Comparative political theory is at best an embryonic and marginalized endeavor. As practiced in most Western universities, the study of political theory generally involves a rehearsal of the canon of Western political thought from Plato to Marx. Only rarely are practitioners of political thought willing (and professionally encouraged) to transgress the canon and thereby the cultural boundaries of North America and Europe in the direction of genuine comparative investigation. Border Crossings presents an effort to remedy this situation, fully launching a (...) new era in political theory. Thirteen scholars from around the world examine the various political traditions of West, South, and East Asia and engage in a reflective cross-cultural discussion that belies the assumptions of an Asian "essence" and of an unbridgeable gulf between West and non-West. The denial of essential differences does not, however, amount to an endorsement of essential sameness. As viewed and as practiced by contributors to this ground-breaking volume, comparative political theorizing must steer a course between uniformity and radical separation--this is the path of "border crossings.". (shrink)

Explores some steps toward non-assimilative encounters in the "global village.".

This ground-breaking collection of essays tackles the philosophical issues at play in cosmology, physics, mathematics, and neuroscience. The book considers topics such as the presence of ontology in cosmological theory and physics. It also weighs the philosophical issues connected with mathematical method, the neuroscience of emotions, and evolutionary anthropology. The contributions look at structuralism in the Platonic philosophy of science and the issue of knowledge and faith. This book is a must read for anyone interested in the philosophy (...) of science and the increasingly blurred borders between the two. (shrink)

This book explores how the history of philosophy can orient us to the new reality brought on by the climate crisis. If we understand the climate crisis as a deeply existential one, it can help to examine the way past philosophers responded to similar crises in their times. This book explores five past crises, each involving a unique form of collective trauma. These events-war, occupation, exile, scientific revolution and political revolution-inspired the philosophers to remake the whole world in thought, (...) to construct a metaphysics. Williston distills a key intellectual innovation from each metaphysical system: - That political power must be constrained by knowledge of the climate system - That ethical and political reasoning must be informed by care or love of the ecological whole - That we must enhance the design of the technosphere - That we must conceive the Earth as an internally complex system - And that we must grant rights to anyone or anything-ultimately the Earth system itself-whose vital interests are threatened by the effects of climate change. Philosophy and the Climate Crisis will be of great interest to students and scholars of climate change, environmental philosophy and ethics and the environmental humanities. (shrink)

The emergence of experimental philosophy was one of the most significant developments in the early modern period. However, it is often overlooked in modern scholarship, despite being associated with leading figures such as Francis Bacon, Robert Boyle, Isaac Newton, Jean Le Rond d'Alembert, David Hume and Christian Wolff. Ranging from the early Royal Society of London in the seventeenth century to the uptake of experimental philosophy in Paris and Berlin in the eighteenth, this book provides new terms of (...) reference for understanding early modern philosophy and science, and its eventual eclipse in the shadow of post-Kantian notions of empiricism and rationalism. Experimental Philosophy and the Origins of Empiricism is an integrated history of early modern experimental philosophy which challenges the rationalism and empiricism historiography that has dominated Anglophone history of philosophy for more than a century. (shrink)

The present essay focuses on the Frankfurt School’s views on relations between philosophy and science. The author specifically concentrates on Horkheimer, the School’s leader, and Habermas, its most prominent contemporary representative. In her reconstruction of the Frankfurt School’s approach to the dependencies between philosophy and science the author—similarly to the Frankfurt theoreticians—abstains from treating it abstractly, instead placing it in its social and historiosophical context. The essay’s leading thesis is that the Frankfurt School sees philosophical self-reflection as a (...) remedy for the crisis in European culture, visible since the beginnings of the modern era in the rise of instrumental thinking. The author reminds that the assumption of philosophy’ primacy over science—or the primacy of wisdom over knowledge—has found avid support among philosophers of other eras and other schools of thought. (shrink)

Drawing on the results of modem psychology and cognitive science we suggest that the traditional theory of concepts is no longer tenable, and that the alternative account proposed by Kuhn may now be seen to have independent empirical support quite apart from its success as part of an account of scientific change. We suggest that these mechanisms can also be understood as special cases of general cognitive structures revealed by cognitive science. Against this background, incommensurability is not an insurmountable obstacle (...) to accepting Kuhn's position, as many philosophers of science still believe. Rather it becomes a natural consequence of cognitive structures that appear in all human beings. (shrink)

