Feminist philosophy of science: history,contributions, and challenges

Feminist philosophy of science has led to improvements in the practices and products of scientific knowledge-making, and in this way it exemplifies socially relevant philosophy of science. It has also yielded important insights and original research questions for philosophy. Feminist scholarship on science thus presents a worthy thought-model for considering how we might build a more socially relevant philosophy of science—the question posed by the editors of this special issue. In this analysis of the history, contributions, and challenges faced by feminist philosophy of science, I argue that engaged case study work and interdisciplinarity have been central to the success of feminist philosophy of science in producing socially relevant scholarship, and that its future lies in the continued development of robust and dynamic philosophical frameworks for modeling social values in science. Feminist philosophers of science, however, have often encountered marginalization and persistent misunderstandings, challenges that must be addressed within the institutional and intellectual culture of American philosophy.     

The history of philosophy in contemporary philosophy: The view from Germany

Conclusion I have frequently mentioned objective problems and topics in the preceding sections. But what exactly is the force of objective here? As my remarks should have made clear I have been using objective to contrast with purely historical. A purely historical approach never gets beyond reproduction, commentary, and interpretation. I call an approach objective when it involves a philosopher who advances his own theses and claims.This minimal understanding of objectivity (in the context of my remarks in this paper) by no means implies that there are problems and topics, systems of concepts, methods, and similar factors that are eternal, completely independent of the contingencies of history (of philosophy, of the sciences), that are not relative to a language, to a logic, to a model, etc. Indeed whether there are problems, etc., in just this absolute, atemporal sense is itself a question for systematic philosophy. It seems clear that the formulation of a problem can only take place against a cognitive background of some sort and within some conceptual scheme.³⁴ Such an assumption is made by most if not all analytic philosophers. But the fact that a philosophical tradition recognizes conceptual schemes does not make it a purely historical, non-objective philosophy, in the sense already introduced and described. A philosopher who explicitly accepts a certain conceptual scheme proceeds in an entirely objective and systematic (and not purely historical) manner when, within this framework, he formulates his own theses.This paper is the text of a talk. the title is due to Barry Smith.     

"道物无际"--道教生态哲学纲要

道教生态哲学的基础围绕着道教的最高理念"道"及最基本范畴"物"生"神"而展开."道"作为道教信仰的终极理念,具有至高无上的地位,它与其它宗教或思想体系中的最高理念,如上帝、安那、梵(印度教吠檀多派)、绝对精神、自由意志等等范畴一样处于核心的地位,虽然这些范畴在解释一切精神和存在现象的作用上不尽相同.在道教哲学中,"道"是无所不覆、自生自化、永恒存在、派生万物的形而上的宇宙本体,是贯穿于整个自然界、人世间和神仙世界之中的最高理念.除了作为最高理念的"道"外,"物"生"和"神"也是道教生态哲学的最基本范畴."物"是对物质、万物、实物、器物、财物等具体事物的抽象,主要指有形的、变化的、局部的、杂多的现象存在."生"是对生命、身体、人生、生物、生物圈、生态环境的抽象,也包括事物的有机活动和转化的功能,如事物的生成、生长和生化."神"是对精神、神仙、神明的抽象,它是对"物"和"生"的提升、超越.道教将"道"贯穿于"物"生"神"三界,具体演化为自然界(物)、人世间(生)和神仙界(神),或物质世界、生命世界和神仙世界."物"生"神"的相互关系及其与"道"的关系构成了道教生态哲学的基础.