The article raises the problem of the ambiguity and polysemantic nature of the complex and heterogeneous semantics of the concept of science. This concept includes theories and methods, models and classifications of reality, scientific laws and laws of nature, scientific thinking, scientific publications, experiments and laboratory activities, scientific institutes and research teams, scientific research, expertise and scientific disciplines, scientific knowledge and scientific truth, etc. Nevertheless, with all the abovementioned complexity, science exhibits the properties of a single, dynamically developing complex phenomenon (...) and, accordingly, requires an appropriate interdisciplinary, complex definition that is sensitive to its fundamental contexts: thematic, social and temporal. (shrink)

The development of science and technology in the Age of Enlightenment came to the idea of a language for describing technical and technological achievements that could facilitate mutual understanding between scientists, artisans, inventors, as well as production organizers and government agencies. This task seemed easily achievable, and the French Academy of Sciences undertook a special edition of the encyclopedic type “Description of Sciences and Crafts” to create such a language. However, the edition was not completed and was partly continued in (...) the “Encyclopedia” of Diderot and D’Alembert, which for the first time in the practice of encyclopedic publications began not only to study crafts and technical achievements, but also to visualize them in special engravings. In Russia, the analysis of technical and technological discourse occurred later, in the late 18th – early 19th centuries. Russian authors had the opportunity to take into account the experience of encyclopedic publications in France and Britain and to see that the project of creating a universal language uniting artisans, scientists and those in power could not be fully realized. However, the problem of mutual understanding between different social groups involved in the process of production and exploitation of new technologies remained unresolved, so work in this direction was being carried out, although sometimes it remained beyond the interest of intellectual historians and historians of science. The article compares European and Russian sources of the 18th century devoted to this issue, as well as a number of Russian sources of the early 19th century related to the analysis and understanding of scientific and technological achievements, new vocabulary and new relationships generated by technical and technological development. It is concluded that the introduction of these sources into scientific circulation will be promising for the study of technical discourses and trends in their development. (shrink)

The paper deals with the epistemological problems posed by the application of the modus ponens rule in cognitive processing of distributed information. Distinguishing the deductive correctness of a rule of inference from its normativity for rational belief, we consider ‘counterexamples’ of modus ponens proposed in modern epistemology of logic that endanger not its model-theoretic validity, but epistemic rationality for boundedly rational cognitive agents. We explain the epistemic lacunas in the closure of knowledge according to modus ponens revealed by Dretske’s ‘counterexamples’ (...) by a variety of standards of validity that go beyond ‘common sense’. However, the epistemic ‘counterexamples’ of modus ponens proposed by McGee, Kolodny and MacFarlane require, in our opinion, an appeal to less obvious epistemic phenomena, which can be discovered by reasoning for interpretation. We demonstrate that the supposed ‘counterexamples’ to modus ponens do not conflict with either the epistemic neutrality of logic or its epistemic relevance to boundedly rational agents. On the contrary, the appeal to reasoning for interpretation, which is needed to resolve the difficulties caused by these ‘counterexamples’, helps to achieve a balance between the epistemic constraints of reasoning agents and the logical requirements for the correctness of their interpretive and deductive cognitive operations. (shrink)

This publication examines in a historical-scientific context some of the assertions and statements of S. Fuller’s article “Galileo’s truth: prolegomena to Feyerabendian research ethics” published in this issue of the journal. The main emphasis is placed on the critical analysis of the “logic of Galileo’s situation in the spirit of historical re-enactment” proposed by S. Fuller’s and “the lessons that Galileo would have drawn” from the situation of his time. The author of this article believes that the most controversial point (...) in the work of S. Fuller, if we evaluate it from the historical-scientific point of view, is the construction of an extremely idealized model of Galileo’s personality and worldview and historical background without due consideration of what is currently known about the Italian scientist and his epoch. (shrink)

This article considers the research ethics appropriate to Paul Feyerabend’s notorious ‘methodological anarchist’ approach to the history and philosophy of science, concluding that it might be especially appropriate for our ‘post-truth’ times. The article begins by noting that Feyerabend favorite historical figure, Galileo, appears Janus-faced in his corpus. The article focuses on the positive image of someone who broke institutionalized rules of inquiry in pursuit of a ‘higher truth’ that was fully realized by Newton and his successors. The logic of (...) Galileo’s early seventeenth century situation was that decisions about permissible forms of inquiry and inference were based on mixed political and epistemic criteria – and that this was known, and sometimes admitted, by all parties. Galileo played with this ambiguity to some but by no means complete success, largely because he could not properly ground his ‘higher truth’. The article proceeds to show that Galileo’s situation was not unique but commonplace in the history of science, a point that has become clearer since the rise of archival historical research in the nineteenth century. Moreover, the institutional incentives to commit, cover up and detect what we now call ‘research fraud’ have been very uneven. Most such fraud has probably passed undetected sufficiently long to be incorporated in the body of accepted scientific knowledge. In recent years, however, increased attention has been given to research fraud due to the increased existential and financial stakes involved, which in turn have contributed to science’s larger legitimacy crisis in the post-truth era. The article ends on a Feyerabendian note, suggesting that research findings should include sunset clauses and statues of limitations. (shrink)

The current discussion within the framework of applied epistemology and interdisciplinary field opens up the possibilities for a linguistic approach. The paper presents the instance of linguistic analysis of technical scientific discourse. The empirical data includes the texts from mining and mineral processing sphere. The analysis focuses on the rhetorical devices, the manifestation of subjective, authorial identity and the interaction between the author/subject and the prospective addressee. The credibility of the obtained results is established through the comparison of English and (...) Russian linguistic and cultural traditions. The revealed rhetorical patterns, namely the authorial self-identification, the communicative distance and building a dialogue with the audience, contribute to the understanding of cognitive characteristics of researchers and their culturally determined specificity. English researchers in the field of technoscience are more likely to find a balance between the objective presentation of data and the authorial reference. The rhetorical devices used by English technoscientists aim to enhance communicative efficiency and outline the boundaries of the researcher’s responsibility. Russian technoscience demonstrates an impersonal manner and the lack of personal involvement in the scientific narration. (shrink)

Summing up the discussion on “field” research in epistemology, we can say that its participants were very attentive to its theses and suggested several interesting ways of their development. Among these proposals is the study of the history of language and images of science used by Russian scientists, starting from the 18th century. An important example is the attempt in Europe and Russia to create a universal language understandable to all educated people, in which it would be possible to describe (...) nature, science, and crafts. No less serious is the proposal to pay attention to the socio-cultural contexts of science and technology in Russia in the 19th century. In this field, we can encounter many concepts that will help us understand how to understand and describe scientific activity in Russian society with its historical features. Here, various optics are possible that enrich each other. An illustration using a specific example of how fruitful the interaction of different areas of the humanities can be – in this case, epistemology and linguistics – in the study of technoscientific texts is very important. The linguist helps with the rhetorical means used by the authors of the articles, and also offers a comparison of the rhetoric of the Russian language with the rhetoric of the modern universal scientific language – English. When a practitioner – a publisher of technoscientific journals – enters the discussion, we see how difficult it is today to organize interdisciplinary communication, even promising interesting results. (shrink)

In addition to the already familiar “epistemology of concepts”, the article proposes a version of “field” epistemological research. Since the well-known approach of B. Latour is difficult to apply in domestic traditions, it is proposed to start with the most accessible – with the study of technoscientific texts, which exist in huge quantities and are widely available. It is possible to overcome the difficulties that arise when a scholar in the humanities reads technical texts, since any text, including technoscientific, has (...) rhetorical characteristics. One of the characteristics of a technoscientific text is its “objectivity”, impersonality. The article provides examples of such texts from high-level journals. It is concluded that technoscientists use positivistic language in their articles with its concepts of objectivity, accuracy and facts. The authors of the articles place themselves in an imaginary position of an “impartial spectator”. Such language does not allow scientists to develop modern intra-scientific communication, to discuss such problems of technoscience that were previously considered “external” and without understanding of which modern science cannot develop. The transformation of the positivist language into a ritualized language of “common sense” of scientists is probably connected with the general tendency toward bureaucratization of science and the influence of the state. Mass higher education plays a huge role in the transmission of rules and standards. Another possible source of standardization of simplified language of description may be the publishers of scientific journals. Technoscientists themselves, although infrequently, express concern about the current state of affairs, since they find that the serious problems that arise before them not only cannot be solved, but also cannot be clearly formulated. Epistemologists, who have their own traditions and methods of research, could, in interaction with technoscientists, help the latter understand what kind of “prose” they write and speak and in what directions the professional languages and worldviews of technoscience can be advanced. Such interactions will also help the development of epistemology itself. (shrink)

