Wolfgang Stegmüller, the leading German philosopher of science, considers the status of scientific revolutions the central issue in the field ever since "the famous Popper-Lakatos-Kuhn discussion" of a decade and a half ago, comments on "almost all contributions to this problem", and offers his alternative solutions in a series of papers culminating with, and summarized in, his recent "A Combined Approach to Dynamics of Theories. How To Improve Historical Interpretations of Theory Change By Applying Set Theoretical Structures", published in Gerard (...) Radnitzky and Gunnar Andersson, editors, The Structure and Development of Science, issued in the Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science series, volume 59, 1979, pp. 151-86. Popper views scientific revolutions as rational and due to empirical refutations, but there are no refutations in science. Lakatos agrees and assumes that research programs are refutable and their replacements to be revolutions, but the same arguments he launches against Popper apply to him; moreover, applying his philosophy to itself makes it collapse anyway . Kuhn's view was interpreted to be one of scientific revolutions as quite irrational and as arbitrary as mob action. Stegmüller presents revolution in another interpretation of Kuhn - as non-rational, as based on hopes and value judgment but not on facts. He thinks there are big and small revolutions. And he uses his own modifications of J. D. Sneed's famous formal analysis of scientific theory to make his point. After presenting a summary of Stegmüller's ideas in our own way, which seems to us a clarification of presentation with no change of content, especially due to our stressing all differences of opinion, we apply Stegmüller's idea to itself, the way Stegmüller has done with the view of Lakatos, and with similar results. (shrink)

Extremists who have been well educated in science are quite common, but nevertheless puzzling. How can individuals with high levels of scientific education fall prey to irrationalist ideologies? Implicit assumptions about rationality may lead to tremendous and conspicuous developments. When correction of social deficits is seen as a pressing problem, it is quite common that individuals conclude that some religious or political system contains the all-encompassing answer, if only it is applied with sufficiently high standards. Implicit assumptions about rationally high (...) standards often demand consistency, system and justification. The strict application of these standards to political and/or religious systems leads quite readily to extremism. J. L. Talmon has shown how the rationality of the Enlightenment led to intolerance, dictatorship and torture. The Enlightenment view of rationality can also encourage irrationalist ideologies and extremism: it leads individuals to conclude that various religions and/or political systems contain all encompassing answers, if only they are systematic, coherant and justified. Alternative theories of science and rationality, which view rationality as critical, partial, and progressive, and which seek to improve imperfect standards, can help avoid the unintended support of extremism rendered by established views of rationality. Unfortunately such theories meet enormous resistance: they call into question well-established canonical doctrines. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:New Insights on Young PopperJohn R. WetterstenSeven essays that Popper wrote from 1925 to 1932–33 show Popper's transition from a fresh student of pedagogy into a serious philosopher of science ten years later. His first essay was published in 1925, and in 1934–35 he presented a revolutionary philosophy. These essays led first to Die beiden Grundprobleme der Erkenntnistheorie (written between 1930 and 1933 but first published in 1979) and (...) culminated in Logik der Forschung.1. Students as IndividualsIn his first published essay Popper argued that each student should be treated as an individual as much as possible.1 It is evident that Popper held this attitude throughout his life, but this essay plays no interesting role in his intellectual development.2. HeimatIn his second essay Popper developed an idea that was important not only for his pedagogy, but also for his psychology and his theory of the open society: because humans tend quite naturally to be dogmatic, they have to learn to overcome dogmatism in order to be rational.2 Following a perspective [End Page 603] heavily indebted to Eduard Burger,3 Karl Bühler,4 and Charlotte Bühler,5 Popper proposed that all aspects of learning begin with the beliefs and attitudes that one learns at "home." Teachers, Popper says, should not ignore the cultural background of their students. This background derives from their home, from their parents or village, and so forth. Teachers should accept the students' dogmatic acceptance of the views and attitudes of home as a necessary, even useful stage in any child's development. The teacher's central task is to help children move away from this dogmatic stage to broader perspectives. How to do this well, he says, poses a, if not the, central pedagogical problem. He discusses the movement from home to aesthetics, to art, to ethics, to law, to the theory of knowledge and science, and to culture. In each case he finds something in the heritage of home that each child possesses, which may be used as a starting point to expand the child's horizons.The problem of how teachers can sympathetically help children move away from the views of their home to broader perspectives is severe, Popper thought, due to the innate need of children to think dogmatically. When children learn the culture of their home they are given certainties that they cling to. As individuals mature, dogmatic thinking has to be overcome: a crucial task for teachers is to help children to set aside their innate dogmatic attitude to engage in critical thinking.At this time Popper was groping for a good philosophical approach. He said that the concept of "Heimat" had to be analyzed because, even though it was at the center of pedagogical concerns, it was a confused concept. This analytical method was quickly abandoned. It is only a historical curiosity that shows how far he had to go in order to develop a new philosophical method. Yet his use of it did bring him to adopt, or he used it to defend, views that he held throughout his life.3. Gewohnheit und Gesetzerlebnis in der ErziehungIn the same year (1927), in Gewohnheit und Gesetzerlebnis in der Erziehung, Popper turned to the task of providing a psychological explanation of the child's need for dogmatism. This third essay was submitted to the Pedagogic Institute, but only became available after Popper's death. Popper was ambivalent about it. When I visited him at his home in Penn in 1973 or 1974, I asked him for a copy. It was then listed in his bibliography, but there were no copies at the University of Vienna. His wife began to say she knew where it was, but he interrupted her before her sentence was completed. But he did not throw it away. The reason for his reluctance to show scholars his essay is [End Page 604] now clear: the essay endorses a philosophy of science—Hans Vaihinger's—with a strong inductivist component, even though its methodology is deductivist. He tried to apply this method in his own psychological investigation of dogmatism in children.Dogmatism was, he thought, a psychological... (shrink)

