Conventionalism and It's Impact on Logical Empiricism
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Sport: a Theory of Adjudication
SPORT: A THEORY OF ADJUDICATION DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By Bogdan Ciomaga, M.A. The Ohio State University 2007 Dissertation Committee: Approved by Professor William Morgan, Adviser Professor Donald Hubin ________________________ Adviser Professor Sarah Fields Graduate Program in Education Copyright by Bogdan Ciomaga 2007 ABSTRACT The main issue discussed in this work is the nature and structure of the process of adjudication, that is, the process by which referees make decisions in sport that possess normative import and force. The current dominant theory of adjudication in sport philosophy is interpretivism, which argues that adjudication is not primarily a matter of mechanically applying the rules of the game, but rather of applying rational principles that put the game in its best light. Most interpretivists are also realists, which means that they hold that the normative standing of adjudicative principles is independent of the beliefs and/or arguments of individuals or communities. A closer look at certain examples of sports and referees decisions supports a different approach to adjudication, called conventionalism, which claims that besides the rules of the game, referees are bound to follow certain conventions established by the athletic community. This conclusion is supported, among other things, by considerations concerning the nature of sport, and especially considerations that take into account the mutual beliefs held by the participants in the game. By following Marmor’s argument that conventions are best seen not as solutions to coordination problems but as constitutive features of autonomous practices like sport, I argue that a conventionalist theory of adjudication in sport has more explanatory force than interpretivist theories. -
Philipp Frank at Harvard University: His Work and His Influence
Philipp Frank at Harvard University: His Work and His Influence The Harvard community has made this article openly available. Please share how this access benefits you. Your story matters Citation Holton, Gerald. 2006. Phillip Frank at Harvard: His Work and his Influence. Synthese 153 (2): 297-311. doi.org/10.1007/ s11229-005-5471-3 Citable link http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:37837879 Terms of Use This article was downloaded from Harvard University’s DASH repository, and is made available under the terms and conditions applicable to Other Posted Material, as set forth at http:// nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:dash.current.terms-of- use#LAA 10/12/04 Lecture at Philipp Frank Conferences in Prague & Vienna, Sept-Oct. ‘04 Philipp Frank at Harvard: His Work and his Influence by Gerald Holton My pleasant task today is to bring to life Philipp Frank’s work and influence during his last three decades, when he found a refuge and a position in America. In what follows, I hope I may call him Philipp--having been first a graduate student in one of his courses at Harvard, then his teaching assistant sharing his offices, then for many years his colleague and friend in the same Physics Department, and finally, doing research on his archival holdings kept at Harvard. I also should not hide my large personal debt to him, for without his recommendation in the 1950s to the Albert Einstein Estate, I would not have received its warm welcome and its permission, as the first one to do historical research in the treasure trove of unpublished letters and manuscripts, thus starting me on a major part of my career in the history of science. -
Dossier Pierre Duhem Pierre Duhem's Philosophy and History of Science
Transversal: International Journal for the Historiography of Science , 2 (201 7) 03 -06 ISSN 2526 -2270 www.historiographyofscience.org © The Author s 201 7 — This is an open access article Dossier Pierre Duhem Pierre Duhem’s Philos ophy and History of Science Introduction Fábio Rodrigo Leite 1 Jean-François Stoffel 2 DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.24117/2526-2270.2017.i2.02 _____________________________________________________________________________ We are pleased to present in this issue a tribute to the thought of Pierre Duhem, on the occasion of the centenary of his death that occurred in 2016. Among articles and book reviews, the dossier contains 14 contributions of scholars from different places across the world, from Europe (Belgium, Greece, Italy, Portugal and Sweden) to the Americas (Brazil, Canada, Mexico and the United States). And this is something that attests to the increasing scope of influence exerted by the French physicist, philosopher and 3 historian. It is quite true that since his passing, Duhem has been remembered in the writings of many of those who knew him directly. However, with very few