Introduction to Analytic Philosophy Spring 2020 Robert Martin
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What Is That Thing Called Philosophy of Technology? - R
HISTORY AND PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY – Vol. IV - What Is That Thing Called Philosophy of Technology? - R. J. Gómez WHAT IS THAT THING CALLED PHILOSOPHY OF TECHNOLOGY? R. J. Gómez Department of Philosophy. California State University (LA). USA Keywords: Adorno, Aristotle, Bunge, Ellul, Feenberg, Habermas, Heidegger, Horkheimer, Jonas, Latour, Marcuse, Mumford, Naess, Shrader-Frechette, artifact, assessment, determinism, ecosophy, ends, enlightenment, efficiency, epistemology, enframing, ideology, life-form, megamachine, metaphysics, method, naturalistic, fallacy, new, ethics, progress, rationality, rule, science, techno-philosophy Contents 1. Introduction 2. Locating technology with respect to science 2.1. Structure and Content 2.2. Method 2.3. Aim 2.4. Pattern of Change 3. Locating philosophy of technology 4. Early philosophies of technology 4.1. Aristotelianism 4.2. Technological Pessimism 4.3. Technological Optimism 4.4. Heidegger’s Existentialism and the Essence of Technology 4.5. Mumford’s Megamachinism 4.6. Neomarxism 4.6.1. Adorno-Horkheimer 4.6.2. Marcuse 4.6.3. Habermas 5. Recent philosophies of technology 5.1. L. Winner 5.2. A. Feenberg 5.3. EcosophyUNESCO – EOLSS 6. Technology and values 6.1. Shrader-Frechette Claims 6.2. H Jonas 7. Conclusions SAMPLE CHAPTERS Glossary Bibliography Biographical Sketch Summary A philosophy of technology is mainly a critical reflection on technology from the point of view of the main chapters of philosophy, e.g., metaphysics, epistemology and ethics. Technology has had a fast development since the middle of the 20th century , especially ©Encyclopedia of Life Support Systems (EOLSS) HISTORY AND PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY – Vol. IV - What Is That Thing Called Philosophy of Technology? - R. -
Kant's Definition of Science in the Architectonic of Pure Reason And
View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Institutional Research Information System University of Turin 372DOI 10.1515/kant-2014-0016Gabriele Gava KANT-STUDIEN 2014; 105(3): 372–393 Gabriele Gava Kant’s Definition of Science in the Architectonic of Pure Reason and the Essential Ends of Reason Abstract: The paper analyses the definition of science as an architectonic unity, which Kant gives in the Architectonic of Pure Reason. I will show how this defini- tion is problematic, insofar as it is affected by the various ways in which the rela- tionship of reason to ends is discussed in this chapter of the Critique of Pure Rea- son. Kant sometimes claims that architectonic unity is only obtainable thanks to an actual reference to the essential practical ends of human reason, but he also identifies disciplines that do not make this reference as scientific. In order to find a solution to this apparent contradiction, I will first present Kant’s distinction be- tween a scholastic and a cosmic concept of philosophy. This distinction expresses Kant’s foreshadowing of his later insistence on the priority of practical philos- ophy within a true system of philosophy. Then, I will present a related distinction between technical and architectonic unity and show how Kant seems to use two different conceptions of science, one simply attributing systematic unity to science, the other claiming that science should consider the essential practical ends of human beings. I will propose a solution to this problem by arguing that, if we give a closer look to Kant’s claims, the unity of scientific disciplines can be considered architectonic without taking into consideration the essential practi- cal ends of human reason. -
Philosophy of Science Reading List
Philosophy of Science Area Comprehensive Exam Reading List Revised September 2011 Exam Format: Students will have four hours to write answers to four questions, chosen from a list of approximately 20-30 questions organized according to topic: I. General Philosophy of Science II. History of Philosophy of Science III. Special Topics a. Philosophy of Physics b. Philosophy of Biology c. Philosophy of Mind / Cognitive Science d. Logic and Foundations of Mathematics Students are required to answer a total of three questions from sections I and II (at least one from each section), and one question from section III. For each section, we have provided a list of core readings—mostly journal articles and book chapters—that are representative of the material with which we expect you to be familiar. Many of these readings will already be familiar to you from your coursework and other reading. Use this as a guide to filling in areas in which you are less well- prepared. Please note, however, that these readings do not constitute necessary or sufficient background to pass the comp. The Philosophy of Science area committee assumes that anyone who plans to write this exam has a good general background in the area acquired through previous coursework and independent reading. Some anthologies There are several good anthologies of Philosophy of Science that will be useful for further background (many of the articles listed below are anthologized; references included in the list below). Richard Boyd, Philip Gasper, and J.D. Trout, eds., The Philosophy of Science (MIT Press, 991). Martin Curd and J. -