Based on the text of M. Mikeshin’s article, the author discusses how one can adjust the optics of epistemological reading of the article to see meta-scientific and cultural problems in a technoscientific text. The approaches developed within the STS (science and technology studies) field can help in this. STS point to the dependence of explanatory models of nature on specific epistemic cultures, and problematize the position of technological determinism, revealing a complex and contingent structure of interaction between nature, society, knowledge (...) and technology. Laboratory studies (B. Latour, S. Woolgar, K. Knorr-Cetina) pointed to the prominence of literature in scientific work and showed that text of a scientific paper is a form of representation of the universe and mythology of a given scientific group or school. The concept of “sociotechnical imaginaries” (Sh. Jasanoff) allows us to analyze how values and perceptions of the desired future are embodied in the design of technological systems and principles of science and technology policy. The related concept of “energy imaginaries” is used to explore the specificity of national energy systems and the relationship of material configurations of infrastructure to the culture and political imagination of a community. Analyzing the visual material of scientific papers allows us to “unpack” the specificity of models that represent a stable picture of scientific knowledge. STS methodological settings can help to investigate a set of contextual aspects and metaproblems that are present in a technoscientific text, even without being explicitly included by the author – they are the result of conventions accepted in the respective scientific or regional community, correlate with the horizon of national or social perceptions and objectives. The power of epistemological reading of the article is thus expressed in the problematization of obviousness, revealing the correlation of sociocultural contexts with technoscientific ways of describing the world. (shrink)

The political dimension of science is one of the major topics in STS. The “political” there has two distinguishable, although often complementary, faces: it can be considered as an object of study, as well as a source of conceptual metaphors. In the first case politics, understood literally as a domain of particular social relations concerning the public sphere and the distribution of power resources, is inevitably involved in the discussions of any issues related to the science’s role and place in (...) the society and the state. In the second case the sphere of politics is no longer a mere object of study but a field where new conceptual instruments for STS can be found or created. P. Feyerabend’s works allow to distinguish and illustrate these two ways of engaging the political in STS. His concept of epistemological anarchism is the result of metaphorical transition of the notion of anarchy from political discourse into philosophical one, while his referring to the problems of democracy in science and society is an example of using politics as a research object along with the science itself. The paper traces both the differences and conceptual relationships between these two faces of politics in STS from Feyerabend to some of the present-day approaches such as actor-network theory. Examples of the development of the issues raised by Feyerabend and the specifics of addressing them in modern projects, as well as the political dimension of the STS themselves are discussed. Particular attention is paid to the projects of B. Latour, J. Law and A. Mol and the concept of ontological politics, which comprises various complex forms of hybridization of politics as both an object and a tool of research, as well as of descriptive and prescriptive research modes. (shrink)

This essay deals with the views of two central members of the Vienna Circle, Moritz Schlick and Friedrich Waismann, on the nature of philosophy. It provides a commentary on ‘The Turning Point in Philosophy’, by the former, and ‘How I see Philosophy’, by the latter. The essay ends each commentary with some brief thoughts on what is to be learned from the paper about philosophy and the nature of its progress.

In his seminal book Against Method Paul Feyerabend demanded that “science should be taught as one view among many and not as the one and only road to truth and reality”. Given the recent backlash against scientific authority, which includes persisting denial of climate science, vaccine scepticism and the wider debate about the dawning of a postfactual era, it seems that Feyerabend had his will. However, scientific authority was never unchallenged and in particular contemporary discussions about an alleged coming of (...) post-factual times create the chimera of an enlightened era in which reason and facts dominated. In my paper I will reengage with the history of facts (Poovey) and address some of the problems that occur when scientific and non-scientific facts clash in the public realm. (shrink)

The article is devoted to the problem of the expert knowledge crisis, which consists in a decrease in public trust in scientific experts, the transformation of the role of experts in making socially significant decisions, escapism or neglect on the part of experts in relation to the society. We believe that in order to resolve the existing confrontation between society and experts, it is necessary to compare the positions of both, and then formulate common grounds that can serve for resolving (...) the conflict. We assign the role of moderator in the practice of resolving this conflict to politicians, who are forced to maneuver between the advice of experts and the opinions of voters, and also take responsibility for the consequences of implementing decisions. Reconstructing the position of experts, we rely primarily on the work of T. Nichols “The Death of Expertise”. We believe that it very clearly articulates the concerns of the scientific community about its current status, role and future fate, as well as the expert community’s understanding of the reasons for the current situation. The position of society is expressed in the works of P. Feyerabend. So, as the first task of our article, we see a comparison of these positions and identification of key points of conflict contradiction. Looking for resolving the conflict contradiction, we rely on the concept of communicative action by J. Habermas and the ideas of the actor-network theory of B. Latour. It is possible to compare all four positions thanks to the analytical approach to the history of philosophy of J. Barnes. An argumentative analysis makes it possible to clearly identify both the basic points of their contradiction and the positions common to all parties, which should form the basis for the search for consensus. Such basic positions are not the assessment of expert or profane knowledge, but the desire by all parties of communication to preserve the democratic structure of society. (shrink)

The paper reviews the Invited session "Science in a Free Society. On the Centenary of Paul Feyerabend", held within the framework of the XXV World Congress of Philosophy in Rome on August 2–3, 2024. It provides a brief summary of the talks as well as summarises the main issues of the event.

M.I. Mikeshin’s article continues to develop existing works in the epistemology of technoscience, presented on the Gornyi Zhurnal Journal pages as part of an informal “project”. The purpose of the “project” was to discover points of real interaction between technical scientists (mining and, partly, metallurgical sciences) and academic philosophy. Therefore, it is advisable to present in chronological order published research carried out outside philosophical institutions and professional epistemological periodicals.

This essay seeks to make the case for reading hermeneutic philosophy of science with Feyerabend. In addition, there is the question of science, as Nietzsche raises this question along with Feyerabend’s programmatic recommendations for traditional philosophy of science. Including a discussion of method in history as in theology and philology, including Nietzsche’s hermeneutics, this essay reviews Feyerabend’s exchanges with Lakatos along with the resistance of mainstream philosophy of science to hermeneutics as such. A discussion of Feyerabend’s ‘gods’ engages what he (...) invokes as ontological abundance as well as his criticism of the limitations of Popper’s critique of Parmenides requiring both historical/historiographical context, an understanding of science in practice, via a contextualization of Schrodinger, and via Plato’s epistemology along with Duhem on experiment and Riegl on style, crucial for Feyerabend on the notion of ‘progress,’ key for Lakatos and others, in art and science. (shrink)

Feyerabend had many interlocutors in his controversial career, and one of them was Kuhn. One key point of contention in their interaction was the divergence between the monism inherent in Kuhnian normal science and Feyerabend’s pluralism about the content and methodology of science and other systems of knowledge. In this paper I offer my perspective on this disagreement. After presenting Feyerabend’s critique of Kuhn, I argue that the disagreement between Kuhn and Feyerabend on this point was not as radical as (...) it may appear. Feyerabend respected the autonomy of diverse cultural and epistemological traditions, and such traditions are often monistic within themselves, in the manner of Kuhnian normal science. On the other hand, Kuhnian revolutions require the presence of competing paradigms at least during periods of extraordinary science. I propose a pluralist position that can accommodate local monism, but ultimately recommends going beyond monism for the purpose of productive interactions between different systems of practice. Such a pluralism can incorporate the advantages of both Feyerabend’s liberal epistemology and Kuhn’s advocacy of disciplined normal science. (shrink)