exceptions (Manville et al. 1927), the comments devoted to him exhibited clear biographical and hagiographic characteristics of a generalist nature (see Jordan 1917; Picard 1921; Mentré 1922a; 1922b; Humbert 1932; Pierre-Duhem 1936; Ocagne et al. 1937). From the 1950s onwards, when the studies on his philosophical work resumed, the thought of the Professor from Bordeaux acquired an irrevocable importance, so that references to La théorie physique: Son objet et sa structure became a common place in the literature of the area. As we know, this recovery was a consequence of the prominence attributed, firstly, to the notorious Duhem-Quine thesis in the English- speaking world, and secondly to the sparse and biased comments made by Popper that generated an avalanche of revaluations of the Popperian “instrumentalist interpretation”. -
Like a Pendulum in Time, the History of the Human Conception of Justice Has
Rugeles: What is Justice? Rugeles 1 What is Justice? An Investigation of Leo Strauss’s Natural Right Proposition Laura Marino Rugeles, Vancouver Island University (Editor’s note: The Agora editorial committee has awarded Laura Marino Rugeles the Kendall North Award for the best essay in the 2010 issue Agora.) of the The main concern of this essay is Leo Strauss’s presentation of the idea of justice in Natural Right and History. Although Strauss’s project appears to have the character of a historical account rather than a straightforward argumentative work about justice, it is reasonable to presume that the form of his historical reconstruction contains an argument in itself. Stewart Umphrey has said that “Strauss does not say what justice is, nor does he preach justice or cry out for spiritual renewal” (32). Instead, Strauss’s suggested argument is a “carefully considered hypothesis couched in further questions-like Socrates’ hypothesis that virtue is knowledge-and hypotheses of this kind are doctrines in a sense; they tell us where to keep looking” (Umphrey 33). I believe this claim to be fundamentally correct. In fact, Strauss’s work leaves us with projects of investigation that are pivotal to the question of justice. These projects will reveal themselves after a critical examination of Strauss’ historical account. Justice is an idea that each person can understand but hardly all can agree on. In fact, “the disagreement regarding the principles of justice... seems to reveal genuine perplexity aroused by a divination or insufficient grasp of natural right” (Strauss 100). That is indeed one of the most stubborn problems in human history. -
An Introduction to Philosophy
An Introduction to Philosophy W. Russ Payne Bellevue College Copyright (cc by nc 4.0) 2015 W. Russ Payne Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document with attribution under the terms of Creative Commons: Attribution Noncommercial 4.0 International or any later version of this license. A copy of the license is found at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ 1 Contents Introduction ………………………………………………. 3 Chapter 1: What Philosophy Is ………………………….. 5 Chapter 2: How to do Philosophy ………………….……. 11 Chapter 3: Ancient Philosophy ………………….………. 23 Chapter 4: Rationalism ………….………………….……. 38 Chapter 5: Empiricism …………………………………… 50 Chapter 6: Philosophy of Science ………………….…..… 58 Chapter 7: Philosophy of Mind …………………….……. 72 Chapter 8: Love and Happiness …………………….……. 79 Chapter 9: Meta Ethics …………………………………… 94 Chapter 10: Right Action ……………………...…………. 108 Chapter 11: Social Justice …………………………...…… 120 2 Introduction The goal of this text is to present philosophy to newcomers as a living discipline with historical roots. While a few early chapters are historically organized, my goal in the historical chapters is to trace a developmental progression of thought that introduces basic philosophical methods and frames issues that remain relevant today. Later chapters are topically organized. These include philosophy of science and philosophy of mind, areas where philosophy has shown dramatic recent progress. This text concludes with four chapters on ethics, broadly construed. I cover traditional theories of right action in the third of these. Students are first invited first to think about what is good for themselves and their relationships in a chapter of love and happiness. Next a few meta-ethical issues are considered; namely, whether they are moral truths and if so what makes them so. -
Overview the Varieties of Conventionalism