The Analytic-Synthetic Distinction and the Classical Model of Science: Kant, Bolzano and Frege
Synthese (2010) 174:237–261 DOI 10.1007/s11229-008-9420-9 The analytic-synthetic distinction and the classical model of science: Kant, Bolzano and Frege Willem R. de Jong Received: 10 April 2007 / Revised: 24 July 2007 / Accepted: 1 April 2008 / Published online: 8 November 2008 © The Author(s) 2008. This article is published with open access at Springerlink.com Abstract This paper concentrates on some aspects of the history of the analytic- synthetic distinction from Kant to Bolzano and Frege. This history evinces con- siderable continuity but also some important discontinuities. The analytic-synthetic distinction has to be seen in the first place in relation to a science, i.e. an ordered system of cognition. Looking especially to the place and role of logic it will be argued that Kant, Bolzano and Frege each developed the analytic-synthetic distinction within the same conception of scientific rationality, that is, within the Classical Model of Science: scientific knowledge as cognitio ex principiis. But as we will see, the way the distinction between analytic and synthetic judgments or propositions functions within this model turns out to differ considerably between them. Keywords Analytic-synthetic · Science · Logic · Kant · Bolzano · Frege 1 Introduction As is well known, the critical Kant is the first to apply the analytic-synthetic distinction to such things as judgments, sentences or propositions. For Kant this distinction is not only important in his repudiation of traditional, so-called dogmatic, metaphysics, but it is also crucial in his inquiry into (the possibility of) metaphysics as a rational science. Namely, this distinction should be “indispensable with regard to the critique of human understanding, and therefore deserves to be classical in it” (Kant 1783, p. -
Foundations of Nursing Science 9781284041347 CH01.Indd Page 2 10/23/13 10:44 AM Ff-446 /207/JB00090/Work/Indd
9781284041347_CH01.indd Page 1 10/23/13 10:44 AM ff-446 /207/JB00090/work/indd © Jones & Bartlett Learning, LLC. NOT FOR SALE OR DISTRIBUTION PART 1 Foundations of Nursing Science 9781284041347_CH01.indd Page 2 10/23/13 10:44 AM ff-446 /207/JB00090/work/indd © Jones & Bartlett Learning, LLC. NOT FOR SALE OR DISTRIBUTION 9781284041347_CH01.indd Page 3 10/23/13 10:44 AM ff-446 /207/JB00090/work/indd © Jones & Bartlett Learning, LLC. NOT FOR SALE OR DISTRIBUTION CHAPTER Philosophy of Science: An Introduction 1 E. Carol Polifroni Introduction A philosophy of science is a perspective—a lens, a way one views the world, and, in the case of advanced practice nurses, the viewpoint the nurse acts from in every encounter with a patient, family, or group. A person’s philosophy of science cre- ates the frame on a picture—a message that becomes a paradigm and a point of reference. Each individual’s philosophy of science will permit some things to be seen and cause others to be blocked. It allows people to be open to some thoughts and potentially keeps them closed to others. A philosophy will deem some ideas correct, others inconsistent, and some simply wrong. While philosophy of sci- ence is not meant to be viewed as a black or white proposition, it does provide perspectives that include some ideas and thoughts and, therefore, it must neces- sarily exclude others. The important key is to ensure that the ideas and thoughts within a given philosophy remain consistent with one another, rather than being in opposition. -
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. -
Introduction to Philosophy of Science
INTRODUCTION TO PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE The aim of philosophy of science is to understand what scientists did and how they did it, where history of science shows that they performed basic research very well. Therefore to achieve this aim, philosophers look back to the great achievements in the evolution of modern science that started with the Copernicus with greater emphasis given to more recent accomplishments. The earliest philosophy of science in the last two hundred years is Romanticism, which started as a humanities discipline and was later adapted to science as a humanities specialty. The Romantics view the aim of science as interpretative understanding, which is a mentalistic ontology acquired by introspection. They call language containing this ontology “theory”. The most successful science sharing in the humanities aim is economics, but since the development of econometrics that enables forecasting and policy, the humanities aim is mixed with the natural science aim of prediction and control. Often, however, econometricians have found that successful forecasting by econometric models must be purchased at the price of rejecting equation specifications based on the interpretative understanding supplied by neoclassical macroeconomic and microeconomic theory. In this context the term “economic theory” means precisely such neoclassical equation specifications. Aside from economics Romanticism has little relevance to the great accomplishments in the history of science, because its concept of the aim of science has severed it from the benefits of the examination of the history of science. The Romantic philosophy of social science is still resolutely practiced in immature sciences such as sociology, where mentalistic description prevails, where quantification and prediction are seldom attempted, and where implementation in social policy is seldom effective and often counterproductive. -