We argue that the concept of epistemic coercion is neither accurate nor useful for describing and thinking about the significance of the new practices of algorithmic curation, and that Foucault’s concept of rarefaction is better suited for this purpose. After establishing what Turner means by epistemic coercion, we show that it differs from how the concept of coercion is typically defined and used by philosophers and sociologists, especially because Turner does not identify a threat that causes the coerced people to (...) act under duress. We then detail our reasons for why the concept of coercion, to our minds, flattens and to some extent distorts our understanding of the practice of curation. Among these reasons are the blurry lines and interdependence between curation and self-curation, thus between “coercion” and “resistance”; the absence of a plausible “threat” that could justify conceptualizing the operation as coercion; the inescapability of curation in order to navigate the “information glut”; as well the question of whether users of social media are aware that their information environment is curated. Finally, and directly following from these reasons, we show that Foucault’s concept of discursive “rarefaction” offers a lot more insight into the novelty and nature of contemporary curation practices. Indeed, we argue that viewed from this perspective, social media appears to represent a new rearrangement and ordering of discourse, the formation of an interface between “ordinary utterances” and “disciplines,” between everyday talk and expert discourse. This intermediate realm, where discursive events are neither ephemeral nor preserved “in the true,” depends on rarefaction-qua-curation for its existence and functioning. (shrink)

In the friendly dispute between the philosophers of science Paul Feyerabend and Imre Lakatos, both authors proclaim their allegiance to fallibilism: a term first coined by Charles Sanders Peirce, though often associated more strongly with Karl Popper. Yet Lakatos charges that Feyerabend’s position amounts to scepticism rather than fallibilism, given that the latter accounts for theoretical change but not theoretical progress. Famously, progress for Lakatos occurs by way of a progressive research program, one that expands in scope over time, tackles (...) an ever more challenging range of problems, and often yields surprising verifications of its theories. But fallibilism is cheap if it merely entails the truism that the scientific consensus of any given moment might turn out to be false. If we describe knowledge in terms of the ancient and still influential formula “justified true belief,” there is good reason to hold that neither justification nor truth are attainable goals, and that they cannot even be approached asymptotically (as in the very different proposals of Alvin Plantinga and Martin Heidegger). Contra Lakatos this is not grounds for scepticism, but for what I term “weird fallibilism,” using “weird” in a technical sense drawn from my book on the American horror writer H.P. Lovecraft. Weird fallibilism is characterized by two fundamental claims: (1) truth never corresponds to reality, and (2) objects never correspond to their own qualities, a point in direct conflict with the “bundle of qualities” theory of objects handed down from British Empiricism. On this basis, a modification of the “justified true belief” criterion for knowledge is briefly sketched. (shrink)

This article problematizes the state of the contemporary scientific community, which fluctuates between the desire for autonomy and creative freedom, on the one hand, and responsibility to social challenges, on the other. In this context, the social meaning of Paul Feyerabend’s epistemological anarchism is reconstructed, revealing not only critical but also positive significance for contemporary science. Answering the two-sided question, “What kind of society does science need, and what kind of science does society need?”, Feyerabend gives a disappointing diagnosis of (...) both society and science. The political desire for ideological monism and totalitarianism is supported by science, which is sometimes a form of ideology – a militant rationalism that excludes alternative points of view – and in turn parasitizes society. This circle can only be broken in a regime of genuine pluralist democracy, which will lead to a change in the understanding of science and its role in society. The ability to “defamiliarize” (B. Brecht), to take the position of the “other”, to refuse to gain intellectual power – these are the key characteristics of free reason, as Feyerabend understood it. If we try to reconstruct a social group that possesses such a mind, then in the social projection it will include marginal people, dilettantes, scientists whose activities diverge from the disciplinary paradigm and norms of the standard scientific ethos. A precarian is such a subject of science that breaks the monopoly on the truth and contributes to changing the understanding of science. The question is raised about the productivity and effectiveness of the scientific precariat in relation to the concept of science in a free society, as well as to the positioning of this phenomenon in the context of current discussions about expert knowledge, citizen science and pseudoscience. (shrink)

I offer a new interpretation of Feyerabend’s ‘conquest of abundance’ narrative. I consider and reject both the ontological reading as implausible and the ‘historical’ reading as uncompelling. My own proposal is that the ‘conquest of abundance’ be understood in terms of an impoverishment of the richness of human experience. For Feyerabend, such abundance is ‘conquered’ when individuals internalize distorting epistemic prejudices including those integral to the theoretical conceptions associated with the sciences. I describe several ways, identified by Feyerabend, in which (...) individuals can be led to occlude the richness of their experience in ways that are existentially impoverishing. (shrink)

Epistemic coercion is a problem – something we need to do as well as something we need to avoid or resist. Epistemic coercion is a superficial problem – in two senses: First: we, or “they”, cannot actually control discourse except by controlling speakers and writers, which means that nobody can actually be stopped from saying what they will up until the moment they are sanctioned or cancelled. Second, through epistemic coercion we control the surfaces and motions of bodies we discipline (...) and mobilize. We can inscribe bodies but cannot conjure them into flesh from words alone – at least until our nanotechnologists can assemble atoms into life. (shrink)

One of the most challenging issues, essential for the actual state of science, is the search for a fragile balance between scientific normativity, openness, methodological proliferation and other key concepts, associated with the modern world of research. Paul Feyerabend understood science not as a detached and hermetic self-sufficient reality, but as a structural part of the social world, liable to politicization, discrepancies and inconsistency. His analysis of science, its strategies and institutions involved and, in a way, undermined a long living (...) concept of science as an objective, rational and neutral domain. Following his discoveries, today researchers in general, philosophers of science and social epistemologists in particular, face the problem of corrupted practices, which jeopardize the acquisition of true knowledge. According to the ideas of professor S. Turner, there are two strategies of approaching epistemic coercion: conformity or resistance. Aimed at scientific progress and sustainable development the scientists strive to overcome obstacles of technological, organizational and administrative nature. It presents the case of epistemic resistance. In other circumstances, when the mechanisms of epistemic coercion function without recognition and impediment, the epistemic environment conforms. Professor S. Turner’s article gives an in-depth analysis of epistemic coercion as a ubiquitous phenomenon, pervading intellectual and institutional practices of science and public life. Having stated the existence of the new instruments of epistemic control, he also sheds light on the requirement of the new forms of resistance. In the following article the author consequently scrutinizes the types of epistemic coercion offered by S. Turner. In order to highlight a technological perspective on all three types of epistemic coercion (information deprivation, normalizing/stigmatizing, legitimating/delegitimizing), the author places the emphasis on algorithm – based practices as a distinctive type of information deprivation. Presented from the standpoint of technological design, an algorithm could be seen as a technologically embodied form of epistemic coercion. Further on, the author argues that some of the means of resistance, given by prof. S. Turner, are more suitable to perform epistemic coercion, rather than resisting it. For instance, transparency has compromised itself as an untrustworthy concept put in use to conceal more information than to reveal. Tribalism is proven to be another arguable means of resistance because of its limiting effect on practices of open internal and external scientific communication. Finally, the author augments the list of means of epistemic coercion with construction of ignorance and coercive effect of expertise. (shrink)

Paul Feyerabend and Richard Rorty were both famously suspicious of an objective concept of truth, in part because they shared the suspicion that concepts like truth and reason were irrevocably anti-democratic. As Feyerabend saw it, an overreliance on a naive objectivist conception of truth and rationality encouraged a “tyranny of truth”, one according to which science should have an overly privileged role to play in deciding what society ought to do. Similarly, Rorty believed truth was a concept ill-suited for democracy. (...) In this paper, I offer some brief reflections on the view that political truth is ill-suited for democratic politics. I argue that Rorty and Feyerabend are right that the concepts of truth and knowledge have political meaning, and that as a result, the question of “who knows” (and who doesn't) are partly political questions. But while Feyerbеnd was right to think we cannot give priority to the epistemic over the political in democracy, neither, I conclude, should we reverse that priority. (shrink)

