Experiments (E), computer simulations (CS) and thought experiments (TE) are usually seen as playing different roles in science and as having different epistemologies. Accordingly, they are usually analyzed separately. We argue in this paper that these activities can contribute to answering the same questions by playing the same epistemic role when they are used to unfold the content of a well-described scenario. We emphasize that in such cases, these three activities can be described by means of the same conceptual (...) framework—even if each of them, because they involve different types of processes, fall under these concepts in different ways. We further illustrate our claims by presenting a threefold case study describing how a TE, a CS and an E were indeed used in the same role at different periods to answer the same questions about the possibility of a physical Maxwellian demon. We also point at fluid dynamics as another field where these activities seem to be playing the same unfolding role. We analyze the importance of unfolding as a general task of science and highlight how our description in terms of epistemic functions articulates in a noncommittal way with the epistemology of these three activities and accounts for their similarities and the existence of hybrid forms of activities. We finally emphasize that picturing these activities as functionally substitutable does not imply that they are epistemologically substitutable. (shrink)

Computer simulation modeling is an important part of contemporary scientific practice but has not yet received much attention from philosophers. The present project helps to fill this lacuna in the philosophical literature by addressing three questions that arise in the context of computer simulation of Earth's climate. Computer simulation experimentation commonly is viewed as a suspect methodology, in contrast to the trusted mainstay of material experimentation. Are the results of computer simulation experiments somehow deeply problematic in ways that the results (...) of material experiments are not? I argue against categorical skepticism toward the results of computer simulation experiments by revealing important parallels in the epistemologies of material and computer simulation experimentation. It has often been remarked that simple computer simulation models---but not complex ones---contribute substantially to our understanding of the atmosphere and climate system. Is this view of the relative contributions of simple and complex models tenable? I show that both simple and complex climate models can promote scientific understanding and argue that the apparent contribution of simple models depends upon whether a causal or deductive account of scientific understanding is adopted. When two incompatible scientific theories are under consideration, they typically are viewed as competitors, and we seek evidence that refutes at least one of the theories. In the study of climate change, however, logically incompatible computer simulation models are accepted as complementary resources for investigating future climate. How can we make sense of this use of incompatible models? I show that a collection of incompatible climate models persists in part because of difficulties faced in evaluating and comparing climate models. I then discuss the rationale for using these incompatible models together and argue that this climate model pluralism has both competitive and integrative components. (shrink)

This chapter presents an opinionated account of how to understand the contributions of experience, especially with respect to the role of cognitive science, in developing and assessing metaphysical theories of reality. I develop a methodological basis for the idea that, independently of work in experimental philosophy focused on explications of concepts, contemporary metaphysical theories with a role for experiential evidence can be fruitfully connected to empirical work in psychology, especially cognitive science. My argument is not that cognitive (...) class='Hi'>science should replace the metaphysician’s use of a priori theorizing and ordinary experience as a guide to metaphysical reality. Rather, we should enrich our perspective on a priori theorizing and ordinary experience as a guide to metaphysical reality by drawing on any relevant work in cognitive science. (shrink)

We offer philosophical motivations for a method we call Virtual World Cognitive Science (VW CogSci), in which researchers use virtual embodied agents that are embedded in virtual worlds to explore questions in the field of Cognitive Science. We focus on questions about mental and linguistic representation and the ways that such computational modeling can add rigor to philosophical thought experiments, as well as the terminology used in the scientific study of such representations. We find that this method forces (...) researchers to take a god’s-eye view when describing dynamical relationships between entities in minds and entities in an environment in a way that eliminates the need for problematic talk of belief and concept types, such as the belief that cats are silly, and the concept CAT, while preserving belief and concept tokens in individual cognizers’ minds. We conclude with some further key advantages of VW CogSci for the scientific study of mental and linguistic representation and for Cognitive Science more broadly. (shrink)

