Online research in philosophy

The concept of necessity plays a central role in Kant's philosophy, but seems to lead to severe paradoxes. On the one hand he states: ‘Notwendigkeit und strenge Allgemeinheit sind sichere Kennzeichen einer Erkenntnis a priori’. On the other hand he talks also about ‘notwendig (d. i. nach einer Regel)’, which means ‘necessary according to the empirical natural laws’. However, he never states explicitly the distinction between these two different concepts of necessity. Either Kant's philosophy is inconsistent or we have to (...) assume that he indeed interchanges two different concepts, even if he does not tell us that there is a difference between synthetic apriori necessity and natural necessity. This paper defends the hypothesis of two different necessities and then shows how this strategy makes possible a rational reconstruction of Kant's epistemology. (shrink)

Operational definitions were once considered the backbone of semantics of natural science. Still in 1955 A. W. Burks published an explication of the general scheme of these definitions. In the fifties of the last century however they became outmoded, while high school teachers for presumably good reasons were still in favour of them. I consider the banishment of this kind of definitions premature, and try to improve the explication of Burks in a way which qualifies them for a rehabilitation. In (...) the improved explication the concept of intrinsic property becomes important, for which I give a new definition on the basis of a structuralist account of physical processes. German Die operationalen Definitionen galten einst als der Kern der Semantik der Naturwissenschaft. Eine letzte Explikation des allgemeinen Schemas der operationalen Definitionen hat A. W. Burks noch 1955 vorgelegt. In den fünf ziger Jahren kamen sie indessen aus der Mode, während sie noch weiterhin von Gymnasiallehrern - wohl aus berechtigten Gründen - geschätzt wurden. Ich halte die Verbannung dieser Art von Definitionen für voreilig und versuche die Explikation von Burks in einer Weise zu verbessern, dass man sie wieder in der Wissenschaftstheorie rehabilitieren kann. In der verbesserten Explikation wird der Begriff der inneren Eigenschaft eines Dinges oder Vorgangs wichtig, den ich auf der Basis einer strukturalistischen Darstellung physikalischer Vorgänge neu definieren möchte. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to discuss how far physics differs frommathematics, and if a philosophy of science which uses mathematics or logicsas a model for physics would be unable to be aware of many importantfeatures of that natural science.Many functions in physics differ from those of mathematics in beingfunctional dependecies and in having a lawlike character.Physical quantities have the character of "`determinables"'', sets ofspecial entities which are presupposed by physical theories.One may suspect that physics also could not be (...) formulated in anextensional language. This cannot be true, however, since every language canbe translated into an extensional version. Neverthless the existence ofdeterminables in physics shows that physics does not only talk aboutconcrete entities like space, time, spacetime, and particles, but also aboutvalues of abstract sets like determinables, and that it thus acknowledgestheir existence. (shrink)

Summary Some leading ideas of the constructivist protophysics are discussed on the basis of P. Janich's Protophysik der Zeit. After having reviewed the contents of the second edition Janich's claim that analytical philosophy of science is purely affirmative and not critical towards science in its historical appearence is refuted. In the next section the principles of constructivist methodology of physics are criticised, and the claim is refuted that prescriptions for measurement cannot without circularity be shown to be invalid by experimental (...) results. In the last section we discuss Janich's foundation of time measurement in a mathematical frame similar to that for extensive systems. Thus the relation between Janich's and the ordinary account is cleared up. (shrink)

Summary In the last decade analytical philosophy of science has been considered by many people as a descriptive activity. In part I of this paper we show that philosophy of science has been designed as normative logical analysis by Reichenbach and Carnap before world war II. Thus the identification analytical = descriptive is historically unjustified. In part II we discuss three tasks of analytical philosophy of science, the logical reconstruction of concepts, theories, and methods. While the first is mainly descriptive, (...) the third mainly normative, the second may be both, depending on the intended goal. (shrink)

Hans Reichenbach's 1928 thesis of the relativity of geometry has been misunderstood as the statement that the geometrical structure of space can be described in different languages. In this interpretation the thesis becomes an instance of trivial semantical conventionalism, as Grünbaum calls it. To understand Reichenbach correctly, we have to interpret it in the light of the linguistic turn, the transition from thought oriented philosophy to language oriented philosophy, which mainly took place in the first decades of our century. Reichenbach (...) — as Poincaré before him — is undermining the prejudice of thought oriented philosophy, that two propositions have different factual content, if they are associated with different ideas in our mind. Thus Reichenbach prepared the change to language oriented philosophy, which he also accepted later. (shrink)