This chapter contains sections titled: * Science and Rationality as Human Practices * Practical Objectivity and Explanatory Focus * Methodological Naturalism and Informal Reasoning * Microdesign and Macrodesign in Science * Note * References * Further Reading.

In this book, the author shows that it is necessary to enrich the conceptual frame of the theory of rational choice beyond consequentialism. He argues that consequentialism as a general theory of rational action fails and that this does not force us into the dichotomy teleology vs deontology. The unity of practical reason can be saved without consequentialism. In the process, he presents insightful criticism of standard models of action and rational choice. This will help readers discover a new perspective (...) on the theory of rationality. The approach is radical: It transcends the reductive narrowness of instrumental rationality without denying its practical impact. Actions do exist that are outlined in accordance to utility maximizing or even self-interest maximizing. Yet, not all actions are to be understood in these terms. Actions oriented around social roles, for example, cannot count as irrational only because there is no known underlying maximizing heuristic. The concept of bounded rationality tries to embed instrumental rationality into a form of life to highlight limits of our cognitive capabilities and selective perceptions. However, the agent is still left within the realm of cost-benefit-reasoning. The idea of social preferences or meta-preferences cannot encompass the plurality of human actions. According to the author they ignore the plurality of reasons that drive agency. Hence, they coerce agency in fitting into a theory that undermines humanity. His theory of structural rationality acknowledges lifeworld patterns of interaction and meaning. (shrink)

Is there such a thing as a “best scientific methodology” in regulatory science? By examining cases from varying regulatory processes, we argue that there is no best scientific method for generating decision-relevant data. In addition, in regulatory science, the most suitable methodologies often differ from what is considered best practice in knowledge-oriented science. In data generation for regulatory purposes, we are faced with a wide spectrum of preferred methodologies as well as controversy as to methodological choice. What (...) goes by the most adequate scientific method can and will—justifiably and rationally—vary significantly according to context and use. In order to make this argument, we analyze four case studies, two from risk assessment and two from benefit assessment. Our analysis shows that it is the noncognitive objectives of a particular regulatory process that determine what counts as the most appropriate scientific method. We use the concept of bounded rationality to indicate that those methodological choices, despite being context-dependent, can be interpreted as rational. (shrink)

This paper explores R.G. Collingwood's argument that a new type of archaeology, taking fairy tales as its subject matter, is capable of expanding our historical knowledge of cultural practices. I suggest that it is interesting from the point of view of current discussions about cosmopolitanism and communitarianism and also for understanding past practices, such as magic, without having to attribute failure of reasoning or a breakdown in mentality to the participants, as Le Roy Ladurie does. Collingwood maintains that (...) the natural sciences are unsuitable models for the human sciences. They are incapable of distinguishing between the inside and outside of an event. They do not acknowledge that a historical process is very different from a natural process. In addition, the natural sciences cannot take account of the self-critical or criteriological aspect of thought. Human sciences are criteriological in that they are capable of taking individuals who formulate intentions and purposes, and employ criteria to judge the extent to which they succeed or fail. Thought is self-critical, and to say that a certain thought conforms to a type of neurosis is to ignore its criteriological character. The implication is that when magic is viewed as bad science, or a failure in rationality, the criteriological character of magical thought is being denied. When magic is understood as an integral part of fairy tales and as a practice designed to arouse specific emotions to be channelled into practical effects, such as to inspire courage in warriors in battle, its character as purposive and intentional thought is being acknowledged. (shrink)

Since the industrial revolution, humans have tended to reduce science to the ancillary role of engine of technology. But the quest for knowledge started two and a half millennia ago with the aim of setting humans free from ignorance. The first scientists and philosophers saw knowledge as the goal, not as the means. The main goal was to understand matter, life, conscience, intelligence, our origin, and our destiny, not only to solve practical problems. Being sceptical to myths and religions, (...) they gave themselves the goal to reach The Answer via rational and empirical inquiry. Transhumanism is a very specific philosophy of technology, because one of its goals is the creation of a posthuman intelligence. Several scientists share this hope: making of technology the ancilla of science, and not vice versa. (shrink)

"Evidence of a flight from reason is as old as human record-keeping: the fact of it certainly goes back an even longer way. Flight from science specifically, among the forms of rational inquiry, goes back as far as science itself... But rejection of reason is now a pattern to be found in most branches of scholarship and in all the learned professions."--from the introduction In the widely acclaimed Higher Superstition: The Academic Left and Its Quarrels with (...) class='Hi'>Science, Paul R. Gross and Norman Levitt offered a spirited response to the "science bashers," raising serious questions about the growing criticism of scientific practice from humanists and social scientists on the academic left. Now, in The Flight from Science and Reason, Gross and Levitt are joined by Martin W. Lewis to bring together a diverse and distinguished group of scholars, scientists, and experts to engage these questions from a wide variety of perspectives. The authors take on critics of science whose views range from moderate to extreme, from social constructivists to deconstructionists, from creationists and feminists to Afro-centrists. They discuss the rise of "alternative medicine" and radical environmentalism (here skewered as "ecosentimentalism"). They explain why the "uncertainty principle" does not work as a metaphor for ambiguity, and why "chaos theory" cannot be invoked without an understanding of mathematics. Throughout, they grapple with the paradox inherent in arguing with opponents who contend that reason itself, and thus logic, is suspect. Distributed for the New York Academy of Sciences. (shrink)

_Tracing practical reason from its origins to its modern and contemporary permutations_ The Greek discovery of practical reason, as the skilled performance of strategic thinking in public and private affairs, was an intellectual breakthrough that remains both a feature of and a bug in our modern world. Countering arguments that rational choice-making is a contingent product of modernity, _The Greeks and the Rational_ traces the long history of theorizing rationality back to ancient Greece. In this book, Josiah Ober explores how (...) ancient Greek sophists, historians, and philosophers developed sophisticated and systematic ideas about practical reason. At the same time, they recognized its limits—that not every decision can be reduced to mechanistic calculations of optimal outcomes. Ober finds contemporary echoes of this tradition in the application of game theory to political science, economics, and business management. _The Greeks and the Rational_ offers a striking revisionist history with widespread implications for the study of ancient Greek civilization, the history of thought, and human rationality itself. (shrink)

