The (Old) New Realism: What Holt Has to Offer for Ecological Psychology

As Ecological Psychology pushes into new areas, success will be made easier by a rediscovery its theoretical history, in particular the “New Realism”, lead in part by E. B. Holt. Three New Realists tenants seem particularly relevant: (1) we experience reality, (2) relations are real, and (3) things are what you see when you see those things. Though the two groups differ in terms of their conception of perception, and what can be perceived, their conceptions are related in very insightful ways. Further, the comparison reemphasizes the extent of unique empirical claims ecological psychologists make, and grounds those claims within a larger framework for psychology as a whole. This makes obvious the need for further work on the mathematics of invariants, the physiological mechanisms of information extraction, and the behaviors of perception.

消极偏差还是积极缺乏:抑郁的积极心理学解释

抑郁的认知理论被认为是当代最具影响的抑郁理论之一,其中贝克抑郁理论与无望抑郁理论是两大主要的认知理论。认知理论主张消极认知偏差是导致抑郁的易感因素。然而,"抑郁现实主义"及"积极错觉"等研究却证实抑郁个体并不存在消极认知偏差。以往研究的矛盾实际上反映了当代心理学过分关注消极的病理化倾向。新兴的积极心理学则试图从全新视角解释抑郁,导致抑郁的原因不是个体身上积极因素的缺位,而是积极力量未被充分发挥。     

Rolston, Lonergan, and the Intrinsic Value of Nature

In recent metaethical debate over ways to justify the notion of intrinsic natural value, some neopragmatists have challenged realist conceptions of scientific and moral truth. Holmes Rolston defends a critical-realist epistemology as the basis for a metaphysics of projective nature and a cosmological narrative—both of which set up a historical ontology of objective natural value. Pure ecological science informs the wilderness experience of Rolston's ideal epistemic subject, the sensitive naturalist. The author argues that Rolston's account of the relation between knowing and valuing can be clarified and strengthened by appropriating Bernard Lonergan's transcendental method. Conversely, Lonergan's view of moral self-transcendence can be developed further in light of Rolston's virtue epistemology, which is embodied in the figure of the sensitive naturalist.     

Über zwei Formen von Realismus in der Quantentheorie

On Two Types of Realism in Quantum Theory. Current realist approaches to the foundations of quantum theory emphasize the dichotomy between (Copenhagen) positivism and ‘beable’-realism. Recently it was even attempted to turn this picture into two (equally possible) histories in order to legitimate Bohmian Mechanics as a viable alternative. This paper argues that this dichotomy is philosophically inadequate and historically questionable by embedding it into the philosophical discussion on positivism and realism that has taken place since the 1920s. Logical Empiricists back then advocated empirical realism and contrasted it to absolutistic metaphysical realism. From this viewpoint David Bohm's ‘beable’-realism combines elements of Mach's sensualism with a pre-Kantian metaphysics. As Wesley Salmon's position shows, empirical realism can become quite pronounced without relapsing into Bohmian philosophy. Instead it arrives close to the GRWP-interpretation. Hence, when Bernard d'Espagnat binds both together as ‘ontological interpretations’, he blurs the borderline between empirical and metaphysical realism that his Veiled Reality has set out to draw, quite in concordance with Logical Empiricism. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

CRITICAL REALISM IN THEORY AND PRACTICE: RESPONSE TO ROBBINS, VAN HUYSSTEEN, AND HEFNER

Abstract. I read Robbins's essay as a hermeneutics of suspicion against the claims of critical realism, especially the tendency of critical realism to achieve correspondence with the world rather than participation in changing it. I read van Huyssteen's essay as an application of critical realism which tends toward correspondence in spite of his correct statement of the theory. I read Hefner's paper as an exposition of both claims and methods capable of conveying truth and genuine knowledge. As such, Hefner's paper illustrates an adequate application of the theory of critical realism and overcomes the suspicion suggested by Robbins.     