I. C. Jarvie interprets Popper's philosophy of science as a theory of the institution of science, explains how the social aspect of his theory developed, and suggests that an updated version of Popper's social theory should be used to study both scientific and nonscientific societies today. Although (1) Jarvie's description of the emergence of Popper's theory suffers because he takes no account Popper's research conducted before Logik der Forschung (1994), (2) his portrayal of Popper's framework overlooks important problems, and (3) (...) his program is by no means new, his essay throws light on the relation between Popper's philosophy of science, his social theory, and his social studies of science. (shrink)

Consequence is at the heart of logic, and an account of consequence offers a vital tool in the evaluation of arguments. This text presents what the authors term as 'logical pluralism' arguing that the notion of logical consequence doesn't pin down one deductive consequence relation; it allows for many of them.

Philosophers wanted commonsense to fight skepticism. They hypostasized and destroyed it. Commonsense is skeptical--Bound by a sense of proportion and of limitation. A scarce commodity, At times supported, At times transcended by science, Commonsense has to be taken account of by the critical-Realistic theory of science. James clerk maxwell's view of today's science as tomorrow's commonsense is the point of departure. It is wonderful but overlooks the value of the sense of proportion.

Foreword I. Critical rationalism is a genuinely new philosophical perspective. It is not, however, one systematic view. The development of it by Popper and ...

From the pre-Socratics to the present, one primary aim of philosophy has been to learn from arguments. Philosophers have debated whether we could indeed do this, but they have by and large agreed on how we would use arguments if learning from argument was at all possible. They have agreed that we could learn from arguments either by starting with true premises and validly deducing further statements which must also be true and therefore constitute new knowledge, or that we could (...) start from putative premises and validly deduce false consequences thereby showing that our premises were false. Our aim in this paper is to suggest a third alternative: we can learn from plausible arguments through criticism of such arguments which enable us to discover new problems. (shrink)

The problem of how to handle interesting but ignored thinkers of the past is discussed through an analysis of the case of Ludwik Fleck. Fleck was totally ignored in the ?30s and declared an important thinker in the 70s and ?80s. In the first case fashion ignored him and in the second it praised him. The praise has been as poor as the silence was unjust. We may do such thinkers more justice if we recognize that intellectual society is fickle, (...) that we cannot make amends in many cases, but that we can do such thinkers justice by treating them critically ? even if this means explaining away any impact they might have had. If we wish to be autonomous and independent of fashion, we must abandon efforts to use the making of amends the occasion for making intellectual society seem fairer than it is. (shrink)

Providing an original and systematic treatment of foundational issues in philosophy of religion, J. L. Schellenberg's new book addresses the structure of..