Taking post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) as an example, we present a concept for transdisciplinary cooperation between life sciences and humanities. PTSD is defined as a long-term persisting anxiety disorder after severe psychological traumata. Initially recognized in war veterans, PTSD also appears in victims of crime and violence or survivors of natural catastrophes, e.g., earthquakes. We consider PTSD as a prototype topic to realize transdisciplinary projects, because this disease is multifacetted from different points of view. Based on physiological and molecular biological (...) research to understand the causes of this disease, conventional academic medicine (to Western medicine) and pharmacology can offer a panel of drugs for treatment, albeit only with limited success. Hence, other treatment options are indispensable. Chinese medicine is frequently regarded as alternative to complement Western medicine. In fact, Chinese medicine offers a large array of both pharmacological and non-pharmacological treatments for PTSD patients. Narrative therapy represents a non-pharmacological approach combating PTSD both in Western medicine as well as in Chinese medicine to improve quality of life of affected patients. Narratives on traumatic experiences form a new genre of life writing in Asian American literature, whose excitement is considerably fueled by the tension between fictitious and very personal narratives taken from reality. Systematic academic reflections on narratives from PTSD patients in the field of Asian American studies may support the improvement of narrative therapy in medical practice. Chinese medicine has a strong philosophical background and may, therefore, serve as junction between life sciences with their strong rational and reductionistic way to generate new knowledge and more holistic approaches in traditional medicines and humanities. In this regard, Chinese medicine may represent a missing link between life science and life writing. (shrink)

The contemporary digital reality is inconceivable without artificial intelligence (AI), which has become disseminated across all cultural practices, from scientific and artistic endeavors to everyday activities. AI increasingly functions as an agent of communication and decision-making, gradually surpassing human capabilities across nearly all competencies. The information flows of this new reality can only be navigated through hybrid systems based on post-critical rationality, which inherently introduces an irreducible element of uncertainty and risk in human-machine environments. The article proposes (...) examining the techno-subject through the lens of activity theory and the multiple types of rationality it generates. This framework facilitates the analysis of sociocultural and anthropological implications arising from AI’s integration with human domains, while addressing the existential challenges inherent in constructing a harmonious hybrid society. Beyond V.S. Stepin’s types of scientific rationality, the author builds upon previously introduced forms of rationality: post-critical, object-oriented, instrumental, subjective, results-oriented, creative, and autopoietic. This theoretical framework facilitates a substantive discussion of various manifestations of AI subjectivity, including its generalized embodiment and creative specificity. The demarcation of dominance domains between natural intelligence and AI in the intellectual sphere is proposed to be resolved on the basis of their heuristic potentials. The author maintains that natural intelligence invariably possesses superior capacity in this regard. The article examines approaches to risk assessment in AI implementation strategies, focusing on criteria for preserving anthropological and sociocultural profiles in the development of hybrid society. Advancing the concept of friendly AI is substantiated as essential, with consideration given not only to technological but also to anthropological aspects of human–machine interaction. The author advocates for the development of social examination institutions as regulatory mechanisms for natural–artificial intelligence interaction and anthropological–technological subject interfaces. (shrink)

In this work we will take up again the contributions of the feminist philosophy of science around androcentrism, with special emphasis on biology and biomedical sciences. We will propose that such contributions can be ordered according to three different senses of androcentrism, and that important tensions appear between these senses. Following the path traced by Longino, contextual critical empiricism, we will defend that the rational reconstruction of theories can help us to specify where patriarchal decision vectors crouch in scientific (...) practice. To this end, we will present an alternative analysis to Longino’s and use it as an input to discuss the idea of type brains in the framework of the neuroendocrinology of behaviour. (shrink)

Behaviorism is consistent with the assumptions of perfect competition, with the homo economicus model, and with a form of ethics that enshrines market-based notions of utility, justice, and rights and encourages rational maximizing. Economics and business courses foster this deficient form of ethics, assuming an overriding desire for money, which, according to MacIntyre and Aristotle, crowds out the associative virtues. These beliefs, often associated with Taylor and Friedman, lead to such practices as incentive compensation, which would be effective only (...) if employees were homines economici and thus rational in the sense of knowing how to satisfy whatever desires they have. Against Davidson’s view that psychology cannot be a natural science, Aristotle believes that there can be a teleological, if not exact, science of behavior. Aristotle believes that emotions and objectives may be rational or irrational. But rationality—phronesis, practical wisdom—is not a matter of applying algorithms. Doris questions whether character generates the first premises of an agent’s practical syllogisms, while Haidt has argued that we often act on emotions rather than on the basis of the reasons that we claim motivate us. Aristotle agrees that many people are not virtuous and that weakness of the will is a common occurrence, and he agrees that emotion drives actions. But if you are virtuous, your emotions and desires support your rationality. Aristotle gives us reason to reject the notion that people are homines economici and to treat them as rational deliberators, in part by creating an appropriate culture. The claim that it is in the nature of human beings to deliberate rationally is in part aspirational, but also in part scientific—in Aristotle’s modest sense. (shrink)

Attempts to explain human behavior that appeal to economic rationality share many of the same ontological as- sumptions and methodological practices that the so-called ‘adaptationist program’ in biology was criticized for. This program in biology was largely abandoned by biologists as poorly motivated, and replaced with the active testing of both adaptive and non-adaptive hypotheses regarding the spread and maintenance of traits in populations. This development was largely welcome by the biological community, despite having required the development of (...) new tools, both conceptual and method- ological. Many analysts of contemporary microeconomic practice criticize the assumptions and practices employed therein as similarly poorly motivated. Close attention to these criticisms reveal them to have more than superficial similarities to the critiques of adaptationism in biology. These similarities extend to some macroeconomics researchers recent suggestions of ways that hypotheses regarding the causes of people’s actions might be tested; as yet, however, these suggestions have not been embraced by the field as a whole. By attending to the ways in which biological practice has moved beyond the adaptationist program, similar changes in economic practice may be motivated. (shrink)

Rationality in medicine is frequently construed as hypotheticodeductive. This article argues that such a model gives a distorted view of the rational character of an enterprise that makes judgments about individual human well-being. Medicine as a science is a practical human science. Seen as such, its rational orientation is one that applies general knowledge to particular situations. It is argued that such an orientation is not deductive but interpretative. The Aristotelian concept of practical wisdom (‘phron sis’) (...) is used as a model of the rational orientation of clinical judgment. Keywords: clinical judgment, rationality, human sciences CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

Summary The article aims at addressing a sport sociological research desideratum: the question of acting in sport. So far, this question has mainly been dealt with in human kinetics and sport psychology. Here, action theories refer to action as a rational-reflective and individual phenomenon whose cognitive and ideational foundations must be given particular attention. Recently, however, the focus has begun to be shifted to embodied, pre-reflective, and relational dimensions of action in these sub-disciplines of sport science. Similar reorientations (...) can be observed in sociology, where the mentalism and individualism inherent in action theories is undermined by practice theories emphasizing the bodily, tacit, and collective properties of practice. Practice theories promise additional advances and insights into practical action in sport insofar as they explicitly take into account dimensions of practice widely abstracted from by approaches of human kinetics and sport psychology. By means of a praxeological reflection of the existing approaches to action in sport, the article identifies their blind spots and presents initial ideas for overcoming them. (shrink)

