Kategoria struktur metodologicznych wprowadzona przez Zygmunta Hajduka jest kategorią nową, nieużywaną dotąd w rozważaniach metodologicznych i niemającą w nich ugruntowanego miejsca. Dlatego można zapytać o funkcję, jaką miałaby ona pełnić w metodologii nauk, oraz ojej przydatność jako ogólnego pojęcia metodologicznego. Zasadnicze pytanie, jakie stawiam to: czy wprowadzony przez Z. Hajduka termin struktury metodologiczne może służyć jako najogólniejsza kategoria wyznaczająca przedmiot badań metodologii nauk? Odpowiadając negatywnie na to pytanie, przedstawiam argumenty, jakie przemawiają przeciwko używaniu pojęcia struktur metodologicznych w ten sposób. Moja (...) argumentacja przebiega w następujący sposób. Przywołując funkcjonujące w metodologii nauk zasadnicze sposoby rozumienia nauki, ujęcie metodologii nauk wyznaczone przez Szkołę lwowsko-warszawską i tradycję metodologiczną KUL, będącą jej kontynuacją, typy metodologii, współczesne anglosaskie ujęcia filozofii nauki oraz rozumienie analizy metodologicznej, próbuję wskazać w miarę całościową mapę kategorii metodologicznych wyznaczających przedmiot badań metodologii nauk. Następnie odnoszę do niej kategorię struktur metodologicznych jako wyznaczającą, moim zdaniem zbyt wąsko, przedmiot badań metodologii nauk i przeprowadzam krytykę pojęcia struktur metodologicznych jako najogólniejszej kategorii wyznaczającej przedmiot badań metodologii nauk. Wskazuję także na niekompletność zaproponowanej przez Z. Hajduka listy struktur metodologicznych, którymi zajmuje się metodologia nauk. (shrink)

Philosophers agree that scientific explanations aim to produce understanding, and that good ones succeed in this aim. But few seriously consider what understanding is, or what the cues are when we have it. If it is a psychological state or process, describing its specific nature is the job of psychological theorizing. This article examines the role of understanding in scientific explanation. It warns that the seductive, phenomenological sense of understanding is often, but mistakenly, viewed as a cue of genuine understanding. (...) The article closes with a discussion of several new paths of research that tie the psychology of scientific explanation to cognate notions of learning, testimony, and understanding. (shrink)

Scientists and laypeople alike use the sense of understanding that an explanation conveys as a cue to good or correct explanation. Although the occurrence of this sense or feeling of understanding is neither necessary nor sufficient for good explanation, it does drive judgments of the plausibility and, ultimately, the acceptability, of an explanation. This paper presents evidence that the sense of understanding is in part the routine consequence of two well-documented biases in cognitive psychology: overconfidence and hindsight. In light of (...) the prevalence of counterfeit understanding in the history of science, I argue that many forms of cognitive achievement do not involve a sense of understanding, and that only the truth or accuracy of an explanation make the sense of understanding a valid cue to genuine understanding. (shrink)

Pluralist and eliminativist positions have proliferated within both science and philosophy of science in recent decades. This paper asks the question why this shift of thinking has occurred, and where it is leading us. We provide an explanation which, if correct, entails that we should expect pluralism and eliminativism to transform other debates currently unaffected, and for good reasons. We then consider the question under what circumstances eliminativism will be appropriate, arguing that it depends not only on the term in (...) question, but also on the context of discussion and details of the debate at hand. The resultant selective eliminativism is an appealing compromise for various ‘pluralists’ and ‘eliminativists’ who are currently locking horns. (shrink)

This paper argues that talk of ‘the aim of science’ should be avoided in the philosophy of science, with special reference to the way that van Fraassen sets up the difference between scientific realism and constructive empiricism. It also argues that talking instead of ‘what counts as success in science as such’ is unsatisfactory. The paper concludes by showing what this talk may be profitably replaced with, namely specific claims concerning science that fall into the following categories: descriptive, evaluative, normative, (...) and definitional. There are two key advantages to this proposal. First, realism and its competitors may be understood to consist of highly nuanced variants. Second, scientific realism and its competitors may be understood as something other than ‘all or nothing’ theses about science. More particularly, one may accept that there are general claims concerning science in some of the identified categories, but deny that there are such claims in the others. (shrink)

Achieving understanding of nature is one of the aims of science. In this paper we offer an analysis of the nature of scientific understanding that accords with actual scientific practice and accommodates the historical diversity of conceptions of understanding. Its core idea is a general criterion for the intelligibility of scientific theories that is essentially contextual: which theories conform to this criterion depends on contextual factors, and can change in the course of time. Our analysis provides a general account of (...) how understanding is provided by scientific explanations of diverse types. In this way, it reconciles conflicting views of explanatory understanding, such as the causal-mechanical and the unificationist conceptions. (shrink)