The era of ‘big data’ studies and computational social science has recently given rise to a number of realignments within and beyond the social sciences, where otherwise distinct data formats – digital, numerical, ethnographic, visual, etc. – rub off and emerge from one another in new ways. This article chronicles the collaboration between a team of anthropologists and sociologists, who worked together for one week in an experimental attempt to combine ‘big’ transactional and ‘small’ ethnographic data formats. Our collaboration (...) is part of a larger cross-disciplinary project carried out at the Danish Technical University, where high-resolution transactional data from smartphones allows for recordings of social networks amongst a freshman class. With a parallel deployment of ethnographic fieldwork among the DTU students, this research set-up raises a number of questions concerning how to assemble disparate ‘data-worlds’ and to what epistemological and political effects? To address these questions, a specific social event – a lively student party – was singled out from the broader DTU dataset. Our experimental collaboration used recordings of Bluetooth signals between students’ phones to visualize the ebb and flow of social intensities at the DTU party, juxtaposing these with ethnographic field-notes on shifting party atmospheres. Tracing and reflecting on the process of combining heterogeneous data, the article offers a concrete case of how a ‘stitching together’ of digital and ethnographic data-worlds might take place. (shrink)

本书从生存论角度对人文科学与自然科学之间的关系进行研究,以大陆的理性主义和英美的经验主义这西方哲学的两大传统的为背景,把握人文科学与自然科学的本质,并做出批判。.

The experimental method is designed to secure the reliable attribution of causal relationships by means of controlled comparison across conditions. Doing so, however, depends upon the reduction of uncertainties and inconsistencies in the process of comparison; and this poses particularly significant challenges for the behavioral and social sciences because they work with human subjects, whose malleability and complexity often interact in unexpected ways with experimental manipulations, thus resulting in unpredictable behavior. Drawing on the Science and Technology Studies perspective and (...) one of our authors’ experiences in experimental work, this paper examines how experimental social scientists manage to establish objectivity and standardization in the face of vagaries arising from working with human subjects. In identifying experimental researchers’ solutions to this challenge, we draw on methodological discussions among applied social scientists as naturally occurring data, through which we show how some seemingly mundane practices play essential roles in extracting patterns out of otherwise unpredictable behaviors in the lab. Closely examining such strategies, we reveal the inherent instabilities in the experimental method when adopted in the social sciences and discuss their methodological implications. In conclusion, we make tentative suggestions for escaping the kinds of methodological impasses which we have identified. (shrink)

We present a theory of human artistic experience and the neural mechanisms that mediate it. Any theory of art has to ideally have three components. The logic of art: whether there are universal rules or principles; The evolutionary rationale: why did these rules evolve and why do they have the form that they do; What is the brain circuitry involved? Our paper begins with a quest for artistic universals and proposes a list of ‘Eight laws of artistic experience’ -- a (...) set of heuristics that artists either consciously or unconsciously deploy to optimally titillate the visual areas of the brain. One of these principles is a psychological phenomenon called the peak shift effect: If a rat is rewarded for discriminating a rectangle from a square, it will respond even more vigorously to a rectangle that is longer and skinnier that the prototype. We suggest that this principle explains not only caricatures, but many other aspects of art. Example: An evocative sketch of a female nude may be one which selectively accentuates those feminine form-attributes that allow one to discriminate it from a male figure; a Boucher, a Van Gogh, or a Monet may be a caricature in ‘colour space’ rather than form space. Even abstract art may employ ‘supernormal’ stimuli to excite form areas in the brain more strongly than natural stimuli. Second, we suggest that grouping is a very basic principle. The different extrastriate visual areas may have evolved specifically to extract correlations in different domains , and discovering and linking multiple features into unitary clusters -- objects -- is facilitated and reinforced by direct connections from these areas to limbic structures. In general, when object-like entities are partially discerned at any stage in the visual hierarchy, messages are sent back to earlier stages to alert them to certain locations or features in order to look for additional evidence for the object . Finally, given constraints on allocation of attentional resources, art is most appealing if it produces heightened activity in a single dimension rather than redundant activation of multiple modules. This idea may help explain the effectiveness of outline drawings and sketches, the savant syndrome in autists, and the sudden emergence of artistic talent in fronto-temporal dementia. In addition to these three basic principles we propose five others, constituting a total of ‘eight laws of aesthetic experience’. (shrink)

Cognitive science has recently made some startling discoveries about temporal experience, and these discoveries have been drafted into philosophical service. We survey recent appeals to cognitive science in the philosophical debate over whether time objectively passes. Since this research is currently in its infancy, we identify some directions for future research.