Stephen Turner identifies forms of epistemic coercion. My reply focuses on the source of experts’ power to epistemically coerce others. I identify one such source, which I call “The Epistemic Leviathan.” The Epistemic Leviathan is formed in a time of crisis, when some members of society grant experts the exclusive right to determine truths believing that only the experts can resolve the crisis. I suggest that we have seen this happen during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The last decade has seen a dramatic increase in literature on decolonisation of knowledge. The impression often given in recent literature is of wholesale neglect of the concerns of the decolonisation literature in what might be called ‘Western thought’ of preceding decades. This paper argues that Feyerabend was a notable figure within Western epistemic communities who expressed positions analogous to those of proponents of decolonisation. The first section presents the most striking contributions from Feyerabend’s work that, I suggest, bear on (...) questions of decolonisation. Four specific issues are identified based on those: the curriculum and the role of universities; the inspirational role of student protests; the concept of ‘epistemicide’; and, indigenous knowledge systems. The second section suggests a range of limitations of, and weaknesses in, Feyerabend’s analysis: no substantive engagement with history or literature on decolonisation; implicitly accepting the Сclaimed inherent association of science, rationalism and various forms of modernity with Western countries and cultures; the (rhetorical) construction of an unnecessary binary choice between science and traditional knowledge systems; underplaying agency through a form of othering; creating an unnecessarily stark binary of Western science and non-Western indigenous knowledge; and, as a consequence of all these, providing no substantive analysis of how science might be integrated with other knowledge systems and cultures. The concluding section provides a brief summary and identifies areas for future work. (shrink)

The presentation of the tension between the autonomy and authority of the scientific community should be recalibrated as the tension between the authority of the scientific community and the autonomy of individuals within a democratic state. Limiting the authority of the scientific community necessarily limits its autonomy (and in this sense the “tension” dissipates). Whatever constraints are imposed on the scientific community by the state, they do not by themselves sanction individual disregard for state policies. The tension, then, is between (...) the political authority of policy makers and the autonomy claimed by individuals. There should be no indiscriminate license for following one’s “gut feelings” when a state adheres to (scientific) expert recommendations that protect and save individual lives. (shrink)

This paper challenges Stephen Turner’s reading of Feyerabend’s Science in a Free Society. In particular, according to Turner, Feyerabend’s “critique represents a recognition that the regimes of science and expertise are ineradicably political and coercive. But if regimes of science and expertise are ineradicably political and coercive, what remains is the problem of our choice of regimes, and how to accommodate them in a democratic order.” This paper shows that by stretching the meaning of coercion so widely, Turner has misrepresented (...) Feyerabend’s position. In fact, the paper argues that Feyerabend offers a vision of liberal politics and science that can be made uncoercive, or at least worth having. In particular, this paper offers a new reading of Feyerabend’s account of ‘free exchange’ as an immanent critique of J.S. Mill’s liberalism. The paper concludes by diagnosing some tensions in Feyerabend’s vision and thereby also criticize Turner. (shrink)

This is a review of selected chapters from the book “Interpreting Feyerabend: Critical Essays” (ed. by K. Bschirr & J. Shaw). The choice of the papers for the review is justified by two main trajectories of the reception of Feyerabend’s ideas in the contemporary philosophy of science and epistemology: his criticism of the approach to the self-presentation of science and criticism of scientific modernity. The polemical thesis formulated on the basis of the review is that Feyerabend’s interpretation has an apologetic (...) orientation. His methodological views are interpreted as consonant with the values of scientific realism and scientific progress. The analysis of his project for science in a free society emphasizes its significance for the interests of science itself. (shrink)

Recent developments in social epistemology have applied a radically expansive notion of harm which encompasses beliefs and kinds of scientific knowledge. The implied or explicit implication of these notions is that these harms need to be suppressed. The notion of disinformation has turned this into institutional practice. The Covid pandemic saw the development and widespread use of actual means of knowledge suppression and epistemic engineering, both within science and with respect to expert claims, within nominally free societies. Paul Feyerabend’s Science (...) in a Free Society addressed these issues by critiquing the erasure of coercion from the past history of science and the practice of ignoring the coercive elements of expertise. Here I take this seriously, and turn the problem upside down by treating coercion and resistance to coercion as inherent parts of science and the public role and place in science and in discourse generally. Regardless of one’s views on these questions it is evident that the rise of digital technologies, such as social media, has created novel opportunities for control, distinctive forms of epistemic control, and a need for rethinking the possibility of resistance to the coercive powers of the new technologies. This is a preliminary formulation of some of the issues. (shrink)

In this reply to comments by Schliesser, Kochin, Kositna, Sassower, Miller, and Eyal and Sheremet, the underlying thesis of “Epistemic Coercion” is elaborated and explained. Epistemic Coercion is often thought to be impossible: no one can coerce belief. This is the thesis of epistemic voluntarism. But the techniques and responses the paper addressed were different: they were attempts to alter the epistemic environment. And this relates to the tacit. Voluntarism does not hold for the tacit, which is to say, that (...) which is produced by experience and by prior cognitive predispositions. The experiences of the digital world are subject to manipulation, and the manipulators can themselves be coerced. In this way a person’s tacit sense of what is normal or acceptable can be manipulated. But the same sense can be the basis of rejection of claims made in the name of expert authority. One difference between overt coercion and tacit manipulation is that the manipulation of epistemically relevant experience, through such means as algorithms governing social media content, is hidden from recipient, and more difficult to resist. But its effects are indirect, for example, in facilitating acceptance as normal. These effects are bound up with persuasion and acceptance generally, so this kind of manipulation represents an exercise of hidden power. (shrink)

This text is a replica of the article by E.V. Borisov А Straight Solution to Kripke’s problem. The proposed solution to the problem of skepticism regarding the meaning of a linguistic expression is based on the idea of language and speech activity, limited to the act of use. Such a truncated and one-sided version of the analysis of language presents a picture where the only subject capable of understanding the meanings of words is the speech agent himself. Although this approach (...) partially allows us to resolve the skeptical problem, it arises again when we pay attention not to the agent of speech, but to the recipient to whom speech activity is directed. (shrink)

The article has the goal to conceptualize the phenomenon of pseudoscience and its scope at the first quarter of the XXI century expires. The relevance, social and political importance of analyzing this phenomenon both at present and in historical retrospect in terms of studying the problem of demarcation of scientific and non-scientific knowledge emphasized. The existence of different types of scientific, quasi-scientific (deviant, proto-scientific) and non-scientific knowledge (pseudoscience, paranormal science, pseudoscience, shadow science) is pointed out. The expansion of pseudoscientific ideas (...) in recent years, caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as by the intensification of other global changes, described. The variety of pseudoscience making up, including pseudo-mathematics and pseudo-logic, described. The necessary attributes of scientific knowledge formulated and we consider pseudoscience as the alter ego of science. Attention drawn to the fact that the belonging of knowledge to pseudoscientific knowledge determined by the methods of obtaining this knowledge. The explanation of constant reproduction of pseudoscientific ideas from the cognitive point of view offered. Confidence is expressed that such ideas will be popular enough and can accompany mankind for a long time, which, however, does not at all reduce the significance of their analysis from the epistemology and philosophy of science perspective. (shrink)

The paper suggests a straight solution to the problem of meaning skepticism presented in Kripke’s Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language. The solution is based on Ladov’s moderate solution to the problem. Ladov’s solution is to the effect that the total skepticism cannot be a theory because it cannot be stated without performative contradiction. This entails that only a limited skepticism is possible as a theory. I argue that the limited skepticism is compatible with the view that meaning can be (...) known provided the knowledge of meaning is construed as an internal part of a speech act, not as a result of interpretation of behavioral facts. (shrink)

The paper presents a holistic notion of speech act and demonstrates its relevance for the straight solution to Kripke’s problem. Besides, the author replies to some comments and objections presented by the participants of the discussion.