This study explores the nature of the conflict between science and religion. It shows through a detailed examination of this conflict as it was manifested in nineteenth century Britain that it is a fallacy that religion and science can co-exist in mutual harmony, since the legacy of their conflict in the past century has been inherited by this century, greatly to the detriment of religious belief. It is the author's contention that a return to the essentials of Kant's critical (...) class='Hi'>philosophy would lay bare the profound differences between religious and scientific approaches to the world, and the nature of the choice people can make between them. In his effort to demarcate the outlines of a genuine Biblical theology (and to articulate the proper procedures for producing one) the author casts light on important questions of Biblical interpretation, and demands a radical reassessment of the meaning of science for society. (shrink)

This chapter examines philosophical issues surrounding the classification of mental disorders by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). In particular, the chapter focuses on issues concerning the relative merits of descriptive versus theoretical approaches to psychiatric classification and whether the DSM should classify natural kinds. These issues are presented with reference to the history of the DSM, which has been published regularly by the American Psychiatric Association since 1952 and is currently in its fifth edition. While the (...) first two editions of the DSM adopted a theoretical (psychoanalytic) and etiological approach to classification, subsequent editions of the DSM have adopted an atheoretical and purely descriptive (“neo-Kraepelinian”) approach. It is argued that largest problem with the DSM at present—viz., its failure to provide valid diagnostic categories—is directly related to the purely descriptive methodology championed by the DSM since the third edition of the DSM. In light of this problem, the chapter discusses the prospects of a theoretical and causal approach to psychiatric classification and critically examines the assumption that the DSM should classify natural kinds. (shrink)

Based upon papers given at a 2011 conference at Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou, China, this book crosses many boundaries. Most obviously, it includes a balanced set of contributions by philosophers and cognitive scientists from a variety of countries: Nine of the authors are based in Europe, eight in Asia, and one in North America. The conference was the latest of three held in Guangzhou between 2004 and 2011; the editors are to be congratulated for their extensive and continuing efforts (...) to open windows among philosophers and cognitive scientists across continents. (shrink)

Through a warm and passionate investigation of the most fundamental properties of human behaviour, Psychotherapy and Science shows how a scientific foundation for psychotherapy is both necessary and feasible. Addressing psychotherapy's need for a coherent theoretical grounding, the book argues that there are striking parallels between the emotion-processing mind and phenomena that have been scientifically observed and charted in the areas of evolution, the immune system and the brain. The idea that scientific theories might be applied to psychotherapy is thoroughly (...) explored in a surprisingly accessible manner. Throughout the book, the ways in which science has a bearing on the clinical techniques and practice of psychotherapy are emphasized, and priority is given to the needs of psychotherapists to focus their theoretical and clinical efforts on understanding the deep, evolved factors behind human suffering, deception, self-limitations and death anxiety. This rare and engaging insight into a scientific quest for better psychotherapeutic knowledge offers a truly original way through the current impasse of ever-divergent theories, and is one of the most cogent challenges to psychotherapy in recent times. It is essential reading for all training and practising psychotherapists, and for those involved in related research. (shrink)

Philosophy and Science are subject to conflicting interpretations, such as the rules of positivism and analytic thought. Bernard Lonergan and Gilles Deleuze have both assessed such issues in complementary fashion. This book examines their arguments through the application of mathematical theories and Buddhist-Christian ethics in an attempt to bridge the religious-secularist divide exacerbated by postmodernism.

The main aim of the paper is to defend (the possibility of) reductionism in the neuroscience--cognitive science case. This is done in three steps. First an ontological and methodological picture is presented which acknowledges the level structure of reality but claims that because every higher level is evolutionarily preceded by the lower level(s), reductionism is as viable strategy as anything else. Secondly, a direct challenge to the two popular doctrines, namely emergentism and supervenience, is presented, the point being that we (...) don't have clear conception of what "emerging" is or how specifically to explain what something's "depending on" something or "determining" something is (in the case of supervenience). In the third part the so-called modified structuralist framework (from the structuralist philosophy of science) is proposed as an alternative model to the old Nagelian one, a model which can serve reductionistic purposes well because it admits many kinds of reduction, from approximate to very strict ones. (shrink)