The Swedish medico-legal concept of “science and proven experience” is both legally important and ambiguous. The conceptual uncertainty associated with it can hamper effective assessment of medical evidence in legal proceedings and encourage medical professionals to distrust legal regulation. We examine normative criteria a functioning medico-legal notion should presumably meet, e.g. clarity, acceptability and consistency with existing laws. We also survey healthcare professionals to see how they understand science and proven experience and thus determine the extent to which (...) their understanding meets the normative criteria. The survey suggests that medical professionals feel more certain about “science and proven experience” in the medical context than they do in a legal context. They still have substantial trust in the legal use of the notion, but they do not believe that legal professionals should be allowed to determine the meaning of “science and proven experience” in the legal context. With these results in mind, we argue that the best way to meet the normative criteria and resolve conceptual uncertainty is to specify sub-questions that clarify the notion. We recommend an analytical-deliberative approach that will close the gap between the medical and legal professions’ perceptions of how law and medicine relate. (shrink)

Science educators and those who investigate science learning have tended, for good reason, to focus their attention on students' conceptual development, Such a focus is, however, too narrow to provide full and proper understanding of the complexities of original science learning. Recently developmental cognitive psychologists have called on the work of postpositivistic philosophers of science, especially Thomas Kuhn, to bolster their research into conceptual development in science acquisition. What these psychologists have not recognized is that (...) Kuhn's position is actually a derivative of Wittgenstein's methodological nominalism, a viewpoint far more favorable to behaviorism than cognitive psychology. After drawing out some of the consequences of this fact for the developmental cognitive psychologist program for studying science learning, we suggest our own radical alternative. Drawing on Floden, Buchmann and Schwille's idea of “Breaking with Everyday Experience” we propose an alternative notion of original science learning in terms of Alfred Schutz's modification of Williams James' many worlds thesis. The many worlds thesis will allow us to better understand students' difficulty in learning idealized worlds such as science, worlds that represent a discontinuous break with ordinary everyday practical experience. (shrink)

Despite their centrality and importance to both science and philosophy, relatively little has been written about thought experiments. This volume brings together a series of extremely interesting studies of the history, mechanics, and applications of this important intellectual resource. A distinguished list of philosophers and scientists consider the role of thought experiments in their various disciplines, and argue that an examination of thought experimentation goes to the heart of both science and philosophy.

Polish philosophy of science has been the beneficiary of three powerful creative streams of scientific and philosophical thought. First and fore­ most was the Lwow-Warsaw school of Polish analytical philosophy founded by Twardowski and continued in their several ways by Les­ niewski, Lukasiewicz, and Tarski, the great mathematical and logical philosophers, by Kotarbinski, probably the most distinguished teacher, public figure, and culturally influential philosopher of the inter-war and post-war period, and by Ajdukiewicz, the linguistic philosopher who was intellectually sympathetic (...) with the anti-irrationalist (as he would say), logistic and meta-theoretical inquiries of the Vienna Circle. Second was independent and lively Polish Marxism, with its fine development of social research under Krzywicki, a social anthropologist and younger contemporary of Engels, and then after the war the economist Lange, the philosophers Schaff, Kolakowski, Baczko, and many others. Finally there has been a wide range of philosophical, scientific and humanistic scholar­ ship which lends its various qualities to the understanding of both the logic of science and the historical situation of the sciences: we mention only that great and humane physicist Infeld, the phenomenologist with deep epistemological interest Ingarden, the historian of scientific ideas Zawirski, the historian of philosophy and aesthetics Tatarkiewicz, and the mathematical logicians such as Mostowski and Szaniawski. (shrink)