A few years ago, an illusionist theory of consciousness appeared in the philosophy of consciousness. It makes an unexpected statement – there is actually no phenomenal consciousness, it is illusory. This illusion is created introspective distortion of physical processes in the brain, which seem to us to have special phenomenal properties. However, an equally strong form of physicalism in the philosophy of consciousness has already appeared more than fifty years ago – identity theory of the mental and physical. Moreover, the (...) proponents of illusionism themselves admit their connection with the identity theorists. As a result, it is reasonable to ask whether illusionism is simply a modern adaptation of the identity theory, and not a new independent theory. This article is devoted to this issue. First, the author presents both theories, focusing on their key statements, arguments and advantages described by the followers of the respective approaches. Then the author makes a comparison, highlighting common places and differences for the approaches. Among the former, the following are noted: the physicalist spirit of both theories; their denial of the existence of a special mental properties metaphysically different from physical ones; argumentation in favor of the pragmatic attractiveness of a theory; defending their key theses as primarily hypotheses that may turn out to be true; a similar strategy for explaining the error, as a result of which we come to the conclusion about the existence of the mental. However, the author also points out a number of serious differences: different attitudes to the possibility of neutral notion for properties of experience; differences in the vision of the content of the mind-body problem; illusionist denial of the real referent of the language of phenomenality; the development of the concept of illusion, which entails a number of new solutions and problems; the epistemological significance of the main arguments of illusionism is more influential in comparison with identity theory. As a result, the author comes to the conclusion that, despite the fact that a significant part of the content of the theories coincides, illusionism has a number of key differences. This testifies, on the one hand, to the skillful use of past achievements of the physicalist-oriented philosophy of consciousness, and, on the other, to the fundamental novelty and independence of illusionism. (shrink)

The article deals with the problem of the philosophy of interdisciplinarity, set forth in the work of the same name by J.K. Schmidt. The main goal the author sets for himself is to define the inner meaning of the concepts and goals of interdisciplinarity. In accordance with this, the tasks performed by the respective fields of work, divided into intrascientific and extrascientific. The first ones are related to fundamental research, rethinking the forms of scientific knowledge, methodologies, the relationship between man (...) and nature. The latter, embedded in social reality, are related to analysis of the problems of technoscience, knowledge production and science policy. Prof. Schmidt considers two approaches to interdisciplinarity: instrumental or strategic and critical-reflexive or communicative. The first of them is presented as a limited tool for solving actual problems of interdisciplinarity due to its proximity to soluchionism and its predominant focus on organizational and managerial problems of science. The critical-reflexive approach is, on the contrary, associated with a fundamental rethinking of the concept of knowledge. Interdisciplinarity is characteristic of the field of scientific research, while transdisciplinarity and its particular forms – object- and problem-oriented approaches – are associated with solving problems of the real world. The author conducts a comprehensive analysis of the problem of interdisciplinarity, analyzing the historical roots of technoscientific issues, assesses the current state of science, and proposes a paradigmatic ProTA program related to the realization of the predictive potential of the critical-reflexive approach to interdisciplinarity. (shrink)

A straight solution to Kripke’s problem proposed by Borisov is discussed in the article. The significance of the problem for modern philosophy of language and epistemology is established. Controversial aspects in Borisov’s study are analyzed. The main question is following. What solution to Kripke’s problem would be considered straight? It is argued that Borisov’s solution does not reach the level of a straight solution although it represents a significant step in this direction. The methodological importance of Borisov’s thesis that knowledge (...) of meaning is not an interpretation of the facts of speech behavior is substantiated. (shrink)

I connect the idea of an existential turn in philosophical science, presented by Ilya Kasavin and Vladimir Porus in their recent article, with the problem of rationality and culture crisis, as well as the opposition of profession and vocation in Max Weber’s famous speech on politics. I offer an analysis of the structure of vocation to politics and to science as affects of a special kind. To do this, I draw on Jacques Lacan’s analysis of hysteria. My conclusions are that (...) the structure of a target affect coincides to that of hysteria. This means that scientist tries to show that the truth exists, seeks to force other people to recognize this fact and submit to science as an only acceptable form of worldview. Until this can be done, the scientist gives his relationship to the community the character of service to the highest entity. At the same time, he waits for the inversion of this service, i.e. a transition to power through acknowledgement. It should be noted that scientific research is never limited by the science itself, no matter how dangerous it may be. The existential choice in science is a choice between the pursuit of truth in natural sciences and exact sciences and maintaining the sustainability of culture in social and humanitarian knowledge. The latter, contrary to Weber, is always intertwined with politics. The first is not political, but affective. This allows me to see the definition of the vocation to the science that Kasavin gives in a new way. At the center of the “cognitive-existential mood” in the search for truth, affect dominates, the engine of which is hysteria, and in its basic attitudes truth and the scientist are opposed to the plausible and the profane. (shrink)

In his article Evgeny Borisov offers an original solution to Kripke’s sceptical problem of meaning. Its conceptual core is the point of view of the participant of speech acts. He believes that first-person statements of speech act participants like “I know for certain that the expression ‘e’ is used by me in the meaning of m” cannot carry any epistemic fallacies. As a criticism, I propose to point out that non-factual Cartesian semantics have serious epistemic flaws that make it vulnerable (...) to sceptical attacks and accusations of petitio principii. (shrink)

A straight solution to S. Kripke’s skeptical problem, proposed by E.V. Borisov, is considered. The main assumption of the argumentation of a straight solution is the thesis about the possibility of knowing meanings. The article shows the need to further define the terms used in the argumentation, in particular the concept of introspection.

The paper deals with the questions of whether naturalization of ethical theory is possible and how radical it should be. The answer to these questions depends largely on the scientific explanations of the process of moral evaluation. The author concentrates on a moderate version of naturalization, which involves merely correcting the conclusions of normative ethics by appealing to scientific evidence. A good example of moderate naturalization is the project of debunking deontological moral principles of J. Green. From J. Green’s point (...) of view, the most important of such principles (“it is impermissible to harm other people as a means of achieving a utilitarian goal, but it is permissible to cause such harm as a side-effect of its achievement”) reflects the functioning of the emotional alarm system, which in the early ages of human history protected small groups from internal violence using contact means of harm. The means of harm have since expanded, but the inflexible emotional part of our psyche still dictates the limits of permissibility. This dictate has no reasonable grounds, and the abovementioned principle cannot claim to be objective and universal. The author shows that the data used by J. Green is different from the results of studies by Yu.I. Aleksandrov and K.R. Arutyunova on the impact of alcohol intoxication on making deontological and utilitarian moral evaluations. These results indicate that both the deontological and the utilitarian principles are partly based on the emotional subsystem. Accordingly, a normative ethicist is forced to choose as the scientific basis of his or her research some of the opposing scientific models that explain the process of making moral evaluations. Some of the models are consistent with the moderate naturalization project, others are not. The choice between models depends exclusively on already taken metaethical and normative preferences. (shrink)