The Fifth International Congress of Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science was held at the University of Western Ontario, London, Canada, 27 August to 2 September 1975. The Congress was held under the auspices of the International Union of History and Philosophy of Science, Division of Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science, and was sponsored by the National Research Council of Canada and the University of Western Ontario. As those associated closely with the work of the Division (...) over the years know weIl, the work undertaken by its members varies greatly and spans a number of fields not always obviously related. In addition, the volume of work done by first rate scholars and scientists in the various fields of the Division has risen enormously. For these and related reasons it seemed to the editors chosen by the Divisional officers that the usual format of publishing the proceedings of the Congress be abandoned in favour of a somewhat more flexible, and hopefully acceptable, method of pre sentation. Accordingly, the work of the invited participants to the Congress has been divided into four volumes appearing in the University of Western Ontario Series in Philosophy of Science. The volumes are entitled, Logic, Foundations of Mathematics and Computability Theory, Foun dational Problems in the Special Sciences, Basic Problems in Methodol ogy and Linguistics, and Historical and Philosophical Dimensions of Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science. (shrink)

This paper contends thatMichael Oakeshott's analogy of conversation conveys a conception of philosophy that can be connected with 'philosophical criticism', as interpreted by British Idealists such as Andrew Seth and Edward Caird. Firstly, my claim is that Oakeshott's notion of philosophical definition is animated by a dialectical 'refutation' of current ideas, articulated in the logical study of their presuppositions. Moreover, I show that this critical idea of philosophy is expressed through a re-interpretation of the Socratic Method that can (...) be compared to that of other Idealists. By means of an examination of textual evidence, I stress the consistency of this perspective throughout all Oakeshott's career. Secondly, I consider the image of conversation as an answer to the Idealist question about the possibility of the unity of knowledge. At the outset, I highlight that Oakeshott's position can be juxtaposed to the critiques of Modern philosophy and science paradigmatically put forward by Edward Caird and R.G. Collingwood. I argue that 'conversation' is consistent with Oakeshott's conception of modality, which is a critique both of the possibility of a final synthesis between different forms of understanding and of all reductionisms. Therefore, I analyze the theoretical foundations of this conception, which I have identified with the nature of postulates, the unity ofmind, and the non-propositional character of judgments. In the conclusion, I suggest that this reading has implications for a broader understanding of Oakeshott's Idealism, of his political theory and of the debate with Analytic philosophy. (shrink)

ANGLO-AMERICAN PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE has tended to define itself squarely against the kinds of so-called metaphysical approaches that have characterized so-called continental philosophy in the line of descent from Husserl. Indeed, Husserl’s project of phenomenological enquiry was the target of criticism by Frege—and later by Gilbert Ryle—which pretty much set the agenda for subsequent debate. That project seemed to them some form of argument that reveals his basically psychologistic approach, one that purported to address issues of truth, validity, (...) rational warrant, and so forth, but which fell far short of the logical rigor attained by thinkers in the analytic tradition. Thus Husserl might claim—like Descartes and Kant before him—to be raising questions about the a priori forms of human knowledge and experience, forms that were given or necessarily presupposed in every possible act of cognition. Moreover, he might claim to have advanced beyond Kant in distinguishing more clearly between formal and transcendental logic, or judgments whose necessity follows from the ground rules of this or that logically binding system of thought, and judgments that result from a rigorous reflection on the genesis and structure of human understanding in general. However these claims counted for little with Husserl’s critics in the other, that is, post-Fregean analytical camp. What they chiefly objected to in Husserl’s project was the approach via thoughts and ideas in the mind of some perceiving or reasoning subject, even though Husserl was very often at pains to reject any merely empirical or psychologistic construal of his claims. To their way of thinking, all this talk about transcendental truth- and validity-conditions was just another variant of the bad old Cartesian-Kantian retreat to consciousness as the last court of appeal in epistemological matters. Only by rejecting that entire line of thought—that is to say, by adopting a strictly analytical or logico-semantic approach—could philosophy at last break free of its attachment to naive, subject-centered, or metaphysical notions of meaning and truth. (shrink)

The effort to link philosophical theories with the progress of science has been a persistent one, but most modern scientists do their work quite successfully without giving a thought to philosophical problems or issues. In the earliest days of intellectual curiosity, one could scarcely distinguish between philosophy and science for the Milesian metaphysicians were also physicists. Democritus’s ontological views presaged the atomic theory of matter. The metaphysician Aristotle was so brilliant as a scientist that few questioned his authority until (...) the fifteenth century. As the concerns of science became more particular and experimental, it began to separate itself from philosophy. Since the Renaissance, the two have rather gone their own ways. Philosophers have usually been more interested in what scientists were doing than vice versa. Not many scientists are affected by what philosophers have concluded. A. D. Ritchie once noted that had chemists paid serious attention to Ernst Mach’s reductionist criticisms of science, they would have “murdered a fine and lively science.”. (shrink)

This essay responds to a review of my book Wittgenstein Flies A Kite: A Story of Models of Wings and Models of the World by Peter Simons that appears in the March 2009 issue of the journal Metascience.

