A Stale Challenge to the Philosophy of Science

In his article “Is psychology based on a methodological error?” and based on a quite convincing empirical basis, Michael Schwarz offers a methodological critique of one of mainstream psychology’s key test theoretical axioms, i.e., that of the in principle normal distribution of personality variables. It is characteristic of this paper—and at first seems to be a strength of it—that the author positions his critique within a frame of philosophy of science, particularly positioning himself in the tradition of Karl Popper’s critical rationalism. When scrutinizing Schwarz’s arguments, however, we find Schwarz’s critique profound only as an immanent critique of test theoretical axioms. We raise doubts, however, as to Schwarz’s alleged ‘challenge’ to the philosophy of science because the author not at all seems to be in touch with the state of the art of contemporary philosophy of science. Above all, we question the universalist undercurrent that Schwarz’s ‘bio-psycho-social model’ of human judgment boils down to. In contrast to such position, we close our commentary with a plea for a context- and culture sensitive philosophy of science.     

Wogegen wandte sich Husserl 1891?

A comprehensive and agreed-upon account of Husserl??s relation to Gottlob Frege does not yet exist. In this situation we encounter interpretations that allow systematic dogmas to reappear that should have long been vanquished??for instance, that the author of the Logical Investigations was not only decisively influenced by Frege, but also that he had already retracted his sharpest Frege-critique by 1891. The present essay contains a largely historical response to W. Künne??s new monograph on Frege that advocates such views. We will concentrate on a small remark that turns out to reference a defining moment for any understanding of Husserl??s early philosophy. We shall argue that Husserl??s supposed self-criticism does not turn on the critique that he had earlier leveled at Frege??s Grundlagen der Arithmetik; rather, it has to do exclusively with his own earlier systematic positions on the grounding of arithmetic. In this context, an important particular of Husserl??s Philosophie der Arithmetik takes center stage: this book is a mosaic composed from old and new insights, a fact that becomes most evident in the two distinct concepts of ??equivalence?? that are founded there, which reflects Husserl??s transition from a theory of arithmetic based on the concept of number to one based on the parallelism between proper and symbolic (improper) presentations. This change involves a long historical development that goes back to a tradition marked by the work of Bolzano, Lotze, Brentano, and Stumpf, and it is closely tied to the problem of how to distinguish between the sense and the object of an act. Systematic neglect of the historical background of the Frege?CHusserl relation has led to disputes over who owns the copyright to the sense/reference distinction, but it has obscured the very core of the original line of questioning.     

Local axioms in disguise: Hilbert on Minkowski diagrams

While claiming that diagrams can only be admitted as a method of strict proof if the underlying axioms are precisely known and explicitly spelled out, Hilbert praised Minkowski??s Geometry of Numbers and his diagram-based reasoning as a specimen of an arithmetical theory operating ??rigorously?? with geometrical concepts and signs. In this connection, in the first phase of his foundational views on the axiomatic method, Hilbert also held that diagrams are to be thought of as ??drawn formulas??, and formulas as ??written diagrams??, thus suggesting that the former encapsulate propositional information which can be extracted and translated into formulas. In the case of Minkowski diagrams, local geometrical axioms were actually being produced, starting with the diagrams, by a process that was both constrained and fostered by the requirement, brought about by the axiomatic method itself, that geometry ought to be made independent of analysis. This paper aims at making a twofold point. On the one hand, it shows that Minkowski??s diagrammatic methods in number theory prompted Hilbert??s axiomatic investigations into the notion of a straight line as the shortest distance between two points, which start from his earlier work focused on the role of the triangle inequality property in the foundations of geometry, and lead up to his formulation of the 1900 Fourth Problem. On the other hand, it purports to make clear how Hilbert??s assessment of Minkowski??s diagram-based reasoning in number theory both raises and illuminates conceptual compatibility concerns that were crucial to his philosophy of mathematics.     

Psychoanalyzing Historicists?: The Enigmatic Popper

The paper shows how Karl Popper’s critique of ‘historicism’ is permeated by psychoanalytic discourse regardless of his critique that psychoanalysis is one of the exemplars of pseudoscience. Early on, when he was formulating his philosophy of science, Popper had an apparently stringent criterion, viz. falsifiablity, and painstaking analysis. The central argument of this paper is that despite his representation of psychoanalysis as the principal illustration of the category he dubs as ‘pseudoscience’, Popper’s analysis has been infused with psychoanalysis when it comes to his social and political philosophy. Besides, not only was his interpretation of the proponents of ‘historicism’ and the ‘closed’ society mediated by the very concepts of a field which he indicted as pseudoscientific but also he frequently slipped into vacuous and unverifiable accusations forgetting the jurisdiction he formerly accorded to empirical adequacy and logical consistency when examining and assessing theories.     

