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1.
Richard Dawkins has a dilemma when it comes to design arguments. On the one hand, he maintains that it was Darwin who killed
off design and so implies that his rejection of design depends upon the findings of modern science. On the other hand, he
follows Hume when he claims that appealing to a designer does not explain anything and so implies that rejection of design
need not be based on the findings of modern science. These contrasting approaches lead to the following dilemma: if he claims
that Darwinism is necessary for rejecting design, he has no satisfactory response to design arguments based on the order in
the laws of physics or the fine-tuning of the physical constants; alternatively, if Humean arguments are doing most of the
work, this would undermine one of his main contentions, that atheism is justified by science and especially by evolution.
In any case, his Humean arguments do not provide a more secure basis for his atheism because they are seriously flawed. A
particular problem is that his argument for the improbability of theism rests on a highly questionable application of probability
theory since, even if it were sound, it would only establish that the prior probability of God’s existence is low, a conclusion which is compatible with the posterior probability of God’s existence being high. 相似文献
2.
While Hume has often been held to have been an agnostic or atheist, several contemporary scholars have argued that Hume was
a theist. These interpretations depend chiefly on several passages in which Hume allegedly confesses to theism. In this paper,
I argue against this position by giving a threshold characterization of theism and using it to show that Hume does not confess.
His most important “confession” does not cross this threshold and the ones that do are often expressive rather than assertive.
I then argue that Hume is best interpreted as an atheist. Instead of interpreting Hume as a proto-logical positivist and arguing
on the basis of Hume’s theories of meaning and method, I show that textually he appears to align himself with atheism, that
his arguments in the Dialogues on Natural Religion support atheism, and that this position is most consistent with Hume’s naturalism. But, I hold that his atheism is “soft”
and therefore distinct from that of his peers like Baron d’Holbach—while Hume really does reject theism, he neither embraces
a dogmatically materialist position nor takes up a purely polemical stance towards theism. I conclude by suggesting several
ways in which Hume’s atheistic philosophy of religion is relevant to contemporary discussions. 相似文献
3.
In Michael Ruse's recent publications, such as Taking Darwin Seriously (1998) and Evolutionary Naturalism (1995), he has advocated a certain sort of evolutionary epistemology and has argued that it implies a rejection of metaphysical realism (MR) in favor of a position that he calls "internal realism" (IR). Additionally, he has maintained that, insofar as his evolutionary epistemology implies a rejection of MR in favor of IR, it escapes the kind of argument against naturalism that Alvin Plantinga makes in his Warrant and Proper Function (1993). In this article I explain the relevant views and arguments of Ruse and Plantinga, and I critically engage with Ruse's views, arguing that (1) his case for rejecting MR has no essential connection to evolutionary considerations; (2) his case for rejecting MR depends upon internalist assumptions about the nature of knowledge that are in need of some kind of defense; and (3) given his implicit internalism and his commitment to IR, his argument for rejecting MR can be used against his IR. 相似文献
4.
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. 相似文献
5.
Alfred Tarski (1944) wrote that “the condition of the ‘essential richness’ of the metalanguage proves to be, not only necessary,
but also sufficient for the construction of a satisfactory definition of truth.” But it has remained unclear what Tarski meant
by an ‘essentially richer’ metalanguage. Moreover, DeVidi and Solomon (1999) have argued in this Journal that there is nothing that Tarski could have meant by that phrase which would make his pronouncement true.
We develop an answer to the historical question of what Tarski meant by ‘essentially richer’ and pinpoint the general result
that stands behind his essential richness claim. In defense of Tarski, we then show that each of the several arguments of
DeVidi and Solomon are either moot or mistaken.
One of the fruits of our investigation is the reclamation of what Tarski took to be his central result on truth. This is a
reclamation since: (i) if one does not understand ‘essential richness’, one does not know what that result is, and (ii) we
must unearth a heretofore unrecognized change that occurs in Tarski's view – an alteration of his main thesis in light of
a failing he discovered in it. 相似文献
6.