This article focuses on the concept of worldviews, arguing that a change in managerial worldviews is the key lever for addressing the social and global challenges facing humanity. We draw from a new synthesis of science and spirituality, with the addition of “other ways of knowing” that go beyond rational-empirical analysis, to suggest that what we call Quantum Worldviews are capable of generating the prosocial and pro-environmental behavior consistent with humanistic management. Using the yin-yang symbol as a metaphor, we (...) suggest that a transformation in consciousness, at the level of the paradigmatic assumptions held by managers about the nature of reality, can be understood through adult development theory. We also go beyond the metaphor to propose a quantum worldview based on a more literal interpretation of quantum science to fundamentally re-conceptualize what it means to be human, drawing on quantum research that suggests ontological wholeness and interdependence of all. Quantum Worldviews can help leaders, and the various systems of which they are a part, transition to a new science-based consciousness - long intuited by indigenous and nonwestern spiritual leaders - of an interconnected and dynamically coherent world. We identify a variety of practices that give managers a direct experience of Oneness, changing who they are at the deepest level of self-concept. Our research suggests that only when using such practices, and in sufficient numbers, will business leaders become agents of world benefit with the collective influence to bring about meaningful solutions to climate change and other wicked problems—in other words, needed system transformation. (shrink)

What does it mean to know something - scientifically, anthropologically, socially? What is the relationship between different forms of knowledge and ways of knowing? How is knowledge mobilised in society and to what ends? Drawing on ethnographic examples from across the world, and from the virtual and global "places" created by new information technologies, Anthropology and Science presents examples of living and dynamic epistemologies and practices, and of how scientific ways of knowing operate in the world. Authors address (...) the nature of both scientific and experiential knowledge, and look at competing and alternative ideas about what it means to be human. The essays analyze the politics and ethics of positioning "science", "culture" or "society" as authoritative. They explore how certain modes of knowing are made authoritative and command allegiance (or not), and look at scientific and other rationalities - whether these challenge or are compatible with science. (shrink)

Philosophy of science and history of science both have a significant relation to science itself; but what is their relation to each other? That question has been a focal point of philosophical and historical work throughout the second half of this century. An analysis and review of the progress made in dealing with this question, and especially that made in philosophy, is the focus of this thesis. Chapter one concerns logical positivist and empiricist approaches to philosophy of (...) science, and the significance of the criticisms levelled at them by analytic epistemologists such as Willard Quine and 'historicist' philosophers, especially Thomas Kuhn. Chapter two details the attempts by Kuhn and Lakatos to integrate these historicist criticisms with historically oriented philosophy of science, in their separate attempts at providing rational explanations of historical developments. Kuhn's latest work seeks to mend fences with philosophy, but his efforts remain too closely tied to the epistemological approaches strongly criticized in his earlier work. Lakatos' treatment of history is much more subtle than most have understood it to be, but the conception of scientific rationality that arises out of it is transformed into an abstract cultural product, more reminiscent of Hegel's geist than of individual human rationality. Chapters three and four discuss the recommendations of Lakatos and Laudan to historians with regard to historiography, and the actual historiographies and philosophy of history of practicing historians and historians of science. The philosophers' contributions indicate little concern for the historians' own methods, materials, and purposes; and the historians' writings present methodologies for history of science that are independent of the normative demarcations of philosophy of science, pace Lakatos and Laudan. Chapter five develops a philosophical position that fosters a more productive engagement between philosophy and history of science, a 'methodological historicism' that embraces the possibility of an important role for social and political factors in a philosophical study of scientific development. The epistemological relativism that might accompany such a historicist position need not be the radical epistemological anarchism of Feyerabend, though it will allow for a significant underdetermination of scientific development by reason nonetheless. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Realism, Universalism, and the Science of the HumanAmanda Anderson (bio)Satya P. Mohanty. Literary Theory and the Claims of History: Postmodernism, Objectivity, Multicultural Politics. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1997.Martha C. Nussbaum. Cultivating Humanity: A Classical Defense of Reform in Liberal Education. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1997.It is arguably a peculiar fact that a book announcing itself as a defense of objectivity and realism would begin by assuring readers of the political (...) efficacy of its theories. After all, the critique of objectivity and realism within progressive cultural criticism of the past several decades has taken for granted that claims to objectivity and realism are suspicious in part because of their pretense to value-neutrality. But Satya P. Mohanty’s ambitious and wide-ranging Literary Theory and the Claims of History joins with other recent attempts to lay claim to a refurbished realism that not only overcomes variously construed limitations of postmodernism but fully answers to the charges leveled against “traditional” objectivity or “naïve” realism [see Alcoff; Livingston]. Such a project can in part be analyzed against a broader critique of postmodernism and poststructuralism advanced through reconsideration of Enlightenment ideals, including, most prominently, the ideals of universalism and its less abstract cousin, cosmopolitanism [see Anderson]. The reconstructions of both universalism and realism have claimed a greater intellectual integrity and coherence than the forms of postmodernism that they challenge and a more promising ethico-political vision, one that more convincingly acknowledges the place and claims of marginalized others. These reconstructive projects thus fundamentally challenge the familiar postmodernist idea that claims to universalism or objectivity themselves enact forms of privilege or exclusion that inherently disable any properly egalitarian or nonviolent relation to others.Mohanty would appear to combine the universalist and realist ambitions, insofar as he asserts a moral position based on Kantian notions of autonomy and dignity at the same time that, in epistemological terms, he elaborates a “postpositivist realist alternative.” Maintaining that the critique of objectivity within postmodernism is propped up by an outdated understanding of scientific method and theory, he argues that the more sophisticated theories within current philosophy of science elaborate epistemological models that are fully compatible with a generalized hermeneutical method, precisely because they acknowledge both the theory-laden nature of all inquiry and the larger social and historical contexts of knowledge and experience. Before elaborating this realist alternative, however, Mohanty situates his project by forwarding a number of critiques of “constructivist postmodernism,” critiques that enable us to better gauge the motivations behind his work. Foregrounded at the start are what Mohanty sees as the [End Page 3] harmful political and ethical consequences of relativism, skepticism, and constructivism. According to Mohanty, while the claims for diversity and difference in the 1960s “had a political edge,” at this historical moment they are used primarily for conservative ends, via a state-sponsored bland multiculturalism that diverts attention from the blunt material issues of race politics [17]. In broader ethico-political terms, moreover, relativist arguments that display skepticism toward the possibilities for rational exchange between variously construed collectivities and cultures lead not to a proper respect for the other but rather to indifference. As Mohanty puts it, to deny the possibility of “general criteria” for “interpretive validity” is “to assert that all spaces are equivalent, that they have equal value, that since the lowest common principle of evaluation is all that I can invoke, I cannot—and consequently need not—think about how your space impinges on mine or how my history is defined together with yours. If that is the case, I may have started by declaring a pious political wish, but I end by denying that I need to take you seriously” [131; Mohanty’s emphasis].Beyond these harmful consequences, however, lies a more fundamental problem. In its monolithic assault on Western Reason and the unified subject of humanism, constructivist postmodernism has deprived itself of any coherent account of human agency and rationality. Without a philosophical anthropology establishing the “capacities, tasks, and limits that might make up a specifically human existence,” Mohanty argues, it becomes impossible to account properly for cultural practices and historical agency, for the self-understanding of cultures and the historical transformations they enact [138... (shrink)

Mikael Stenmark examines four models of rationality and argues for a discussion of rationality that takes into account the function and aim of such human practices as science and religion.

