In this article, I will view realist and non-realist accounts of scientific models within the larger context of the cultural significance of scientific knowledge. I begin by looking at the historical context and origins of the problem of scientific realism, and claim that it is originally of cultural and not only philosophical, significance. The cultural significance of debates on the epistemological status of scientific models is then related to the question of ‘intelligibility’ and how science, through models, can give us (...) knowledge of the world by presenting us with an ‘intelligible account/picture of the world’, thus fulfilling its cultural-epistemic role. Realists typically assert that science can perform this role, while non-realists deny this. The various strategies adopted by realists and non-realists in making good their respective claims, is then traced to their cultural motivations. Finally I discuss the cultural implications of adopting realist or non-realist views of models through a discussion of the views of Rorty, Gellner, Van Fraassen and Clifford Hooker on the cultural significance of scientific knowledge.Keywords: Models; Intelligibility; Scientific realism; Culture. (shrink)

Inferences from scientific success to the approximate truth of successful theories remain central to the most influential arguments for scientific realism. Challenges to such inferences, however, based on radical discontinuities within the history of science, have motivated a distinctive style of revision to the original argument. Conceding the historical claim, selective realists argue that accompanying even the most revolutionary change is the retention of significant parts of replaced theories, and that a realist attitude towards the systematically retained constituents of our (...) scientific theories can still be defended. Selective realists thereby hope to secure the argument from success against apparent historical counterexamples. Independently of that objective, historical considerations have inspired a further argument for selective realism, where evidence for the retention of parts of theories is itself offered as justification for adopting a realist attitude towards them. Given the nature of these arguments from success and from retention, a reasonable expectation is that they would complement and reinforce one another, but although several theses purport to provide such a synthesis the results are often unconvincing. In this paper I reconsider the realist’s favoured type of scientific success, novel success, offer a revised interpretation of the concept, and argue that a significant consequence of reconfiguring the realist’s argument from success accordingly is a greater potential for its unification with the argument from retention.Keywords: Scientific realism; Pessimistic meta-induction; Success; Progress; Aether; Novelty. (shrink)

Structural realism has been suggested as the best compromise in the debate on scientific realism. It proposes that we should be realist about the relational structure of the world, not its nature. However, it faces an important objection, first raised by Newman against Russell: if relations are not qualified, then the position is either trivial or collapses into empiricism, but if relations are too strongly qualified, then it is no longer SR. A way to overcome this difficulty is to talk (...) about modal, or nomological relations instead of purely extensional relations. I argue that this is insufficient, for then, SR collapses into modal empiricism. I suggest, however, that ME could be the best position in the debate on scientific realism. 1Introduction2Objections to Structural Realism3How to Escape Newman’s Objection4Which Modal Relations Are Retained in Theory Change?5Are Modal Relations Real?6Relativity and Fundamentality7Is Modal Empiricism Really Empiricism?8Could Modal Empiricism Be the Best of Both Worlds? (shrink)

Some scientific categories seem to correspond to genuine features of the world and are indispensable for successful science in some domain; in short, they are natural kinds. This book gives a general account of what it is to be a natural kind and puts the account to work illuminating numerous specific examples.

This paper treats the situation where a single mathematical construction satisfies a multitude of interesting mathematical properties. The examples treated are all infinitely large entities. The clustering of properties is termed ‘niceness’ by the mathematician Michiel Hazewinkel, a concept we compare to the ‘robustness’ described by the philosopher of science William Wimsatt. In the final part of the paper, we bring our findings to bear on the question of realism which concerns not whether mathematical entities exist as abstract objects, but (...) rather whether the choice of our concepts is forced upon us. (shrink)

These preprints were automatically compiled into a PDF from the collection of papers deposited in PhilSci-Archive in conjunction with the PSA 2018.

This is the most comprehensive book ever published on philosophical methodology. A team of thirty-eight of the world's leading philosophers present original essays on various aspects of how philosophy should be and is done. The first part is devoted to broad traditions and approaches to philosophical methodology. The entries in the second part address topics in philosophical methodology, such as intuitions, conceptual analysis, and transcendental arguments. The third part of the book is devoted to essays about the interconnections between philosophy (...) and neighbouring fields, including those of mathematics, psychology, literature and film, and neuroscience. (shrink)

Structural realism is considered by many realists and antirealists alike as the most defensible form of scientific realism. There are now many forms of structural realism and an extensive literature about them. There are interesting connections with debates in metaphysics, philosophy of physics and philosophy of mathematics. This entry is intended to be a comprehensive survey of the field.