What happens when someone acts? A familiar answer goes like this. There is something that the agent wants, and there is an action that he believes conducive to its attainment. His desire for the end, and his belief in the action as a means, justify taking the action, and they jointly cause an intention to take it, which in turn causes the corresponding movements of the agent's body. I think that the standard story is flawed in several respects. The flaw (...) that will concern me in this paper is that the story fails to include an agent-or, more precisely, fails to cast the agent in his proper role. (shrink)

Theories of explanation in the social sciences vacillate between holism and individualism. This book contends that this has been a consequence of theories of rationality which assume that rationality requires coherent theories to be shown to be true. It claims that traditional explanations place unrealistic demands on individuals and institutions.

Name der Zeitschrift: Zeitschrift für Religionswissenschaft Jahrgang: 21 Heft: 2 Seiten: i-ii.

Raimo Tuomola has complained that my critical review of his The Philosophy of Sociality is superficial, that I have not presented, even that I have misrepresented his work, and that I have neglected its virtues, which others have praised. I reject his complaint about the content of my review as unwarranted in an open society, as he demands that I take his work on his own terms. I defend my view of the place of his work in the analytic tradition, (...) my analysis of his work as essentialist and not explanatory, my argument that his analytic method is weak, and my appraisal that the framework he offers for current social scientific research is not needed and not very useful. (shrink)

The question whether attempts to vindicate induction should be abandoned in favor of (other) problems of rationality is pressing and difficult. How may we decide rationally when standards for rationality are at issue? It may be useful to first know how we have decided in the past. Whewell's philosophy of science and the reaction to it are discussed. Whewell's contemporaries mistakenly thought that only an inductivist research program could produce an adequate theory of rationality. But this very move violated their (...) own standards of rationality. We should now avoid making the same mistake again. We should return to Whewell's rejected proposal to make the philosophy of science historical and seek thereby to improve rational practice. (shrink)

William Whewell's views on the philosophy of science were dismissed as incoherent and eclectic when he introduced them in the middle of the 19th century, though some leading contemporaries engaged and even incorporated them. When his ideas were resurrected a century later, they were dismissed as poor induction rather than original thinking. Wettersten (philosophy of science, Mannheim U., Germany) explores why Whewell's impact continues to be felt, and why almost all theorists have had to come to terms with his (...) ideas. He also addresses larger concerns such as whether traditions can be assessed rationally, and whether there is a logic to how they change or can be changed. Six commentaries follow his treatise, and he responds to them. Annotation : 2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com). (shrink)

Abstract I argue that meaning in life is importantly influenced by bioloical ties. More specifically, I maintain that knowing one's relatives and especially one's parents provides a kind of self-knowledge that is of irreplaceable value in the life-task of identity formation. These claims lead me to the conclusion that it is immoral to create children with the intention that they be alienated from their bioloical relatives?for example, by donor conception.

This article discusses the following: (i) The acceptability of diverse styles of rationality suggests replacing concern for uniqueness with that for coordination, (ii) Popper's lowering of the standard of rationality increases its scope insufficiently, (iii) Bartley's making the standard comprehensive increases its scope excessively, (iv) the pluralist view of rationality as partial (i.e., of Jarvie and Agassi) is better, but its ranking of all rationality eliminates choice of styles, (v) styles diversify the standards of rationality, (viii) rationality is not merely (...) a matter of style, (vi) (vii) diversity raises new, interesting problems, allowing diversity permits reconciling differences better than does the absent unique standard, and (ix) cultural heritage and rationality are complementary. (shrink)

Retributive theories of punishment argue that punishing a criminal for a crime she committed is sufficient reason for a justified and morally permissible punishment. But what about when the state gets lucky in its decision to punish? I argue that retributive theories of punishment are subject to “Gettier” style cases from epistemology. Such cases demonstrate that the state needs more than to just get lucky, and as these retributive theories of punishment stand, there is no anti-luck condition. I’ll argue that (...) Gettier-style cases demonstrate an impermissible instance of punishment, even though they meet the conditions of retributive theories of punishment. Retributive theories are, therefore, too weak. The safety condition from epistemology provides the anti-luck condition needed for permissible punishment. I argue that two forms of retributivism, rights-forfeiture and what I call standard retributivism, are both subject to Gettier-style cases. Unlike the literature on standards of proof, this paper argues that safety is a condition on punishment itself, i.e., in all nearby possible worlds, the accuser must correctly accuse the convicted for the crime they actually committed. (shrink)

