The article presents the standpoint that naturalistic tendencies in modern science, which are especially expressed in neuroscience, push up social knowledge toward the need to revise its attitudes and norms, which consist in consistent sociocentrism and biophobia, and, hence, a simplified understanding of the phenomenon of “genetic reductionism”. We show that the application of the methods of natural science to social disciplines often marked visible progress and even conceptual breakthroughs in their development. Achievements of modern neuroscience affect a traditional area (...) of social and humanitarian knowledge as political science, which leads to the formation of an independent area of research – political neuroscience. Through the optics of this research, cognitive styles characteristic of individuals and social groups with different value orientations imply the dominance of certain ideological sympathies and antipathies, which attributed to the opposite poles of the ideological scale – liberalism and conservatism. Considerable empirical material allows us to conclude that these ideological positions are exist due to differences in their ontogenetic “foundations”, which allows us to develop I. Kant's ideas about a priorism and transcendentalism in the context of the Kantian research program in contemporary neuroscience. The result of the implementation of this program to the political sphere was the discovery of the genesis of political views, and the demonstration of the peculiarities of their dynamics. They are based on the difference in the activity of certain neural sets, which in their turn are influenced by culture and society, forming an integral system “brain – culture – society”, where each component of which affects other components. Features and changes in the socio-cultural context of the development of an individual or a group of people may have an effect upon the architectonics of the brain and shift, due to its plasticity, of the political views along the scale of ideologies “liberalism – conservatism”. At the same time, carriers of different cognitive styles and, therefore, with a sufficient degree of probability of ideological views, percept the world in which they live in differently, and evaluate its past and possible future in diverse ways. (shrink)

Back in the late 1950s, a wonderful thing happened to metaphysics.

The critique of the dogmatism of a-priorism from the Popperians suffered from the fact that Popper, too, was moving towards a certain dogmatic derivation. According to the a-priorists, in wanting to protect himself from any would-be-critics who would argue against the dogmatism of his approach, Popper left his philosophical foundation free to the critics. In fighting against German essentialism, he found himself in a position that necessitated the abandonment of either his presupposed anti-essentialism, or his critique of the positivists. (...) Popper's success stems less from his ability to rally the anti-historicist positivists towards the search for scientific foundations, than the fact that he was one of the greatest, if not the greatest, theoreticians of the scientific method, and critic of ideological simplicity. (shrink)

Laurence BonJour a proposé une façon novatrice de défendre son principe inductif en réponse à une proposition posée par Hume et pouvant être remise en question. Dans cet article, j’élabore et fais la critique de la stratégie de BonJour. Au cours de mon développement, j’attire l’attention sur les critiques formulées par Anthony Brueckner à l’égard de l’approche de BonJour, détaillant les raisons pour lesquelles elles ne parviennent pas à réfuter de manière cohérente l’argument de BonJour. En distinguant et en appliquant (...) deux types distincts d’évaluation des probabilités aux hypothèses de BonJour, j’avance l’argument selon lequel la stratégie déductive de BonJour échoue à fournir une argumentation convaincante en faveur du PI. Je conclus en exposant les implications des tentatives visant à défendre le principe à partir d’arguments a priori. (shrink)

In this, the second of two articles outlining a theory of communicative competence, the author questions the ability of Chomsky's account of linguistic competence to fulfil the requirements of such a theory. ?Linguistic competence? for Chomsky means the mastery of an abstract system of rules, based on an innate language apparatus. The model by which communication is understood on this account contains three implicit assumptions, here called ?monologism?, ?a priorism?, and ?elementarism?. The author offers an outline of a theory (...) of communicative competence that is based on the negations of these assumptions. In opposing the first two assumptions he introduces distinctions, respectively, between semantic universals which process experiences and those that make such processing possible, and between semantic universals which precede all socialization and those that are linked to the conditions of potential socialization. Against elementarism, he argues that the semantic content of all possible natural languages does not consist of combinations of a finite number of meaning components. Differences in systems of classification preclude this, and such differences can be seen to infect all respects of intercultural comparison. Using the notion of ?performative utterance?, the author elucidates the role of dialogue?constitutive universals as part of the formal apparatus required of a?; speaker's capacity to communicate. He then notes what would be required of a general semantics based on a theory of communicative competence; and finally points out how this theory might be used for social analysis. (shrink)

