinctly rationalist flavor. (shrink)

By focussing on the intentional character of observation in science, we argue that Constructive Empiricism—B.C. van Fraassen’s much debated and explored view of science—is inconsistent. We then argue there are at least two ways out of our Inconsistency Argument, one of which is more easily to square with Constructive Empiricism than the other.

This paper aims to defend scientific realism against two versions of agnostic empiricism: a naive agnostic position, which suggests that the only rational option is to remain agnostic as to the truth of theoretical assertions, and van Fraassen's more sophisticated agnostic empiricism - which may be called "Hypercritical Empiricism". It first argues that given semantic realism, naive agnostic empiricism cannot be maintained: there is no relevant epistemic difference between theoretical assertions and observational ones. It then focuses (...) on van Fraassen's more sophisticated alternative to scientific realism and suggests that an attitude towards science which involves less than aiming at theoretical truth and believing in theories would be, in some concrete respect that empiricists should recognize, worse off than the recommended realist attitude. To this end, the paper develops the so-called conjunction argument into a diachronic argument for scientific realism. (shrink)

This essay examines the concept of "truth" from empiricist and pragmatist perspectives. This not without reference to other theories. The concern is to see how the ascendancy of pragmatism has affected humanity and may continue to affect humanity, the so-called objectivity in the practice of science and philosophy and the relationships between the diverse peoples of the world. An analysis of the pragmatist's preference for usefulness, rather than truth, it is argued, accounts for the deleterious consequences of pragmatism for humankind (...) in its almost irrational substitution of usefulness for truth. (shrink)

A defence of constructive empiricism against an attack of N. Maxwell by means of his pet-thesis that science implicitly and permanently accepts a metaphysical thesis about the nature of the universe. We argue that Maxwell's attack can be beaten off; that his arguments do not establish what Maxwell believes they establish; and that we can draw a number of valuable lessons from these attacks about the nature of science and of the libertatian nature of constructive empiricism.

Seit Beginn der frühen Neuzeit ist das naturwissenschaftliche Verfahren maßgeblich durch ein neues Konzept geprägt: das Konzept des experimentellen, gestalterischen Eingriffs in die Natur. Es geht nun nicht mehr darum, eine Geschichte der "freien und ungebundenen Natur" (Bacon) zu erzählen, die in ihrem eigenen Lauf belassen und als vollkommene Bildung betrachtet wird. Es geht vielmehr darum, der "gebundenen und bezwungenen Natur" (Bacon) vermittels der experimentellen Tätigkeit des Menschen die Geheimnisse zu entreißen. Diese technisch-praktische Konzeption grenzt sich explizit von den klassischen (...) kontemplativen Wissenschaftsvorstellungen der Antike ab. Wie es Kant paradigmatisch in Bezug auf Bacon formuliert hat, ist diese "Revolution der Denkart" maßgeblich durch ein gewandeltes Verständnis des Verhältnisses des Menschen zur Natur geprägt. Der Mensch als Experimentator hat für Kant nicht mehr die "Qualität eines Schülers", der sich passiv von der Natur belehren läßt und an ihrem "Leitbande" (Kant) gegängelt wird. Seine neu gewonnene Autorität verleiht ihm vielmehr den Status eines Richters, der nun die Natur nötigen kann, auf gestellte Fragen zu antworten. Die Laborforschung der modernen Naturwissenschaft ist von den Formen der alten Naturwissenschaft so weit entfernt, daß sie den Vorwurf auf sich zog, sie untersuche Artekakte, aber nicht Natur. Die grundlegenden Theorien über Natur können in der Regel nur unter den künstlichen Bedingungen des Labors aufgestellt werden. Daraus darf aber nicht geschlossen werden, die anhand von Laborphänomenen aufgestellten und getesteten Theorien handelten nicht von der Natur außerhalb der Labore. Aber ihrer exakten und detaillierten Anwendung auf Prozesse außerhalb der Labore stehen eine Fülle von Schwierigkeiten entgegen. Insofern markiert das Labor sehr wohl eine Grenze exakter Naturforschung, die für den Umgang der wissenschaftlich-technischen Zivilisation mit der Natur wichtige Konsequenzen hat. Inhalt: Kristian Köchy / Gregor Schiemann: Natur im Labor Lothar Schäfer: Die Erscheinung der Natur unter Laborbedingungen Holm Tetens: Das Labor als Grenze der exakten Naturforschung Christoph Rehmann-Sutter: Genes in Labs - Concepts of Development and the Standard Environment Kristian Köchy: Lebewesen im Labor. Das Experiment in der Biologie Jutta Weber: Mannigfaltige Techno-Naturen. Von epistemischen Modellsystemen und situierten Maschinen Thomas Sören Hoffmann: Gezeigte versus sich zeigende Natur. Eine Skizze im Blick auf das Verhältnis von Labor und Natur Klaus Michael Meyer-Abich: Laborforschung im Erkenntnishandeln der Experimentiergesellschaft. Eine holistisch-pragmatische Perspektive für die Wissenschaftstheorie. (shrink)