Benacerraf has presented two problems for the philosophy of mathematics. These are the problem of identification and the problem of representation. This paper aims to reconstruct the latter problem and to unpack its undermining bearing on the version of Ontic Structural Realism that frames scientific representations in terms of abstract structures. I argue that the dichotomy between mathematical structures and physical ones cannot be used to address the Benacerraf problem but strengthens it. I conclude by arguing that versions of OSR (...) that do not rely on mathematical frameworks for representational purposes need not be vulnerable to Benacerraf’s second problem. (shrink)

In contemporary philosophy of science, the no-miracles argument and the pessimistic induction are regarded as the strongest arguments for and against scientific realism, respectively. In this paper, I construct a new argument for scientific realism which I call the anti-induction for scientific realism. It holds that, since past theories were false, present theories are true. I provide an example from the history of science to show that anti-inductions sometimes work in science. The anti-induction for scientific realism has several advantages over (...) the no-miracles argument as a positive argument for scientific realism. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to show that the French philosopher and historian of science Abel Rey played a more influential role in the formative phase of the Vienna Circle than hitherto supposed. On the whole, it will be argued that Rey's contribution had political impact. His interpretation of "modern physics" in 1907 in the face of the alleged "bankruptcy of science" should be appreciated as a masterpiece of applied enlightenment thought. As such, it was especially paradigmatic for Philipp (...) Frank's "positivist" defense of the theory of relativity and quantum mechanics against the irrationalist tendencies of the 1920s and 1930s. (shrink)

'The arrow of time' refers to the curious asymmetry that distinguishes the future from the past. Reversing the Arrow of Time argues that there is an intimate link between the symmetries of 'time itself' and time reversal symmetry in physical theories, which has wide-ranging implications for both physics and its philosophy. This link helps to clarify how we can learn about the symmetries of our world, how to understand the relationship between symmetries and what is real, and how to overcome (...) pervasive illusions about the direction of time. Roberts explains the significance of time reversal in a way that intertwines physics and philosophy, to establish what the arrow of time means and how we can come to know it. This book is both mathematically and philosophically rigorous yet remains accessible to advanced undergraduates in physics and the philosophy of physics. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core. (shrink)

QBism is an agent-centered interpretation of quantum theory. It rejects the notion that quantum theory provides a God’s eye description of reality and claims instead that it imposes constraints on agents’ subjective degrees of belief. QBism’s emphasis on subjective belief has led critics to dismiss it as antirealism or instrumentalism, or even, idealism or solipsism. The aim of this paper is to consider the relation of QBism to scientific realism. I argue that while QBism is an unhappy fit with a (...) standard way of thinking about scientific realism, an alternative conception I call “perspectival normative realism” may allow for a reconciliation. (shrink)

There are realist and antirealist interpretations of the free energy principle (FEP). This paper aims to chart out a structural realist interpretation of FEP. To do so, it draws on Worrall’s (Dialectica 43(1–2): 99–124, 1989) proposal. The general insight of Worrall’s paper is that there is progress at the level of the structure of theories rather than their content. To enact Worrall’s strategy in the context of FEP, this paper will focus on characterising the formal continuity between fundamental equations of (...) thermodynamics—such as Boltzmann’s equation and Gibbs’s equation—on the one hand, and Friston’s characterisation of FEP on the other. Lack of a universal consensus on the physical character of entities that feature in thermodynamics, information theory and FEP notwithstanding, I argue that there is structural continuity and unity at the level of mathematical equations that regiment entropy, information and free energy. The existence of such structural continuity and unity provides grounds for structural realism about FEP. (shrink)

Ronald N. Giere’s Perspectival realism is one among the various approaches in philosophy of science claiming to offer an alternative understanding of scientific realism. In various writings, Giere has claimed that scientific knowledge is perspectival, and that models represent some aspects of the world based on the relation of fit. This paper argues that Giere’s perspectivism does not offer a genuine alternative as he claims, due to its difficulties in accounting for truth and the objective nature of scientific knowledge. In (...) an attempt to salvage perspectivism, I propose an alternative understanding based on a Syntactic Approach to theories. (shrink)

The essays in this volume concern the points of intersection between analytic philosophy and the philosophy of the exact sciences. More precisely, it concern connections between knowledge in mathematics and the exact sciences, on the one hand, and the conceptual foundations of knowledge in general. Its guiding idea is that, in contemporary philosophy of science, there are profound problems of theoretical interpretation-- problems that transcend both the methodological concerns of general philosophy of science, and the technical concerns of philosophers of (...) particular sciences. A fruitful approach to these problems combines the study of scientific detail with the kind of conceptual analysis that is characteristic of the modern analytic tradition. Such an approach is shared by these contributors: some primarily known as analytic philosophers, some as philosophers of science, but all deeply aware that the problems of analysis and interpretation link these fields together. (shrink)

