In "Dynamics of Reason" (2001), Michael Friedman advocates a neo-Kantian perspective for philosophy of science that addresses the problem of scientific change and opposes both Quine's naturalism and Kuhn's relativism. This critical notice of Friedman's book focuses on the "relativized a priori" principles articulated by Friedman. Friedman's arguments against Quine and Kuhn are subsequently evaluated. It is concluded that Friedman succeeds in illustrating deficiencies of Quine's naturalism, however, he fails to sufficiently establish a "rational" basis for theory-choice and, hence, his (...) argument against Kuhn's "arational" view is unsuccessful. (shrink)

Alberto Casullo ("Necessity, Certainty, and the A Priori", Canadian Journal of Philosophy18, 1988) argues that arithmetical propositions could be discon¯rmed by appeal to an invented scenario, wherein our standard counting procedures indicate that 2 + 2 != 4. Our best response to such a scenario would be, Casullo suggests, to accept the results of the counting procedures, and give up standard arithmetic. While Casullo's scenario avoids arguments against previous "disconfirming" scenarios, it founders on the assumption, common to scenario and response, (...) that arithmetic might be independent of standard counting procedures. Here I show, by attention to tallying as the simplest form of counting, that this assumption is incoherent: given standard counting procedures, then (on pain of irrationality) arithmetical theory follows. (shrink)