Conventionalism Revisited

Conventionalism in sport philosophy has been rejected as unable to provide a theory of normativity and as collapsing in ethical relativism, but this criticism is rather imprecise about its target, which invites doubt about the legitimacy of the concept of conventionalism described by its critics. Instead, a more charitable and legitimate account of conventionalism is proposed, one that draws inspiration from conventionalism in axiomatic geometry and is able to avoid the counterarguments directed against conventionalism. This new model allows for a number of non-conventional elements of sport, namely the definition of sport and certain central moral norms, while at the same time arguing that normativity in sport is not exhausted by them, which leaves athletic communities with authority over a broad range of norms.     

Conventionalism,scientific discovery and the sociology of knowledge*

In this paper the basic aim of the so‐called ‘strong programme’ in the sociology of knowledge is examined. The ‘strong programme’ is considered (and rightly so) as an extreme version of the anti‐realist view of science. While the problem of scientific realism has normally been dealt with from the point of view of the ‘context of justification’ of theories, the paper focuses on the issues raised by law‐discovery. In this context Herbert Simon's views about the existence of a ‘logic of scientific discovery’ are discussed and criticized. The main thesis of the paper is that if the structure of both discovery and prediction is properly understood, then the basic anti‐realist claims become untenable. A fortiori, the ‘strong programme’ appears to be unable to explain some basic features of the structure of science.     

Basic Entrenchment

In contrast to other prominent models of belief change, models based on epistemic entrenchment have up to now been applicable only in the context of very strong packages of requirements for belief revision. This paper decomposes the axiomatization of entrenchment into independent modules. Among other things it is shown how belief revision satisfying only the ‘basic’ postulates of Alchourrón, Gärdenfors and Makinson can be represented in terms of entrenchment.     

Necessity and Language: In Defence of Conventionalism

Kalhat has forcefully criticised Wittgenstein's linguistic or conventionalist account of logical necessity, drawing partly on Waismann and Quine. I defend conventionalism against the charge that it cannot do justice to the truth of necessary propositions, renders them unacceptably arbitrary or reduces them to metalingustic statements. At the same time, I try to reconcile Wittgenstein's claim that necessary propositions are constitutive of meaning with the logical positivists’ claim that they are true by virtue of meaning. Explaining necessary propositions by reference to linguistic conventions does not reduce modal to non‐modal notions, but it avoids metaphysical accounts, which are incapable of explaining how we can have a priori knowledge of necessity.     

Conventionalism and the world as bare sense-data

We are confident of many of the judgements we make as to what sorts of alterations the members of nature's kinds can survive, and what sorts of events mark the ends of their existences. But is our confidence based on empirical observation of nature's kinds and their members? Conventionalists deny that we can learn empirically which properties are essential to the members of nature's kinds. Judgements of sameness in kind between members, and of numerical sameness of a member across time, merely project our conventions of individuation. Our confidence is warranted because apart from those conventions there are no phenomena of kind-sameness or of numerical sameness across time. There is just ‘stuff’ displaying properties. This paper argues that conventionalists can assign no properties to the ‘stuff’ beyond immediate phenomenal properties. Consequently they cannot explain how each of us comes to be able to wield ‘our conventions’.     

迈涅克及其历史主义

本文介绍了迈涅克其人和他的重要著作<历史主义的兴起>,并分析了迈涅克所推崇的历史主义.迈涅克的历史主义对立于自然法观念,重视活生生的个性和个性的发展.他推崇这种历史主义是想为普遍人类价值与民族国家特殊需要之间的冲突寻求解救之道.     

胡塞尔现象学的历史主义批判及其启示

该文从胡塞尔在《哲学作为严格的科学》中对历史主义的批判入手,继而分析他在《欧洲科学的危机与超越论的现象学》中对历史主义问题的阐述,最后对胡塞尔的历史哲学观点及其对我们的启示进行简单的总结。     

Contraction: On the Decision-Theoretical Origins of Minimal Change and Entrenchment

We present a decision-theoretically motivated notion of contraction which, we claim, encodes the principles of minimal change and entrenchment. Contraction is seen as an operation whose goal is to minimize loses of informational value. The operation is also compatible with the principle that in contracting A one should preserve the sentences better entrenched than A (when the belief set contains A). Even when the principle of minimal change and the latter motivation for entrenchment figure prominently among the basic intuitions in the works of, among others, Quine and Ullian (1978), Levi (1980, 1991), Harman (1988) and Gärdenfors (1988), formal accounts of belief change (AGM, KM – see Gärdenfors (1988); Katsuno and Mendelzon (1991)) have abandoned both principles (see Rott (2000)). We argue for the principles and we show how to construct a contraction operation, which obeys both. An axiom system is proposed. We also prove that the decision-theoretic notion of contraction can be completely characterized in terms of the given axioms. Proving this type of completeness result is a well-known open problem in the field, whose solution requires employing both decision-theoretical techniques and logical methods recently used in belief change.     

后库恩时代的科学实在论——超越结构主义和历史主义

在当代理论物理学发展及其相关解释和编史工作的激励下,我们提出了一种结构主义的且具有历史构成性和建构性的科学实在论研究进路(SHASR),以回应托马斯·库恩对科学实在论的挑战,并消除结构主义者在对付这些挑战时所提出的盛行一时却难令人满意的反应。SHASR充分发挥了库恩的历史主义及其批评者结构主义的洞见,同时又避免了落入这两种传统的陷阱。比较SHASR与迈克尔·弗里德曼等人提倡、捍卫并日益流行的新康德主义式后库恩科学哲学,可以展现一幅关于科学—世界关系的宏观图景,这幅图景源自SHASR框架内被概念化的涌现观念,它所牵涉的关乎现象—本体关系的康德式问题值得进一步探讨。     

Realism,Conventionalism, and Causal Decomposition in Units of Selection: Reflections on Samir Okasha’s Evolution and the Levels of Selection

I discuss two subjects in Samir Okasha’s excellent book, Evolution and the Levels of Selection. In consonance with Okasha’s critique of the conventionalist view of the units of selection problem, I argue that conventionalists have not attended to what realists mean by group, individual, and genic selection. In connection with Okasha’s discussion of the Price equation and contextual analysis, I discuss whether the existence of these two quantitative frameworks is a challenge to realism.     

Problems With Formal Models Of Epistemic Entrenchment As Applied To Scientific Theories

Formal models of theory contraction entered the philosophicalliterature with the prototype model by Alchourrón, Gärdenfors,and Makinson (Alchourrón et al. 1985). One influential modelinvolves theory contraction with respect to a relation calledepistemic entrenchment which orders the propositions of a theoryaccording to their relative degrees of theoretical importance.Various postulates have been suggested for characterizingepistemic entrenchment formally. I argue here that threesuggested postulates produce inappropriately bizarre results whenapplied to scientific theories. I argue that the postulates callednoncovering, continuing up, and continuing down, implyrespectively that, (i) no scientific law is more epistemicallyentrenched than any of its instances, (ii) two distinct instances ofthe same scientific law must have different degrees of epistemicentrenchment, and (iii) any two scientific laws must have differentdegrees of epistemic entrenchment. I also argue that continuingup and continuing down each lead to incoherency.