Localism is the view that the unit of evaluation in the scientific realism debate is a single scientific discipline, sub-discipline, or claim, whereas individualism is the view that the unit of evaluation is a single scientific theory. Localism is compatible, while individualism is not, with a local pessimistic induction and a local selective induction. Asay (2016) presents several arguments to support localism and undercut globalism, according to which the unit of evaluation is the set of all scientific disciplines. I argue (...) that some of his arguments clash with localism as well as with globalism and support individualism, and that individualism goes hand in hand, while localism does not, with the basic rule of how to evaluate an argument. (shrink)

Since the time of Charles Darwin, there has been concern that the theory of evolution provides fuel for skepticism. This paper presents new arguments that humanity's evolutionary origins are grounds for accepting that the universe is not as it appears to be to us. Firstly, it is argued that we should expect to have an incomplete capacity to comprehend the universe: both the mental limitations of all non-human life and the narrow interests of most humans provide evidence for this. Secondly, (...) it is argued that we should expect the universe as it appears to us to have nothing more than a relationship of correlation to the universe as it actually is: both simplicity and the huge number of ways in which the universe may be represented provide reason for evolution to produce such a correlative system. (shrink)

I examine the epistemological debate on scientific realism in the context of quantum physics, focusing on the empirical underdetermin- ation of different formulations and interpretations of QM. I will argue that much of the interpretational, metaphysical work on QM tran- scends the kinds of realist commitments that are well-motivated in the light of the history of science. I sketch a way of demarcating empirically well-confirmed aspects of QM from speculative quantum metaphysics in a way that coheres with anti-realist evidence from (...) the history of science. The minimal realist attitude sketched withholds realist com- mitment to what quantum state |Ψ⟩ represents. I argue that such commitment is not required for fulfilling the ultimate realist motiva- tion: accounting for the empirical success of quantum mechanics in a way that is in tune with a broader understanding of how theoretical science progresses and latches onto reality. (shrink)

I argue that scientific and poetic modes of objectivity are perspectival duals: 'views' from and onto basic natural forces, respectively. I ground this analysis in a general account of objectivity, not in terms of either 'universal' or 'inter-subjective' validity, but as receptivity to basic features of reality. Contra traditionalists, bare truth, factual knowledge, and universally valid representation are not inherently valuable. But modern critics who focus primarily on the self-expressive aspect of science are also wrong to claim that our knowledge (...) is or should be ultimately mediated by ourselves. In objective science, we represent nature as a field of phenomena determined by and within explanatorily-basic physical structures that encode the causal impact of elemental physical forces. These causally-basic forces hence ground the possibility of objective scientific theory, even though (I argue) they are systematically excluded from its representational contents. I show how my notions of force and field emerge partly through my effort to naturalize concepts of 'God' and 'Laws' in 17th-century natural philosophy. In science, we use the structure of basic forces' impact to see corresponding objects. We do not see these forces themselves—and this relates to the 'transcendence' of 'God'. I supplement this historical analysis by critiquing standard accounts of objectivity, and by synthesizing elements from neo-Kantian epistemology and current 'structural' realism into a view that I call 'dynamic structuralism'. Finally, I argue that physics systematically relies on passive characterizations of phenomena like inertia and impressed force. Dynamic alternatives that are just as empirically adequate are possible, but they are non-scientific. Poetic objectivity involves a direct presentation of nature as an order of interacting forces. I elaborate first by developing a novel theory of the relation between beauty and sublimity, mediated by a basic category of 'sensory force' (e.g. a 'singing' tone in a beautiful melody). I then describe the interaction between sensory and affective dimensions of aesthetic experience, in relation to an original historical analysis of passion and 'disinterestedness' in Kant, Schiller and Nietzsche. I synthesize these lines of analysis into a critique of the role of 'expression' in art. I also resist 'spectator'-centric aesthetics, in this connection, by developing an account of artistic objectivity in dialogue with Ruskin's critique of the 'pathetic fallacy'. I contrast artistic objectivity with Romantic ideals of self-expression, while elaborating its positive relation to certain currents within Victorian and Modernist aesthetics, including Imagists' stress on 'exteriority'. My project creatively extends Nietzsche's view that philosophical and scientific theories are 'perspectival' expressions of theorists' drives. It is a virtue of Nietzsche's account that he takes the outlet of strong human drives in creative acts of theorizing to be just one among many higher modes of 'will to power' in nature—many of which are totally impersonal. But Nietzsche is still too focused on self-expression or willing one's own power. Objective science involves external forces' 'expression' in and through us, not just 'expressing' our own powers. And Nietzsche's vitalistic 'will to power' must be replaced by a basic ontology that better accommodates inorganic phenomena, like the 'lawful' order of celestial motions. Thus I aim to de-anthropomorphize and 'de-organicize' post-Kantian notions of willful striving and organic development, while preserving for force the primary ontological and evaluative status that theorists from Schiller and Goethe to Schelling and Schlegel to Emerson and Nietzsche attributed to will or to life. (shrink)