Cambridge University Press 0521826195 - Conventionalism Yemima Ben-Menahem Excerpt More information 1 Overview The Varieties of Conventionalism This book recounts the hitherto untold story of conventionalism. The profound impact conventionalism has had on seminal developments in both the science and the philosophy of the twentieth century is revealed through analysis of the writings of Poincar´e,Duhem, Carnap, Wittgen- stein, and Quine on the subject, and by examining the debate over con- ventionalism in the context of the theory of relativity and the foundations of mathematics. I trace the evolution of conventionalism from Poincar´e’s modest but precise initial conception through a number of extravagant extrapolations, all of which, I show, eventually collapsed under the weight of the problems they generated. My focus, however, is not history but anal- ysis. The literature is replete with ambiguity as to what the meaning of ‘convention’ is, misunderstandings about the aims of conventionalism, and conflation of conventionalism with other philosophical positions, such as instrumentalism and relativism. The most serious confusion per- tains to the notion of truth by convention typically associated with conven- tionalism. A central theme of this book is that conventionalism does not purport to base truth on convention, but rather, seeks to forestall the conflation of truth and convention. Much of twentieth-century philosophy was characterized by engage- ment in determining the limits of meaning and countering the tendency to ascribe meaning to meaningless expressions. Conventionalism, cor- rectly understood, is motivated by a desire to mitigate deceptive ascription of truth. To the conventionalist, the very idea of truth by convention is as incongruous as that of meaningful nonsense. -
Gaston Bachelard and the Hands of Albert Flocon†
Revista de Humanidades de Valparaíso Año 4 / 2016 / 2do semestre / N° 8 Págs. 205 - 221 ISSN 0719-4234 / eISSN 0719-4242 Gaston Bachelard and the Hands of Albert Flocon† Hans-Jörg Rheinberger* Abstract The paper deals with the engraving hand of Albert Flocon and its poietic description by the pen of Gaston Bachelard. It proceeds by discussing examples of the group of collaborative works that emerged from the cooperation between Flocon, the copperplate engraver and theoretician of perspective and Bachelard, the philosopher of science and scholar of literary images in mid-twentieth century Paris. Keywords: Gaston Bachelard, Albert Flocon, Images of the hand, Con- cretion, Abstraction, Perspective, Phenomenotechnique, Surrationalism. Gaston Bachelard y las manos de Albert Flocon Resumen Este artículo se ocupa del grabado de mano de Albert Flocon y la des- cripción poiética que realiza la pluma de Gaston Bachelard. Se procede a discutir los ejemplos del conjunto de trabajos que surgieron de la cooperación entre Flocon y Bachelard; el grabador en cobre y teórico de la perspectiva, y el filósofo de la ciencia y estudioso de imágenes literarias de la segunda mitad del siglo XX de París. Palabras clave: Gaston Bachelard, Albert Flocon, imágenes de la mano, concreción, abstracción, perspectiva, fenomenotécnica, surrealismo. __________________ † Dedicated to Roberto Torretti. Recibido: mayo 2016. * Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin. 205 206 / Revista de Humanidades de Valparaíso Año 4, 2016, 2do semestre, N° 8 ISSN 0719-4234 / eISSN 0719-4242 This paper concerns the engraving hand of Albert Flocon and its poietic description by the pen of Gaston Bachelard. -
Poincare Conventions Relations
Conventions and Relations in Poincaré’s Philosophy of Science ∗∗∗ Stathis Psillos Dept of Philosophy and History of Science University of Athens, Greece & Rotman Institute of Philosophy & Dept of Philosophy, University of Western Ontario, Canada e-mail: [email protected] 1. Introduction Henri Poincare’s La Science et l’ Hypothése was translated into English in 1905. One of the first reviews—published already in 1905—was by Bertrand Russell. After praising Poincaré for his “power of co-ordinating the whole domain of mathematics and physics in a single system of ideas” (1905, 412), Russell—in this short by pointed review—put forward the two main interpretations of Poincaré’s thought that subsequently became standard. Poincaré was a conventionalist and a structuralist. According to Russell, Poincaré argued that geometry is wholly conventional and that the principles of mechanics are definitions. He rather quickly dismissed this view by taking the line that conventions are merely hypotheses which have been willingly withdrawn from empirical testing and claimed that they were not really necessary qua a different epistemic category. 1 Interestingly, he spent more time explaining that for Poincaré “science teaches us, not about things in themselves, but about their relations” (1905, 412). As Russell understood Poincaré’s main thesis, “if a really exists, a statement about a has no meaning unless it asserts a relation to a b which also really exists” (1905, 417). His prime disagreement with Poincaré was that he took that statements about qualities of real things are not devoid of meaning but simply unknowable. But apart from that, Russell endorsed this relationist reading of Poincaré and made two important points. -
What Is Conventionalism About Moral Rights and Duties?