In this article, I want to show that the concept “rationality”, which is important for the French school of epistemology of science, has a dual content and is not very successful. This is the main point of my polemic with Tatyana Sokolova. On the one hand, there seems to be general rationality in it, understood as a preference (in the broad sense) for benefits over costs. Benefits include true knowledge. On the other hand, there is a historical socio-cultural context (...) in which scientific knowledge arises and in which the parameters of practice are determined, which serves as the final instance for testing knowledge. At the same time, there are many such contexts in society, which I call human interfaces. The world, for its part, offers many of its interfaces as collections of interaction tools. When some interface of a person and some interface of the world assimilate each other, knowledge arises, that is confirmed by practice. It can be considered rational. But with a change in the sociocultural context, the human interface also changes, so that a search for new assimilation takes place. It is carried out by science. I agree with Tatyana Sokolova’s characterization of the progress of science, but I suggest at least differentiating the levels of rationality. One operates in the historical sociocultural locus, the other ensures the change of such loci and the adaptation of knowledge to them. I consider the progress of science to be an evaluative characteristic; no objectively recorded phenomenon corresponds to it. The disciplinary distinction of science is derived from the concepts of “object” and “method”, which have a performative content. (shrink)

Contemporary neo-Aristotelianism attempts to ground normative constraints on action on the notion of human nature and this opens it to two main objections: Firstly, human nature seems to be too indeterminate to set constraints on action; secondly, it is unclear why knowledge of human nature should motivate agents. This essay considers the contribution that Wittgenstein’s notion of form of life can give in answering these challenges. It suggests that forms of life are not objects of analysis, but (...) rather a new philosophical method, which allows us also to investigate human volitional capacities and their normative significance for practical rationality. (shrink)

From 1918 to the late 1940s, a host of influential scientists and intellectuals in Europe and North America were engaged in a number of far-reaching unity of science projects. In this period of deep social and political divisions, scientists collaborated to unify sciences across disciplinary boundaries and to set up the international scientific community as a model for global political co-operation. They strove to align scientific and social objectives through rational planning and to promote unified science as the (...) driving force of human civilization and progress. This volume explores the unity of science movement, providing a synthetic view of its pursuits and placing it in its historical context as a scientific and political force. Through a coherent set of original case studies looking at the significance of various projects and strategies of unification, the book highlights the great variety of manifestations of this endeavour. These range from unifying nuclear physics to the evolutionary synthesis, and from the democratization of scientific planning to the utopianism of H.G. Wells's world state. At the same time, the collection brings out the substantive links between these different pursuits, especially in the form of interconnected networks of unification and the alignment of objectives among them. Notably, it shows that opposition to fascism, using the instrument of unified science, became the most urgent common goal in the 1930s and 1940s. In addressing these issues, the book makes visible important historical developments, showing how scientists participated in, and actively helped to create, an interwar ideology of unification, and bringing to light the cultural and political significance of this enterprise. (shrink)

A major theme of the European Enlightenment was the rationalization of value, the use of reason to determine the value of things, from diamonds to civilizations. This view of the Enlightenment is well-established in the human sciences. It is ripe for extension to the natural sciences, given the rich recent literature on affect, evaluation, and subjectivity in early modern science. Meanwhile, in art history, the new history of connoisseurship provides a model for the historical study of the evaluation (...) of material things. Historians of natural history have already noted the connections between science, Enlightenment, and connoisseurship. The time has come to extend their insights to other areas of Enlightenment science. This means recognizing the breadth of connoisseurship – the social, linguistic, and disciplinary diversity of the practice – as understood in Europe in the eighteenth century and the latter part of the seventeenth century. An outline of the three papers in this special section gives an indication of how this historiographical project might be carried out. (shrink)

How developing a more expansive, non-formal conception of reason produces richer ethical understandings of human situations, explored and illustrated with many real examples. In Re-Reasoning Ethics, Barry Hoffmaster and Cliff Hooker enhance and empower ethics by adopting a non-formal paradigm of rational deliberation as intelligent problem-solving and a complementary non-formal paradigm of ethical deliberation as problem-solving design to promote human flourishing. The non-formal conception of reason produces broader and richer ethical understandings of human situations, not the simple, (...) constrained depictions provided by moral theories and their logical applications in medical ethics and bioethics. Instead, it delivers and vindicates the moral judgment that complex, contextual, and dynamic situations require. Hoffmaster and Hooker demonstrate how this more expansive rationality operates with examples, first in science and then in ethics. Non-formal reason brings rationality not just to the empirical world of science but also to the empirical realities of human lives. Among the many real cases they present is that of how women at risk of having children with genetic conditions decide whether to try to become pregnant. These women do not apply the formal principle of maximizing expected utility (as advised by genetic counselors) and instead imagine scenarios of what their lives could be like with an affected child and assess whether they could accept the worst of these scenarios. Hoffmaster and Hooker explain how moral compromise and a liberated, extended, and enriched reflective equilibrium expand and augment rational ethical deliberation and how that deliberation can rationally design ethical practices, institutions, and policies. (shrink)

Synthetic biology is often described as a project that applies rational design methods to the organic world. Although humans have influenced organic lineages in many ways, it is nonetheless reasonable to place synthetic biology towards one end of a continuum between purely ‘blind’ processes of organic modification at one extreme, and wholly rational, design-led processes at the other. An example from evolutionary electronics illustrates some of the constraints imposed by the rational design methodology itself. These constraints reinforce the limitations of (...) the synthetic biology ideal, limitations that are often freely acknowledged by synthetic biology’s own practitioners. The synthetic biology methodology reflects a series of constraints imposed on finite human designers who wish, as far as is practicable, to communicate with each other and to intervene in nature in reasonably targeted and well-understood ways. This is better understood as indicative of an underlying awareness of human limitations, rather than as expressive of an objectionable impulse to mastery over nature. (shrink)