This paper explores the 'delicate empiricism' proposed by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Goethe's scientific work provided an alternative epistemology to that of conventional science. The author discusses the Goethean way of knowing. Particular emphasis is given to the changed understanding of process, form and participation that results from employing the epistemology expressed by Goethe. A methodology for Goethean science is introduced and its applications and their implications are explored. Goethe's "zarte Empirie" — his delicate empiricism - legitimises and (...) organizes the role of imagination, intuition and inspiration in science. It may contribute significantly to the emerging participatory and holistic worldview, and to providing knowledge that is in tune with nature. This paper explores how and why. (shrink)

In The empirical stance, Bas van Fraassen argues for a reconceptualization of empiricism, and a rejection of its traditional rival, speculative metaphysics, as part of a larger and provocative study in epistemology. Central to his account is the notion of voluntarism in epistemology, and a concomitant understanding of the nature of rationality. In this paper I give a critical assessment of these ideas, with the ultimate goal of clarifying the nature of debate between metaphysicians and empiricists, and more specifically, (...) between scientific realists and empiricist antirealists. Despite van Fraassen’s assertion to the contrary, voluntarism leads to a form of epistemic relativism. Rather than stifling debate, however, this ‘stance’ relativism places precise constraints on possibilities for constructive engagement between metaphysicians and empiricists, and thus distinguishes, in broad terms, paths along which this debate may usefully proceed from routes which offer no hope of progress. Author Keywords: Empiricism; Metaphysics; Scientific realism; Voluntarism; Rationality; Relativism. (shrink)

In this paper I show that Einstein made essential use of aim-oriented empiricism in scientific practice in developing special and general relativity. I conclude by considering to what extent Einstein came explicitly to advocate aim-oriented empiricism in his later years.

Investigation of Empiricism. On Ernst Mach’s Conception of the Thought Experiment. The paper argues that Ernst Mach’s conception of the thought experiment from 1897/1905 holds a singular position in the lively discussions and repeated theorizations that have continued up to the present in relation to this procedure. Mach derives the thought experiment from scientific practice, and does not oppose it to the physical experiment, but, on the contrary, endows it with a robust relation to the facts. For Mach, the (...) thought experiment is a reliable means of determining empiricism, and at the same time a real, because open and unbiased, experimenting. To shed light on this approach, the paper carries out a close reading of the relevant texts in Mach’s body of writings (in their different stages of revision) and proceeds in three steps: first, Mach’s processual understanding of science will be presented, which also characterizes his research and publication practice (I. ‘Aperçu’ and ‘Sketch’. Science as Process and Projection); then in a second step the physiological and biological justification and valorization of memory and association will be examined with which Mach limits the relevance of categories such as consciousness and will (II. The Biology of Consciousness. Or The Polyp Colony); against this background, thirdly, the specific empiricism can be revealed that Mach inscribes into the thought experiment by on the one hand founding it in the memory and association, and on the other by tracing it back to geometry, which he deploys as an experimenting oriented to experience (III. Thinking and Experience. The Thought Experiment). (shrink)

