科学哲学

本文首先讨论科学哲学的起源与重要性。其次,本文考察如下基本问题：理论客体的实在论性、理论与经验的区分、科学解释、归纳、科学检验等等。本文所涉及的观点包括实在论与反实在论、科学解释的不同模型、证实主义与证伪主义、亚决定论、整体论、被理论渗透的经验、不可公度性等等。本文所涉及的学派包括逻辑经验（实证）主义、实在论及关于科学的实用主义、历史（科学史）转向与相对主义。最后,笔者会谈一谈科学哲学的新近发展方向及笔者对其在中国与西方将来发展的前瞻。     

Philosophy of Science and Ethics

The issue whether science can be correctly submitted to ethical judgment has been widely debated especially in the 1960s. Those who denied the legitimacy of such a judgment stressed that this would entail an undue limitation of the freedom of science; those who defended such a limitation laid stress on the great dangers that an uncontrolled growth of scientific knowledge has already produced and would continue to produce against humankind. This sterile debate can be settled by recognizing that scientific knowledge can and must be evaluated, as far as its validity is concerned, exclusively through the methodological criteria admitted by the professionals of the single scientific disciplines concerned, and no ethical judgment is pertinent from this point of view. Nevertheless, if we consider science as a particular system of social activities, entailing concrete procedures, conditions and applications, the ethical evaluation of these actions is pertinent and correct. A second question is whether or not the inclusion of these ethical investigations in the specific domain of philosophy of science is correct. If one conceives philosophy of science simply as an epistemology of science consisting in a logical-methodological investigation about the language of scientific theories, this broadening would appear spurious. This view, however, is too narrow and dated: a fully fledged philosophical investigation on the complex phenomenon of science cannot prevent important outlooks and instruments of the philosophical inqujiry (in particular ethics) from legitimately pertaining to the philosophy of science.     

Hermeneutical Philosophy and Pragmatism: A Philosophy of Science

Two philosophical traditions with much in common, (classical) pragmatism and (Heidegger's) hermeneutic philosophy, are here compared with respect to their approach to the philosophy of science. Both emphasize action as a mode of interpreting experience. Both have developed important categories – inquiry, meaning, theory, praxis, coping, historicity, life-world – and each has offered an alternative to the more traditional philosophies of science stemming from Descartes, Hume, and Comte. Pragmatism's abduction works with the dual perspectives of theory (as explanation) and praxis (as culture). The hermeneutical circle depends in addition on the lifeworld as background source of ontological meaning and resource for strategies of inquiry. Thus a hermeneutical philosophy of research involves three components: lifeworld (as ontological and strategic), theory (as explanatory), and praxis (as constitutive of culture). This revised version was published online in June 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

The Science of Philosophy

If philosophy consists of conceptual analysis, is it thereby debarred from being a science? This article argues that it is not and that philosophy so conceived is a science. The argument takes the form of careful attention to the meaning of “science,” “experiment,” “empirical,” and related words. Philosophy is a formal science. This does not mean it is not part of the humanities. The role of observation in other kinds of science is investigated. There is more methodological homogeneity in the various sciences, including philosophy, than has been recognized, despite some clear differences. Seeing this helps restore philosophy to its rightful place in the academic firmament.     

人类学:科学与哲学

设定人类学是一门科学根据哈里斯所说 ,博厄斯 以很简明的方式表述这个论题 :“人类学是一门科学 ,而科学是历史”。[1] 马林诺夫斯基 则寻求一种关于文化的科学的定义。在他死后发表的一部题为《科学的文化理论》的文本中 ,[2 ] 他为人文学者提供了一种关于“科学”的最低限度的定义 ,从而使科学得以有别于抽象思想和常识。“科学的论述不同于常识的表述 ,首先 ,在于一位某门科学的学者会以一种学术上合规则、有条理的方式 ,很为深入地扩展考察的完整性与精密性 ;其次 ,在于经过科学训练的心智 ,会将问题的探究循着和问题相关的思路推进 ,…     

科学哲学与批判-创新思维

Since the 16-17 centuries scientific methods have been playing a key role in the development of the scientific-technological age.There are three types of general scientific method,i.e.,induction-confirmation method,deduction-falsification method,and abduction-explanation method.They correspond to logical positivism,falsificationism,and historicism in philosophy of science respectively.Based on the reasoning procedure of these three scientific methods,and the development of the three schools of thought,this ...     