The goal of this essay is twofold. First, it provides a quick look at the foundations of modern relational mechanics by tracing its development from Julian Barbour and Bruno Bertotti's original ideas until present-day's pure shape dynamics. Secondly, it discusses the most appropriate metaphysics for pure shape dynamics, showing that relationalism is more of a nuanced thesis rather than an elusive one. The chapter ends with a brief assessment of the prospects of pure shape dynamics in light of quantum physics.

Este artigo é uma breve introdução à filosofia da linguagem. Ele se concentra nos problemas que surgem a partir de dois conceitos centrais: referência e significado. Em particular, o foco central é no problema fundacional da referência e no problema descritivo do significado, assim como a relação entre eles. Embora esta de modo algum seja uma introdução exaustiva ao tema, muitos conceitos centrais são clarificados, como por exemplo teoria da referência, termo singular, termo geral, teoria do significado, composicionalidade, conteúdo, significado (...) linguístico, implicatura conversacional, vagueza, etc. Espera-se que sirva como um primeiro contato com a disciplina, principalmente voltado a estudantes de filosofia, filosofia da linguagem e áreas afins. (shrink)

Scientific realism is the view that the aim of science is to produce true or approximately true theories about nature. It is a view which not only is shared by many philosophers but also by scientists themselves. Regarding Kuhn’s rejection of scientific progress, Steven Weinberg once declared: “All this is wormwood to scientists like myself, who think the task of science is to bring us closer and closer to objective truth.” But such a realist view on scientific theories is not (...) without problems. The paper discusses some arguments for and against the ontological commitments that scientific theories may entail. The upshot is that scientific realism according to which the semantic content of theories should be understood literally is not sustainable. Instead, it is argued that only realism with respect to entities can be reasonably and practically maintained. Finally, the paper discusses structural realism which presents itself as a modern alternative to scientific realism which may meet both the optimistic no-miracle argument and the pessimistic meta-induction argument. My conclusion is that such a position is neither attractive nor defendable. (shrink)

The Higgs model was developed using purely formal analogies to models of superconductivity. This is in contrast to historical case studies such as the development of electromagnetism, which employed physical analogies. As a result, quantum case studies such as the development of the Higgs model carry new lessons for the scientific realism--anti-realism debate. I argue that, by breaking the connection between success and approximate truth, the use of purely formal analogies is a counterexample to two prominent versions of the 'No (...) Miracles' Argument for scientific realism, Psillos' refined explanationist defence of realism and the Argument from History of Science for structural realism. The NMA is undermined, but the success of the Higgs model is not miraculous because there is a naturalistically acceptable explanation for its success that does not invoke approximate truth. I also suggest some possible strategies for adapting to the counterexample for scientific realists who wish to hold on to the NMA in some form. (shrink)

Our best social scientific theories try to tell us something about the social world. But is talk of a “social world” a metaphor that we ought not take too seriously? In particular, do the denizens of the social world—cultural values like the Protestant work ethic, firms like ExxonMobil, norms like standards of dress and behavior, institutions like the legal system, teams like FC Barcelona, conventions like marriages—exist? The question is not merely academic. Social scientists use these different social entities to (...) explain social phenomena such as the rise of capitalism, the decline in oil prices, or the effect of unions on the sports labor market. But how could these explanations possibly work if social entities don’t exist? (shrink)

Paper on structural realism and how its problems lend support to some kind of panpsychism.