The goal of this paper is to correct a widespread misconception about the work of Robert Leslie Ellis and John Venn, namely that it can be considered as the ‘British empiricist’ reaction against the traditional theory of probability. It is argued, instead, that there was no unified ‘British school’ of frequentism during the nineteenth century. Where Ellis arrived at frequentism from a metaphysical idealist transformation of probability theory’s mathematical calculations, Venn did so on the basis of an empiricist critique of (...) its ‘inverse application’. (shrink)

Peter Berger established himself in the sociological profession in large part through his functional interpretations of religion and its ostensible demise in relation to the empirical bent of modern intellectual thought. Yet, in his ef–fort to expand the scope of empiricism such that it might address nontrivial concerns, Berger found himself attempting to understand the “substance” of religiori—that is, the conviction that there exists an “other” which confronts us unconditionally and consequently forms the basis of all issues concerning value (...) and meaning. Berger's writings deserve critical attention in that they disclose both the problems and the promises of utilizing empirical methods for the task of rehabilitating, rather than debunking, humanity's religious propensities. (shrink)

SCIENCE VERSUS IDEALISM Science Versus Idealism An Examination of Pure Empiricism and Modern Logic By MAURICE CORNFORTH M. A. To the Memory of David Guest ...

This article analyzes the central weaknesses of both relativism and traditional empiricism as overarching accounts of science appropriate for psychology. A third approach, a variant of scientific realism, is described and discussed, and it is argued that this approach avoids the most pernicious features of both relativism and empiricism. This version of scientific realism postulates that the rational structure of science is composed of four interlocked categories: aims, epistemic values, methodological rules, and theories. These categories are described, and (...) the nature of the links between them is analyzed. Various other issues are discussed, including the nature of scientific debate, the extent to which psychology is different from other sciences, and whether scientific realism really avoids a relativist fate. In conclusion, scientific realism is a viable alternative account of scientific thought that is suitable for psychology. (shrink)

The main thesis of Heyes' book is that all of the domain-specific learning mechanisms that make the human mind so different from the minds of other animals are culturally created and culturally acquired gadgets. The only innate differences are some motivational tweaks, enhanced capacities for associative learning, and enhanced executive function abilities. But Heyes' argument depends on contrasting cognitive gadgets with cognitive instincts, which are said to be innately specified. This ignores what has for some years been the mainstream nativist/anti-empiricist (...) view, which commits only to partially specified learning systems that become elaborated and built through domain-specific learning. (shrink)

In the first Enquiry, Hume takes the experience of exerting force against a solid body to be a key ingredient of the vulgar idea of power, so that the vulgar take that experience to provide us with an impression of power. Hume provides two arguments against the vulgar on this point: the first concerning our other applications of the idea of power and the second concerning whether that experience yields certainty about distinct events. I argue that, even if we accept (...) Hume’s conception of the vulgar’s approach, neither of Hume’s arguments succeeds. The first argument can be resisted either by using the very arguments Hume provides concerning other causal representations or by simply rejecting Hume’s strict empiricism. The second argument can be resisted on epistemological grounds: there is no reason to think that an experience of a maximally-strong metaphysical connection would provide a maximally-strong epistemological connection. Unlike some recent neo-Anscombean responses to the second argument, my response does not require challenging Hume’s view that causal relations are strictly necessary. Though I do not attempt to translate the resilience of the vulgar view into contemporary terms, the failure of Hume’s arguments challenges one of the long-standing motivations for Humean approaches to causation. (shrink)