This paper evaluates attempts to defend established concepts of expertise and clinical judgement against the incursions of evidence‐based practice. Two related arguments are considered. The first suggests that standard accounts of evidence‐based practice imply an overly narrow view of ‘evidence’, and that a more inclusive concept, incorporating ‘patterns of knowing’ not recognised by the familiar evidence hierarchies, should be adopted. The second suggests that statistical generalisations cannot be applied non‐problematically to individual patients in specific contexts, and points out that this (...) is why we need clinical judgement. In evaluating the first argument, I propose a criterion for what counts as evidence. It is a minimalist criterion but the ‘patterns of knowing’, referred to in the literature, still fail to meet it. In evaluating the second argument, I will outline the powerful empirical reasons we have for thinking that decisions based on research evidence are usually better than decisions based on clinical judgement; and show that current efforts to rehabilitate clinical judgement seriously underestimate the strength of these reasons. By way of conclusion, I will sketch the ways in which the concept of expertise will have to be modified if we accept evidence‐based practice as a template for health‐care. (shrink)

A Biologia é diferente de outras ciências naturais? Na Filosofia da ciência existe um longo e complexo debate sobre essa questão. O objetivo deste trabalho é apresentar os argumentos das principais interpretações rivais sobre esse assunto.

Definiciones de epistemología hay muchas, al igual que clases y estilos. Sin embargo, más allá de esta diversidad, es necesario contar con una definición básica que guíe nuestra comprensión del tema. Dos serán las preguntas que nos ayuden a ello en este artículo: a) ¿qué es la epistemología? y b) ¿para qué le sirve al científico?

http://dx.doi.org/10.5007/1808-1711.2008v12n1p73 This paper aims at discussing from the point of view of a pragmatic stance the concept of model as an abstract replica. According to this view, scientific models are abstract structures different from set-theoretic models. The view of models argued for here stems from the conceptions of some important philosophers of science who elaborated on the notion of model, such as Suppe, Cartwright, Hempel, and Nagel. Differently from all those authors, however, the conception of model argued for here is (...) typically pragmatic, not semantic, i.e. it has not to do with the interpretation of scientific theories, but with the explanation and construction of given circumstances (both abstract and concrete), from the point of view of the theory. (shrink)

The goal of this paper is to present and defend an empiricist, neo-Hempelian account of scientific explanation as ampliative, specialized embedding. The proposal aims to preserve what I take to be the core of Hempel’s empiricist account, by weakening it in some respects and strengthening it in others, introducing two new conditions that solve most of Hempel’s problems without abandoning his empiricist strictures. According to this proposal, to explain a phenomenon is to make it expectable by introducing new conceptual/ontological machinery (...) and using special, and non-ad hoc, non-accidental regularities. The new conditions are elaborated making essential use of two central structuralist ideas, namely T-theoreticity and specialization. I first introduce and qualify the project, then present the new account in detail and assess it vis-à-vis its rivals, and finally discuss some possible objections, concluding that the account fares better than its monistic rivals and well enough to qualify as a promising neo-Hempelian account. Even for those unpersuaded by its monistic goals, it has the merit of calling attention to two new necessary conditions not explicitly emphasized thus far and showing how they serve to answer many of the criticisms addressed against Hempel’s account. (shrink)

In recent years, a revisionist process focused on logical positivism can be observed, particularly regarding Carnap’s work. In this paper, I argue against the interpretation that Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions having been published in the International Encyclopedia of Unified Science, co-edited by Carnap, is evidence of the revisionist idea that Carnap “would have found Structure philosophically congenial”. I claim that Kuhn’s book, from Carnap’s point of view, is not in philosophy of science but rather in history of science (...) (in the context of a sharp discovery–justification distinction). It could also explain the fact that, despite his sympathetic letters to Kuhn as editor, Carnap never refers to Kuhn’s book in his work in philosophy of science. (shrink)

Showcasing original arguments for well-defined positions, as well as clear and concise statements of sophisticated philosophical views, this volume is an ...