I argue that although Ockham’s Razor (OR) has its origins in a-priorist ontological mandates according to the purposes of natural theology and natural philosophy as influenced by it, the principle has taken on significant empirical and contingent materialist connotations and conceptual content since the scientific revolution. I briefly discuss the pluralism of the concept of OR historically and in contemporary science and philosophy. I then attempt to align scientific metaphysics with contemporary conceptions of OR, and to demonstrate that ontic parsimony (...) is an indispensable element of scientific (contingent and anti-a-priorist) metaphysics. I then further deploy that scientific metaphysics to propose a contingently grounded semi-formal approach, with set theoretic features, and then with information theoretic features, to provide a way of assessing when a scientific theory and its ontology are aligned with OR appropriately in the context of the proposed scientific metaphysics. (shrink)

The question of how and why the application of mathematics to physical reality is possible has occupied philosophers for many centuries. In contemporary discussions, Philip Kitcher’s attack on a priorist approaches to the question is particularly interesting, for it suggests that there is no global answer (Kitcher 1983, Chapters 1-4). In this essay, I would like to develop his insight by arguing, first, that the problem of how mathematics relates to physical reality should be addressed by an appeal to the (...) history of mathematics and the sciences in the form of case studies which analyze the peculiar and changing ways in which these domains interact. Generalizations about such interaction should be made carefully, in a kind of local and piecemeal retrospective; I believe that the historical record will show that the grounds of justification and the form of applied mathematics changes dramatically from one historical era to the next. (shrink)

Michael Devitt has been developing an influential two-pronged attack on the a priori for over thirteen years. This attack does not attempt to undermine the coherence or significance of the distinction between the a priori and the a posteriori, but rather to answer the question: 'What Can We Know A Priori?' with: 'Nothing'. In this paper I explain why I am dissatisfied with key extant responses to Devitt's attack, and then take my own steps towards resisting the attack as it (...) appears in two recent incarnations. Devitt aims firstly to undermine the motivation for believing in any a priori knowledge, and secondly to provide reasons directly against believing in any. I argue that he misidentifies the motivations available to the a priorist, and that his reasons against believing in the a priori do not take account of all the options. I also argue that his attempt to combine the two prongs of the attack into an abductive argument for his anti-a priorist position does not succeed. (shrink)

I argue that recent rationalists' accounts of a priori knowledge suffer from two substantial weaknesses: an inadequate phenomenology of a priori insight , and the error of psychologism. I show that Husserl's theory of a priori knowledge presents a defensible and viable alternative for the contemporary rationalist, an alternative that addresses both the ontology and phenomenology of rational intuition, as well as such contemporary concerns as the possibility and character of a priori error, the empirical defeasibility of a priori claims, (...) the relation of mind to necessity, and the role of conception and imagination in a priori knowledge. Consequently, I conclude that Husserl's theory provides the needed response to the 20 th century critique of rationalism, and its attendant a priorism, as mysterious and obscure. (shrink)

Beginning with an attempt to remove what he believes are the most common misconceptions about Hegel, e.g., that he is a "transcendent metaphysician," a "subjectivist," and an "a priorist," Findlay goes on to deal with Hegel's concept of Geist and his dialectical method. He argues that Hegel's philosophy does not consist of a body of truths, but rather of an exhaustive and subtle analysis of all possible ways of conceiving experience. Hegel's is, he holds, "one of the most anti-metaphysical of (...) philosophical systems, one that remains most within the pale of ordinary experience, and which accords no place to entities or properties lying beyond that experience, or to facts undiscoverable by ordinary methods of examination".--R. E. (shrink)

