Some differences between Kant’s and Husserl’s conceptions of transcendental philosophy

This article compares the differences between Kant’s and Husserl’s conceptions of the “transcendental.” It argues that, for Kant, the term “transcendental” stands for what is otherwise called “metaphysical,” i.e. non-empirical knowledge. As opposed to his predecessors, who had believed that such non-empirical knowledge was possible for meta-physical, i.e. transcendent objects, Kant’s contribution was to show how there can be non-empirical (a priori) knowledge not about transcendent objects, but about the necessary conditions for the experience of natural, non-transcendent objects. Hence the transcendental for Kant ends up connoting a philosophy that claims to show how subjective forms of intuition and thinking have objective validity for all objects as appearances. By contrast, Husserl’s phenomenological philosophy takes a different set of problems for its starting point. His quest is to avoid the uncertainty of empirical knowledge about all kinds of objects that present themselves to us as something other than, something transcendent to, consciousness. Transcendental or reliable knowledge is made possible through the phenomenological reduction that focuses strictly on consciousness as immediately self-given to itself—reflection upon “pure” consciousness. The contents of such consciousness are not the same for everyone and at every time, so they are not necessary and invariant in the way that Kant’s pure forms of subjectivity are. Since Husserl however also claims that the all objects, as intentional objects, are constituted in and for consciousness, an investigation into the structures of pure subjectivity can also be called “transcendental” in a further sense of showing the genesis of our knowledge of objects that are transcendent to consciousness. Moreover, since Husserl’s philosophical interest is precisely upon the structures of that consciousness, he also concentrates on necessary conditions for the constitution of these objects in his philosophical work. Hence, there ends up being a great deal of overlap between his own transcendental project and Kant’s in spite of the differences in what each of them means by the term “transcendental.”

Development of specialization scales for the MSPI: A comparison of empirical and inductive strategies

An empirical measurement model for interest inventory construction uses internal criteria whereas an inductive measurement model uses external criteria. The empirical and inductive measurement models are compared and contrasted and then two models are assessed through tests of the effectiveness and economy of scales for the Medical Specialty Preference Inventory (Zimney, 1979). The empirical results clearly demonstrate the advantages of using an empirical model for occupational interest inventory construction, whether alone or in conjunction with an inductive model. Furthermore, the results indicated that the empirical model may be used to resolve the long-standing problems in constructing predictive inventories for specialty choice within an occupation.     

Language, moral order and political praxis

The paper argues that the debate between objectivist criticism and postmodern critique represents a fracturing of the modes of mundane social and linguistic practice. The two together miss the open-textured character of language-in-use and the reflexive properties of situated human practice. Both difference and agreement are grounded in the multiplicity of criteria that are a feature of the logical grammar of language, and therefore of everyday praxis, including that of critique. To escape the duality of foundationalism on the one hand, and radical relativism on the other, attention to the praxiological details of human action and reasoning is needed. The paper draws on Wittgensteinian philosophy and ethnomethodological studies of reasoning to make its case.     

SOBIG: A Symposium on Belief in God

The following is a fictional account of a symposium on the age-old topic of belief in God. Organized by faculty members at a religion-based academy called the “Immutable Creeds University” (ICU), the goal of the Symposium was to generate candid discussion on two major questions of interest to both traditional theology and the contemporary cognitive sciences: (1) Why do people believe in God? and (2) Is that belief justified? Responses to these questions were posed and discussed by representatives of: (a) Pre-scientific creedal Christianity, (b) Scientifically informed Christian theology, and (c) Comprehensive naturalism. These three points of view also represent the succession of stages experienced by the author in his personal (and occasionally turbulent) worldview journey. For this reason, some readers may wish to read the author's closing remarks first.     

State–trait anxiety and existential fear: an empirical analysis

The Fear Checklist consists of 18 items (e.g. intimacy, loss of control, failure) a respondent checks to signify areas that have been or currently are personal sources of concern and/or apprehension. Total scores on the Fear Checklist, along with scores on each of its three subscales (Social, Control, Identity), were correlated with the state (A-State) and trait (A-Trait) anxiety scales of the State–Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI). Both the A-State and A-Trait scales demonstrated significant association with the total Fear Checklist score (r_stat =0.48, r_trait=0.50) and each of its three subscales in a group of 135 male federal prisoners. Despite substantial overlap between the A-State and A-Trait scales (r=0.76), each achieved significant partial correlations with the total Fear Checklist score when the other scale was controlled (i.e. the A-Trait score was controlled in the state anxiety–fear relationship and the A-State score was controlled in the trait anxiety–fear relationship). These results lend preliminary support to the notion that existential fear, as measured by the Fear Checklist, is sensitive to both dispositionally (A-Trait) and situationally (A-State) based anxiety, although the majority of variance shared by the STAI and Fear Checklist was common to both STAI scales.     