The "standard account" of Wittgenstein’s relations with the Vienna Circle is that the early Wittgenstein was a principal source and inspiration for the Circle’s positivistic and scientific philosophy, while the later Wittgenstein was deeply opposed to the logical empiricist project of articulating a "scientific conception of the world." However, this telegraphic summary is at best only half-true and at worst deeply misleading. For it prevents us appreciating the fluidity and protean character of their philosophical dialogue. In retrospectively attributing clear-cut positions (...) to Wittgenstein and his interlocutors, it is very easy to read back our current understanding of familiar distinctions into a time when those terms were used in a much more open-ended way. The paper aims to to provide a broader perspective on this debate, starting from the protagonists’ understanding of their respective positions. Too often, the programmatic statements about the nature of their work that are repeated in manifestoes, introductions, and elementary textbooks have occupied center stage in the subsequent secondary literature. Consequently, I focus on a detailed examination of a turning point in their relationship. That turning point is Wittgenstein's charge, in the summer of 1932, that a recently published paper of Carnap's, "Physicalistic Language as the Universal Language of Science", made such extensive and unacknowledged use of Wittgenstein's own ideas that Wittgenstein would, as he put it in a letter to Schlick, "soon be in a situation where my own work shall be considered merely as a reheated version or plagiarism of Carnap’s." While the leading parties in this dispute shared a basic commitment to the primacy of physicalistic language, and the view that all significant languages are translatable, there was a remarkable lack of mutual understanding between them, and deep disagreement about the nature of the doctrines they disputed. Three quarters of a century later, we are so much more conscious of the differences that separated them than the points on which they agreed that it takes an effort of historical reconstruction to appreciate why Wittgenstein once feared that his own work would be regarded as a pale shadow of Carnap’s. (shrink)

Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte, EarlyView.

David Hume is the most influential precursor of modern empiri cism. By modern empiricism, I intend a belief that all cognitive conflicts can be resolved, in principle, by either appeal to matters off act, via scientific procedure, or by appeal to some sets of natural or conventional standards, whether linguistic, mathematical, aes thetic or political. This belief itself is a consequent of an old appre hension that all synthetic knowledge is based on experience, and that the rest can be (...) reduced to a set of self-evident truths. In this broad sense, Modern Empiricism encompasses classes, such as Logi cal Empiricism, Logical Atomism and Philosophical Analysis, and unique individuals such as Russell and Moore. It excludes, thereby, the present day continental philosophies, such as Thomism, Exist entialism, and Dialectical Materialism. Modem empiricists, to be sure, are influenced by many other phi losophers. Locke, Berkeley, and Mill, among the classical empiri cists, and Leibniz and Kant, among the rationalists (the former especially on the logico-mathematical side) in one way or other are responsible for the appearance of empiricism in its new form. But none of them were as influential as Hume. This, by itself is not news. Weinberg, in his well-known book, An Examination of Logical Positivism, observes that: Many, if not all, of the principal doctrines of contemporary positivism derive from Hume. (shrink)

"Homage to Rudolph Carnap."--Hempel, C. G. Rudolf Carnap, logical empiricist.--Wedberg, A. How Carnap built the world in 1928.--Eberle, R. A construction of quality classes improved upon the Aufbau.--Carnap, R. Observation language and theoretical language.--Kaplan, D. Significance and analyticity: a comment of some recent proposals of Carnap.--Wójcicki, R. The factual content of empirical theories.--Williams, P. M. On the conservative extensions of semantical systems: a contribution to the problem of analyticity.--Winnie, J. A. Theoretical analyticity.--Wedberg, A. Decision and belief in science.--Bohnert, H. G. (...) Carnap's logicism.--Hintikka, J. Carnap's heritage in logical semantics.--Partee, B. H. The semantics of belief-sentences.--Kasher, A. Pragmatic representations and language-games.--Carnap, R. Notes on probability and induction.--Jeffrey, R. C. Carnap's inductive logic.--Hilpinen, R. Carnap's new system of inductive logic.--Kuipers, T. A. F. A generalization of Carnap's inductive logic. Essler, W. K. Hintikka versus Carnap.--Hintikka, J. Carnap and Essler versus inductive generalization.--Shimony, A. Carnap on entropy, introduction to "Two essays on entropy" by Rudolf Carnap. (shrink)