This article endeavors to identify the strongest versions of the two primary arguments against epistemic scientific realism: the historical argument—generally dubbed “the pessimistic meta-induction”—and the argument from underdetermination. It is shown that, contrary to the literature, both can be understood as historically informed but logically validmodus tollensarguments. After specifying the question relevant to underdetermination and showing why empirical equivalence is unnecessary, two types of competitors to contemporary scientific theories are identified, both of which are informed by science itself. With the (...) content and structure of the two nonrealist arguments clarified, novel relations between them are uncovered, revealing the severity of their collective threat against epistemic realism and its “no-miracles” argument. The final section proposes, however, that the realist’s axiological tenet “science seeks truth” is not blocked. An attempt is made to indicate the promise for a nonepistemic, purely axiological scientific realism—here dubbed “Socratic scientific realism.”. (shrink)

Se propone una aproximación al realismo científico desde la perspectiva de Zubiri, para quien, por un lado, la realidad es el modo “de suyo” en que se actualizan los contenidos “en” la aprehensión y, por otro lado, la verdad es la misma realidad en cuanto que “actualizada”. Como la realidad ya se da en la aprehensión, no es un logro de la ciencia, mientras lo postulado solo puede ser erróneo en un proceso de verificaciónEn la medida en que el error (...) es posible por la verdad, los fracasos de la ciencia, en lugarde ser una prueba a favor del antirrealismo, son un indicio que apoya al realismo. (shrink)

RESUMEN Se propone una aproximación al realismo científico desde la perspectiva de Zubiri, para quien, por un lado, la realidad es el modo "de suyo" en que se actualizan los contenidos "en" la aprehensión y, por otro lado, la verdad es la misma realidad en cuanto que "actualizada". Como la realidad ya se da en la aprehensión, no es un logro de la ciencia, mientras lo postulado solo puede ser erróneo en un proceso de verificación. En la medida en que (...) el error es posible por la verdad, los fracasos de la ciencia, en lugar de ser una prueba a favor del antirrealismo, son un indicio que apoya al realismo. ABSTRACT The article addresses scientific realism from the perspective of Zubiri, for whom reality is the intrinsic way in which contents are actualized "in" apprehension, on the one hand, and truth is that same reality inasmuch as it is "actualized", on the other. Since reality is already present in apprehension, it is not an achievement of science, while the postulates of scientific theories can only prove to be erroneous in a process of verification. Insofar as error is possible in the search for truth, the failures of science would support realism, rather than provide evidence of antirealism. (shrink)

De um modo geral, queríamos mostrar que a filosofia tem suas próprias áreas, mas tem também subáreas em interdisciplinaridade com as ciências. As ciências e as disciplinas acadêmicas em geral têm problemas, cuja a solução pode ser encontrada empiricamente, por meio de experimentos, entrevistas, documentos, ou formalmente, por meio de cálculos etc, porém os problemas das filosofias dessas disciplinas são justamente os problemas mais fundamentais dessas disciplinas, que fundam o quadro conceitual e de pesquisa das mesmas, e que só poderiam (...) ser respondidos por meio de uma extensa argumentação. A filosofia de cada uma dessas disciplinas é uma mistura (a) de metafísica da disciplina, perguntando-se qual a natureza e justificação das entidades que formam o quadro teórico da disciplina, i.e., quais delas realmente existem na realidade (não sendo meros instrumentos para obter resultados) e quais as suas categorizações fundamentais, naturezas e funções teóricas, (b) de epistemologia dessa disciplina, ao nos perguntarmos sobre como tal área poderia obter conhecimento de modo confiável e se ela de fato o faz, e (c) de teorias do valor, ao nos perguntarmos, por exemplo, sobre qual o valor moral do desenvolvimento de uma certa disciplina e, finalmente, (d) a lógica, que perpassa tudo, ao nos perguntarmos sobre a consistência das teses assumidas pela disciplina. Não é à toa que falamos que a filosofia é mãe de todas as ciências. Ela é mãe tanto num sentido geracional, pois a maioria das ciências foram desenvolvimentos particulares, empíricos ou de cálculo, das questões filosóficas sobre um certo tema, quanto num sentido fundamental, pois é a filosofia que fornece os fundamentos mais gerais, metafísicos, epistêmicos, valorativos e lógicos, na construção do quadro teórico de cada ciência e na qualidade dos métodos para se aproximar da verdade que a disciplina utiliza. A biologia, por exemplo, foi criada por Aristóteles, tal como os primeiros desenvolvimentos da meteorologia (na verdade, esta começa com os pré-socráticos), e grande parte do fundamento da física atual jaz nas discussões de filosofia da física. Sendo você filósofo ou cientista de outra área, a filosofia promete te dar as bases para uma reflexão geral ou sobre sua área, que seja muito mais informada e profunda do que aquilo que você poderia realizar sem ela. /// In general, we wanted to show that philosophy has its own areas, but it also has subareas in interdisciplinarity with the sciences. The sciences and academic disciplines in general have problems, the solution of which can be found empirically, through experiments, interviews, documents, or formally, through calculations etc., but the problems of the philosophies of these disciplines are precisely the most fundamental problems. of these disciplines, which build their conceptual and research framework, and which could only be answered through extensive argumentation. The philosophy of each of these disciplines is a mixture (a) of metaphysics of the discipline, asking what is the nature and justification of the entities that form the theoretical framework of the discipline, ie, which ones really exist in reality (not being mere instruments for achieving results) and what are its fundamental categorizations, natures and theoretical functions, (b) the epistemology of this discipline, when we ask ourselves how such an area could obtain knowledge reliably and if it does, and (c) theories of value, when we ask ourselves, for example, about the moral value of the development of a certain discipline and, finally, (d) the logic, which permeates everything, when we ask ourselves about the consistency of the theses assumed by the discipline. It is not for nothing that we say that philosophy is the mother of all sciences. It is a mother both in a generational sense, as most sciences were particular empirical or formal developments of philosophical questions on a certain topic, and in a fundamental sense, as it is philosophy that provides the most general, metaphysical, epistemic, evaluative and logical foundations, in the construction of the theoretical framework of each science and in the quality of the methods to approach the truth that the discipline uses. Biology, for example, was created by Aristotle, like the first developments in meteorology (in fact, it starts with the pre-Socratics), and much of the foundation of current physics lies in discussions of the philosophy of physics. Whether you are a philosopher or scientist from another area, philosophy promises to give you the basis for a general reflection or about your area, which is much more informed and profound than what you could accomplish without it. (shrink)