Empirically Corrected Rescaled Statistics for SEM with Small N and Large p

Survey data often contain many variables. Structural equation modeling (SEM) is commonly used in analyzing such data. With typical nonnormally distributed data in practice, a rescaled statistic T_rml proposed by Satorra and Bentler was recommended in the literature of SEM. However, T_rml has been shown to be problematic when the sample size N is small and/or the number of variables p is large. There does not exist a reliable test statistic for SEM with small N or large p, especially with nonnormally distributed data. Following the principle of Bartlett correction, this article develops empirical corrections to T_rml so that the mean of the empirically corrected statistics approximately equals the degrees of freedom of the nominal chi-square distribution. Results show that empirically corrected statistics control type I errors reasonably well even when N is smaller than 2p, where T_rml may reject the correct model 100% even for normally distributed data. The application of the empirically corrected statistics is illustrated via a real data example.     

Towards a reflexive framework for development: technology transfer after the empirical turn

The purpose of this essay is to: (1) detail how recent trends in philosophical theory have made it possible for philosophers of technology to critically discuss technology transfer; (2) demonstrate that economic standards of assessment are conducive to obscuring the hidden tradeoffs that technological practices, such as mobile phone use in Bangladesh, can engender; and (3) provide the basis of an alternative model that can reflexively addresses dimensions of technology transfer that neo-classical economic accounts occlude.     

What really matters

What really matters fundamentally in survival? That question—the one on which I focus—is not about what should matter or about metaphysics. Rather, it is a factual question the answer to which can be determined, if at all, only empirically. I argue that the answer to it is that in the case of many people it is not one’s own persistence, but continuing in ways that may involve one’s own cessation that really matters fundamentally in survival. Call this the surprising result. What are we to make of it? According to several philosophers, not much. I argue that these philosophers are wrong. What best explains the surprising result is that in the case of many people one’s special concern for oneself in the future is not fundamental, but derived. I explain what this means. Finally I explain why the task of explaining empirically what matters fundamentally in survival is in some ways more like a meditative quest than a traditional inquiry in western philosophy or social science and, as such, is best answered not by psychologists, but by philosophers.     

Predictive coding explains binocular rivalry: an epistemological review

Binocular rivalry occurs when the eyes are presented with different stimuli and subjective perception alternates between them. Though recent years have seen a number of models of this phenomenon, the mechanisms behind binocular rivalry are still debated and we still lack a principled understanding of why a cognitive system such as the brain should exhibit this striking kind of behaviour. Furthermore, psychophysical and neurophysiological (single cell and imaging) studies of rivalry are not unequivocal and have proven difficult to reconcile within one framework. This review takes an epistemological approach to rivalry that considers the brain as engaged in probabilistic unconscious perceptual inference about the causes of its sensory input. We describe a simple empirical Bayesian framework, implemented with predictive coding, which seems capable of explaining binocular rivalry and reconciling many findings. The core of the explanation is that selection of one stimulus, and subsequent alternation between stimuli in rivalry occur when: (i) there is no single model or hypothesis about the causes in the environment that enjoys both high likelihood and high prior probability and (ii) when one stimulus dominates, the bottom-up, driving signal for that stimulus is explained away while, crucially, the bottom-up signal for the suppressed stimulus is not, and remains as an unexplained but explainable prediction error signal. This induces instability in perceptual dynamics that can give rise to perceptual transitions or alternations during rivalry.     

Normativity in the Philosophy of Science

This paper analyzes what it means for philosophy of science to be normative. It argues that normativity is a multifaceted phenomenon rather than a general feature that a philosophical theory either has or lacks. It analyzes the normativity of philosophy of science by articulating three ways in which a philosophical theory can be normative. Methodological normativity arises from normative assumptions that philosophers make when they select, interpret, evaluate, and mutually adjust relevant empirical information, on which they base their philosophical theories. Object normativity emerges from the fact that the object of philosophical theorizing can itself be normative, such as when philosophers discuss epistemic norms in science. Metanormativity arises from the kind of claims that a philosophical theory contains, such as normative claims about science as it should be. Distinguishing these three kinds of normativity gives rise to a nuanced and illuminating view of how philosophy of science can be normative.