The problem of distinguishing within the same investigation between the scientific and the philosophical orders of constructive thinking has increased with the complex speculation of current theory and urgently demands systematic clarification, against the dangers of ambiguity and abuse of evidence. M. Maritain has proposed a detailed conceptual classification, which expands Aristotle’s division of the planes of abstraction: his pioneer effort is still under discussion even in Scholastic circles. In particular his proposed distinction of mathematics and its allied empirio-schematic and (...) empirio-metrical sciences from the philosophy of nature, which he brought nearer to, and yet really distinguished from the empiriological sciences has been recently criticised by the Laval and Forest Hill schools in North America. Now Father Connolly outlines this debate and bravely offers a tentative ‘compromise theory’. Restricting philosophy to metaphysics proper, he proposes that “some of the empiriological sciences belong to the philosophy of nature—and to this extent the theory agrees with the anti-Maritain position; secondly, some of the empiriological sciences fall outside its orbit and, along with Mathematics, constitute a distinct field of human knowledge—and to this extent the theory agrees with the Maritain position”. (shrink)

SCIENCE VERSUS IDEALISM Science Versus Idealism An Examination of Pure Empiricism and Modern Logic By MAURICE CORNFORTH M. A. To the Memory of David Guest ...

Preview: This is the second volume of the double issue of Eidos. A Journal for Philosophy of Culture devoted to the relationship between science and religion. The contributions across these two volumes have mostly been concerned with, and argued for, various aspects of a non-reductive view of this relationship, according to which reality is not limited to what the natural sciences can tell us about it. That is the view that science and religion are not in conflict, (...) or that the advances made by the natural sciences do not undermine religion as an adequate means of addressing the big questions humanity faces. This is not only a very welcome but also exciting result confirming that after many decades of an almost complete monopoly of scientific naturalism in English language philosophy the field is beginning to open up to a more diverse range of views. This development has made it possible for philosophers in the analytic tradition to engage with topics of deep human importance in a serious and systematic way. (shrink)

Excerpts: THIS book is an attempt to solve, in a way which any interested layman can understand, a problem which has been hotly debated throughout the centuries. Is Matter the only reality? Philosophers, theologians, scientists as well as others who can lay claim to no specialized knowledge, but whose concerns range beyond the petty tasks each day brings forth, have all said their say. And some of them have said yes, others no. Those who say yes are called materialists. Those (...) who say no have no collective name. They all believe that there are other things besides Matter, but they are not all interested in the same things. "Matter is not everything," say many philosophers. "There is also Mind. This can be proved to have a separate existence." "Matter is not everything," say the theologians. "There are also a God and the Souls of men. Those who do not realize this will fail to seek that spiritual guidance which alone can raise men above the level of brute creation." "Matter is not everything," say various idealists. Among them are teachers, moralists, poets. These insist on the non-material reality of "higher things," of beauty, truth and goodness. In the materialism of our age they see the risk that mankind may ignore those things which make life most worth living. Values disappear, or, at least, have but a precarious existence in materialistic doctrine, so that, to the idealist, it seems that the materialist says: "What harm if the temple be destroyed? The stones remain." "Yes, Matter is everything. Science proves it," says the materialist to this heterogeneous collection of opponents with their various interests, their various reasons for opposing him, their various ways of saying what they think. And always he feels a little contemptuous since they base their beliefs on considerations which he does not regard as valid. Their attitude seems to him to be due to ignorance and prejudice. For they fail to build as he does, or believe he does, "on the facts of science."... In this book we want to revive the old controversy and to do so in such a way as to secure the attention of both sides. We want to provide both with a common meeting ground or shall we call it a battleground? We want to put an end to the complacency with which those who hold tenaciously to their own opinions talk much and write much, but listen only to themselves or to those with whom they agree. At the same time we do not intend to seek a compromise. We shall take sides and offer our services (for what they may be worth) wholeheartedly to those who are opposed to materialism. (shrink)

For Diderot, the man who discovers significant truths not through the experimental method but through global intuition is a genius, a kind of visionary poet.