By taking ‘existence in reality’ to be a great-making property and ‘God’ to be the greatest possible being, Plantinga skillfully
presents Anselm’s ontological argument. However, since he proves God’s existence by virtue of a premise, “God (a maximally
great being) is a possible being”, that is true only if God actually exists; his argument begs the question of the existence
of God. 相似文献
7.
Brent Kious has recently attacked several arguments generally adduced to support anti-doping in sports, which are widely supported
by the sports medicine fraternity, international sports federations, and international governments. We show that his attack
does not succeed for a variety of reasons. First, it uses an overly inclusive definition of doping at odds with the WADA
definition, which has global, if somewhat contentious, currency. Second, it seriously misconstrues the position it attacks,
rendering the attack without force against a more balanced construal of an anti-doping position. Third, it makes unwarranted
appeals to matters Kious considers morally ‘clear’, while simultaneously attacking a position many others take to be equally
morally ‘clear’, namely that of anti-doping. Such an inconsistency, attacking and appealing to the moral status quo as befits
one’s argument, is not acceptable without further qualification. Fourth, his position suffers from a general methodological
flaw of over-reliance upon argumentation by analogy. Moreover, it is argued that the analogies, being poorly selected and
developed, fail to justify his conclusion that the anti-doping lobby lacks philosophical and moral authority for its stance.
These issues are symptomatic of a more fundamental problem: any attempt at providing a blanket solution to the question of
whether doping is morally acceptable or not is bound to run up against problems when applied to highly specific contexts.
Thus, rather than reaching any particular conclusion for or against doping products or processes in this article, we conclude
that an increased context-sensitivity will result in a more evenhanded appraisal of arguments on the matter. 相似文献
8.
In his paper, “The Relevance of Rawls’ Principle of Justice for Research on Cognitively Impaired Patients” ( Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics 23 (2002):45–53), Giovanni Maio has developed athought-provoking argument for the permissibility of non-therapeutic research
on cognitively impaired patients. Maio argues that his conclusion follows from the acceptance of John Rawls’s principles of
justice, specifically, Rawls’s “liberty principle” Maio has misinterpreted Rawls’s “libertyprinciple” – correctly interpreted
it does notsupport non-therapeutic research on cognitivelyimpaired patients. Three other ‘Rawlsian’ arguments are suggested
by Maio’s discussion –two “self-respect” arguments and a “presumed consent” argument – but none of them are convincing. However,
an alternative argument developed from Rawls’s discussion of “justice in health care” in his most recent book, Justice as Fairness: A Restatement, may justify certain kinds of non-therapeutic research on some cognitively impaired patients in special circumstances. We
should not expect anything more permissive from a liberal theory of justice.
This revised version was published online in June 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date. 相似文献
9.
This paper argues that Kepler considered his work in optics as part of natural philosophy and that, consequently, he aimed
at change within natural philosophy. Back-to-back with John Schuster’s claim that Descartes’ optics should be considered as
a natural philosophical appropriation of innovative results in the tradition of practical and mixed mathematics the central
claim of my paper is that Kepler’s theory of optical imagery, developed in his Paralipomena ad Vitellionem (1604), was the result of a move similar to Descartes’ by Kepler. My argument consists of three parts. First, Kepler borrowed
a geometrical model and experiment of optical imagery from the mélange of mixed and practical mathematics provided in the
works of the sixteenth-century mathematicians Ettore Ausonio and Giovanni Battista Della Porta. Second, Kepler criticized
the Aristotelian theory of light and he developed his own alternative metaphysics. Third, Kepler used his natural philosophical
assumptions about the nature of light to re-interpret the model of image formation taken from Della Porta’s work. Taken together,
I portray Kepler’s theory of optical imagery as a natural philosophical appropriation of an innovative model of image formation
developed in a sixteenth-century practical and mixed mathematical tradition which was not interested in questioning philosophical
assumptions on the nature of light. 相似文献
10.