Joel Pust has recently challenged the Thomas Reid-inspired argument against the reliability of the a priori defended by Alvin Plantinga, Nicholas Wolterstorff, William Alston, and Michael Bergmann. The Reidian argument alleges that the Cartesian insistence on the primacy of a priori rationality and subjective sensory experience as the foundations of epistemic justification is unwarranted because the same kind of global skeptical scenario that Cartesians recognize as challenging the legitimacy of perceptual beliefs about the external world also undermine the reliability of (...) a priori rationality. In reply, Pust contends that some a priori propositions are beyond doubt and that fact can be used to support the overall reliability of reason. This paper challenges Pust’s argument. I argue that while Pust successfully undermines a radical skeptical view of reason, he does not refute a more modest skepticism. I conclude with some suggestions for Cartesian a priorists. (shrink)

The work of cognitive psychologists, philosophical naturalists, post-modernists, and other such epistemic subversives conspires to endanger the well being of traditional analytic epistemology. Stephen Stich ( et tu Stich) has contributed his design for epistemology's coffin. I look hard at his proposed radical revision of epistemology. The ostensible target of Stich's analysis is the traditional enterprise of analytic epistemology. It is, however, the conceptual pillars that underpin both the traditional analytic and naturalist epistemologies that are the primary focus. It is (...) a conceptual domain neutral to the priorists and naturalists which Stich calls normative cognitive monism . Normative cognitive monism is the view that there is a unique system of cognitive processes that people should use. The point of Stich's analytical exercise is to disabuse us of the belief that there is such a unique and global set of standards by which cognitive performance is to be evaluated. He argues that all the evidence, both empirical and conceptual, leads away from this ultimately chauvinistic view and converges on normative cognitive pluralism which is the denial of monism. The same evidence that informs normative cognitive monism confirms normative cognitive pluralism. The empirical evidence is provided by the results of celebrated experiments on reasoning, or as Stich calls it, cognitive performance. The conceptual evidence derives from the failure of naturalistic accounts of intentional content. Stich's (1983) derisive view of theories of intentional content adumbrated in From Folk Psychology to Cognitive Science is now the linchpin of his pragmatic theory of cognitive evaluation. (shrink)

This article begins with discussions of rationalist, a priori and empiricist, a posteriori thinking in philosophy. It then argues that classically, sociology is rationalist or a priori. Sociology — Weber, Simmel, Durkheim and Marx — moves from Kant's epistemological a priori to the social a priori. It moves from the question of how knowledge is possible to the question of how society is possible. This question of the possibility of society becomes quickly one of social control and social order in (...) functionalism and Parsons. The article argues instead for an aposteriorist, de facto empiricist sociology that breaks with this ultimately normative question. This aposteriorist sociology would instead investigate social processes in their very factuality, their open-endedness, complexity, and path dependency. A priorism in sociology, I would argue, is dominant in both positivism and phenomenology. The article opposes to phenomenology's transcendentaI rationalism a `transcendental empiricism' that is illustrated with Edmund Burke's English and aposteriori aesthetics of the sublime. Sociology today needs to be relevant to study of `emerging' nations like China. The article argues for an aposteriorist, empiricist sociology here, and looks at debates on property law in today's China. Here we look at rationalist and a priori notions of clear, distinct and divisible property in Continental reception of Roman law. We counterpose to this English, empiricist (a posteriori) Common Law notions of property as a bundle of rights, in which property is not clear and distinct but vague like a boundary object. We look at how this is instantiated in China. With François Jullien, we contrast a Chinese, effectively empiricist, aposteriorist notion of the universal to Western rationalist and a priori universalism. We look at the implications for international geopolitics and a possible Chinese route to democracy. With Jullien, we counterpose an aposteriorist Chinese notion of `activity' to the Western a priori notions of `action' found in Weber and Parsons. The Chinese `activity' is more processual, more relational, less goal-oriented, more path-dependent than our Western notion of `action'. The article argues that in the twenty-first century when national social control is partly displaced by global uncertainty, and when the ascendancy of the West is coming increasingly under question, that such an empiricist, aposteriorist sociology is suitable. (shrink)

The Problem of Perception offers two arguments against direct realism--one concerning illusion, and one concerning hallucination--that no current theory of ...