Supervaluationism is often described as the most popular semantic treatment of indeterminacy. There’s little consensus, however, about how to fill out the bare-bones idea to include a characterization of logical consequence. The paper explores one methodology for choosing between the logics: pick a logic thatnorms beliefas classical consequence is standardly thought to do. The main focus of the paper considers a variant of standard supervaluational, on which we can characterizedegrees of determinacy. It applies the methodology above to focus ondegree logic. (...) This is developed first in a basic, single-premise case; and then extended to the multipremise case, and to allowdegreesof consequence. The metatheoretic properties of degree logic are set out. On the positive side, the logic is supraclassical—all classical valid sequents are degree logic valid. Strikingly, metarules such as cut and conjunction introduction fail. (shrink)

J.L. Schellenberg offers a path to a new kind of religious outlook. Reflection on our early stage in the evolutionary process leads to skepticism about religion, but also offers a new answer to the problem of faith and reason, and the possibility of a new, evolutionary form of religion.

v. 1. Nicomachean ethics. Politics. The Athenian Constitution. Rhetoric. On Poetics.--v. 2. Logic.--v. 3. Physics. Metaphysics. On the soul. Short physical treaties.--v. 4. On the heavens. On generation and corruption. Meteorology. Biological treatises.

Summary The importance of the problem of how to integrate psychology and methodology was rediscovered by Oswald Külpe. He noted that Wundt's psychology was inadequate and that a new methodology was needed to construct an alternative. Külpe made real progress but his program turned out to be quite difficult: he had no appropriate method for integrating the two fields. August Messer tried to fill the gap but failed. The problem was largely dropped due to poor methods at hand for studying (...) it but remained important due to Popper's methodology and de Groot's psychology at least. We may now more effectively return to it by using a bootstrap method. (shrink)

Philosophers have tried to explain how science finds the truth by using new developments in logic to study scientific language and inference. R. G. Collingwood argued that only a logic of problems could take context into account. He was ignored, but the need to reconcile secure meanings with changes in context and meanings was seen by Karl Popper, W. v. O. Quine, and Mario Bunge. Jagdish Hattiangadi uses problems to reconcile the need for security with that for growth. But he (...) mistakenly insists that all problems are mere contradictions and artificially separates rigid from flexible aspects of meanings. In order to resolve the conflict we must (1) replace the quest for rigid terms with techniques for improvement, (2) use plausible arguments to uncover confused meanings, (3) use frameworks to choose problems and to regulate meanings, and (4) employ a bootstrap approach that uses frameworks to improve meanings and refined meanings to improve frameworks. (shrink)

The nineteenth-century appraisal of Whewell's philosophy as confused, eclectic, and metaphysical is still dominant today. Yet he keeps reappearing on the agenda of the historians and philosophers of science. Why? Whewell continues to be a puzzle. Historians evade the puzzle by deeming him to have had no serious philosophy but some interesting ideas and/or to have been socially important. Menachim Fisch's recent study offers promise of a new appraisal. But Fisch's account leads back to the puzzle. Fisch poses the question (...) well, promises a new answer, but does not provide one. The puzzle will remain until the strength of Whewell's turn away from empiricist problems to Kantian ones has been appreciated. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to elaborate on the phenomenological approach to expertise as proposed by Dreyfus and Dreyfus and to give an account of the extent to which their approach may contribute to a better understanding of how athletes may use their cognitive capacities during high-level skill execution. Dreyfus and Dreyfus's non-representational view of experience-based expertise implies that, given enough relevant experience, the skill learner, when expert, will respond intuitively to immediate situations with no recourse to deliberate actions (...) or mental representations. The paper will subsequently outline some implications and consequences of such an approach and will also examine to what extent Dreyfus and Dreyfus's skill model is capable to resist different attacks that have been made against their view, and in particular regarding the practical application of their approach to the skill domain of competitive sport. (shrink)