O desenvolvimento da filosofia acadêmica no Brasil é direcionada, entre vários fatores, pelas investigações dos diversos Grupos de Trabalho (GTs) da Associação Nacional de Pós-Graduação em Filosofia (ANPOF). Esses GTs se dividem de acordo com a temática investigada. O GT de Metafísica Analítica é relativamente novo e ainda tem poucos membros, mas os temas nele trabalhados são variados e todos centrais no debate metafísico contemporâneo internacional. A sua investigação se caracteriza pelo rigor lógico e conceitual com o qual aborda esses (...) tradicionais tópicos da metafísica. Embora os assuntos tratados tenham sido, em sua grande maioria, tópicos abordados e discutidos em reuniões remotas do GT, nem todos os membros do nosso grupo estão aqui representados. Esperamos apresentar seus trabalhos em futuros livros. Por enquanto, queremos apenas divulgar ao público acadêmico algumas de nossas produções, trabalhadas e produzidas exclusivamente para este livro. Segundo a caracterização tradicional, com a qual plenamente concordamos, a metafísica se ocupa com a natureza mais íntima e geral da realidade. Essa metafísica é, por um lado, ambiciosa: não pretende apenas expor a realidade segundo o modo como ela se apresenta para nós, mas como ela é ‘em si mesma’. Por outro lado, ela é modesta: ela sabe da sua dívida para com as outras disciplinas, especialmente lógica, linguagem e epistemologia. Além disso, ela se entende como sempre tentativa, provisória, aberta a críticas e revisões. Neste livro, tratamos temas como as categorias ontológicas fundamentais e as suas relações de dependência e de fundamentalidade, a natureza da composição mereológica, da persistência temporal e do próprio tempo, a natureza dos objetos abstratos e dos mundos possíveis, as naturezas do mundo quântico, da causalidade nômica do mundo físico, e, finalmente, de um dos objetos mais característicos da presença humana no nosso mundo físico, que é o objeto de arte. É claro que essa coletânea está longe de apresentar exaustivamente todos os tópicos da metafísica. Tentamos selecionar e organizar os textos da forma mais fluida possível, de modo que eles possam levar tanto a uma reflexão específica quanto a uma reflexão geral sobre a natureza da realidade. Ainda que tenha uma inerente incompletude, o livro serve à finalidade de levar o/a estudante de graduação e pós-graduação a refletir sobre temas contemporâneos da Metafísica Analítica. Justamente por ter esse objetivo de formentar a pesquisa em metafísica analítica nacional, optamos por traduzir muitos termos do inglês que ainda não tem uma tradução canônica, a fim de evitar anglicismos e contribuir para uma leitura mais natural. Muito mais do que leitores complacentes, esse livro pede por leitores críticos, debatedores corajosos, que estejam dispostos a contribuir e a propor novas teorias e argumentos. Agradecemos a todos os membros do GT de Metafísica Analítica da ANPOF e a todos os autores deste livro, que decidiram apresentar publicamente suas pesquisas à academia; aos membros do Grupo de Pesquisa Investigação Filosófica, que decidiram pela publicação deste livro; à Pró-Reitoria de PósGraduação e Pesquisa da Universidade Federal do Amapá, que o financiou; e ao NEPFIL Online e à Editora da UFPel, que o editaram e publicaram. [Guido Imaguire e Rodrigo Reis Lastra Cid, Organizadores] . (shrink)