Hertz and Wittgenstein's Philosophy of Science

The German physicist Heinrich Hertz played a decisive role for Wittgenstein's use of a unique philosophical method. Wittgenstein applied this method successfully to critical problems in logic and mathematics throughout his life. Logical paradoxes and foundational problems including those of mathematics were seen as pseudo-problems requiring clarity instead of solution. In effect, Wittgenstein's controversial response to David Hilbert and Kurt Gödel was deeply influenced by Hertz and can only be fully understood when seen in this context. To comprehend the arguments against the metamathematical programme, and to appreciate how profoundly the philosophical method employed actually shaped the content of Wittgenstein's philosophy, it is necessary to make an intellectual biographical reconstruction of their philosophical framework, tracing the Hertzian elements in the early as well as in the later writings. In order to write Wittgenstein's biography, we have to take seriously the coherence of his thought throughout his life, and not let convenient philosophical ideologies be our guidance in drawing up a “Wittgensteinian philosophy”. To do so, we have to take a second look upon what he actually wrote, not only in the already published material, but in the entire Nachlass. Clearly, this is not easily done, but it is a necessary task in the historical reconstruction of Wittgenstein's life and work.     

Philosophy of Science in Iran

First steps are taken in the following toward the study of present‐day philosophy of science in Iran, by choosing various examples in the hope of showing that philosophy of science in Iran has emerged predominantly as an apologetic and ideological discourse. I start by pointing out the complexities of method in such a study. I then criticise two writing samples by two well‐known Iranian scholars, which exemplify the first Iranian reaction to logical positivism. The study continues with a survey of the mistakes in the Persian translation of T. S. Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, a study of the status of research in philosophy of science in Iran, and a critique of attempts by Iranian scholars at indigenising philosophy of science through the reconciliation of modern science with Islamic faith.     

Philosophy and Science Dialogue: Consciousness

This is a dialogue between a philosopher and a scientist about the scientific explanation of consciousness. What is consciousness? Does it admit of scientific explanation? If so, what must a scientific theory of consciousness be like in order to provide us with a satisfying explanation of its explanandum? And what types of entities might such a theory acknowledge as being conscious? Philosopher Owen Flanagan and scientist Giulio Tononi weigh in on these issues during an exchange about the nature and scientific explanation of consciousness.     

The Science to Save Us from Philosophy of Science

Are knowledge and belief pivotal in science, as contemporary epistemology and philosophy of science nearly universally take them to be? I defend the view that scientists are not primarily concerned with knowing and that the methods of arriving at scientific hypotheses, models and scenarios do not commit us having stable beliefs about them. Instead, what drives scientific discovery is ignorance that scientists can cleverly exploit. Not an absence or negation of knowledge, ignorance concerns fundamental uncertainty, and is brought out by retroductive (abductive) inferences, which are roughly characterised as reasoning from effects to causes. I argue that recent discoveries in sciences that coped with under-structured problem spaces testify the prevalence of retroductive logic in scientific discovery and its progress. This puts paid to the need of finding epistemic justification or confirmation to retroductive methodologies. A scientist, never frightened of unknown unknowns, strives to advance the forefront of uncertainty, not that of belief or knowledge. Far from rendering science irrational, I conclude that catering well for the right conditions in which to cultivate ignorance is a key to how fertile retroductive inferences (true guesses) arise.     

Normative Philosophy of Science: Responding to Special-Interest Science

This article shows why it is important to do normative or practical philosophy of science, especially philosophy of science that criticizes and evaluates contemporary use of scientific methods to analyze welfare-affecting societal problems. The article (1) introduces the scientific, ethical, and social problem of environmental injustice—disproportionate environmental and pollution threats that are responsible for roughly 40% of all preventable disease and death. Next it (2) explains that many deadly threats (like pollution) continue in part because of “special-interest science”, methodologically flawed science that is done to promote corporate profits, rather than truth, then (3) argues that philosophers of science should use normative or practical philosophy of science to critique and expose special-interest science. To illustrate special-interest science, the article (4) provides two case studies, on diesel-particulate-matter pollution and on organophophate-pesticide pollution, and (5) shows how diesel and pesticide polluters use special-interest science. For instance, they often ignore observational data, illegitimately demand statistically significant evidence of harm from observational data, use small sample sizes, do the wrong tests, or demand certainty—rather than a preponderance of evidence—to justify a conclusion about pollution harm. They also use flawed normative arguments to defend both diesel and pesticide pollution. The article (6) concludes that, given the epistemic, scientific, human-welfare toll of special-interest science, philosophers of science need to do normative or practical philosophy of science that exposes these scientific flaws.