This volume is dedicated to two philosophicohistorical categories, whose origin dates back to Bacon’s famous simile of the ants, the spiders, and the bees, and which are widely diffused as a consequence of Hegel’s reconstruction of the history of philosophy in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In his Lectures on the History of Philosophy, Hegel began his exposition of philosophy in the modern age with Bacon’s empiricism and Descartes’s rationalism and he has been followed in this by virtually all (...) historians of philosophy to the present day. Engfer, however, mentions Hegel only when he comes to discuss the position of Bacon. (shrink)

One thing we have found out about logical empiricism, now that people are examining it more closely again, is that it was more a framework for a number of related views than a single doctrine. The pluralism of different approaches among various adherents to the Vienna and Berlin groups has been much emphasized. Some have gone so far as to suggest that the kind of speculative philosophy now often called "continental" (including, say, phenomenology) can be seen as falling within (...) the framework of views shared by the Vienna Circle. Much is made of Felix Kaufmann's membership in the Vienna Circle, for instance, or of its "Austrian" roots in the phenomenology of Brentano. (shrink)

There are scientists that have speculated that, since science involves abstraction, generalizations across facts, and the generalization of causes and theories across empirical phenomena, the direction of science is to increasingly unify forces and causes until there is a single general theory unifying all of the forces of nature. The most prominent contemporary example of this attempt to unify all of the forces of nature in a single theory is string theory or superstring theory. String theorists have attempted to emulate (...) Albert Einstein’s call for physicists to attempt to unify all of the forces of physics in a single theory, sometimes called a “theory of everything.” String Theory has been called “untestable,” empirically unverifiable, and “post-empiricist,” and I use another standard by which String Theory might be evaluated, a _Standard of Instrument Design and Technological Productivity. _Moreover, I seek to show that, instead of attempting to unify all of the forces of nature in a single theory or “theory of everything,” it is possible to identify and separate the forces of nature in relation to each other, and order and rank the forces of nature by their capacity to generate branching patterns in the biological sciences or the physical sciences. Ranking forces by their capacity to generate branching patterns (or other shapes or patterns), in the biological sciences or in the physical sciences, is more positivist and testable than attempts to unify all of the forces of nature in a single theory. (shrink)

David Hume is the most influential precursor of modern empiri cism. By modern empiricism, I intend a belief that all cognitive conflicts can be resolved, in principle, by either appeal to matters offact, via scientific procedure, or by appeal to some sets of natural or conventional standards, whether linguistic, mathematical, aes thetic or political. This belief itself is a consequent of an old appre hension that all synthetic knowledge is based on experience, and that the rest can be reduced (...) to a set of self-evident truths. In this broad sense, Modern Empiricism encompasses classes, such as Logi cal Empiricism, Logical Atomism and Philosophical Analysis, and unique individuals such as Russell and Moore. It excludes, thereby, the present day continental philosophies, such as Thomism, Exist entialism, and Dialectical Materialism. Modern empiricists, to be sure, are influenced by many other phi losophers. Locke, Berkeley, and Mill, among the classical empiri cists, and Leibniz and Kant, among the rationalists (the former especially on the logico-mathematical side) in one way or other are responsible for the appearance of empiricism in its new form. But none of them were as influential as Hume. This, by itself is not news. Weinberg, in his well-known book, An Examination of Logical Positivism, observes that: Many, if not all, of the principal doctrines of contemporary positivism derive from Hume. (shrink)

In the end of the nineteenth century, there was a remarkable ‘empiricist attitude’ found among certain philosopher-scientists, an attitude which arguably emerged in the main as a reaction to the anti-scientific mood prevalent in the culture that time. Those philosopher-scientists, such as Mach and Hertz, were particularly anxious to emphasize and laud the privileged status of the empirical dimension ofour scientific knowledge, distinguishing it carefully from the theoretical constructions and hypothetical entities that are ordinarily posited by scientists. Yet, as I (...) exhibit in this article, there were certain crucial philosophical differences between these two thinkers with respect to their general conception of scientific theories and scientific norms guiding the activity. I suggest further that the most central difference in this context between Mach and Hertz can justifiably (and, perhaps, more fruitfully) be articulated and reckoned in traditional andcontemporary epistemological terms. (shrink)

