REALISM WITHOUT TRUTH: A REVIEW OF GIERE'S SCIENCE WITHOUT LAWS AND SCIENTIFIC PERSPECTIVISM

An increasingly popular view among philosophers of science is that of science as action—as the collective activity of scientists working in socially‐coordinated communities. Scientists are seen not as dispassionate pursuers of Truth, but as active participants in a social enterprise, and science is viewed on a continuum with other human activities. When taken to an extreme, the science‐as‐social‐process view can be taken to imply that science is no different from any other human activity, and therefore can make no privileged claims about its knowledge of the world. Such extreme views are normally contrasted with equally extreme views of classical science, as uncovering Universal Truth. In Science Without Laws and Scientific Perspectivism, Giere outlines an approach to understanding science that finds a middle ground between these extremes. He acknowledges that science occurs in a social and historical context, and that scientific models are constructions designed and created to serve human ends. At the same time, however, scientific models correspond to parts of the world in ways that can legitimately be termed objective. Giere's position, perspectival realism, shares important common ground with Skinner's writings on science, some of which are explored in this review. Perhaps most fundamentally, Giere shares with Skinner the view that science itself is amenable to scientific inquiry: scientific principles can and should be brought to bear on the process of science. The two approaches offer different but complementary perspectives on the nature of science, both of which are needed in a comprehensive understanding of science.     

概念转变理论及其发展述评

概念转变是心理与教育领域的热点问题。20多年来,研究者从不同的背景和视角研究概念转变的过程与机制,提出了基于认识论、本体论和朴素理论的多个概念转变理论,成为后续概念转变研究的理论框架。随着研究的深入,这些概念转变理论得以继承和发展,表现为融入了社会、情感等因素并具整合的趋势。本文对当前国际主流的概念转变理论及其发展加以评述,并从问题、方法和视角等方面对未来的概念转变研究加以展望,提出构建更具普适性的概念转变理论框架的设想     

The Cognitive Relation in a Formal Setting

This paper proposes a formal framework for the cognitive relation understood as an ordered pair with the cognitive subject and object of cognition as its members. The cognitive subject is represented as consisting of a language, conequence relation and a stock of accepted theories, and the object as a model of those theories. This language allows a simple formulation of the realism/anti-realism controversy. In particular, Tarski’s undefinability theorem gives a philosophical argument for realism in epistemology. Special Issue Formal Epistemology II. Edited by Branden Fitelson     

Worries about Pritchard’s safety

I take issue with two claims that Duncan Pritchard makes in his recent book, Epistemic Luck. The first concerns his safety-based response to the lottery problem; the second his account of the relationship between safety and intellectual virtue.     

Two for the show: Anti-luck and virtue epistemologies in consonance

This essay extends my side of a discussion begun earlier with Duncan Pritchard, the recent author of Epistemic Luck.Pritchard’s work contributes significantly to improving the “diagnostic appeal” of a neo-Moorean philosophical response to radical scepticism. While agreeing with Pritchard in many respects, the paper questions the need for his concession to the sceptic that the neo-Moorean is capable at best of recovering “‘brute’ externalist knowledge”. The paper discusses and directly responds to a dilemma that Pritchard poses for virtue epistemologies (VE). It also takes issue with Pritchard’s “merely safety-based” alternative. Ultimately, however, the criticisms made here of Pritchard’s dilemma and its underlying contrast of “anti-luck” and “virtue” epistemologies are intended to help realize his own aspirations for a better diagnosis of radical scepticism to inform a still better neo-Moorean response.     

Erkenntnistheorie der Zahldefinition und philosophische Grundlegung der Arithmetik unter Bezugnahme auf einen Vergleich von Gottlob Freges Logizismus und platonischer Philosophie (Syrian, Theon von Smyrna u.a.)

The epistomology of the definition of number and the philosophical foundation of arithmetic based on a comparison between Gottlob Frege's logicism and Platonic philosophy (Syrianus, Theo Smyrnaeus, and others). The intention of this article is to provide arithmetic with a logically and methodologically valid definition of number for construing a consistent philosophical foundation of arithmetic. The – surely astonishing – main thesis is that instead of the modern and contemporary attempts, especially in Gottlob Frege's Foundations of Arithmetic, such a definition is found in the arithmetic in Euclid's Elements. To draw this conclusion a profound reflection on the role of epistemology for the foundation of mathematics, especially for the method of definition of number, is indispensable; a reflection not to be found in the contemporary debate (the predominate ‘pragmaticformalism’ in current mathematics just shirks from trying to solve the epistemological problems raised by the debate between logicism, intuitionism, and formalism). Frege's definition of number, ‘The number of the concept F is the extension of the concept ‘numerically equal to the concept F”, which is still substantial for contemporary mathematics, does not fulfil the requirements of logical and methodological correctness because the definiens in a double way (in the concepts ‘extension of a concept’ and ‘numerically equal’) implicitly presupposes the definiendum, i.e. number itself. Number itself, on the contrary, is defined adequately by Euclid as ‘multitude composed of units’, a definition which is even, though never mentioned, an implicit presupposition of the modern concept ofset. But Frege rejects this definition and construes his own - for epistemological reasons: Frege's definition exactly fits the needs of modern epistemology, namely that for to know something like the number of a concept one must become conscious of a multitude of acts of producing units of ‘given’ representations under the condition of a 1:1 relationship to obtain between the acts of counting and the counted ‘objects’. According to this view, which has existed at least since the Renaissance stoicism and is maintained not only by Frege but also by Descartes, Kant, Husserl, Dummett, and others, there is no such thing as a number of pure units itself because the intellect or pure reason, by itself empty, must become conscious of different units of representation in order to know a multitude, a condition not fulfilled by Euclid's conception. As this is Frege's main reason to reject Euclid's definition of number (others are discussed in detail), the paper shows that the epistemological reflection in Neoplatonic mathematical philosophy, which agrees with Euclid's definition of number, provides a consistent basement for it. Therefore it is not progress in the history of science which hasled to the a poretic contemporary state of affairs but an arbitrary change of epistemology in early modern times, which is of great influence even today. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

成体干细胞可塑性研究中的若干哲学思考

随着干细胞生物学研究的不断深入,成体干细胞被发现可以分化成组织来源与其无关的其他系统的细胞,即成体干细胞的可塑性.但是最近不断有学者对其提出质疑,认为可塑性可能是与"细胞融合"或成年组织中的"多潜能成年祖细胞"有关.面对可塑性上两种截然相反的观点,我们在热切关注其研究进展的同时,也引发了一连串的哲学思考.     

Prima facie and seeming duties

Sir David Ross introduced prima facie duties, or acts with a tendency to be duties proper. He also spoke of general prima facie principles, wwhich attribute to acts having some feature the tendency to be a duty proper. Like Utilitarians from Mill to Hare, he saw a role for such principles in the epistemology of duty: in the process by means of which, in any given situation, a moral code can help us to find out what we ought to do.After formalizing general prima facie principles as universally quantified conditionals I will show how seeming duties can be detached from them. There will be examples involving lies, burnt offerings and the question of whether to have a napkin on your lap while eating asparagus. They will illustrate the defeasibility of this detachment, how it can lead into dilemmas, and how general prima facie principles are overridden by more specific ones.I've been lucky to discuss parts of this project with among others Jeff Horty, Paul McNamara, Alasdair MacIntyre, Wlodek Rabinowicz and Michael Slote. Thanks, too, to Henry Prakken and the reviewers for Studia Logica