Understanding and philosophical methodology

According to Conceptualism, philosophy is an independent discipline that can be pursued from the armchair because philosophy seeks truths that can be discovered purely on the basis of our understanding of expressions and the concepts they express. In his recent book, The Philosophy of Philosophy, Timothy Williamson argues that while philosophy can indeed be pursued from the armchair, we should reject any form of Conceptualism. In this paper, we show that Williamson??s arguments against Conceptualism are not successful, and we sketch a way to understand understanding that shows that there is a clear sense in which we can indeed come to know the answers to (many) philosophical questions purely on the basis of understanding.     

But is it sociology of knowledge? Wilhelm Jerusalem’s “sociology of cognition” in context

This paper considers the charge that??contrary to the current widespread assumption accompanying the near-universal neglect of his work??Wilhelm Jerusalem (1854?C1923) cannot count as one of the founders of the sociology of (scientific) knowledge. In order to elucidate the matter, Jerusalem??s ??sociology of cognition?? is here reconstructed in the context of his own work in psychology and philosophy as well as in the context of the work of some predecessors and contemporaries. It is argued that while it shows clear discontinuities with the present-day understanding of the sociology of (scientific) knowledge, Jerusalem??s sociology of cognition was not only distinctive in its own day but also anticipated in nuce a much-discussed theme in current history of science.     

A DEFENSE OF SCIENCE AND RELIGION: REFLECTIONS ON PETER HARRISON'S “AFTER SCIENCE AND RELIGION” PROJECT

Recent scholars have called into question the categories “science” and “religion” because they bring metaphysical and theological assumptions that theologians should find problematic. The critique of the categories “science” and “religion” has above all been associated with Peter Harrison and his influential argument in The Territories of Science and Religion (2015). This article evaluates the philosophical conclusions that Harrison draws from his antiessentialist philosophy in the two volumes associated with his “After Science and Religion Project.” I argue that Harrison's project is too skeptical toward the categories “science” and “religion” and places too much emphasis on naturalism being incompatible with Christian theology. One can accept the lessons of antiessentialism—above all, how meanings of terms shift over time—and still use the terms “science” and “religion” in responsible ways. This article defends the basic impulse of most scholars in science and religion who promote dialogue and argues for a more moderate reading of the lesson of Territories.     

Buber from the Cartesian Perspective? A Critical Review of Reading Buber’s Pedagogy

The positive reception of Buber??s philosophy does not fully match Buber??s intention in terms of overcoming the problem of the subject?Cobject binary. In other words, a number of authors have remained within the traditional way of thinking by merely replacing the subject and object with Buber??s I and You, establishing a more dogmatic normative subjectivity, paradoxically going against Buber??s intent and even seemingly not noticing this problem. In this article, we will investigate the reasons for these paradoxical readings of Buber. By focusing on the structure and significance of Buber??s ontology of between-humane, we will study the concept of I?CYou and I?CIt, suggesting that these are not intentionality-oriented concepts, but a radically relationship-centered one. The theoretical problem caused by Buber himself in the process of adaptation of his dialog-philosophy to his dialog-pedagogy, namely the impossibility of complete mutuality in the educational relationship will be critically examined, based on Buber??s own declaration in his ??Afterword?? (1957) in I and Thou (1923). With this, we will reflect on the problematic situation of post-Buberian literature in contemporary pedagogy to pave a way to modernize Buber??s dialog-pedagogy.     

Arthur F. Bentley and the foundations of behavioral science

Arthur F. Bentley's early work on the foundations of behavioral science has been neglected by students of the history and philosophy of social science. Bentley believed that the development of behavioral science required extensive reflection on and criticism of the categorial presuppositions of both everyday and scientific knowledge. This paper is concerned with Bentley's criticism of psychological explanation, his theory of observation, and the basic concepts of his behavioral science.     

The Art of Being Human: A Project for General Philosophy of Science

Throughout the medieval and modern periods, in various sacred and secular guises, the unification of all forms of knowledge under the rubric of ??science?? has been taken as the prerogative of humanity as a species. However, as our sense of species privilege has been called increasingly into question, so too has the very salience of ??humanity?? and ??science?? as general categories, let alone ones that might bear some essential relationship to each other. After showing how the ascendant Stanford School in the philosophy of science has contributed to this joint demystification of ??humanity?? and ??science??, I proceed on a more positive note to a conceptual framework for making sense of science as the art of being human. My understanding of ??science?? is indebted to the red thread that runs from Christian theology through the Scientific Revolution and Enlightenment to the Humboldtian revival of the university as the site for the synthesis of knowledge as the culmination of self-development. Especially salient to this idea is science??s epistemic capacity to manage modality (i.e. to determine the conditions under which possibilities can be actualised) and its political capacity to organize humanity into projects of universal concern. However, the challenge facing such an ideal in the twentyfirst century is that the predicate ??human?? may be projected in three quite distinct ways, governed by what I call ??ecological??, ??biomedical?? and ??cybernetic?? interests. Which one of these future humanities would claim today??s humans as proper ancestors and could these futures co-habit the same world thus become two important questions that general philosophy of science will need to address in the coming years.     