This chapter endeavors to show that the relevant contrasting term to friend in liberal political theory is not enemy but self. Given the skepticism that suffuses liberal theory, the self remains an endlessly problematic construct that gives us ongoing opportunities for reimagining and reconstructing what the behavior of both friends and enemies is truly like. The chapter examines key terms in the liberal epistemological vocabulary such as skepticism, empiricism, nominalism, and conventionalism to clarify their import for the liberal conceptions (...) of personal identity, friend, and enemy. Throughout, the chapter shows how the Levinasian deployment of the same–other distinction with its devolution upon the concept of infinity offers us a revealing guide to liberal political thought and practice and thereby also constitutes an important implicit critique of Schmitt. (shrink)

This article explores why Russell believed Spinoza to be a superior philosopher to Locke. The latter’s empiricism is closer to Russell’s epistemology than the former’s rationalism, and the superiority of the former’s metaphysic is dubious at best. This makes for an intriguing choice. Normative ethics is the most likely basis, but Russell did not believe that this area of inquiry should be considered part of philosophy.

Two views of scientific theories dominated the philosophy of science during the twentieth century, the syntactic view of the logical empiricists and the semantic view of their successors. I show that neither view is adequate to provide a proper understanding of the connections that exist between theories at different times. I outline a new approach, a hybrid of the two, that provides the right structural connection between earlier and later theories, and that takes due account of the importance of the (...) mathematical models of a theory and of the various distinct formulations that pick out these models. (shrink)

This article distinguishes between Machian empiricism and the logical positivism of the Vienna Circle and associated philosophers. Mach's natural philosophy was a first order attempt to reform and reorganize physics, not a second order reconstruction of the "language" of physics. Mach's elements were not sense data but realistic events in the natural world and in minds, and Mach admitted unobserved elements as part of his world view. Mach's critique of metaphysics was far more subtle and concerned the elimination of (...) sensory visual imagery from natural science, leaving only concrete elements and functions, very much an inspiration to the young Einstein and Heisenberg and a useful engine of theory construction in physics. (shrink)

Michel Ghins and I are both empiricists, and agree significantly in our critique of “traditional” empiricist epistemology. We differ however in some respects in our interpretation of the scientific enterprise. Ghins argues for a moderate scientific realism which includes the view that acceptance of a scientific theory will bring with it belief in the existence of all those entities, among the entities the theory postulates, that satisfy certain criteria. For Ghins these criteria derive from the criteria for legitimate affirmation of (...) existence for any entities, the directly observable ones not being privileged in that respect. They are roughly that the putatively existing entity should according to the accepted theory manifest itself in our experience, and display a certain permanence and invariance. My disagreement on this topic derives from a larger difference concerning the relation between experience, existence, and theory. (shrink)

In Difference and Repetition1 Deleuze sets out to critique the regime of representation and common sense by developing a new conception of difference and repetition in which difference and repetition become liberated from the coherence and continuity of a self or I.2 Difference in itself means that difference has become independent not only from representation, but also from an enduring or coherent self. Difference in itself and repetition in itself are the becoming different and the repetition of a fractured or (...) dissolved self, which Deleuze relates to both a larval subject3 and to a simulacrum.4 In Difference and Repetition Deleuze defines both the concepts of larval subject and simulacrum through the multiplicities and differential relations of the realm of the virtual.5 However, they are not the same. A simulacrum defines a condition in which an entity has become transformed into pure appearance in which nothing appears. A simulacrum is no longer an entity, but only the illusion of an entity.6 This is distinct from the larval subject because the larval subject is an embryonic entity, an entity in the process of formation.7 Through an analysis of the conceptual relation and distinction between larval subject and simulacrum in the first part of the essay, I will reinterpret Deleuze as a philosopher of indifference and the impossibility of repetition, which is a critique on the common idea that Deleuze’s Difference and Repetition is a philosophy of pure difference and pure repetition. Also, I will argue that Deleuze did not just develop a transcendental empiricism (a metaphysics of process), but a philosophy of the universal in itself (which is the collapse of metaphysics). The universal in itself emerges when experience collapses and when the self-determination of entities has become impossible. (shrink)