Im Zentrum des Bandes steht die Frage nach dem Zusammenhang von Erkenntnis- und Wissenschaftstheorie im Kontext der mittelalterlichen Rezeption der Texte des Aristoteles an Hof und Universitäten, insbesondere der für die Epistemologie einschlägigen Passagen in "De anima" und in den "Zweiten Analytiken" sowie ihre spätantike und arabische Vermittlung. In diesem komplexen Rezeptions- und vor allem Transformationsprozeß werden zugleich die wissenschaftlichen und gesellschaftlich-institutionellen Grundlagen für den okzidentalen Prozeß der Rationalisierung und Aufklärung gelegt, deren "Dialektik" nicht nur die Geschichte Europas bis zum (...) heutigen Tag bestimmt. (shrink)

The claim that philosophy and its history are two distinct, though interrelated, things would probably seem allmost people who have any idea of what philosophy is, to be so obviously true that it would be foolish or perverse to call it in question. Do we not assume, and rightly, that there is a real distinction between art and the history of art, between science and the history of science? Is there not also a real distinction between philosophy (...) and history of philosophy? Artistic creation and telling the story of the development of the arts through the centuries are clearly not the same thing, though there is an obvious relationship between them. Similarly, the actual process of scientific inquiry and formulating scientific hypotheses and theories is not the same thing as recounting the genesis of such hypotheses and theories. Again, it hardly needs saying that there is a difference between Kant's original creative development of his philosophy and the activity of providing even a sympathetic and illuminating interpretative account of Kant's thought. (shrink)

The Victorian era is a unique historical period of turbulent political, economic and social changes. These changes also touched upon science: the emergence of new theories and experimental data, new discoveries and inventions, the growth of the number of scientific societies, the debate about teaching methods in universities and the significance of science and scientists for the state laid the foundations for the institutional structure of the modern sciences. In addition, it is the Victorian era when a fundamentally new theoretical (...) discipline, the philosophy of science, was born. At the heart of the article, there is the personality and social circle of its founder, William Whewell, the author of the fundamental work “The Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences founded upon their history”. The author reconstructs the making of the philosophy of science as an independent discipline, considering it, on the one hand, as a product of the Victorian era, and on the other – as a tool for the formation of the modern sciences in all their diversity. (shrink)

This book is about the journey that humanity has taken over the last 2500 years in its understanding of religion, philosophy and to bring us to the brink of planetary destruction. This should be read by anyone with an interest in understanding religion, philosophy, the approach of modern medicine or the roots of our current climate crisis and ecocide. They will learn that the roots of our current planetary crisis in the early 21st century stem well beyond the (...) fossil fuel industry and actually have their origins in shifts in paradigms of philosophy and religion going back 2500 years and continuing their pervasive influence well into the 20th and 21st centuries in order to help provide a root cause analysis to help comprehensively address humanity's greatest problem of the 21st century. The book is different from other similar books in that it does not merely look at the abuses of the fossil fuel industry, humanity's excessive use of plastic or even civilizational changes from tribal to more individual societies; rather, it looks at how our abuses in understanding and applying philosophy, religion and scientific medical understanding have taken humanity to the self-inflicted brink of planetary destruction. (shrink)

Reason and quest for revelation, by P. Tillich.--On the ontological mystery, by G. Marcel.--The problem of non-objectifying thinking and speaking, by M. Heidegger.--The problem of natural theology, by J. Macquarrie.--Metaphysical rebellion, by A. Camus.--Psychoanalysis and religion by E. Fromm.--Why I am not a Christian, by B. Russell.--The quest for being, by S. Hook.--The sacred and the profane; a dialectical understanding of Christianity, by T. J. J. Altizer.--Three strata of meaning in religious discourse by C. Hartshorne.--The theological task, by J. B. (...) Cobb.--Theology and objectivity, by S. A. Ogden.--Can faith validate God-talk? by K. Nielsen.--The logic of God, by J. Wisdom.--Mapping the logic of models in science and theology, by F. Ferré.--On understanding mystery, by I. T. Ramsey.--Teilhard de Chardin; a philosophy of precession, by E. R. Baltazar.--The nature of apologetics, by H. Bouillard.--Metaphysics as horizon, by B. Lonergan.--Deciding whether to believe, by M. Novak. (shrink)