Is scientific reasoning the standard of rationality? Can historical explanation be reduced to the scientific mode of reasoning? R.G. Collingwood answered both questions negatively. He further attempted to show that the types of justification used to account for moral actions are closely similar to historical explanations. His ethics has thus a strong historicist and relativistio flavour. Hie aim of my paper is to state Collingwood's ethical views and to show that the "ethical judgment", which inevitably relies on rules, cannot be (...) equated with the "historical judgment". (shrink)

A concise study in Thomistic theory of knowledge and philosophy of science, aiming primarily to mediate the controversy, within the Thomist camp, between Maritain and his opponents over "the Science-Philosophy problem": is science a field of knowledge distinct from philosophy, and if so wherein? Against both Maritain and his opponents the author argues for a more basic distinction between metaphysics and philosophy of nature; but in favor of Maritain he supports the separation of (...) certain empiriological sciences, along with mathematics, from philosophy of nature. -- L. K. B. (shrink)

The contrast between the two approaches alluded to in the title has gained a certain prominence in our own day. With the knowledge of hindsight it will be of interest therefore to study its incidence in an earlier period, in the writings of Whewell and Mill, Which may thus yield added significance for a later generation. Right at the start there is a difficulty. Not all inductivists agree on their principles, or their interpretation of the logic of scientific reasoning, and (...) the same is true of deductivism, and the differences can therefore be discussed only in connection with individual writers. When this is done, we do find moreover some considerable variations in the treatment of their respective doctrines by the members of each of our two schools. To define these differences, we need a finer structure of elements of classification, indicative of criteria for the acceptance of scientific hypotheses. (shrink)

In our daily lives we conceive of our surroundings as an objectively given reality. The world is perceived through our senses, and ~hese provide us, so we believe, with a faithful image of the world. But occ~ipnally we are forced to realize that our senses deceive us, e. g., by illusions. For a while it was believed that the sensation of color is directly r~lated to the frequency of light waves, until E. Land (the inventor of the polaroid camera) showed (...) in detailed experiments that our perception of, say, a colored spot depends on the colors of its surrounding. On the other hand, we may experience hallucinations or dreams as real. Quite evidently, the relationship between the "world" and our "brain" is intricate. Another strange problem is the way in which we perceive time or the "Now". Psychophysical experiments tell us that the psychological "Now" is an extended period of time in the sense of physics. The situation was made still more puzzling when, in the nineteen-twenties, Heisenberg and others realized that, by observing processes in the microscopic world of electrons and other elementary particles, we strongly interfere with that world. The outcome of experiments - at least in general - can only be predicted statistically. What is the nature ofthis strange relationship between "object" and "observer"? This is another crucial problem of the inside-outside or endo-exo dichotomy. (shrink)

Behaviourism is the view that preferences, beliefs, and other mental states in social-scientific theories are nothing but constructs re-describing people's behaviour. Mentalism is the view that they capture real phenomena, on a par with the unobservables in science, such as electrons and electromagnetic fields. While behaviourism has gone out of fashion in psychology, it remains influential in economics, especially in ‘revealed preference’ theory. We defend mentalism in economics, construed as a positive science, and show that it fits best (...) scientific practice. We distinguish mentalism from, and reject, the radical neuroeconomic view that behaviour should be explained in terms of brain processes, as distinct from mental states. (shrink)

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

Parsimony arguments are advanced in both science and philosophy. How are they related? This question is a test case for Naturalismp, which is the thesis that philosophical theories and scientific theories should be evaluated by the same criteria. In this paper, I describe the justifications that attach to two types of parsimony argument in science. In the first, parsimony is a surrogate for likelihood. In the second, parsimony is relevant to estimating how accurately a model will predict (...) new data when fitted to old. I then consider how these two justifications apply to parsimony arguments in philosophy concerning theism and atheism, the mind/body problem, ethical realism, the question of whether mental properties are causally efficacious, and nominalism versus Platonism about numbers. (shrink)

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)

In response to a recent argument by David Bloor, I argue that denying absolutes does not necessarily lead to relativism, that one can be a fallibilist without being a relativist. At issue are the empirical natural sciences and what might be called “framework relativism”, that is, the idea that there is always a conceptual scheme or set of practices in use, and all observations are theory-laden relative to the framework. My strategy is to look at the elements that define a (...) relativist stance and show where the pragmatic fallibilist disagrees. Defending the pragmatic notion of experience will be central, given that relativists reject the idea that experience can play a role in objectively justifying belief. We can reject all absolutes and start from the premise that everything is historical, contingent, and situated. One of the lessons of pragmatism is that universal and fixed principles are not necessary for objective knowledge. (shrink)