Community Science, Philosophy of Science, and the Practice of Research

Embedded in community science are implicit theories on the nature of reality (ontology), the justification of knowledge claims (epistemology), and how knowledge is constructed (methodology). These implicit theories influence the conceptualization and practice of research, and open up or constrain its possibilities. The purpose of this paper is to make some of these theories explicit, trace their intellectual history, and propose a shift in the way research in the social and behavioral sciences, and community science in particular, is conceptualized and practiced. After describing the influence and decline of logical empiricism, the underlying philosophical framework for science for the past century, I summarize contemporary views in the philosophy of science that are alternatives to logical empiricism. These include contextualism, normative naturalism, and scientific realism, and propose that a modified version of contextualism, known as perspectivism, affords the philosophical framework for an emerging community science. I then discuss the implications of perspectivism for community science in the form of four propositions to guide the practice of research.Portions of this paper are based on an invited paper presented at the May 1997 Pre-Conference Workshop of the Biennial Conference of the Society for Community Research and Action, Columbia, South Carolina.     

Depression,Confidence, and Decision: Evidence Against Depressive Realism

This research examined how retrospective self-assessments of performance are affected by major depression. To test the validity of the depressive realism versus the selective processing hypotheses, aggregate posttest performance estimates (PTPEs) were obtained from clinically depressed patients and an age-matched comparison group across 4 decision tasks (object recognition, general knowledge, social judgment, and line-length judgment). As expected on the basis of previous findings, both groups were underconfident in their PTPEs, consistently underestimating the percentage of questions they had answered correctly. Contrary to depressive realism, and in partial support of the selective processing account, this underconfidence effect was not reduced but modestly exacerbated in the depressed patients. Further, whereas the PTPEs of the comparison group exceeded that expected on the basis of chance alone those of the depressed individuals did not. The results provide no support for the depressive realism account and suggest that negative biases contribute to metacognitive information processing in major depression.The results reported in this paper are based on an extension of the MSc dissertation of Tiffany Fu, conducted in partial fulfillment of the degree of MSc in Research Methods in Psychology, University of Reading, 2003     

Discussions Quinton’s Neglected Argument for Scientific Realism

Summary  This paper discusses an argument for scientific realism put forward by Anthony Quinton in The Nature of Things. The argument – here called the controlled continuity argument – seems to have received no attention in the literature, apparently because it may easily be mistaken for a better-known argument, Grover Maxwell’s “argument from the continuum”. It is argued here that, in point of fact, the two are quite distinct and that Quinton’s argument has several advantages over Maxwell’s. The controlled continuity argument is also compared to Ian Hacking’s “argument from coincidence”. It is pointed out that both arguments are to a large extent independent from considerations about high-level scientific theories, and that both are abductive arguments at the core. But these similarities do not dilute an important difference related to the fact that Quinton’s argument cleverly seeks to anchor belief in unobservable entities in realism about ordinary objects, which is a position shared by most contemporary scientific anti-realists.     

Outgrowing representationalism: Semantic remarks on Tracy Llanera's Richard Rorty: Outgrowing modern nihilism

This article provides a semantic reading of Tracy Llanera's brilliant book Richard Rorty: Outgrowing Modern Nihilism. Llanera is reframing the debate of how to react to the malaise of modern nihilism by proposing a change of metaphor: instead of trying to “overcome” nihilism, we should try to “outgrow” nihilism. This article invites Llanera to shed more light on her project with respect to the semantic categories of realism and representationalism, and with respect to the growing field of conceptual engineering. Can Llanera's project be fruitfully understood as engineering the concepts of “transcendence” and “redemption”? How much of the project hangs on the idea that language does not represent but is rather a tool that helps us fulfill our varying needs? How neat is the entanglement of semantic and existential meaning?     

IAN BARBOUR ON RELIGION AND THE METHODS OF SCIENCE: AN ASSESSMENT

Abstract. Two aspects of Ian Barbour's position on the relation between religion and science are considered. First is his preference for comparing religions as a whole to scientific paradigms. It is suggested that the concept of a tradition as defined by Alasdair MacIntyre is more useful than Thomas Kuhn's paradigm. Thus, the Christian tradition could be compared to the Aristotelian or Newtonian scientific traditions. Within traditions, both religious and scientific, we find schools with enough agreement on fundamentals to be designated research programs, as defined by Imre Lakatos; here fruitful comparisons between theology and science are possible. Barbour's critical realism is intended as a compromise between highly rationalistic and sociological accounts of science. However, rationalism and sociology of science are answers to two different sets of questions rather than extremes on a spectrum of answers to the same question. Thus, there is no middle position between them, and no compromise need be found.