This undergraduate textbook introduces some fundamental issues in philosophy of science for students of philosophy and science students. The book is divided into two parts. Part 1 deals with knowledge and values. Chap. 1 presents the classical conception of knowledge as initiated by the ancient Greeks and elaborated during the development of science, introducing the central concepts of truth, belief and justification. Aspects of the quest for objectivity are taken up in the following two chapters. Moral issues are broached in (...) Chap. 4, which discusses some aspects of the use and abuse of science, taking up the responsibilities of scientists in properly conducting their business and decision-makers in their concerns with the import of science for society. Part 2 contrasts the view of scientific progress as the rejecting of old hypotheses and theories and replacing them with new ones, represented by Karl Popper, with the conception of progress as accumulating knowledge, saving as much as possible from older theories, represented by Pierre Duhem. A concluding chapter defends the natural attitude of taking the theories of modern science to be literally true, i.e. realism, in the face of arguments drawn partly from the history of scientific progress in criticism of this stance. (shrink)

The volume includes twenty-five research papers presented as gifts to John L. Bell to celebrate his 60th birthday by colleagues, former students, friends and admirers. Like Bell’s own work, the contributions cross boundaries into several inter-related fields. The contributions are new work by highly respected figures, several of whom are among the key figures in their fields. Some examples: in foundations of maths and logic ; analytical philosophy, philosophy of science, philosophy of mathematics and decision theory and foundations of economics. (...) Most articles are contributions to current philosophical debates, but contributions also include some new mathematical results, important historical surveys, and a translation by Wilfrid Hodges of a key work of arabic logic. (shrink)

This is book l of three philosophy books in international language; formal academic philosophy source in Kurdish language Given overall view on classic epistemology for university student in non English language philosophy departments and philosophy schools .

'Reason, Causation and Compatibility with the Phenomena' strives to give answers to the philosophical problem of the interplay between realism, explanation and experience. This book is a compilation of essays that recollect significant conceptions of rival terms such as determinism and freedom, reason and appearance, power and knowledge. This title discusses the progress made in epistemology and natural philosophy, especially the steps that led from the ancient theory of atomism to the modern quantum theory, and from mathematization to analytic philosophy. (...) Moreover, it provides possible gateways from modern deadlocks of theory either through approaches to consciousness or through historical critique of intellectual authorities. This work will be of interest to those either researching or studying in colleges and universities, especially in the departments of philosophy, history of science, philosophy of science, philosophy of physics and quantum mechanics, history of ideas and culture. Greek and Latin Literature students and instructors may also find this book to be both a fascinating and valuable point of reference. (shrink)

It is often thought that consciousness has a qualitative dimension that cannot be tracked by science. Recently, however, some philosophers have argued that this worry stems not from an elusive feature of the mind, but from the special nature of the concepts used to describe conscious states. Marc Champagne draws on the neglected branch of philosophy of signs or semiotics to develop a new take on this strategy. The term “semiotics” was introduced by John Locke in the modern period – (...) its etymology is ancient Greek, and its theoretical underpinnings are medieval. Charles Sanders Peirce made major advances in semiotics, so he can act as a pipeline for these forgotten ideas. Most philosophers know Peirce as the founder of American pragmatism, but few know that he also coined the term “qualia,” which is meant to capture the intrinsic feel of an experience. Since pragmatic verification and qualia are now seen as conflicting commitments, Champagne endeavors to understand how Peirce could (or thought he could) have it both ways. The key, he suggests, is to understand how humans can insert distinctions between features that are always bound. Recent attempts to take qualities seriously have resulted in versions of panpsychism, but Champagne outlines a more plausible way to achieve this. So, while semiotics has until now been the least known branch of philosophy ending in –ics, his book shows how a better understanding of that branch can move one of the liveliest debates in philosophy forward. (shrink)

This paper offers an intellectual history of the scientific realism debate during the twentieth century. The telling of the tale will explain the philosophical significance and the prospects of the scientific realism debate, through the major turns it went through. The emphasis will be on the relations between empiricism and scientific realism and on the swing from metaphysics-hostile to metaphysics-friendly versions of realism.