My theme is thought experiment in natural science, and its relation to real experiment. I shall defend the thesis that thought experiments that do not lead to theorizing and to a real experiment are generally of much less value that those that do so. To illustrate this thesis I refer to three examples, from three very different periods, and with three very different kinds of status. The first is the classic thought experiment in which Galileo imagined that he had, (...) by pure thought, demolished Aristoteles' dogma that heavier bodies fall more quickly than light ones. I will show that he was mistaken. The second is the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen paper purporting to show that quantum mechanics must be incomplete in its domain of application. This thought experiment is a very good one, not because its conclusions are correct, but precisely because it was fruitful, leading to theory and, above all, to a real experiment. Finally I discuss the modern string theory of everything, which, while it is regarded as a physical theory by its instigators, shares some properties of the least successful sort of thought experiment. (shrink)

The Embodied Mind provides a unique, sophisticated treatment of the spontaneous and reflective dimension of human experience.

Context: The majority of contemporary enactivist work is influenced by the philosophical biology of Hans Jonas. Jonas credits all living organisms with experience that involves particular “existential” structures: nascent forms of concern for self-preservation and desire for objects and outcomes that promote well-being. We argue that Jonas’s attitude towards living systems involves a problematic anthropomorphism that threatens to place enactivism at odds with cognitive science, and undermine its legitimate aims to become a new paradigm for scientific investigation and understanding (...) of the mind. Problem: Enactivism needs to address the tension between its Jonasian influences and its aspirations to become a new paradigm for cognitive science. By relying on Jonasian phenomenology, contemporary enactivism obscures alternative ways in which phenomenology can be more smoothly integrated with cognitive science. Method: We outline the historical relationship between enactivism and phenomenology, and explain why anthropomorphism is problematic for a research program that aspires to become a new paradigm for cognitive science. We examine the roots of Jonas’s existential interpretation of biological facts, and describe how and why Jonas himself understood his project as founded on an anthropomorphic assumption that is incompatible with a crucial methodological assumption of scientific enquiry: the prohibition of unexplained natural purposes. We describe the way in which phenomenology can be integrated into Maturana’s autopoietic theory, and use this as an example of how an alternative, non-anthropomorphic science of the biological roots of cognition might proceed. Results: Our analysis reveals a crucial tension between Jonas’s influence on enactivism and enactivism’s paradigmatic aspirations. This suggests the possibility of, and need to investigate, other ways of integrating phenomenology with cognitive science that do not succumb to this tension. Implications: In light of this, enactivists should either eliminate the Jonasian inference from properties of our human experience to properties of the experience of all living organisms, or articulate an alternative conception of scientific enquiry that can tolerate the anthropomorphism this inference entails. The Maturanian view we present in the article’s final section constitutes a possible framework within which enactivist tools and concepts can be used to understand cognition and phenomenology, and that does not involve a problematic anthropomorphism. Constructivist content: Any constructivist approach that aims for integration with current scientific practice must either avoid the type of anthropomorphic inference on which Jonas bases his work, or specify a new conception of scientific enquiry that renders anthropomorphism unproblematic. (shrink)

The relationship between science and religion is generally depicted in one of two ways. In one view, they are locked in an inevitable, eternal conflict in which one must choose a side. In the other, they are separate spheres, in which the truth claims of one have little bearing on the other. This collection of provocative essays by leading thinkers offers a new way of looking at this problematic relationship. The authors begin from the premise that both science (...) and religion operate in, yet seek to reach beyond, specific historical, political, ideological, and psychological contexts. How may we understand science and religion as arising from, yet somehow transcending, human experience? The volume is divided into four sections. The first takes a fresh look at the relationship between science and religion in broad terms: as spheres of knowledge or belief, realms of experience, and sources of authority. The other three sections take on topics that have been focal points of conflict between science and religion: the nature of the cosmos, the origin of life, and the workings of the mind. Ultimately, the authors argue, by seeing science and religion as irrevocably tied to human experience we can move beyond simple either/or definitions of reality and arrive at a more rich and complex view of both science and religion. (shrink)

This book offers an introduction to the way art is perceived, interpreted, and felt and approaches these mindful events from a multidisciplinary perspective.