The paper aims to analyze three discussions pertaining to the artificial intelligence project that took place on both sides of the “Iron Curtain” since the 1960s: 1) E.V. Ilyenkov – D.I. Dubrovsky (USSR), 2) H. Dreyfus – computer scientists (USA), 3) H. Dreyfus – H. Collins (USA – UK). The authors observe the originality of the arguments of Soviet philosophers in comparison with the discussions in the US and UK. The basis for a comparative analysis of these discussions is the (...) typology of social intercourse paradigms, which assumes the existence of three fundamentally different views of humans as social beings: the information-instrumental, the existential-phenomenological, and the social-institutional paradigms. These views correlate with the ideas about humans within different theoretical structures examining artificial intelligence. The information-instrumental paradigm poses the problem of social intercourse regarding communication, material, and informational exchange (D.I. Dubrovsky, computer scientists). The social-institutional paradigm considers social intercourse as personification, actualization, and implementation of the structural characteristics of social relations (E.V. Ilyenkov). The existential-phenomenological paradigm characterizes social intercourse as the realization of the internal potency of a self-conscious individual (H. Dreyfus). The paper exposes that the theoretical and methodological foundations of the discussions under consideration are similar to the paradigmatic foundations of the analysis of social intercourse in social philosophy and social sciences. There are “two and a half floors” in the research of problems associated with the entry of artificial intelligence technologies into the everyday life of society: 1) philosophy, computer and cognitive sciences; 2) social sciences; 3) interdisciplinary research. A particular paradigmatic structure and a unique research problem characterize each of them. In conclusion, “new old questions” are highlighted that structure the field of contemporary social analytics for studying artificial intelligence and artificial sociality. (shrink)

It is increasingly common to conceive of scientific research as something that can be planned, managed, and assessed by applying modern techniques of project management. Expecting research to follow certain standardized procedures to achieve clearly defined goals has a long tradition, in particular, in the natural sciences and has arguably contributed to the acceptance of science as an authoritative force that makes tangible contributions to social progress. For the social sciences, however such a narrow understanding of scientific research causes serious (...) problems. Social science research doesn’t always fit in the logic of project management. Moreover, attempts to adjust research practices to correspond with external, managerial experiences are far more consequential and damaging to the social sciences. This article interrogates the prospects and consequences of project thinking in the social sciences and discusses the likely epistemological consequences. To do so, it will recapitulate the historical and social developments that lead to the adoption of managerial principles in social science research and contrasts them with the philosophical principles that underpinned the scientification of thinking about the social. (shrink)

Science communicators, including journalists and experts in the field of public relations in science, are often seen as an external and optional addition to the scientific community. Their influence on scientific practices and public perception of science is often underestimated, and their role is understood as a technical one: as a simple retelling of scientific research in a language understandable to the public. In this paper, using the example of such a criterion as “creativity”, we propose to reconsider the role (...) of science communicators more broadly. The paper shows that it is science communicators, rather than representatives of the scientific community, who should be the primary subjects of evaluating articles according to the criterion of creativity. The authors argue that the creativity of scientific research is an essential element in the development of science as a social phenomenon, rather than just a component of its internal operation. Science communicators are not considered as “external” actors in relation to science – their work has a significant impact on the fundamental criteria for scientific success, such as the establishment of scientific reputation, and influences the perception of science among the general public. They do not just describe research, they form ideas about the value aspects of science in society and influence the image of science, which is broadcast into the public space, selecting articles according to certain criteria that are not always the most significant in science, endowing scientific results with a special, socially relevant significance that is not explicitly presented in the texts of scientific articles. The activities of science communicators can influence the funding and development of a scientific field, its public and government support, its popularity among applicants, students and young scientists – and, consequently, the quality of scientific personnel involved in this field. In fact, science communicators turn out to be key architects of public, and often intrascientific, ideas about science and various scientific fields. (shrink)

The purpose of the article is to analyze the meaning of examples in C. Hempel’s works. Hempel uses many examples referring to readings of magnetic hand, burning of white phosphorus, predictions of properties of some elements of the table of Mendeleev, to astrophysical hypotheses, terms of total solar eclipse, throwing of dice, as well as on unmarried men, on white and black swans, green mermaids, black crows and white shoes, blue roses, predictions of Jones’ recovery, the eruption of Vesuvius, the (...) assassination of Julius Caesar, and other “special cases” and “concrete facts”. The question is raised as to whether the case studies are mere illustrative material, a form of argumentation; a way of verifying Hempel’s ideas, their “demonstrable confirmation”, and in this sense a definite empirical basis for the study. The necessity of analyzing concrete examples in the context of Hempel’s theoretical research is shown, for which the examples turn out to be an occasion for investigating the logic of confirmation and the logic of explanation, for analyzing the structures of explanans and explanandum, for understanding the differences in inductive and deductive logical constructions, and for analyzing “quasi-induction”. The paper discusses Hempel’s famous example, the crow paradox, which is named in his honor and is a kind of logical provocation. (shrink)

The article considers the straight solution of S. Kripke’s skeptical problem concerning the stability of linguistic meaning proposed by E.V. Borisov’s. The distinction between two kinds of introspection related to the knowledge of linguistic meaning is analyzed. The moderate solution of the skeptical problem as a basis for the straight solution is explored. It is suggested that R. Carnap’s conception of linguistic frameworks can be useful for the solution of skeptical problem.

The article shows that Borisov’s direct solution to the problem of skepticism about meaning using a special type of introspection is associated with the assumption of the agent’s direct access to their own consciousness. This assumption has two complicating consequences: the analogy with Moore’s paradox and the Platonic concept of meaning. It is also shown that direct access to meaning as a way of Borisov’s direct solution of the skeptical paradox significantly uses the performativity of the speech act, narrowing the (...) scope of analysis of the original problem. The little-studied problem of distinction in the analysis of the skeptical paradox of meaningful and formalized mathematics is noted. (shrink)

The paper discusses a solution to Kripke’s skeptical problem proposed by E.V. Borisov. It shows that this solution is based on the idea of “introspection2”, i.e. intuitive knowledge of meaning, which: a) is an essential part of a speech act, b) is given in our immediate experience and c) doesn’t form a source of empirical facts. The author of the paper admits the significance of the proposed idea for the discussion of the skeptical problem. Nevertheless, he argues that: 1) as (...) a point of the discussion the idea of introspection2 needs to be established more extensively; 2) this idea reinforces not a straight solution of the problem, but skeptical. (shrink)

The article examines the main ideological content of the work of the community of scientists and philosophers, which entered the history of philosophy under the name “The Vienna Circle”. Representatives of this association viewed their main methodological task in the logical analysis of the language of science in order to eliminate metaphysical – pseudoscientific – concepts. They investigated the structure of scientific theories, the functions of the theory – explanation and prediction, the processes of justification, confirmation and refutation of theories. (...) Their results were widely recognized, set down essential influence on scientific problems as well as style of philosophical and academic studies, and are still included in textbooks on the philosophy of science. The members of the Vienna Circle created the first holistic concept of science, which gave impetus to subsequent developments in the philosophy of science and served as example for the construction of similar concepts. The socio-ideological prerequisite of this philosophical movement was the task of creating a new scientific view of the world, opposing philosophical pessimism and anti-scientism. This worldview, however, was not naive-scientististic, but presented a synthetic project at the intersection of natural science, philosophy, art and social pedagogy. (shrink)

Hempel’s account of thought experiments has been discussed only by a very few authors and, for the most part, with rather cursory remarks. Its importance, however, is not only historical, but also systematic theoretical, because it involves the distinction between discovery and justification, a main pillar of neopositivistic philosophy of science. Hempel raised the question whether thought experiments constitute a methodological component of scientific research or, on the contrary, are merely a heuristic-psychological device for obtaining and/or transmitting new ideas. While (...) conceding a few exceptions in the natural sciences, he argued that thought experiments always have a heuristic character in the social sciences. There is however a fundamental tension in Hempel’s conception of thought experiments, between the thesis of methodological monism and the neopositivistic dichotomy discovery/justification. On the one hand, on the basis of the unity of scientific method, Hempel admits a difference only in degree between the natural and the human sciences, but on the other hand, he draws a principled distinction between thought experiments of the human sciences (which have only a greater or lesser heuristic value) and those of the natural sciences (which may have also a cognitive-justificatory value). If one assumes the unity of method in the minimal sense in which no scientific knowledge can renounce intersubjective controllability, this tension can be removed either by rejecting the discovery/justification dichotomy or by interpreting it differently. Here, following the second path, two senses of the dichotomy are distinguished, one of which must be accepted, while the other rejected. This removes the internal tension in Hempel’s conception of thought experiments and suggests the thesis that any plausible thought experiment, both in the natural and the human sciences, must already contain some justification, implicit or explicit, of the theoretical hypotheses that they formulate. (shrink)