Hume on space, geometry, and diagrammatic reasoning

Hume??s discussion of space, time, and mathematics at T 1.2 appeared to many earlier commentators as one of the weakest parts of his philosophy. From the point of view of pure mathematics, for example, Hume??s assumptions about the infinite may appear as crude misunderstandings of the continuum and infinite divisibility. I shall argue, on the contrary, that Hume??s views on this topic are deeply connected with his radically empiricist reliance on phenomenologically given sensory images. He insightfully shows that, working within this epistemological model, we cannot attain complete certainty about the continuum but only at most about discrete quantity. Geometry, in contrast to arithmetic, cannot be a fully exact science. A number of more recent commentators have offered sympathetic interpretations of Hume??s discussion aiming to correct the older tendency to dismiss this part of the Treatise as weak and confused. Most of these commentators interpret Hume as anticipating the contemporary idea of a finite or discrete geometry. They view Hume??s conception that space is composed of simple indivisible minima as a forerunner of the conception that space is a discretely (rather than continuously) ordered set. This approach, in my view, is helpful as far as it goes, but there are several important features of Hume??s discussion that are not sufficiently appreciated. I go beyond these recent commentators by emphasizing three of Hume??s most original contributions. First, Hume??s epistemological model invokes the ??confounding?? of indivisible minima to explain the appearance of spatial continuity. Second, Hume??s sharp contrast between the perfect exactitude of arithmetic and the irremediable inexactitude of geometry reverses the more familiar conception of the early modern tradition in pure mathematics, according to which geometry (the science of continuous quantity) has its own standard of equality that is independent from and more exact than any corresponding standard supplied by algebra and arithmetic (the sciences of discrete quantity). Third, Hume has a developed explanation of how geometry (traditional Euclidean geometry) is nonetheless possible as an axiomatic demonstrative science possessing considerably more exactitude and certainty that the ??loose judgements?? of the vulgar.     

An Enlightened Revolt: on the Philosophy of Nicholas Maxwell

This paper is a reaction to the book “Science and the Pursuit of Wisdom”, whose central concern is the philosophy of Nicholas Maxwell. I distinguish and discuss three concerns in Maxwell’s philosophy. The first is his critique of standard empiricism (SE) in the philosophy of science, the second his defense of aim-oriented rationality (AOR), and the third his philosophy of mind. I point at some problematic aspects of Maxwell’s rebuttal of SE and of his philosophy of mind and argue in favor of AOR.     

Nietzsche,science, and philosophical nihilism

Abstract

Nietzsche offers us a critique of modern culture as threatened by a nihilistic crisis in values. Philosophy is specifically incorporated into Nietzsche’s critique, resulting in the claim that modern philosophy, as well as modern culture, is nihilistic. But why should contemporary philosophers give this view credence? In this paper, I put forward some reasons to take Nietzsche’s view seriously, focusing on the relationship between science and philosophy. I suggest that modern philosophy still tends to idealise science as an exemplar of objectivity, particularly as this relates to judgement, even despite widespread acknowledgement that science is not value-free. I therefore argue that Nietzsche’s critique is valuable in two respects: first, it calls the notion of a scientific ideal grounding objective, cross-cultural, judgement into question, and second, it facilitates a distinction between this scientific ideal and science itself.     

Kant on geometry and spatial intuition

I use recent work on Kant and diagrammatic reasoning to develop a reconsideration of central aspects of Kant??s philosophy of geometry and its relation to spatial intuition. In particular, I reconsider in this light the relations between geometrical concepts and their schemata, and the relationship between pure and empirical intuition. I argue that diagrammatic interpretations of Kant??s theory of geometrical intuition can, at best, capture only part of what Kant??s conception involves and that, for example, they cannot explain why Kant takes geometrical constructions in the style of Euclid to provide us with an a priori framework for physical space. I attempt, along the way, to shed new light on the relationship between Kant??s theory of space and the debate between Newton and Leibniz to which he was reacting, and also on the role of geometry and spatial intuition in the transcendental deduction of the categories.     

