The Ambiguity of Covariation: A Conceptual Note

Three dimensions of propositions, the factual, the epistemic and the modal, and their relationships, are described. The five factor model of personality is based on correlations between ordinary language items. The terms of this language are fuzzy and context-dependent in meaning, and, therefore, unsuitable for epistemic/modal analysis. Hence, one cannot decide to what extent FFM is a priori versus empirical. Only a scientific language, with explicitly stated primitives, axioms, and definitions will permit such a decision.     

An epistemological history of time: From technology to representations

Abstract

This paper attempts to link the social history of the mechanization of time with the history of the psychological notion of time. Historical processes such as the mechanization of tower clocks from the Middle Ages onwards, the reform of the Gregorian calendar and the quarrel of the Christian and Chinese calendars characterized the modern representation of time on three points: isochrony, desacralization and abstraction. While Western societies learned to domesticate the practical aspects of time, the scholars of the Enlightenment naturalized time. They considered it a concept only related to man and used quantified time for scientific purposes. Empiricists saw time as a product of the succession of thought while idealists considered it a form necessary for the human experience to occur. Both trends agreed in removing time from nature and accepted isochrony, desaralization and abstraction as the necessary foundation for the modern notion of time.     

The woman in the painting and the image in the penny: an investigation of phenomenological doubleness, seeing-in, and “reversed seeing-in”

The experience of looking at a tilted penny involves a “phenomenological doubleness” in that it simultaneously seems to be of something circular and of something elliptical. In this paper, I investigate the phenomenological doubleness of this experience by comparing it to another case of phenomenological doubleness––the phenomenological doubleness of seeing an object in a painting. I begin by pointing out some striking similarities between the phenomenological characters of these two experiences. I then argue that these phenomenological characters have a common explanation. More specifically, I argue that the psychological mechanism that explains the phenomenological doubleness of the experience of seeing an object in a painting can be extended to also explain the phenomenological doubleness of the experience of seeing a tilted penny.

Social Epistemology,scientific practice and the elusive social

Social Epistemology, as formulated by Steve Fuller, is based on the suggestion that rational knowledge policy must be held accountable to brute facts about the nature of our human cognitive pursuits, whatever these may be. One difficulty for Fuller concerns the conception of the social which underwrites social epistemology. I argue that social epistemology conflates the social with human psychological properties that are available for public scrutiny and, accordingly, that social epistemology is best viewed as a brand of psychologism. Though Fuller's proposal signifies an important step in the ongoing attempt by scholars to eradicate the last traces of Descartes' epistemological device of a disembodiedres cogitans, I conclude that his conception of the social is too weak to serve as the basis for a socially-embedded discipline in anything but name only.     

Practical Arguments for Theoretical Theses

Pascals wager is expounded as a paradigm case of a practical,decision-theoretical argument for acting as if a proposition is true when wehave no theoretical reasons to accept or reject it (1.1.–1.2.). Thoughthe paradigm is fallacious in various respects there are valid and adequatearguments for acting as if certain propositions are true: that theoreticalentities exist, that there are material perceptual objects, that the worldis uniform across time (1.3). After this analysis of examples the authorsgeneral approach for developing criteria for the validity and adequacy oftypes of argument (2.1.) is applied: Having discussed some problems(2.2.–2.3.), a general epistemic principle for such pascal argumentsis developed, which characterizes their premisses and, if introduced as anadditional premiss, can make them deductively valid (2.4).     

第三种生命形式的诞生与科学哲学

美国科学家卡尔·戊斯发现了生命的第三种形式－古生菌域,并将生物分成三大分支,即真核生物域、细菌域和古生菌域。这一理论被称为戊斯革命。但是,他的理论历经艰辛才得到同行的认可,从科学哲学研究的方法论和认识论讨论这一重大发现带给我们有关思维方式和科学评价体系的思考。     

Critique of an epistemic account of fallacies

An epistemic account of fallacies is one which takes it as a necessary condition for a fallacy that it has a tendency to produce false or unwarranted beliefs. The most sophisticated form of this account occurs in an article by Robert J. Fogelin and Timothy J. Duggan (Fallacies,Argumentation 1, 1987, pp. 255–262). I criticize the Fogelin and Duggan proposal, in particular, and epistemic accounts, more generally. Though an epistemic approach is attractive, it enlarges the class of fallacies, beyond what would be permitted by traditional accounts. I also question thenecessity of fallacies leading to unwarranted beliefs. Some fallacies are fallacious due to their expected harm to argument practices. This position touches on a theme in the work of Van Eemeren and Grootendorst, though I criticize their notion of rules of argument as too broad.     

Psychologie en première et en troisième personne : de la « psychologie concrète » à la psychologie clinique

This article presents some basic concepts proposed by G. Politzer, articulated around the concept of “tragic life”, in the literary sense of the composition of a complex of events, actions and people, unity and meaning can only be realized in “first person”. In this context, defining the perimeter of legitimacy of clinical psychology, a “fact” specifically psychological necessarily corresponds to an act which takes existence and feel like segment of a human drama, as an effective act of the singular individual. Critics resulting analyzes relate to the abstract and formal perspective of scientific psychology, which considers classes of facts rather than facts, designing them as entities in themselves, the external I they are demonstrations. The explanatory model which necessarily carries out field of concrete psychology since its causalists schemes have lost sight of the act “first person”. And psychologists would not have noticed that “I remove the psychological facts is destroying them.” (G. Politzer). The person, in his psychic dimension, can only be understood from the person, which makes it possible to specify the field of clinical psychology, and more generally, of any clinical approach.     

The methodology of genuine modal realism

David Lewis’s genuine modal realism is a controversial thesis in modal metaphysics. Charles Chihara and Ross Cameron have each argued that Lewis’s defence of his thesis involves his committing serious methodological errors; in particular, that his replies to two well-known and important objections are question-begging. Scott Shalkowski has further argued that Lewis’s attempt to analyse modal talk in non-modal terms is viciously circular. This paper considers the methodology which Lewis uses to argue for his thesis, and the paper tries to show that it is guilty of no methodological errors.