This chapter explores how perspectives on science drawn from Indian experiences can contribute to the interface between history and philosophy of science (HPS) and science education (SE). HPS is encoded in science texts in the various presuppositions that underlie both the content and the way the content is presented. Thus, a deeper engagement with contemporary work in HPS will be of great significance to science teaching. By drawing on the notion of multicultural origins of (...) class='Hi'>science as well as redefining the nature of science debate by invoking the Indian engagement with science, this chapter aims to make both HPS and SE more sensitive to other cultural understandings of science and scientific method. The last two sections describe ways of drawing on the Indian philosophical traditions that could be relevant for contemporary debates, such as constructivism and teaching critical thinking, in science education. (shrink)

The field of science communication is plagued by challenges. Communicators face the difficulty of responding to unjustified public skepticism over issues like climate change and COVID-19 while also acknowledging the fallibility and limitations of scientific knowledge. Our goal in this paper is to suggest a new model for science communication that can help foster more productive, respectful relationships among all those involved in science communication. Inspired by the pragmatist philosophy of John Dewey, we develop an experience model, (...) according to which science communication consists in people’s experiences with science and the meanings they develop from those experiences. Three principles are central to the model: experience is cumulative, context matters, and audiences have agency. We argue that this model has significant implications both for communication research and practice, which we illustrate by applying it to the phenomenon of vaccine hesitancy. We show how science communicators can help to identify and alleviate structural factors that contribute to skepticism as well as fostering opportunities for meaning making around shared experiences. (shrink)

The feminist philosopher and social scientist shows how "gendering" has affected the social and natural sciences as she reconciles the long-standing dichotomy between the quantitative and qualitative methods and demonstrates the tandem use of both experimental and intuitive approaches.

This book is a radical plea for the centrality of experience in the social and human sciences. Scott Lash argues that a large part of the output of the social sciences today is still shaped by assumptions stemming from positivism, in contrast to the tradition of interpretative social enquiry pioneered by Max Weber. These assumptions are particularly central to economics, with its emphasis on homo economicus, the utility-maximizing, instrumental actor, but they have infiltrated the other social sciences too. Lash argues (...) for a social sciences based not in positivism’s utilitarian a priori but instead in the a posteriori of grounded and embedded subjective experience. This features a politics of Hannah Arendt’s public sphere, which begins with the particular experience of Aristotle’s polis and moves - via Rome, Augustine and Kant - to a modernity that acknowledges the fragility of political worlds. Yet modernity is also a matter of technological experience and technological forms of life. Lash - starting from Aristotle’s technics and working through Turing’s and Shannon’s computer mediation – develops a novel account of technological experience, of how objects themselves experience. And here he finds a surprising convergence with Chinese cosmology’s ethos of dao, qi and li: the experience of the embedded multiplicity of the ‘ten thousand things’. This original book by a leading social and cultural theorist will be of interest to scholars and students across the social sciences, from sociology and cultural studies to anthropology and politics. (shrink)

Does science have limits? Where does order come from? Can we understand consciousness? Written by Nobel Laureate Leon N. Cooper, this book places pressing scientific questions in the broader context of how they relate to human experience. Widely considered to be a highly original thinker, Cooper has written and given talks on a large variety of subjects, ranging from the relationship between art and science, possible limits of science, to the relevance of the Turing Test. These essays (...) and talks have been brought together for the first time in this fascinating book, giving readers an opportunity to experience Cooper's unique perspective on a range of subjects. Tackling a diverse spectrum of topics, from the conflict of faith and science to whether understanding neural networks could lead to machines that think like humans, this book will captivate anyone interested in the interaction of science with society. (shrink)

This chapter explores how to understand the contributions of experience, especially with respect to the role of cognitive science, in developing and assessing metaphysical theories of reality. Further, it develops a methodological basis for the idea that, independently of work in experimental philosophy focused on explications of concepts, contemporary metaphysical theories with a role for experiential evidence can be fruitfully connected to empirical work in psychology, especially cognitive science. While there are different ways to flesh out the connection (...) between cognitive science and metaphysics, one way to understand the methodological issue concerns the evaluation of Moorean facts about the manifest. The chapter deals with Moorean facts about experience, in particular, with features of the manifest image that are drawn from ordinary experience. It also explores how temporal experience relates to the nature of time. (shrink)