Geometry was a main source of inspiration for Carnap’s conventionalism. Taking Poincaré as his witness Carnap asserted in his dissertation Der Raum (Carnap 1922) that the metrical structure of space is conventional while the underlying topological structure describes "objective" facts. With only minor modifications he stuck to this account throughout his life. The aim of this paper is to disprove Carnap's contention by invoking some classical theorems of differential topology. By this means his metrical conventionalism turns out to be indefensible (...) for mathematical reasons. This implies that the relation between to-pology and geometry cannot be conceptualized as analogous to the relation between the meaning of a proposition and its expression in some language as logical empiricists used to say. (shrink)

The relation between theory and reality is an important problem for phüosophy of science. Positivists or logical empkicists of the Vienna Circle have tried to solve it by postulating several types of so-called basic statements induced by immediate experience or observation. According to Neurath protocol sentences are distinguished from other synthetic sentences only m virtue of their syntactical form. Since consistency is a relation concerning sentences only, not a sentence and any immediate experience,he contends that there remains an unbridgeable gap (...) between observationstatements and observation itself and consequently he adopts a coherentist strategy of corroboration, which Schlick, as a thorough empiricist, wants to avoid. For that purpose he introduces the notion of "Konstatierung". Such ascertainments play a decisive role as endpoints in the corroboration of theories insofar as they serve to verify predictions which express expected ascertainments. In spite of the fact that they are synthetic wc recognize their truth when grasping their meaning and, therefore, error is precluded in their case, while protocol sentences remain mere hypotheses. Quine attempts to overcome the weaknesses of all prior positions by proposing a purely behavioristic definition of 'observation sentence' which avoids the pitfalls of former sense-data theories as well as the ones of cultural relativism or irrationalism. Considering science to be a bridge linking together our sensory stimuli he comes to the view that empirical support of a theory is a consequence of the logical relation between the theory formulation and the observation categoricals derivable from it. He considers the ideological and epistemological neutrality of his conception as one of its main merits. Its feasibility depends, however, on the question whether, by his behavioristic method, he effectively can explain how linguistic expressions acquire their meanings. (shrink)

Mit der Entfaltung des Problems der „zwei Reihen“, der Genesis philosophischer Begriffsbildung, vollzog Fichte einen paradigmatischen Einschnitt im Hinblick auf die Fassung der Rolle begrifflicher Momente in der menschlichen Erkenntnis. Dieser Schnitt erscheint aus der Perspektive des durch Hegel entfalteten Prinzips des Aufsteigens vom Abstrakten zum Konkreten gleichsam als ‚erledigt’. Eine solche Perspektive verdeckt jedoch den vollzogenen qualitativen Umbruch. Dieser gewinnt dadurch Kontur, wenn die durch Fichte angesprochenen Positionen in Beziehung zu der vorangegangenen Ausbildung methodischer Positionen in der europäischen Aufklärung (...) gesetzt werden. -/- With the development of the problem of the "two rows", the genesis of philosophical concept formation, Fichte made a paradigmatic break with regard to the understanding of the role of conceptual moments in human knowledge. From the perspective of the principle developed by Hegel of ascending from the abstract to the concrete, this cut appears as 'done', so to speak. Such a perspective, however, conceals the qualitative upheaval that has taken place. This gains contours when the positions addressed by Fichte are related to the previous formation of methodical positions in the European Enlightenment. (shrink)