Šešelja and Straßer’s critique fails to hit its target for two main reasons. First, the argument is not that Kuhn is a rationalist because he is a coherentist. Although Kuhn can be taken as a rationalist because of his commitment to epistemic values, coherence analysis provides a more comprehensive characterisation of cognitive process in scientific change than any of these values alone can offer. Further, we should understand Kuhn as characterising science as the best form of rationality we have outside (...) logic, which rules out algorithmic rationality and allows non-cognitive factors to play a role in theory change. Second, Šešelja and Straßer overemphasise the importance of a priori reasoning in Kuhn, which was only an alternative to his earlier historical-empirical approach. My suggestion is that Kuhn’s neo-Kantian historical cognitivism integrates the earlier empirical and the later a-prioristic orientations. According to it, that any understanding of the world is preconditioned by some kind of mental module that is liable to change, detected as a discontinuity in the historical record of science.Keywords: Thomas S. Kuhn; Rationality; Scientific change; Coherentism; Kantianism; Correspondence theory of truth. (shrink)

In this paper I examine Grace A. de Laguna’s theory of universals in its historical context and in relation to contemporary debates in analytic metaphysics. I explain the central features of her theory, arguing that her theory should be classified as a form of immanent realism and as a powers ontology. I then show in what ways her theory affords a theory of modality in terms of potentialities and discuss some of its consequences along the way.

This paper achieves two general objectives. It first analyses Bernard Hodgson's "Economic As Moral Science" as a path-breaking internal critique of neo-classical economic theory, and it then demonstrates that the underlying neo-classical paradigm he presupposes suffers from a deeper-structural myopia than his standpoint recognizes. EMS mainly exposes the a priori moral prescriptions underlying orthodox consumer choice theory - namely, its classical utilitarian ground and four or, as argued here, five hidden universal categorical-ought prescriptions which the theory presupposes as instrumental imperatives: (...) comparability evaluations by all consumer judgements; non-satiety of consumer desire; consistency and transitivity of consumer preferences; diminishing rate of marginal substitution by consumer choice; and an unlimited aggregate growth of commodity production, or "the liberal growth ethic". The article argues that Hodgson's refutation of the neo-classical claims of "value neutral scientific method" is sound, that his bridging of the Humean reason-desire divide by the "rational review" of wants is resonantly demonstrated, and that his argument for conversion of an "a priori-cum-normative-cum-idealized" neoclassical theory into scientific status is logically plausible but morally abhorrent. The principal objection to Hodgson's magisterial exposé of neo-classical doctrine's moral a priorism is that the latter's normative presuppositions are profoundly deranged at a level that he himself assumes as given. In consequence, there is theoretical closure at three levels: to the underlying "life economy" of non-priced and non-profit production and distribution of goods otherwise in short supply; to the "civil commons" infrastructure sustaining these non-commodity systems of social and ecological production and distribution; and to the systemic despoiling of both by monetized market mechanisms which are falsely assumed as the defining limits of "the economy". (shrink)

A. H. Louie's More Than Life Itself is an exploratory journey in relational biology, a study of life in terms of the organization of entailment relations in living systems. This book represents a synergy of the mathematical theories of categories, lattices, and modelling, and the result is a synthetic biology that provides a characterization of life. Biology extends physics. Life is not a specialization of mechanism, but an expansive generalization of it. Organisms and machines share some common features, but organisms (...) are not machines. Life is defined by a relational closure that places it beyond the reach of physicochemical and mechanistic dogma, outside the reductionistic universe, and into the realm of impredicativity. Function dictates structure. Complexity brings forth living beings. (shrink)