The professions of nursing and nurse education are currently experiencing a crisis of confidence, particularly in the UK, where the Francis Report and other recent reviews have highlighted a number of cases of nurses who no longer appear willing or able to ‘care’. The popular press, along with some elements of the nursing profession, has placed the blame for these failures firmly on the academy and particularly on the relatively recent move to all‐graduate status in England for pre‐registration student nurses. (...) This has come to be known in the UK as the ‘too‐posh‐to‐wash’ argument, that there is an incommensurability between being educated to degree level and performing basic nursing tasks. I will argue in this paper that the diagnosis of the problem is substantively correct, but the formulation and the prescription are misguided and dangerous. I will suggest that the growing emphasis on research‐based and evidence‐based practice is the logical conclusion of an inappropriate scientific paradigm for nursing which is underpinned by the social sciences, by technical rationality, and by a focus on people. In contrast, I will suggest that a more fruitful way of thinking about and practising nursing and nurse education is to consider it as a human science with a focus on persons in which evidence for practice derives largely from practice itself. The history of the idea of a human science is traced from its roots in nineteenth century hermeneutics to the work of Gadamer and R.D. Laing in the 1960s, and I attempt to imagine a paradigm for nursing practice, scholarship, and education based on Laing's ‘existential–phenomenological’ approach with a focus on the endeavour to understand and relate to individual persons rather than to make broad prescriptions for practice based on statistical and other generalizations. (shrink)

The practical nature of all human understanding lies at the heart of Gadamer's philosophical hermeneutics, yet the stress he places on practicality and his appeal to Aristotle remain relatively neglected by the secondary literature. This neglect is due in part to a failure to see the great extent to which Gadamer relies on the Aristotelian concept of phronēsis (practical wisdom) and, to a lesser extent, on the Hegelian concept of the concrete universal. The purpose of this paper is to (...) show how the proper understanding of Aristotle's notions of practical wisdom and theoretical knowing, both of which are crucial to an appreciation of Gadamer's description of human understanding as Spiel (“game” or “play”), will help to reverse two of the recurring mischaracterizations of philosophical hermeneutics: first, that it is ultimately anti-science (against method and theory) and second, that critical reason or rationality plays only a minor role within it. (shrink)

This special issue examines the diverse realities created by the intersection of emerging technologies, new scientific knowledge, and the human being. It engages with two key questions: how is the human being shaped and constructed in new ways through advances in science and technology? and how might these new ways of imagining the subject shape present and future human rights law and practice? The papers examine a variety of scientific technologies—personalized medicine and organ transplant, mitochondrial DNA (...) replacement, and scaffolds and regenerative medicine—and their implications for our conceptualization of the human subject. Each is then followed by a commentary that both brings to light new dimensions of the original paper and presents a new theoretical take on the topic. Together these papers offer a serious challenge to the vision of the human subject at the root of human rights law. Instead of the autonomous, rational, unique, and physically discrete individual who owns herself and her body, the subject that emerges from the human technology assemblage has physically porous boundaries and a relational self. This depiction of the human being as a relational subject enmeshed in her technoscientific environment requires that we reconceptualize human rights law and practice. (shrink)

In contrast to dominant approaches to human reason involving essentially a logical and instrumental conception of rationality easily modeled by artificial intelligence mechanisms, I argue that the specific capacities of the human mind are meta-analytic in nature, understood as irreducible to the analytic or the logical, or else the computational. Firstly, the assumption of a meta-analytical level of rationality is derived from key insights developed in various branches of the social sciences. This meta-analytical level is then inferred from (...) Gödel’s incompleteness theorem. On these bases, and with the help of psychological approaches to consciousness, I argue that human rationality may be characterized as the capacity to make meaningful use of signs. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Leibniz and the Rational Order of Nature by Donald RutherfordChristia MercerDonald Rutherford. Leibniz and the Rational Order of Nature. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995. Pp. xiii + 301. Cloth, $54.95. Paper, $18.95.During the twentieth century, scholars of Leibniz have mostly ignored his theology. The tide has recently turned, however, and a few brave souls have begun to disentangle the subtle complications of the relations between Leibniz’s philosophical (...) theology and the rest of his thought. Donald Rutherford is such a brave soul. In his book, he intends to recover “the theodicy as an essential part of Leibniz’s philosophy” (1). To this end, he offers “a comprehensive interpretation of Leibniz’s metaphysical theories—particularly those of his late writings,” and attempts to show “how theodicy [End Page 139] and metaphysics inform each other in his thought” (1). The book has three parts and ten chapters. In the three chapters of Part I, Rutherford “focuses on Leibniz’s theodicy: his vindication of divine justice, the character of the goods that make this the best of all possible worlds, and the special role assigned to rational minds as agents within God’s providential plan for the world” (1). In the three chapters of Part II, Rutherford turns his attention to “Leibniz’s conception of metaphysics as a rational science” and to the notion of substance at its center (2). Finally, in the four chapters of Part III, Rutherford presents an account of Leibniz’s late metaphysics.The structure of Rutherford’s general argument is ingenious. Most fundamentally, he argues that “the guiding force behind” the theodicy is a commitment to reason: “reason as it directs the creative will of God, reason as it is... realized in the intelligible order of the created world, and reason as it helps human beings discern and appreciate that order.” Moreover, “Leibniz’s metaphysical theories are designed to promote the goals of his theodicy” by evidencing as much as possible that rational order (2). Therefore, once we see the metaphysics in light of its theological goal, the close interconnections among its parts will become evident. As Rutherford nicely puts it: “The Leibniz who emerges in this book is one for whom theoretical and practical ends are inextricably linked” (3).In Part I, Rutherford describes the project of the theodicy and, along the way, offers answers to questions which have plagued scholars for decades: What is the relation between variety and simplicity as (apparently conflicting) criteria of worldly goodness? How is the demand for the maximization of perfection related to the (apparently conflicting) commitment to the optimization of the happiness of rational creatures? How can there be different orders and harmonies in one world? Although many of Rutherford’s proposals are both plausible and interesting, they are painted with such broad strokes that they are sometimes difficult to evaluate. Some of the missing details are supplied later in the book, but others are not. For example, a clear picture of the relation between God’s power, goodness, will, and rationality never emerges. In Part II, Rutherford surveys some important texts and topics which concern Leibniz’s methodology, and he presents an intelligent interpretation of Leibniz’s theory of substance. There is much that is interesting here. In Part III, Rutherford is at his best. He ties together many of the separate strands of the late philosophy and tells a plausible story about monads, panorganism, and corporeal substance. This is a genuine achievement and one that will generate a lot of discussion.While I applaud Rutherford’s attempt to construct a coherent account of Leibniz’s philosophy, it is my opinion that he has attached too much importance both to the rational order that is supposed to please the faculty of reason, whether divine or human, and to that faculty itself. According to the Christianized Platonism that Leibniz learned (among many other things) from his teachers in Leipzig, it is the intellect or understanding (intellectus) and not the reason that comes to know the most fundamental truths; and moreover the goodness that created beings (and their interrelations) are supposed to have is based on the fact that they are expressions of God... (shrink)