Two things seem to make science different from other human activities: the existence of a special method and the claim that this method produces objective knowledge of the world. Yet, as Barry Gower’s impressive book shows, after centuries of philosophical reflection on scientific method, there is considerable disagreement as to what exactly this method is. What is more interesting is that all attempts to characterise scientific method, from Galileo and Descartes up until the present, suffer from an internal tension: whatever (...) the method of science be in its details, it should satisfy two general desiderata which, at least prima facie, pull in contrary directions. On the one hand, it should be amplia- tive: it should be able to move from the finite data and observations available at any given time to hypotheses and theories which go far beyond these data, either by generalising them over unexamined (or even unexaminable) domains or by introducing unobserved and unobservable causes which bring the phenomena about. This ‘content-increasing’ aspect of scientific method is indispensable, if science is seen as an activity which purports to extend our knowledge beyond what is immediately observed by means of the senses. On the other hand, the method of science should be epistemically probative: it should be able to convey epistemic warrant to its conclusions (hypotheses and theories). Otherwise, its claim to extending our knowledge of the world beyond what is actually observed is dubious. The tension arises because ampliative methods don’t carry their epistemically probative character on their sleeves. Since the conclusion of an ampliative method can be false, even though all of its premises are true, the following question arises: what makes it the case that the method conveys whatever epistemic warrant the premises enjoy to the intended conclusion rather than to its negation? (shrink)

The frame model, originating in artificial intelligence and cognitive psychology, has recently been applied to change-phenomena traditionally studied within history and philosophy of science. Its application purpose is to account for episodes of conceptual dynamics in the empirical sciences suggestive of incommensurability as evidenced by “ruptures” in the symbolic forms of historically successive empirical theories with similar classes of applications. This article reviews the frame model and traces its development from the feature list model. Drawing on extant literature, examples of (...) frame-reconstructed taxonomic change are presented. This occurs for purposes of comparison with an alternative tool, conceptual spaces. The main claim is that conceptual spaces save the merits of the frame model and provide a powerful model for conceptual change in scientific knowledge, since distinctions arising in measurement theory are native to the model. It is suggested how incommensurability as incomparability of theoretical frameworks might be avoided. Moreover, as nontranslatability of worldviews, it need not to be treated as a genuine problem of conceptual representation. The status of laws vis à vis their dimensional bases as well as diachronic similarity measures are discussed. (shrink)

By understanding laws of nature as geometrical rather than linguistic entities, this paper addresses how to describe theory structures and how to evaluate their continuity. Relying on conceptual spaces as a modelling tool, we focus on the conceptual framework an empirical theory presupposes, thus obtain a geometrical representation of a theory’s structure. We stress the relevance of measurement procedures in separating conceptual from empirical structures. This lets our understanding of scientific laws come closer to scientific practice, and avoids a widely (...) recognised deficit in current philosophy of science accounts, namely to risk a collapse of the physical into the mathematical. (shrink)

The ontic structural realist stance is motivated by a desire to do philosophical justice to the success of science, whilst withstanding the metaphysical undermining generated by the various species of ontological underdetermination. We are, however, as yet in want of general principles to provide a scaffold for the explicit construction of structural ontologies. Here we will attempt to bridge this gap by utilizing the formal procedure of quantization as a guide to ontic structure of modern physical theory. The example of (...) non-relativistic particle mechanics will be considered and, for that case, it will be shown that a viable candidate for an ontic structural realism framework can be constituted in terms of the combination of a state-space with Poisson bracket structure, and a set of observables, with Lie algebra structure. 1 Introduction2 Formulation Underdetermination and Structural Ontologies3 Quantization and Structural Ontologies4 The Case of Non-relativistic Particle Mechanics4.1 Formulation underdetermination4.2 The classical ontology4.3 Quantum theory and the generalized structural ontology4.4 Interpretation of results5 Conclusion and Prospects. (shrink)

It is difficult to articulate how we should take a realist attitude towards Bohmian mechanics because there are many versions of it. This paper aims to clarify the realist commitments of Bohmian mechanics and how we can understand it from a general scientific realist perspective. I use the box experiment, a double-slit like experiment conducted by Cardone et al. :1–13, 2004; Int J Mod Phys B 20:1107–1121, 2006), as a working example to argue that a causal realist account that is (...) applicable to Bohmian mechanics, has to be supplemented with the use of Inference to the Best Explanation. The reason is because causal realism on its own does not form a sufficient basis for realism about Bohmian mechanics. In particular, I argue that the existence of the pilot wave explains why we observe an anomalous interference effect in the experiment of Cardone et al. The conclusion to draw is that a complete realist account about Bohmian mechanics rests on explanatory considerations. (shrink)