Samuel Alexander was one of the foremost philosophical figures of his day and has been argued by John Passmore to be one of
‘fathers’ of Australian philosophy as well as a novel kind of physicalist. Yet Alexander is now relatively neglected, his
role in the genesis of Australian philosophy if far from widely accepted and the standard interpretation takes him to be an
anti-physicalist. In this paper, I carefully examine these issues and show that Alexander has been badly, although understandably,
misjudged by most of his contemporary critics and interpreters. Most importantly, I show that Alexander offers an ingenious,
and highly original, version of physicalism at the heart of which is a strikingly different view of the nature of the microphysical
properties and associated view of emergent properties. My final conclusion will be that Passmore is correct in his claims
both that Alexander is significant as one of the grandfather’s of Australian philosophy and that he provides a novel physicalist
position. I will also suggest that Alexander’s emergentism is important for addressing the so-called ‘problem of mental causation’
presently dogging contemporary non-reductive physicalists. 相似文献
11.
There is a common-sense view of language, which is held by Wittgenstein, Strawson Dummett, Searle, Putnam, Lewis, Wiggins,
and others. According to this view a language consists of conventions, it is rule-governed, rules are conventionalised, a
language is learnt, there are general learning mechanisms in the brain, and so on. I shall call this view the ‘ordinary language’
view of language. Chomsky’s attitude towards this view of language has been rather negative, and his rejection of it is a
major motivation for the development of his own theory. In this paper I shall review Chomsky’s long-standing criticisms. I
shall show that (1)Chomsky’s argument does not constitute a dismissal of the ‘ordinarylanguage’ view of language, (2) Chomsky’s
conclusions about language do not follow from his argument, and (3) the ‘ordinary language’ view actually points to a promising
way for us to understand the true nature of language and mind.
This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date. 相似文献
12.
Kuhn's ‘taxonomic conception’ of natural kinds enables him to defend and re-specify the notion of incommensurability against
the idea that it is reference, not meaning/use, that is overwhelmingly important. Kuhn's ghost still lacks any reason to believe
that referentialist essentialism undercuts his central arguments in SSR – and indeed, any reason to believe that such essentialism
is even coherent, considered as a doctrine about anything remotely resembling our actual science. The actual relation of Kuhn
to Kripke-Putnam essentialism, is as follows: Kuhn decisively undermines it – drawing upon the inadequacies of such essentialism
when faced with the failure of attempts to instantiate in history or contemporaneously its ‘thought-experiment’ – and leaves
the field open instead for his own more ‘realistic’, deflationary way of thinking about the operation of ‘natural kinds’ in
science.
This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date. 相似文献
13.
This paper argues that ‘that’-clauses are not singular terms (without denying that their semantical values are propositions).
In its first part, three arguments are presented to support the thesis, two of which are defended against recent criticism.
The two good arguments are based on the observation that substitution of ‘the proposition that p’ for ‘that p’ may result
in ungrammaticality. The second part of the paper is devoted to a refutation of the main argument for the claim that ‘that’-clauses
are singular terms, namely that this claim is needed in order to account for the possibility of quantification into ‘that’-clause
position. It is shown that not all quantification in natural languages is quantification into the position of singular terms,
but that there is also so-called ‘non-nominal quantification’. A formal analysis of non-nominal quantification is given, and
it is argued that quantification into ‘that’-clause position can be treated as another kind non-nominal quantification. 相似文献
14.
Charles Darwin considered sexual selection as integral to evolution as natural selection, but the theory of sexual selection
was rejected by most scientific and lay audiences. This article argues that sexual selection theory clashed with biases prevalent
in the 19th-century—about culture and nature, mind and body, male and female—in ways that Darwin’s first sketch of evolution
did not. Whereas the 1859 The Origin of Species tracked the development of bodily structures, the 1871 The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex focused not on form but function—on behavior. In Darwin’s view, “mind is function of body,” and the mind was the seat not
of reason but of sex. Also, when he postulated that female choice sculpted the male form, he conflicted with the long-standing
cultural assumption that men controlled women. And, in discussing female beauty, Darwin showed a fascinating ambivalence about
its implications for human gender relations. Finally, he was at odds with his culture in the premium he placed on desire.
In short, his theory landed on a cultural fault line, causing upheaval and mayhem, and then it fell into an abyss it had helped
to create. 相似文献
15.