Katharina Nieswandt What Is Conventionalism about Moral Rights and Duties? Abstract A powerful objection against moral conventionalism says that it gives the wrong reasons for individual rights and duties. The reason why I must not break my promise to you, for example, should lie in the damage to you—rather than to the practice of promising or to all other participants in that practice. Common targets of this objection include the theories of Hobbes, Gauthier, Hooker, Binmore, and Rawls. I argue that: (1) The conventionalism of these theories is superfi- cial. (2) Genuinely conventionalist theories are not vulnerable to the ob- jection. (3) Genuine moral conventionalism is independently plausible. Key Words practice view • promises • rule-consequentialism • contractarianism • John Rawls • G.E.M. Anscombe Publication & Download Australasian Journal of Philosophy http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00048402.2018.1425306 Acknowledgements I am deeply indebted to Ulf Hlobil for multiple readings of this paper in its various stages. I am furthermore grateful to editor Stephen Hetherington and three anonymous reviewers, whose feedback greatly improved the final version. For additional feedback, I'd like to thank participants at multiple work- shops; in particular Oded Na’aman, Jorah Dannenberg, Nico Cornell, and Michael Goodhart. Final Draft, January 2018 Nieswandt, What Is Conventionalism about Moral Rights and Duties? 1 Introduction ‘Conventionalist’ or ‘practice views’ of morality are a large and diverse group. Contractarians (Hobbes or Gauthier), rule-consequentialists (Hooker), Neo-Aristotelians (Anscombe or Foot), evolutionary ethicists (Binmore), and Rawls are commonly regarded as conventionalists; many treatments also include Hume (e.g. Kolodny and Wallace [2003: sec. -
A Guide to Kant's Psychologism Via Locke, Berkeley, Hume, And
5 From Hume to Kant via Wittgenstein Hume’s thesis that associative psychology is the cement of the universe so far as our consciousness of the natural and human worlds is concerned was a gauntlet thrown down before theorists of mind of his and subse- quent eras. It reduces all non-linguistic human conception, judgments, and inferences to processes fully as affect-driven and devoid of proposi- tional or other logical structure as presumably drive non-human animal intelligences and govern both human and animal passions. In so doing, it effectively cuts the ground from under all claims of human exception- alism since the universe represented by the human psyche becomes, in all fundamentals, no different from that of animal psyches generally. The challenge facing Hume’s opponents, then, was to show that associa- tive psychology suffices in neither regard, and so to identify what makes human intelligence psychologically unique—or at least more exceptional than Hume would have it. The Humean challenge is two-sided. The first is the claim considered in the previous chapter that the explanatory power of associative psychol- ogy has been grossly underestimated, being nothing less than the cement of every creature’s representational universe, humans included. The sec- ond, which I shall explore now, is his thesis that conscious mind by itself is incapable of supporting any other kind of representation. This relates particularly to propositional thought, its logic, and the languages that are its vehicle: any representation that depends on these is not a mental rep- resentation at all—a consciousness with dedicated neural correlates—but something else entirely. -
Democracy and Scientific Method in Thomas Hobbes
Duquesne University Duquesne Scholarship Collection Electronic Theses and Dissertations 2014 The A rP iori Nature of the Political: Democracy and Scientific ethoM d in Thomas Hobbes Patrick Craig Follow this and additional works at: https://dsc.duq.edu/etd Recommended Citation Craig, P. (2014). The A rP iori Nature of the Political: Democracy and Scientific eM thod in Thomas Hobbes (Doctoral dissertation, Duquesne University). Retrieved from https://dsc.duq.edu/etd/438 This Immediate Access is brought to you for free and open access by Duquesne Scholarship Collection. It has been accepted for inclusion in Electronic Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Duquesne Scholarship Collection. For more information, please contact [email protected]. THE A PRIORI NATURE OF THE POLITICAL: DEMOCRACY AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD IN THOMAS HOBBES A Dissertation Submitted to the McAnulty College and Graduate School of Liberal Arts Duquesne University In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy By Patrick Craig December 2014 Copyright by Patrick Craig 2014 THE A PRIORI NATURE OF THE POLITICAL: DEMOCRACY AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD IN THOMAS HOBBES By Patrick Craig Approved October 3, 2014 ________________________________ ________________________________ Daniel Selcer Fred Evans Associate Professor of Philosophy Professor of Philosophy (Committee Chair) (Committee Member) ________________________________ ________________________________ James Swindal Douglas Jesseph Professor of Philosophy Professor of Philosophy -
Was Pierre Duhem an Esprit De Finesse ?
Transversal: International Journal for the Historiography of Science , 2 (201 7) 93 -107 ISSN 2526 -2270 www.historiographyofscience.org © The Author 201 7 — This is an open access article Dossier Pierre Duhem Was Pierre Duhem an Esprit de finesse ? Víctor Manuel Hernández Márquez 1 Abstract: Although Pierre Duhem is well known for his conventionalist outlook and, in particular, for his critique of crucial experiments outlined in his thesis on the empirical indeterminacy of theory, he also contributed to the scholarship on the psychological profiles of scientists by revising Pascal’s famous distinction between the subtle mind and the geometric mind ( esprits fins and esprits géométriques ). For Duhem, the ideal scientist is the one who combines the defining qualities of both types of intellect. As a physicist, Duhem made important theoretical contributions to the field of thermodynamics as well as to the then-nascent physical chemistry. Due to his rejection of atomism and his unrelenting critique of Maxwell’s electrodynamics, however, in his later years, Duhem’s work was surpassed and abandoned by the dominant tendencies of physics of the time. In this essay, I will discuss whether Duhem himself can be understood through the lens of his own account of the scientist’s psychological profile. More specifically, I examine whether the subtle 93 mind – to which he seems to assign greater cognitive value – in fact plays a key role in Duhem’s critique of the English School ( école anglaise ), or if his preference for the axiomatic structure of theoretical physics shows a greater affinity with the geometric mind. Keywords: Pierre Duhem; subtle and geometric minds; abstract and axiomatic theories; physical theory Received: 30 March 2017.