This book argues for the use of nonideal theory in social ontology. The central claim is that a paradigm shift is underway in contemporary social ontology, from ideal to nonideal, and that this shift should be fully followed through. To develop and defend this central claim, the first step is to show that the key questions and central dividing lines within contemporary social ontology can be fruitfully reconstructed as a clash between two worlds, referred to as ideal and nonideal social (...) ontology. Ideal social ontology is characterized by consensus and cooperation, while nonideal social ontology is characterized by conflict and contestation. The second step is to show that, when taken together, objections to the standard model of ideal social ontology (the dominant version of ideal social ontology) imply that this model needs to be given up in favor of nonideal social ontology. In other words, we should look to nonideal rather than ideal social ontology for core concepts. The third step is to offer a positive account, called the power view, of nonideal social ontology. This account places the concept of social power at the core of a general theory of the social world and replaces the flat and narrow conception of power in ideal social ontology with a richer and more extensive conception. In addition, it rectifies a shortcoming in nonideal social ontology by attending to class, which has been notably and oddly overlooked in the literature. (shrink)

This companion is a cutting-edge primer to critical forms of the posthumanities and the feminist posthumanities, aimed at students and researchers who want to catch up with the recent theoretical developments in various fields in the humanities, such as new media studies, gender studies, cultural studies, science and technology studies, human animal studies, postcolonial critique, philosophy and environmental humanities. It contains a collection of nineteen new and original short chapters introducing influential concepts, ideas and approaches that have shaped and developed (...) new materialism, inhuman theory, critical posthumanism, feminist materialism, and posthuman philosophy. A resource for students and teachers, this comprehensive volume brings together established international scholars and emerging theorists, for timely and astute definitions of a moving target – posthuman humanities and feminist posthumanities. (shrink)

I. Ókor -- II. A középkor és a reneszánsz -- III. Az újkor.

La admirable riqueza cultural y artística del Renacimiento esconde una desoladora miseria y aquella "edad de la abundancia" contrasta con una inmensa pobreza. Lejos de ser una broma o una pesadilla, la celebrada Utopía de Tomás Moro fue antes que nada un desafío insoslayable, pues proponía que ninguna sociedad merece tal nombre si tolera la miseria de un solo pobre. Rico y pobre explora la cuestión en ese libro de 1516 y en otros del escritor londinense para concluir con un (...) esbozo de su vida a la luz de la pobreza como virtud indispensable y libertadora. He aquí un hombre afortunado que no fue indiferente ante el infortunio de tantos y que vio en la humanitas la virtud por excelencia que lleva a una constante atención y cuidado del prójimo. Inspirado por un cambio de actitud en su época, así como por su fe cristiana y la mejor tradición estoica, mostró una robusta preocupación sobre el tema subrayando el valor social que debe tener toda riqueza, tanto a nivel estatal como individual, destacando la grave obligación cívica de los ricos y la necesidad que tienen todos, ricos y pobres, de empeñarse en la práctica de cierto desprendimiento y generosidad si no quieren mermar su propia humanidad y fallecer en su avaricia. La percepción de la miseria había cambiado de tal manera que su remedio ya no podía estar en una u otra limosna en plazas e iglesias, sino en la acción bien pensada y perentoria de todo gobierno que se tenga por justo. Sir Tomás Moro, privilegiado desde la cuna y seguro en su trabajo profesional, vio la pobreza de tantos como un desastre social, pero uno que, al mismo tiempo, debería llevar a todo ser humano a ver en el desprendimiento y generosidad una excelencia o virtud que alumbra la "otra" libertad, y tan íntima y valiosa que en su caso brilló aun en la prisión y ante el horror de una muerte injusta y atroz." -- Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

Articles on the life and works of Āraja Ālī Mātubbara, 1901-1986, Muslim philosopher and author from Bangladesh.

Commentary on the Brahmasūtra of Bādarāyaṇa, aphoristic work on Vedanta philosophy.