The wider topic to which the content of this paper belongs is that of the relationship between formal logic and real argumentation.
Of particular potential interest in this connection are held to be substantive arguments constructed by philosophers reputed
equally as authorities in logical theory. A number of characteristics are tentatively indicated by the author as likely to
be encountered in such arguments. The discussion centers afterwards, by way of specification, on a remarkable piece of argument
quoted in Cicero’s dialog On Divination and ascribed to Stoic thinkers. The Stoics’ formal theory of inference is summarily referred to in this context, with special
emphasis on their basic deductive schemata (‘indemonstrables’), some of them recognizable as links in the overall structure
of the quoted argument. The main lines of Cicero’s criticism of the Stoic argument are next commented upon, with emphasis
on his implied view as to the requirements of a good argument. Towards the end of the paper, a few considerations are added
on the changes in the prevailing style of argumentation conspicuous in the three famous Roman Stoics. 相似文献
16.
After the publication of On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, the controversy over the issues of design, teleology and divine intervention in nature were renewed. This paper looks at Darwin's correspondence with Harvard botanist Asa Gray from 1860–1863 and investigates how Darwin rejected notions of design due to his immersion in William Paley's categories. Gray, in contrast, was able to move past Paley's influence and find consistency in affirming both evolutionary theory and natural theology. 相似文献
17.
In Part I of “Of Miracles,” Hume argues that belief in miracle-testimony is never justified. While Hume’s argument has been widely criticized and defended along a number of different veins, including its import on scientific inquiry, this paper takes a novel approach by comparing Hume’s argument with Thomas Kuhn’s account of scientific anomalies. This paper makes two arguments: first that certain types of scientific anomalies—those that conflict with the corresponding paradigm theory—are analogous to miracles in the relevant ways. Note, importantly, that the argument applies only to the first definition of ‘miracle’ that Hume offers (i.e. ‘miracle’ as a “violation of the laws of nature.”) Second, it argues that we are sometimes rationally justified in believing testimony for scientific anomalies (that conflict with the corresponding paradigm theory), because there have been several cases of scientists accepting such anomalies and—assuming certain criteria are met—we are rationally justified in believing these scientists. If both arguments are successful, then it is possible to be rationally justified in believing miracle-testimony, though the extent of justification depends on various criteria and comes in degrees. After examining a few objections, the paper concludes by contextualizing this argument in relation to Part II of Hume’s essay and in relation to broader apologetic concerns. In short, it is vital to recognize that this paper’s focus is Hume’s first account of ‘miracle,’ rather than his argument against miracle-testimony more broadly, but the argument could be coupled with other arguments against Hume’s broader attack on miracle-testimony. 相似文献
19.
Hume argued that inductive inferences do not have rational justification. My aim is to reject Hume’s argument. The discussion
is partly motivated by an analogy with Carroll’s Paradox, which concerns deductive inferences. A first radically externalist
reply to Hume (defended by Dauer and Van Cleve) is that justified inductive inferences do not require the subject to know
that nature is uniform, though the uniformity of nature is a necessary condition for having the justification. But then the
subject does not have reasons for believing what she believes. I defend a moderate externalist account that seeks to partly
accommodate that objection to the radical externalist proposal. It is based on an extension of Peacocke’s theory of concepts:
possession conditions for predicative concepts standing for natural properties include (fallible) dispositions to project
them to new cases in accordance with inductive inferential patterns.
相似文献
20.
This paper engages with Ferrajoli’s contribution to the philosophical debate on constitutional democracy and in particular
his conception of ‘structural entrenchment’, or the basis upon which one can defend the normativity of the Constitution as
‘higher law’, which can trump or limit legislation, without infringing democratic principles. Ferrajoli’s own understanding
of ‘structural entrenchment’ is compared to Rawls’s and Dworkin’s arguments in support of it. Ferrajoli’s position is neither
grounded on a philosophy of history, as in Rawls, nor on a version of moral realism, as for Dworkin, but on a formal understanding
of the nature of fundamental rights, and in a conception of democratic sovereignty as ‘joint ownership.’ 相似文献
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