People have always been xenophobic, but an explicit philosophical and scientific view of human racial difference only began to emerge during the modern period. Why and how did this happen? Surveying a range of philosophical and natural-scientific texts, dating from the Spanish Renaissance to the German Enlightenment, Nature, Human Nature, and Human Difference charts the evolution of the modern concept of race and shows that natural philosophy, particularly efforts to taxonomize and to order nature, played a crucial (...) role. Smith demonstrates how the denial of moral equality between Europeans and non-Europeans resulted from converging philosophical and scientific developments, including a declining belief in human nature's universality and the rise of biological classification. The racial typing of human beings grew from the need to understand humanity within an all-encompassing system of nature, alongside plants, minerals, primates, and other animals. While racial difference as seen through science did not arise in order to justify the enslavement of people, it became a rationalization and buttress for the practices of trans-Atlantic slavery. From the work of François Bernier to G. W. Leibniz, Immanuel Kant, and others, Smith delves into philosophy's part in the legacy and damages of modern racism. With a broad narrative stretching over two centuries, Nature, Human Nature, and Human Difference takes a critical historical look at how the racial categories that we divide ourselves into came into being. (shrink)

Are the cognitive sciences relevant for law? How do they influence legal theory and practice? Should lawyers become part-time cognitive scientists? The recent advances in the cognitive sciences have reshaped our conceptions of human decision-making and behavior. Many claim, for instance, that we can no longer view ourselves as purely rational agents equipped with free will. This change is vitally important for lawyers, who are forced to rethink the foundations of their theories and the framework of legal practice. Featuring (...) multidisciplinary scholars from around the world, this book offers a comprehensive overview of the emerging field of law and the cognitive sciences. It develops new theories and provides often provocative insights into the relationship between the cognitive sciences and various dimensions of the law including legal philosophy and methodology, doctrinal issues, and evidence. (shrink)

Habermas's early work on action and practical rationality -- Practical rationality in Habermas's communicative paradigm -- Towards a thoroughly communicative conception of social action and its rationality.

Technology is fundamental to and embedded in the way practice is conceptualized and institutionalized in social service work. Many scholars assume and expect that good practices of care are achieved with the correct application of theory produced by rigorous scientific research. However, there are significant critiques of this viewpoint. We examine the work of Donald Schön and Martin Heidegger and agree with these authors' suggestions that technical rationality and modern technology are not the way to achieve good practice in (...) the human services. At the same time, we are not convinced that the alternatives offered by Schön and Heidegger provide what good practice requires. We draw on Aristotle's account of the intellectual virtues and make the case for phronesis and praxis as other possibilities for inspiring new kinds of social welfare practice in the twenty-first century. (shrink)

This ambitious and challenging book, by a noted American Marxist sociologist, tries to do two things at once, both of which should be of interest to social and political philosophers as well as philosophers of science. First, it distances itself from virtually all the European Marxist traditions for their adherence to "science" as the dominant mode of epistemic legitimation; second, it clears the conceptual space for an epistemic practice that retains a sufficiently critical distance from science so (...) as to enable the emergence of a truly emancipatory form of knowledge. It should be said, however, that Aronowitz merely hints at this new practice, which will emerge in forthcoming works on feminism and ecologism as perhaps the first sustained attempts since the Enlightenment to ground rationality in the pursuit of substantive ends, namely, the relationship that humans have to their material existence. (shrink)

The conventional interpretation of Thomas Aquinas's concept of "moral science" casts it as a knowledge of moral rules that are the outcome of a deductive method of theoretical reason. However, there is a practical moral science that is possessed by ordinary people who are capable of a moral wisdom that is not derived from philosophy. The doctrine concerning this moral science is found in the texts of Aquinas as he takes up and strengthens the philosophy of Aristotle. (...) This book examines how moral science, then, is not a theoretical set of conclusions imposed on the will, but it is rather the grasping of a whole set of human ends that are intellectually apprehended by a compositive method. (Series: Philosophy: Science and Research / Philosophie: Forschung und Wissenschaft - Vol. 42). (shrink)

This essay defends the view that “modern science,” as with modernity in general, is a polycentered phenomenon, something that appears in different forms at different times and places. It begins with two ideas about the nature of rational scientific inquiry: Karin Knorr Cetina's idea of “epistemic cultures,” and Philip Kitcher's idea of science as “a system of public knowledge,” such knowledge as would be deemed worthwhile by an ideal conversation among the whole public under conditions of mutual engagement. (...) This account of the nature of scientific practice provides us with a new perspective from which to understand key elements in the philosophical project of Jaina logicians in the seventh, eighth, and ninth centuries c.e. Jaina theory seems exceptionally well targeted onto two of the key constituents in the ideal conversation—the classification of all human points of view and the representation of end states of the deliberative process. The Buddhist theory of the Kathāvatthu contributes to Indian epistemic culture in a different way: by supplying a detailed theory of how human dialogical standpoints can be revised in the ideal conversation, an account of the phenomenon Kitcher labels “tutoring.” Thus science in India has its own history, one that should be studied in comparison and contrast with the history of science in Europe. In answer to Joseph Needham, it was not ‘modern science’ which failed to develop in India or China but rather non-well-ordered science, science as unconstrained by social value and democratic consent. What I argue is that this is not a deficit in the civilisational histories of these countries, but a virtue. (shrink)

In a career spanning sixty years, Sir Karl Popper has made some of the most important contributions to the twentieth century discussion of science and rationality. _The Myth of the Framework_ is a new collection of some of Popper's most important material on this subject. Sir Karl discusses such issues as the aims of science, the role that it plays in our civilization, the moral responsibility of the scientist, the structure of history, and the perennial choice between reason (...) and revolution. In doing so, he attacks intellectual fashions that exagerrate what science and rationality have done, as well as intellectual fashions that denigrate what science and rationality can do. Scientific knowledge, according to Popper, is one of the most rational and creative of human achievements, but it is also inherently fallible and subject to revision. In place of intellectual fashions, Popper offers his own critical rationalism - a view that he regards both as a theory of knowlege and as an attitude towards human life, human morals and democracy. Published in cooperation with the Central European University. (shrink)