The article is devoted to the well-known dispute between R. Carnap and W.V.O. Quine on the meaning of statements with names of abstractions, which also revealed their disagreements on the more general question of the nature of the dependence of ontology on the choice of language of knowledge. According to Quine, the choice of language carries with it certain ontological commitments – judgments of existence that must be true for anyone who appropriately uses the language in question. The language of (...) abstractions (using appropriate names and indications) is widely used not only in philosophy and everyday communication, but also in the sciences, including natural sciences. The names of abstractions (or, alternatively, quantification by corresponding entities) cannot be completely excluded from science, as Carnap, in particular, points out. He also considers it wrong to attribute to a scientist with empiricist views the belief in the existence of something that he, as an empiricist, is not ready to consider existing. In his view, the choice of language (framework) does not carry any ontological obligations: it determines what should be the correct answer to the so-called internal questions of the theory but does not affect metaphysical questions. Carnap interprets meaningful statements about abstractions as analytical truths, while Quine believes that most references to abstractions are removable from the language of science, and those that are not removable create additional ontological obligations, which, however, for some reason say nothing about reality itself. But why this is so, if the theory implicating them claims to describe reality, is not clear. This debate about the role of judgments about abstractions in scientific knowledge gave rise to a whole branch of metaphysical and ontological research, best known as metaontology. The main parties in this dispute are realists, who interpret irreducible abstractions as part of reality and denotations of certain names, and anti-realists, who, as a rule, deny the connection of statements with such names with reality, treating them as pseudo-statements or something similar. The solution to the problem, which is proposed in this article, consists in abandoning the belief, widespread both in philosophy and in everyday thought, which can be generally called “The theory of reference” and which consists in the fact that the contribution of names and certain other types of expressions to communication is their denotations. If we assume that names have no denotations at all and their semantic contribution to statements is only their senses or something similar, then the names of abstractions in this respect will be no different from other types of names. In this case, it would be no need to either assume that they designate some “Platonic” entities in order for some statements with them being true, nor interpret these judgments as pseudo-statements or as truths of some special kind that are not related to reality. The interpretation of statements with such names and their evaluation will not pose any special problem for the empiricist with this approach. (shrink)

Ever since the heyday of the Vienna Circle, scientific realists have worked hard to document and clarify the structure and growth of truth content in theoretical descriptions. Today, this trait is particularly intense among “selective realists” – realists focused on theory parts with high empirical corroboration rather than whole theories. From their perspective, theories with posits systematically deployed in corroborated novel predictions are, with high probability, descriptively true or contain a proper part that is. Unlike traditional realists, selectivists acknowledge that (...) (a) radical conceptual change is a recurring scientific phenomenon and (b) empirical theories have poor reliability records at the most profound ontological level. At the same time, they point to significant descriptive continuities at intermediate theoretical levels between successful theories and their successors – i.e., a false theory can (and often does) contain parts that succeed as correct descriptions. Selectivists seek to identify those parts. Their approaches limit ontological commitment exclusively to highly confirmed theoretical descriptions; unfortunately, the selection criteria they use seemingly support many regrettable choices. One source of trouble is that extant approaches leave unclear the ontology described by the selected parts. Historical cases and scientific practice gesture toward a functional resolution of this difficulty, but the clues could be more transparent and need elaboration. Otherwise, selectivism has improved in consistency over the last three decades. Current projects emphasize the continuity of well-established scientific content (relating to how entities and processes effectively behave within a specific regime or descriptive level) instead of just the continuity of “structure”. This paper provides some clarifications that arguably clear the road for realist commitment toward functional and effective theoretical content. The proposed functional/effective turn is checked against some plausible objections. (shrink)

The article traces the crisis of intellectual and political situation in which the Vienna Circle operated. It is shown that the struggle against metaphysics was a common task of its participants. Forms and methods of metaphysical criticism are considered. The role of neo-Kantianism in the formation of logical empiricism is evaluated. The origins of the profound rift in German-speaking, and then Western philosophy as a whole, are analyzed.

The proposed text develops a number of provisions of N.I. Kuznetsova’s article “Oxymoron of the Vienna Circle”. Special attention is paid to the intellectual heritage of the Vienna Circle, which is in many ways paradoxical – rejected and simultaneously operational.

The past decade has seen notable development of conceptual engineering – a field of analytical philosophy that focuses on the critical evaluation of concepts. Most authors engaged with this area identify Rudolf Carnap’s ideas as its methodological framework and theoretical origin, placing particular emphasis on the philosopher’s method of explication. This article highlights the unquestionable influence Carnap’s thought had on conceptual engineering whilst by no means reducing it to the utilisation and advancement of explication within this field of analytical philosophy: (...) indeed, conceptual engineering has incorporated – and brought to the forefront – much broader tenets of Carnap’s concept. This study draws on a series of the philosopher’s works, as well as his ‘Intellectual Autobiography’, to trace the evolution of his ideas about language and describe the fundamental elements revealing the ‘engineering perspective’ in his reflection. Most clearly, this perspective is evident in his interpretation of logic as a conceptual tool for acquiring and processing knowledge, ‘assembling’ it into a structure and refining the procedures of logic itself. It is shown that the origins of the engineering perspective trace back, on the one hand, to Carnap’s interest in the methodological framework of physics, particularly the measurement problem and its epistemological analysis, and, on the other, his fascination with interpretations of the nature of mathematical theory and the idea of unifying logicism and formalism by introducing the principle of tolerance, which adds a pragmatic dimension to methodology. The article examines in detail the idea of explication and its theoretical origins, which lie, in particular, in Carnap’s intention to exactify the notions expressing the degree of validity and probability. His idea of a link between the results of explication and its goal became the central principle of conceptual engineering, distinguishing it from mere conceptual analysis. It is concluded that, when considered together, Carnap’s two major ideas – explication and the principle of tolerance – can be placed in a broader context of a project seeking a rational reconstruction of the life of society and providing it with knowledge-based underpinnings. (shrink)

The author proposes to consider the activities of the Vienna Circle from two different perspectives. One approach reveals the intellectual efforts of the Vienna logicians to bring the order of thought in line with the social and political „Ordnung“ in Austria in the 1930s. It also brings to light the clash between the “exact thinking” and M. Heidegger’s „Das Nichts“, as well as the “new order”, whose adherents sought support not in logic, but in the collective unconscious. The other perspective (...) allows one to highlight the problem of ethics and a system of values, as shaped and solved differently by the language of logic, and by the great Austrian writers of the time. (shrink)

The article presents a critical semantic analysis of the so-called analytical truths as they were discussed by R. Carnap and building on some new empirical data that are not fully satisfactorily explained by Carnap’s theory. A theoretical reconstruction of Carnap’s theory of analytical truths is proposed. It is demonstrated how his understanding of analytical truths, as statements that are true in all possible worlds and amenable to a quite obvious definition on a par with the concepts of sense (meaning) and (...) synonymy, applies exclusively to artificial languages of logic. Therefore, Carnap’s theory remains unreachable for the well-known criticism of W. Quine, who, in turn, pointed out the difficulties in defining these concepts for natural languages. A theoretical reconstruction of Carnap’s explication of the mentioned concepts in the theory of meaning for natural languages is carried out. The connection of Carnap’s approach with the perspective of contemporary formal semantics is established. Subsequently, problematic cases and the difficulties they pose for Carnap’s concept are examined. An explanation is proposed for analytical truths as containing in their logical form an (unpronounced) quantifier over possible worlds (situations). (shrink)

It is argued that the legacy of the Vienna Circle played a very important role in the intellectual quest of modern philosophy. No matter how the concept of logical positivism is buried by “continental philosophy”, or ideologically motivated philosophers, or even the latest initiatives of the contemporary philosophy of science, the scientific worldview remains invariant. The traditions of the work of logical positivists remain relevant both for the development of modern philosophy of science and as guidelines indicating the way to (...) get rid of the idle talk (“meaninglessness”) of political slogans and manifestos. (shrink)