Most disciplines make use of thought experiments, but physics and philosophy lead the pack with heavy dependence upon them. Often this is for conceptual clarification, but occasionally they provide real theoretical advances. In spite of their importance, however, thought experirnents have received rather little attention as a topic in their own right until recently. The situation has improved in the past few years, but a mere generation ago the entire published literature on thought experiments could have been mastered in a (...) long weekend. Now the subject is beginning to flourish. Given the relative newness of the field, it might be useful to have several examples at one’s finger tips, so a number of great ones will be described. Attention will also be drawn outside physics and philosophy. In mathematics there is something analogous to thought experiments -- visual reasoning and picture proofs. I will look briefly at this class of thought experiments and try using them to make a case for possibly settling the continuum hypothesis. After this, I will return to thought experiments in the sciences and propose an account of how they work. Finally, I will end with a sketch of a topic I am currently working on, a kind of progress report which, I hope, will be an inducement to others. (shrink)

Paul Thagard has recently argued that thought experiments are dangerous and misleading when we try to use them as evidence for claims. This paper refutes his skepticism. Building on Thagard’s own work in cognitive science, I suggest that Thagard has much that is positive to say about how thought experiments work. My last section presents some new directions for research on the intersection between thought experiments and cognitive science.

Attempts to show that traditional definitions of "science" and "technology" fail to capture the complex discursive construction of scientific knowledge. Argues (accompanied by many literary and philosphical examples) that science, technology, and the humanities developed in concert with each other, and that their reciprocal relationship transcends traditional disciplinary boundaries. Cloth edition (unseen), $35. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR.

Proven experience can be shared. Given this, we cannot assume that the character of proven experience is always manifest as a physical token in each individual sharing it. But the token might still exist somewhere. Perhaps that is a condition of the proven experience’s existence. Something similar could have been accepted as true of scientific knowledge, especially if those who argued that scientific claims were only shorthand for more complicated claims about observations had been right. But it seems that they (...) were not. Hence there might be an ontological difference explaining why there will always be a netto divergence between science and proven experience. (shrink)

This book is no less than the birth of a new discipline. The Experience Science is the indispensable tool for the global experience economy. Including a detailed analysis of the human experience process, the book provides the reader with a teachable methodology for staging unforgettable experiences that make a difference. It is a must for everyone in the experience industry who wants to leave his/her mark. Author Gerhard Frank - philosopher, natural scientist, and experience dramaturge - has been engaged (...) in the global attraction industry for 25 years. His clients come from different segments, including theme parks, museums, zoos, visitor centers, and other types of venues. (Series: Psychologie - Vol. 50). (shrink)

In this paper I examine the role of thought experiments in the social studies of science. More specifically, I will focus on two strands of social studies of science: the so-called sociology of scientific knowledge and the naturalistically oriented philosophy of science with interest in social dimensions of science. I begin by discussing David Hull's views on thought experiments in the study of science. His account serves as a foil that helps me to make some (...) points about thought experiments. As an illustration I discuss two example of thought experimenting in the social studies of science. The first example is the use of thought experiments by the sociologists of scientific knowledge, and the second case will be the recent work by Philip Kitcher on division of cognitive labour. With the help of these cases, I argue that Hull's negative attitude towards the use of thought experiments requires some, tempering. The notion of thought experiment will be understood broadly in this paper. One could also talk about imaginary or hypothetical examples. In social sciences the contrast for thought experiments is not an experiment, but an empirical case study. Accordingly, thought experiment in social science in an imaginary case study or a made up historical scenario. The focus of my discussion is on the various functions and argumentative roles thought experiments have or could have in social studies of science. An empirical experiment (or a case study) is not an argument by itself, nor is a thought experiment. However, they both are used in making arguments and my aim is to look how they are used. (shrink)

In this essay I consider, by way of the reflections of accomplished synthetic chemists, how the experimental work of the synthetic organic chemist supports the testing, refinement, and creation of theories of organic chemistry. The role of experiments in modern Baconian sciences like organic chemistry is contrasted with their role in fields of more traditional philosophical concern, such as experimental physics.