This volume broadens our concept of reasoning and rationality to allow for a more pluralistic and situational view of human thinking as a practical activity. Drawing on contributors across disciplines including philosophy, economics, psychology, statistics, computer science, engineering, and physics, _Reasoning, Rationality, and Probability_ argues that the search for strong theories should leave room for the construction of context-sensitive conceptual tools. Both science and everyday life, the authors argue, are too complex and multifaceted to be forced into (...) ready-made schemata. (shrink)

Robert Hannas The Rational Human Condition is a five-volume book series, including: Volume 1. Preface and General Introduction, Supplementary Essays, and General Bibliography Volume 2. Deep Freedom and Real Persons: A Study in Metaphysics Volume 3. Kantian Ethics and Human Existence: A Study in Moral Philosophy Volume 4. Kant, Agnosticism, and Anarchism: A Theological-Political Treatise Volume 5. Cognition, Content, and the A Priori: A Study in the Philosophy of Mind and Knowledge The fifth volume in the series, Cognition, (...) Content, and the A Priori, was published by Oxford University Press in 2015. So, with the present publication of the first four volumes in the series by Nova Science in 2019, all five volumes of The Rational Human Condition are now available in hard-copy and as e-books. All five books share a common aim, which is to work out a true general theory of human rationality in a thoroughly nonideal natural and social world. This philosophical enterprise is what Hanna calls rational anthropology. In the eleventh and most famous of his Theses on Feuerbach, Marx wrote that philosophers have only interpreted the world in different ways; the point is to change it. Hanna completely agrees with Marx that the ultimate aim of philosophy is to change the world, not merely interpret it. So, Marx and Hanna are both philosophical liberationists: that is, they both believe that philosophy should have radical political implications. But, beyond Marx, Hanna also thinks that the primary aim of philosophy (understood as rational anthropology) and its practices of synoptic reflection, writing, teaching, and public conversation is to change lives for the betterand ultimately, for the sake of the highest good. Then, and only then, can the human race act upon the world in the right way. The four volumes of The Rational Human Condition will therefore appeal not only to philosophers, but also to any other philosophically-minded person interested in the intellectual and practical adventure of synoptic, reflective thinking about the nature of our rational, but still ineluctably human, all-too-human lives. (shrink)

This paper proposes an analysis of the discursive dynamics of high-impact concepts in the humanities. These are concepts whose formation and development have a lasting and wide-ranging effect on research and our understanding of discursive reality in general. The notion of a conceptual practice, based on a normative conception of practice, is introduced, and practices are identified, on this perspective, according to the way their respective performances are held mutually accountable. This normative conception of practices is then combined (...) with recent work from philosophy of science that characterizes concepts in terms of conceptual capacities that are productive, open-ended, and applicable beyond the original context they were developed in. It is shown that the formation of concepts can be identified by changes in how practitioners hold exercise of their conceptual capacities accountable when producing knowledge about a phenomenon. In a manner similar to the use of operational definitions in scientific practices, such concepts can also be used to intervene in various discourses within or outside the conceptual practice. Using the formation of the concepts “mechanism” and “performative” as examples, the paper shows how high-impact concepts reconfigure what is at issue and at stake in conceptual practices. As philosophy and other humanities disciplines are its domain of interest, it is a contribution to the methodology of the humanities. (shrink)

Scientists and 'anti-scientists' alike need a more realistic image of science. The traditional mode of research, academic science, is not just a 'method': it is a distinctive culture, whose members win esteem and employment by making public their findings. Fierce competition for credibility is strictly regulated by established practices such as peer review. Highly specialized international communities of independent experts form spontaneously and generate the type of knowledge we call 'scientific' - systematic, theoretical, empirically-tested, quantitative, and so (...) on. Ziman shows that these familiar 'philosophical' features of scientific knowledge are inseparable from the ordinary cognitive capabilities and peculiar social relationships of its producers. This wide-angled close-up of the natural and human sciences recognizes their unique value, whilst revealing the limits of their rationality, reliability, and universal applicability. It also shows how, for better or worse, the new 'post-academic' research culture of teamwork, accountability, etc. is changing these supposedly eternal philosophical characteristics. (shrink)

This article is both a comment on Neyland’s ‘On organizing algorithms’ and a supplementary note to our ‘The concept of algorithm as an interpretative key of modern rationality’. In the first part we discuss the concepts of algorithm and recursive function from a different perspective from that of our previous article. Our cultural reference for these concepts is once again computability theory. We give additional arguments in support of the idea that a culture informed by an algorithmic logic has promoted (...) modern rationality both in science and in society. We stress again the importance of distinguishing between algorithms applied to quantifiable entities such as space, time and value and those applied to ontological entities such as human actions. In the second case, the algorithm is applied outside its domain of definition and leads to social disaggregation. (shrink)

Scientism is a philosophy which purports to define what the world ‘really is’. It adopts what the philosopher Thomas Nagel called ‘an epistemological criterion of reality’, defining what is real as that which can be discovered by certain quite specific methods of investigation. As a consequence all features of experience not revealed by those methods are deemed ‘subjective’ in a way that suggests they are either not real, or lie beyond the scope of meaningful rational inquiry. This devalues capacities that (...) (we argue) are in fact essential components of good reasoning and virtuous practice. Ultimately, the implications of scientism for statements of value undermine value-judgements essential for science itself to have a sound basis. Scientism has implications, therefore, for ontology, epistemology and also for which claims we can assert as objective truths about the world. Adopting scientism as a world view will have consequences for reasoning and decision-making in clinical and other contexts. We analyse the implications of this approach and conclude that we need to reject scientism if we are to avoid stifling virtuous practice and to develop richer conceptions of human reasoning. (shrink)

There are two different senses of rationality of methodological rules: one is instrumental rationality, another is rationality of goals. In the first sense methodological rules are mere means of an apparently neutral true description of a given reality. Such a description, no matter how adequate, involves hidden value-assumptions and may be used for irrational purposes. A different notion of ends-means rationality characterizes methodological rules of critical science which analyses limitations of the given reality from an explicitly stated value-standpoint. The (...) ultimate purpose of such critical research is to produce changes in human behaviour and in objective reality. As in the case of medical activity: diagnosis is followed by therapy. Methodological rules of critical inquiry are only a special case of a general methodology of human practice, the rationality of which presupposes a universal emancipatory goal. (shrink)