The very possibility of reflecting upon the relationship between philosophy and science, as a problem, is relatively recent. It goes back only to the Renascence, to the separation which at that time occurred between philosophy and science, and which appears to have found its finished form in the philosophy of Descartes. The Cartesian philosophy is indeed not only a philosophy that distinguishes itself strictly from science; it is at the same time a philosophy which (...) develops, in a systematic and decisive manner, the categories in which the opposition philosophy-science is thought: the categories of thought and space. Philosophy will be, in this perspective, the development of what is contained in the idea of thought, the res cogitans, based upon the fundamental experience of the Cogito. And, as we know, this idea leads to the philosophical rediscovery of the idea of God and of creation. It also contains, by the intermediary of the notion of God and the relation of creation, a kind of transcendental justification of the world and, in particular, of the world of spatial extension. With this world of pure extension philosophy as such has not to deal, but it must offer a justification of it. This precisely is one of the aims of the metaphysical reflection of Descartes, and the philosophical role, if such an expression is permissible, of the idea of God in his system. (shrink)

In the 1960s, archaeologists en masse were voicing dissatisfaction with the archaeological status quo. Rather than record static facts as historians, archaeologists wanted to study fluid processes as scientists. As Hempelian explanation, where an event is explained when it is subsumed under a law or law-like statement, showed promise as a way to recast archaeology in this manner, it was chosen as the theoretical base for what became known as processual, or 'new archaeology.' ;Unfortunately, Hempelian archaeology ran into a number (...) of serious theoretical and methodological problems. Archaeology lacked the regularities that were thought to exist in sciences such as physics, so archaeological laws were difficult, if not impossible to define. In addition, equifinality, or under-determinism, made it impossible for archaeologists to choose between equally subsumable, albeit contradictory explanations. ;These problems were not limited to archaeology. Philosophers of science were already aware of these issues, and continue to search for answers for problems surrounding scientific explanation. As both groups continue to ask similar questions about the nature of science, this project posits that both archaeologists and philosophers of science have much to gain by resuming their original dialogue. ;By reengaging with philosophy, archaeologists can understand that the failure of Hempelian archaeology should not be seen as a failure of philosophical archaeology. Archaeologists would then see that ongoing questions about the future of archaeology actually mirror debates going on in philosophical explanation. ;Philosophers of science can also learn much from archaeology. As a transdisciplinary science, archaeology puts an interesting spin on standard philosophical problems. For instance, archaeological practice can be seen as questioning the centrality of laws to scientific explanation, and raises questions about the unity of science. In addition, claims that scientists have to be realists in regard to theoretical entities may need to be rethought, due to antirealist tendencies found in some archaeological contexts. Finally, as the interplay between the theory and practice of science has not been ironed out in archaeology, a study of this issue could be of great interest to philosophers of science. In summary, the goal of this dissertation is to provide concrete examples of how a study of problems central to archaeology can provide philosophers of science a new way to approach philosophical issues. At the same time, these examples should prove to archaeologists that a study of contemporary philosophy of science will strengthen the epistemological foundations of their relatively young science. (shrink)

The volume before us is the fourth in the series of proceedings of what used to be the Israel Colloquium for the History, Philosophy and Sociology of Science. This Colloquium has in the meantime been renamed. It now bears the name of Yehoshua Bar-Hillel (1915-1975). Bar-Hillel was an eminent philosopher of science, language, and cognition, as well as a fearless fighter for enlightenment and a passionate teacher who had a durable influence on Israeli philosophical life. The essays collected in (...) this volume have of course this much in common, that they are all in, of, and pertaining to science. They also share the property of having all been delivered before live, and often lively, audiences in Jerusalem and in Tel Aviv, in the years 1984-1986. As is customary in the volumes of this series, the essays and commentaries presented here are intended to strike a rather special balance between the disciplines to which the Colloquium is dedicated. The historical and sociological vantage point is addressed in Kramnick's and Mali's treatment of Priestley, in Vickers' and Feldhay's studies of the Renaissance occult, and in Warnke's and Barasch's work on the imagination. From a philosophical angle several concepts, all material to the methodology of science, are taken up: rule following, by Smart and Margalit; analysis, by Ackerman; explanation, by Taylor; and the role of mathematics in physics, by Levy-Leblond and Pitowsky. (shrink)