In response to a recent argument by David Bloor, I argue that denying absolutes does not necessarily lead to relativism, that one can be a fallibilist without being a relativist. At issue are the empirical natural sciences and what might be called “framework relativism”, that is, the idea that there is always a conceptual scheme or set of practices in use, and all observations are theory-laden relative to the framework. My strategy is to look at the elements that define a (...) relativist stance and show where the pragmatic fallibilist disagrees. Defending the pragmatic notion of experience will be central, given that relativists reject the idea that experience can play a role in objectively justifying belief. We can reject all absolutes and start from the premise that everything is historical, contingent, and situated. One of the lessons of pragmatism is that universal and fixed principles are not necessary for objective knowledge. (shrink)

We use recent developments within philosophy of science and within certain strands of linguistic research to throw light on each other. According to Ronald Giere's perspectivist philosophy of science, the scientific understanding of reality must proceed along different, mutually irreducible lines of approach. Giere's proposal, however, leaves unresolved the problem of how to integrate the ever‐growing multitude of highly diverse scientific accounts of what is, after all, one and the same world. We propose a technique for (...) the alignment of different perspectives that will permit cross‐perspectival explanation, and thus allow for a more holistic picture of reality to emerge. With respect to modern linguistics, however, Giere's perspectivism merely legalises a de facto state of affairs, as this discipline displays the peaceful coexistence of a multitude of different theoretical perspectives. Still, this makes it all the more important to show how the different aspects of language picked out by these different perspectives combine to form one single complex reality. During our investigation, a largely overlooked type of reduction within linguistics comes to light, prevalent in classical as well as current work within speech act theory and politeness theory. We suggest how a more holistic understanding of language can be attained through our technique for integrating different perspectives. (shrink)

This paper examines critically the current state of affairs in philosophy of science. It focuses on the well-Known puzzle about the relationship between the normative prescriptive methodology of science and positive descriptive history of science. This puzzle has dogged philosophers of science for over a generation and is still controversial. My conclusion is that there is really no escape from it. The best way to characterize it is as follows: "philosophy of science without (...) history of science is empty; history of science without philosophy of science is blind.". (shrink)

A reading of a sample of taxonomical papers leads to the conclusion that new species identification is both taxonomically plausible and philosophically incoherent. As a result, taxonomy becomes a science that apparently violates a necessary condition of its rationality. It is this apparent violation that is the focus of the philosophical debate, a debate whose goal for taxonomy is theoretical coherence at a global level. In this paper, I assess the appropriateness of this goal.

The meaning of sustainability is the subject of intense debate among environmental and resource economists. Perhaps no other issue separates more clearly the traditional economic view from the views of most natural scientists. The debate currently focuses on the substitutability between the economy and the environment or between “natural capital” and “manufactured capital”—a debate captured in terms of weak versus strong sustainability. In this article, we examine the various interpretations of these concepts. We conclude that natural science and (...) economic perspectives on sustainability are inconsistent. The market-based Hartwick-Solow “weak sustainability” approach is far removed from both the ecosystem-based “Holling sustainability” and the “strong sustainability” approach of Daly and others. Each of these sustainability criteria implies a specific valuation approach, and thus an ethical position, to support monetary indicators of sustainability such as a green or sustainable Gross Domestic Product. The conflict between “weak sustainability” and “strong sustainability” is more evident in the context of centralized than decentralized decision making. In particular, firms selling “services” instead of material goods and regarding the latter as “capital” leads to decisions more or less consistent with either type of sustainability. Finally, we discuss the implications of global sustainability for such open systems as regions and countries. Open systems have not been dealt with systematically for any of the sustainability criteria. (shrink)

Although generally informed by an intimate knowledge of evolutionary biology and taxonomy, the controversy over the nature of species is clearly philosophical; it consists almost entirely of the clarification of old, and the invention of new arguments for or against calling the species category a class, The debate seems firmly divided between those, like Kitts and Bernier, who see homo sapiens as a class, and those, like Hull and Ghiselin, who see it as an individual. In the first case, particular (...) human beings are members; in the second case, parts. To the champions of class, the essentialists, each species can be defined by means of a unique set of necessary and sufficient conditions, and every organism can be placed without equivocation into a particular species. To the individualists, nothing could be further from the truth. As a contingent, product of evolution, each species shares that crucial characteristic of an individual, spacio-temporal identity; each is a chunk of genealogical nexus. (shrink)