At the University of Pretoria the author, a practical theologian, experiences a fruitful soil for the development of an interdisciplinary process. He referred to concrete examples of cooperation, but used the article to reflect on best practices for the interdisciplinary dialogue. He came to the conclusion that it probably made more sense to talk of Practical-theological alternatives rather than to describe the subject in a single fixed manner of understanding and action. Our goal should rather be to open up (...) the boundaries between Practical Theology, Human, Social and Natural Sciences. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Verum-factum and Practical Wisdom in the Early Writings of Giambattista VicoRobert C. MinerAs several contemporary writers have noted, Giambattista Vico defends the idea of practical knowledge, a type of knowledge that cannot be fully expressed by propositions and defies reductions to method. 1 The defense of practical knowledge, against Descartes and the rise of objectifying science, is most clearly articulated in a group of Vico’s early writings: the (...) oration De nostri temporis studiorum ratione (1709), the metaphysical book De antiquissima Italorum sapientia ex linguae latinae originibus eruenda (1710), and two rejoinders (Prima and Seconda risposte) to critics of the De antiquissima. In these texts Vico criticizes Cartesian method in terms that remind us of Aristotle, or at least the Aristotle of the Nicomachean Ethics and Politics. “If you were to import the geometrical method into practical life, you would do no more than exhaust yourself in becoming a rational lunatic” (A 7.5). 2This comment and many others like it seem to suggest that Vico is an “Aristotelian,” but any simple classification is problematic. In the same text in which Vico defends the Aristotelian topos he also announces that “the true and the made are convertible” (verum et factum convertuntur). The emphasis on the [End Page 53] role of “making” in truth seems incompatible with the Aristotelian idea of phronesis, whose knowledge is associated with praxis and cannot be reduced to techne. It would be simpler if Vico distinguished between a realm in which the verum-factum principle applied and one in which prudentia was supreme. However, Vico not only situates mathematics and experimental science within the metaphysical framework governed by verum-factum, but also implies strong connections between making and ethics. The prominence Vico assigns to making in all areas of human endeavor gives him a distinctly modern appearance in the fashion of Bacon, Galileo, and Hobbes.This gives rise to both hermeneutical and philosophical problems. Is Vico simply hesitating between the old and new? Does he coherently balance an Aristotelian perspective with the “modern” emphasis on artifice? 3 Perhaps Vico is caught in the middle of the querelle des anciens et modernes, somewhat like John Dunn’s version of Locke, a “tragic figure” who cannot reconcile his epistemological discoveries with a noninstrumentalist view of practical reason. 4 The purpose of this essay is to provide a sympathetic interpretation of Vico’s early writings on prudentia and its links to both verum-factum and rhetoric.Vico contra Rule-based EthicsThe denial that ethics is well understood as a matter of following or justifying general rules has become a commonplace among contemporary Aris-totelians and Wittgensteinians. 5 Against the Enlightenment ambition to construct a universally valid moral science, recent virtue ethics has emphasized the irreducibly contingent aspects of human life, aspects which resist the clutches of “method.” Although Descartes wrote little about morals directly, his influence can be detected in the ethical writings of Hobbes, Kant, Mill, and Sidgwick. These examples of modern moral philosophy presuppose the correctness of the Cartesian diagnosis of ancient and medieval writing on virtue. In the Discourse on Method Descartes compares previous moral teaching to “the most proud and magnificent palaces built on nothing but sand or mud.” 6 Descartes himself did not provide a rational justification of ethics, but he has had no shortage of successors who have tried to complete his foundational project. Jusnaturalism, Kantian deontology, and utilitarianism, as different as they are from one another, share the desire to ground ethics in principles as universal and certain as [End Page 54] those of mathematics. Each of these variants of post-Cartesian ethics claim to have discovered and justified such a principle or set of principles. Maxims deduced from the principle, if not the principle itself, will arguably enable moral agents to discover the right course of action in a particular situation.Vico did not live to witness the most articulate expressions of a Cartesian approach to ethics, but he did apprehend the shift in focus from prudence to method. In the De nostri temporis studiorum ratione, an oration delivered at the University of Naples in 1708 and published the following year, Vico criticizes approaches that locate... (shrink)

Adolf Grünbaum is one of the giants of 20th century philosophy of science. This volume is the first of three collecting his most essential and highly influential work. The essays collected in this first volume focus on three related areas. They discuss scientific rationality-the problem of what it takes for a theory to be called scientific, and ask whether it is plausible to draw a clear distinction between science and non-science as was famously proposed by Karl Popper. (...) They delve into the debate between determinism and indeterminism, in both science and in the humanities. Grünbaum defends the position of the Humane Determinist, which then leads to a thorough criticism of the current theological approaches to ethics and morality-where Grünbaum defends an explicit Secular Humanism-as well as of prominent theistic interpretations of twentieth century physical cosmologies. The second volume is devoted to Grünbaum's writings on the Philosophy of Physics and Space-Time, and the third to his lectures on the Philosophy of Psychology and Psychoanalysis, including his 1985 Gifford Lectures, which are to be published for the first time. (shrink)

This chapter takes inspiration from Wittgenstein’s thinking to formulate a non-reductive toolbox for the study of religion associated with generative modelling, specifically as applied in complex adaptive systems theory. It converges on a communal perspective on religion as multiscale active inference that contrasts starkly with common ‘straw person’ perspectives on religion that reduce it to ‘erroneous’ theorising generated by the brain. In contrast, we argue, religious practices at the enculturated level of description involve implicit and explicit meanings, experienced both (...) individually and collectively. Firstly, we characterise these in terms of Wittgenstein’s notions of rule-following and language games. Secondly, we discuss how the collective and perspectival aspects of religion in enculturation with morals, doctrines, rituals, and expressions can be formalised in terms of deep active inference in multi-agent systems. This approach describes how religions are incommensurable with scientific methods due to the epistemic separation between the different kinds of language games of religious and scientific practices. Their touchpoints tend to give rise to perpetual confusion and unproductive discussions, requiring perspicuous presentations that can be formulated with our toolbox. In this sense, our account has implications for tackling complex societal challenges such as ethical policy-making. (shrink)

The normative phenomenon is ubiquitous in human interactions, emerging in a wide range of fields studied by social science and considered as one of the essential traits of human’s way of life. The modern subjectivist tradition of social science has been based on a model in which elements like self, freedom and reason play the most relevant roles in explaining normativity by connecting beliefs to behaviors by means of motives that are non-reducible to preferences, desires or (...) impulses. In this paper I will discuss normativity in general in order to turn into normativity as it is conceived in social science and then with a focus on normativity based on reasons. I will argue in favor of a naturalistic approach to normativity by means of a defense of a concept of will, which can provide a bridge between social and natural science, rather than giving further reason to sustain a dualistic approach to them. Moreover, I will claim that mental qualities usually alleged to be essential for assigning personality, agency, and moral responsibility, such as rationality, self-consciousness, and freedom, are neither sufficient nor necessary for a naturalistic characterization of moral agents, or for explaining normativity in human evaluative practices. (shrink)