From Lucretius throwing a spear beyond the boundary of the universe to Einstein racing against a beam of light, thought experiments stand as a fascinating challenge to the necessity of data in the empirical sciences. Are these experiments, conducted uniquely in our imagination, simply rhetorical devices or communication tools or are they an essential part of scientific practice? This volume surveys the current state of the debate and explores new avenues of research into the epistemology of thought experiments.

: The increasing attention on experiment in the last two decades has led to important insights into its material, cultural and social dimensions. However, the role of experiment as a tool for generating knowledge has been comparatively poorly studied. What questions are asked in experimental research? How are they treated and eventually resolved? And how do questions, epistemic situations, and experimental activity cohere and shape each other? In my paper, I treat these problems on the basis of detailed studies of (...) research practice. After presenting several cases from the history of electricity—Dufay, Ampère, and Faraday—I discuss a specific type of experiment—the "exploratory experiment"—and analyze how it works in concept formation. I argue that a fuller understanding of experiment can only be achieved by intertwining historical and philosophical perspectives in such a way that the very separation of the two become questioable. (shrink)

Marco Buzzoni has presented a Kantian account of thought experiments in science as a serious rival to the current empiricist and Platonic accounts. This paper takes the first steps of a comprehensive assessment of this account in order to further the more general discussion of the feasibility of a Kantian theory of scientific thought experiments. Such a discussion is overdue. To this effect the broader question is addressed as to what motivates a Kantian approach. Buzzoni's account and the assessment (...) developed in this paper are warranted by the fact that the history of philosophical inquiry into thought experiments is deeply interwoven with Kant's philosophy. This history will be depicted here for the first time in more comprehensive terms to contextualize Buzzoni's account in historical and systematic perspective. (shrink)

Science is a discipline defined by empiricism and reliable methodologies that result in predictable outcomes. Yet, cutting-edge experiments inevitably involve an element of the unknown, an aspect which science fiction exploits for dramatic effect. Furthermore, fictional science is freed from the ethical constraints that regulate real-world experimentation and is therefore often transgressive. Even as films capitalize on unethical practices and cutting-edge scenarios for dramatic and commercial reasons, the origin of the filmmaker and/or place of production may affect (...) a film’s content. A film is also obviously subject to legal constraints, according to the country of origin, and classification codes in its place of exhibition. Thus, while the very nature of science fiction may cause it to appear morally unbridled, there are nonetheless multiple inhibitions entrenched in such depictions. By drawing on relevant cinematic examples, including Prometheus, The Hunger Games and District 9, and scientific scenarios on which these films are based, this essay explores how the unpredictable nature of advances in science, in combination with a lack of ethics, foregrounds the dangerous dimensions of science fiction. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction McDowell Sellars and McDowell: Convergence Sellars and McDowell: Divergence Above the Line …and Below It Philosophy and Modern Science Notes References.

This book offers the first study of theological thought experiments. It advances the discussion about the religious significance of the imagination and presents a tightly argued response to debates over pluralism in the history and philosophy of science.

The research presented in this work represents reflections in the light of Julia Kristeva's philosophy concerning empirical data drawn from research describing the everyday life of people dependent on ventilators. It also presents a qualitative and narrative methodological approach from a person‐centred perspective. Most research on home ventilator treatment is biomedical. There are a few published studies describing the situation of people living at home on a ventilator but no previous publications have used the thoughts in Kristeva's philosophy applied to (...) this topic from a caring science perspective. The paper also addresses what a life at home on a ventilator may be like and will hopefully add some new aspects to the discussion of philosophical issues in nursing and the very essence of care. Kristeva's philosophy embraces phenomena such as language, abjection, body, and love, allowing her writings to make a fruitful contribution to nursing philosophy in that they strengthen, expand, and deepen a caring perspective. Moreover, her writings about revolt having the power to create hope add an interesting aspect to the work of earlier philosophers and nursing theorists. (shrink)