This work is an analysis of F. P. Ramsey's philosophy of science. Twentieth-century philosophy of science was marked by attempts to consider the relation between scientific theories and our knowledge of the empirical world through considerations of abstract mathematical structure. Such considerations led Bertrand Russell to an account of the relation between our theoretical picture of the world and its real nature as a relation of structural similarity. Subsequently, Max Newman gave what has become a well-known logico-mathematical objection to this (...) account. William Demopoulos recently showed that Newman's problem applied not only to Russell's realist account, but also to a variety of otherwise disparate accounts of theoretical knowledge. The common element underlying these accounts is a conception of theories as abstract formal structures. Many such accounts have incorporated key elements of Ramsey's views, most notably the Ramsey-sentence. Moreover, Demopoulos has interpreted Ramsey's own view of theories as sharing the essential features of those abstract views, and therefore their common problem. My analysis aims to show that this abstract conception of theories does not adequately characterize Ramsey's view. Namely, his account of theories was not an attempt to do the epistemology of science in the fashion of Russell or Eddington, or of subsequent structuralist views that have adopted the Ramsey-sentence. I show this by a broader exposition of Ramsey's work on the nature of theories, comparing his seminal paper with his many other remarks on the nature and purpose of theories. I begin by discussing the historical context of Newman's objection, and a generalization of it that shows its broad applicability to abstract characterizations of theoretical knowledge. I then reconstruct Ramsey's view of theories, to show how far it extends beyond the Ramsey-sentence picture. Finally, I discuss the relevance of this view to contemporary debates concerning realism and instrumentalism. I characterize Ramsey's view as focused not on grounding our theoretical knowledge in abstract structure, but instead on demystifying the role of theoretical language and concepts in a theory's application to the world. (shrink)

Introduction to alternative ontology of mind and physics based on the multi-dimensional model of A Geometric Theory of the Universe (Holster).

A aceitação ou a escolha de uma teoria científica por parte de uma comunidade científica é um evento ou processo central na dinâmica científica. É, também, um evento ou processo complexo –já que dele participam as teorias, a experiência e alguma forma de relação inferencial entre a teoria e a experiência.

The concept of natural kind is center stage in the debates about scientific realism. Champions of scientific realism such as Richard Boyd hold that our most developed scientific theories allow us to “cut the world at its joints” (Boyd, 1981, 1984, 1991). In the long run we can disclose natural kinds as nature made them, though as science progresses improvements in theory allow us to revise the extension of natural kind terms.

Throughout the last century there has been much discussion over what it is that makes an activity or a theory 'scientific'. In the philosophy of science, conversation has focused on differentiating legitimate science from so-called 'pseudoscience'. In the broader cultural sphere this topic has received attention in multiple legal debates regarding the status of creationism, where it has been generally agreed that the 'supernatural' nature of the claims involved renders them unscientific. In this thesis I focus upon the latter of (...) these issues, arguing that although there may be merit in the larger demarcation project of separating science from pseudoscience, the notion of 'supernaturality' does not belong in this adjudication. Due to the complex cultural issues that have played a role in the history of this topic, this will involve a degree of historical and normative analysis alongside more philosophically abstract considerations. Complicating the discussion is thefact that neither the term 'science' nor 'supernatural' enjoys a widely agreed upon definition. In order to assess the question then, I will survey a wide variety of definitions of each term in order to identify areas of potential conflict. I argue that in none of the prevalent understandings can we find impediment to scientific investigation inherent in the supernaturality of a claim, but rather posit that where difficulty arises it does so for more mundane reasons. I conclude that not only is there no inherent issue with scientific investigation of the supernatural, but that the term 'supernatural' itself is too poorly defined to provide a useful role in philosophical discussion. While I argue that notions of supernaturality should be abandoned entirely when assessing demarcation criteria, I concede that numerous extraneous factors, including the significant degree of overlap between the supernatural and the 'religious', warrant consideration of a compromise position. (shrink)

The culture-economy dialectic (CED) – the opposition of the concepts and phenomena of culture and economy – is one of the most important ideas in the modern history of ideas. Both disciplinary boundaries and much theoretical thought in social science are strongly influenced or even determined by the CED. For that reason, a thorough analysis and evaluation of the CED is needed to improve understanding of the history of ideas in social science and the currently fashionable research on the cultural (...) influences on economic differences between countries and regions. This thesis is an attempt to do just that. The concepts of “culture” and “economy” (and related concepts) and the (assumed) relations therebetween are compared and analyzed. Empirical results from earlier studies are summarized and some new test are presented. These new tests are partly based on a measurement of Dutch regional culture. However, most theories of the CED are (nearly) impossible to verify (empirically). There appears to be some influence of wealth on specific cultural phenomena (such as individualism and post-materialism), but the often assumed influence of culture on entrepreneurship and economic growth remains unconfirmed. Moreover, from an analysis of the theories themselves, it appears that most of these cannot be falsified and are, therefore, hardly 'scientific'. Many of the theories of the CED and, in fact, many theories of social science in general are of a conceptual rather than a causal nature. These theories cannot be falsified (or verified) by empirical means alone, but must be studied by means of conceptual analysis. In the final conclusions, this thesis, therefore, argues for conceptual analysis in – and a more anarchist approach to – social science. (shrink)