Many Windows: Reflections on Robert Ulanowicz’s Search for Meaning in Science

This paper is an extended discussion of Robert Ulanowicz??s critique of mechanistic and reductionistic metaphysics of science. He proposes ??process ecology?? as an alternative. In this paper I discuss four sets of question coming out of Ulanowicz??s proposal. First, I argue that universality remains one of the hallmarks of the scientific enterprise even with his new process metaphysics. I then discuss the Second Law of Thermodynamics in the interpretation of the history of the universe. I question Ulanowicz??s use of the terms ??random?? and ??chance?? in his definition of process. Finally, I discuss what difference a relational and process metaphysics might make in addressing the political and practical problems in the twenty-first century.     

On the Conditions of Possibility for Comparative and Intercultural Philosophy

In this essay, we present a theory of intercultural philosophical dialogue and comparative philosophy, drawing on both hermeneutics and analytic philosophy. We advocate the approach of “de-essentialization” across the board. It is true that similarities and differences are always to be observed across languages and traditions, but there exist no immutable cores or essences. “De-essentialization” applies to all “levels” of concepts: everyday notions such as green and qing 青, philosophical concepts such as emotion(s) and qing 情, and philosophical categories such as forms of life and dao 道. We argue that interpretation is a holistic multi-directional process constrained by the principle of mutual attunement. It is necessary to assume that “the other” is a human being, who, in most cases, is consistent and stating that which is true or right. This is the condition of possibility for intercultural philosophical dialogue and comparative philosophy. No more necessary conditions are needed. There is no need to presuppose concepts or categories that are universal for all humans and their languages (such as emotion(s) and qing 情).     

The Limitations of Ritual Propriety: Ritual and Language in Xúnzǐ and Zhuāngzǐ

This essay examines the theory of ritual propriety presented in the Xúnz?? and criticisms of Xunzi-like views found in the classical Daoist anthology Zhu??ngz??. To highlight the respects in which the Zhu??ngz?? can be read as posing a critical response to a Xunzian view of ritual propriety, the essay juxtaposes the two texts' views of language, since Xunzi's theory of ritual propriety is intertwined with his theory of language. I argue that a Zhuangist critique of the presuppositions of Xunzi's stance on language also undermines his stance on ritual propriety. Xunzi contends that state promulgation of anelaborate code of ritual propriety is a key to good social order (zhi) and that state regulation of language is a key to smooth communication and thus also good order. The Zhu??ngz?? provides grounds for doubting both contentions. Claiming that ritual propriety causally produces social order is analogous to claiming that grammar causally produces smooth linguistic communication, when in fact it is more likely our ability to communicate that allows us to develop shared rules of grammar. Humans have fundamental social and communicative capacities that undergird our abilities to speak a language or engage in shared ritual performances. It is these more fundamental capacities, not their manifestation in a particular system of grammar or ritual norms, that provide the root explanation of our ability to communicate or to live together harmoniously. The Xunzi-Zhuangzi dialectic suggests that ritual is indispensable, but normatively justified rituals will be less rigid, less comprehensive, less fastidious, and more spontaneous than a Xunzian theorist would allow.     

Carnap and Kuhn: On the Relation between the Logic of Science and the History of Science

This paper offers a refutation of J. C. Pinto de Oliveira’s recent critique of revisionist Carnap scholarship as giving undue weight to two brief letters to Kuhn expressing his interest in the latter’s work. First an argument is provided to show that Carnap and Kuhn are by no means divided by a radical mismatch of their conceptions of the rationality of science as supposedly evidenced by their stance towards the distinction of the contexts of discovery and justification. This is followed by an argument to the effect that the fact that Carnap’s own work concentrated on formal aspects of scientific theories does not licence the conclusion that he thought historical investigations and concerns irrelevant for what we nowadays would rightly call “philosophy of science”.     

Antinomism, trinity and the challenge of Solov’?van pantheism in the theology of Sergij Bulgakov

The paper argues that Sergej Bulgakov??s sophiology was an attempt, via antinomism or the philosophy of antinomies, to overcome the rationalism, monism, and determinism (in a word, ??pantheism??) of Vladimir Solov???v??s philosophy of the Absolute understood as an abstract Trinitarianism. After detailing Solov???v??s thought on the Trinity and Bulgakov??s criticisms of it, the study then describes Bulgakov??s antinomism and its application to the doctrine of God. However, it is contended that Bulgakov??s antinomism ultimately falls into the same problems with pantheism found in Solov???v and so the last part of the paper tentatively proposes resources in his work, stated in the form of a suggested ??fourth (Bulgakovian) antinomy?? between ousia (divine Being as such) and Sophia (the revelation in God and the world of the divine Being), that might help to avoid a collapse of God and the world by making the divine Being proper utterly transcendent and unknowable.