The paper deals with the conception of logical empiricism developed by Eino Kaila. Eino Kaila, being a thinker close to the Vienna Circle, departs from some of the central ideas of logical positivism. He identifies a limited number of problems in metaphysics that are meaningful and need to be solved, but he declares the rest of metaphysics to be a logical fallacy. For Eino Kaila, it is not the principle of verification (as a criterion of meaning) but the principle of (...) testability that plays the most important role. In addition, he revises the principle of translatability, insisting that it is impossible to translate a single sentence into the language of experience, but it is possible to translate the whole theory to which the sentence belongs. This is related to his structuralist position in the philosophy of science and his understanding of scientific theories as ‘rationalisations’ as opposed to simple inductive generalisations. The paper compares Eino Kaila’s views expressed during the period of his active interaction with the Vienna Circle be regarded as a predecessor of later critics of logical positivism (in particular, W.V.O. Quine). (shrink)

The article attempts to develop the “oxymoron formula” proposed by N.I. Kuznetsova to interpret the ideas and fate of the representatives of the Vienna Circle. The combination of incompatible reveals the content of this formula. The author of the article proposes to see a combination of incompatible, firstly, in the temporal nature of the work of the Vienna Circle, which unites, on the one hand, the desire for finality in solving problems and, on the other, openness to development. Secondly, she (...) describes the combination of incompatible through the relation and difference of the positions of M. Schlick and O. Neurath in the discussion about protocol sentences. The author defines Schlick’s position as a philosophical desire to combine incompatible and offer a translation of affirmations as expressions describing subjective immediate experience into the intersubjective language of science, the meaning of which is emphasized by Neurath. (shrink)

My point of departure is a passage in which Coffa claims: “Wittgenstein’s and Carnap’s insights on the a priori belong in the same family as Kant’s... What we witness circa 1930 is a Copernican turn that, like Kant’s, bears the closest connection to the a priori; but its topic is meaning rather than experience” [Coffa, 1991, p. 263]. I draw out Kantian resonances in Wittgenstein’s and Carnap’s work on logic, grammar, and theoretical frameworks. In the end, Coffa’s remark comes out (...) as significantly illuminating for a variety of questions, issues, and dynamic historical trends. (shrink)

In his foreword to the Philosophical papers by Hans Hahn, Karl Menger mentions a controversy about the possibility or impossibility to speak about language within the Vienna Circle in the early 1930’s. He then adds: “Waismann proclaimed that one could not speak about language. Hahn took strong exception to this view. Why should one not – if perhaps in a higher-level language – speak about language? To which Waismann replied essentially that this would not fit into the texture of Wittgenstein’s (...) latest ideas.”1 Thanks to the publication of the protocols of the Vienna Circle by Friedrich Stadler in his book The Vienna Circle – Studies in the origins, development and influence of logical empiricism, we have access to some discussions within the circle in the years 1930 and 1931, that allow us a partial reconstruction of the controversy. In these minutes we attend a very lively discussion on the topic of ‘talking about language’. We would like to make more explicit the tenets of this controversy, starting from the discussions within the circle. We will then focus on the evolution of the positions of different members of the Circle, that reflect different attitudes towards this problem, that are expounded in articles published until 1936. Although its members strived to stay the closest, they could to the landmarks laid down by the Tractatus logico-philosophicus, some of its members broke with them in many respects. The need to admit the possibility of talking theoretically about language became more pressing as the works of Tarski and Godel began to exert an influence on the researches of its members. Two options emerged: talking about a language in another language (Hahn) or in the same language (Carnap). Hahn’s positions, despite their originality, stand close to those of Carnap, who presents in 1931 his meta-logical project. Disagreements with Waismann occured frequently. Neurath remained skeptical about such a development that could, according to him, lead back to metaphysical considerations. The protocols by Rosa Rand give us precious insights on the premises of this debate, symptomatic of the diversity of the positions and of the fruitfulness of the exchanges within the Vienna Circle at that time. However, this debate takes place in a broader setting, namely the discussion of the status of philosophical statements once the rejection of metaphysics is accomplished. The answers provided reflect strong dissenting currents within the circle. For Neurath, to conceive of philosophy as providing elucidations is mistaken. Science shall take the form of an encyclopedia, that contains heterogeneous discourses – exact formulated sentences, as well as piece of ordinary language – and is taken in a dynamic process. No discourse outside science can be accepted. For Schlick and Waismann, there is still room for philosophy as providing elucidations about language. For Carnap, the aim is to attain a logically suitable language for science; discussions in a natural language have only a provisional role, in order to attain an adequate language, in which the logic of science can be formulated. (shrink)

This article represents the author’s reflections on the book by Karl Sigmund “Exact Thinking in Demented Times. The Vienna Circle and the Epic Quest for the Foundations of Science” and the fate of the Vienna Circle. Sigmund paints a vivid portrait of the Vienna Circle against the background of the difficult historical period in which its members lived and worked. The Vienna Circle established the tradition of liberating consciousness and science from metaphysics. But the participants of the Vienna Circle and (...) their entourage did not manage to get rid of the humanistic issues, despite the declaration of strict scientific character. The author of the article draws attention to the internal contradiction between strict scientific topics and the existential-humanistic perception of this topic by the Vienna Circle’s authors and their likeminded people, and by Sigmund himself. The author concludes that it was thanks to this contradiction the Vienna Circle became not only a stage in the development of philosophical science, but also had a broad cultural influence on art, politics, architecture, museums, etc. The historical and philosophical tradition connects the activities of the Vienna Circle with the beginning of the divergence between the philosophical scientific and humanistic traditions in the understanding of philosophy, and the controversy between R. Carnap and M. Heidegger is an important point in this process. But Sigmund’s book gives the impression that this is not the divergence strictly scientific and humanistic traditions, but the difference between two humanistic traditions, one of them tends to express its thoughts strictly analytically. (shrink)

In our paper, we explore the question of what is wrong with Neurath’s “plank-by-plank” method, which Quine later also adopted with enthusiasm. Shipbuilding experts will confirm that plank-byplank replacement is only possible in the dock and never on the open sea. This is simply empty talk, flatus vocis, often attributed to philosophers. The main problem with Neurath’s ship metaphor is that it is completely alien to the seafarers’ way of life, or even in stark contradiction to it. If it is (...) the task of philosophy to bring order into the house of concepts, the use of metaphors should also be scrutinized. Any practical test of the plank-by-plank methodology would prove unsuccessful, for as soon as one would remove a plank from the ship, the ship would sink very quickly due to the onslaught of the water. If the philosophers argue for empiricist epistemology, as Neurath and Quine do, they should not use such utopian metaphors in which the practical life world is completely ignored. When philosophers argue for an empiricist epistemology, as Neurath and Quine do, they should be more careful in their use of metaphors that exclude empiricism, practice, and the practical world of life. It is rather a vivid example of abstract armchair philosophy to explain how science works. Finally, it remains a problem to elaborate a concept of epistemology by “philosophizing” abstractly about empiricism and empiricist epistemology without referring to concrete life experiences. Neurath’s boat metaphor, praised by Quine, is, unfortunately, an example of epistemology without reference to concrete forms of life, and it is still questionable whether we can achieve anything factually with such non-functional metaphors, let alone make the process of cognition scientifically plausible. The whole thing is reminiscent of the scholastic witty remark about how someone convincingly tries to talk about swimming without jumping into the water. Every sailor knows that a ship could only be serviced and repaired in a dock. Seafaring as a way of life, all the turbulence associated with this form of life, obviously remained unknown to Neurath, who spent most of his life in a continental, mountainous country, so it is fair to say that he used a very unusual metaphor not grounded in the practice of life, which, to make the paradox even greater, is meant to represent a naturalistic-empiricist concept of knowledge. (shrink)