Immanuel Kant's Philosophy of Mathematics in Terms of His Theory
Immanuel Kant’s Philosophy of Mathematics in Terms 2012/18 45 Hülya YALDIR*- Necdet GUNER** Immanuel Kant’s Philosophy of Mathematics in Terms of His Theory of Space and Time Abstract At the beginning of the modern age, mathematics had a great importance for the study of Nature. Galileo claimed that ‘the book of nature was written in a kind of mathematical code, and that if we could only crack that code, we could uncover her ultimate secrets’. But, how can mathematics, consisting of necessary tautological truths that are infallible and non-informative, be regarded as the language of natural sciences, while the knowledge of natural sciences is informative, empirical and fallible? Or, is there another alternative: as Hume claimed, modern sciences only depend on empirical data deriving from our perceptions, rather than having the necessity of mathematics. Many philosophers have tried to find an adequate answer for the problem of the relationship between mathematical necessity and contingent perceptions, but the difficulty remained unsolved until Kant’s construction of his original philosophy of the nature as well as the limits of human reason. The main purpose of this study is to show how Kant overcomes this difficulty by making use of the examples of Euclidean geometry and of arithmetic: there are synthetic a priori (a priori, universal, necessary, but at the same time informative) judgments, and indeed mathematical propositions are of this kind. Key Terms a priori, a posteriori, analytic, synthetic, synthetic a priori, mathematics, geometry, arithmetic, space, time and imagination. Uzay ve Zaman Teorisi Açısından Immanuel Kant’ın Matematik Felsefesi ÖZET Modern çağın başlangıcında, matematik doğa çalışması için büyük bir öneme sahip olmuştur. -
A Brief Overview of the Philosophy of Science
A Brief Overview of the Philosophy of Science NRC 601 Research Concepts in Natural Resources Department of Natural Resources Conservation University of Massachusetts Amherst Fall 2009 Instructor: Stephen DeStefano USGS Massachusetts Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit Opening premise “The universe is a place filled with wonderful but deeply mysterious structures and processes – [but] these can be understood as behaving in accord with universal laws.” - Anonymous Objectives (1) lay a foundation of philosophy and trace the philosophical roots of science. (2) become familiar with the names and backgrounds of some key philosophers of science. (3) identify some of the ideas and approaches that form the foundations of modern science. Some terminology - empiricism --- all knowledge is derived from experience. - deductivism --- specific observations obtained from generalizations. - inductivism --- generalizations from facts recorded in experience. - materialism --- everything that exists is physical. - metaphysicalism --- related to abstract, intangible, philosophical. - realism --- there is a knowable external world. - scepticism --- the world is unknowable; nothing can be established. - pluralism --- increase alternative H’s to max. chance of falsification. Types of Reasoning (1) analogical “Betty should be able to graduate from college because her identical twin did so . “ “Black spruce require certain levels of nutrients, therefore white spruce should . .” (2) inductive 1,000 apples are red all apples are red (3) deductive “If all men are mortal and Socrates is a man, then Socrates is mortal.” In Ecology . We study a . sample, . and apply what we learn to . the population. Thus we commonly use . inductive reasoning, . based on . empirical data. Sir Francis Bacon (1561-1626) An English lawyer, statesman, essayist, historian, intellectual, reformer, philosopher, and champion of modern science. -
PHIL-36 - Philosophy of Language Amherst College Spring 2009 – Visiting Prof
PHIL-36 - Philosophy of Language Amherst College Spring 2009 – Visiting Prof. Kevin C. Klement (UMass faculty member) Mondays and Wednesdays 12:30pm-1:50pm in Cooper House 201. Course description: “Caesar was stabbed.” With those words, I can make a claim about someone who lived in the distant past. How is that possible? How do our words succeed in picking out particular portions of reality, even ones with which we have had no contact? How does language enable us to convey thoughts about everything from Amherst College, to the hopes of a friend, to the stars beyond our galaxy? What are the thoughts, or the meanings, that our words carry? And whatever they turn out to be, how do they come to be associated with our words: through some mental activity on our part, or instead through our shared use of language? This course covers selected topics in 20th century analytic philosophy of language, including meaning, reference, naming, truth, speech acts, propositional attitudes, translation, and the nature of linguistic representation. Contact info: You may e-mail me at [email protected], which is often the best way to reach me. I have a mailbox in the Amherst College philosophy department office (208 Cooper House). My office at UMass is 353 Bartlett Hall, and I also have access to Prof. Alexander George’s Office (307 Cooper House) for meetings at Amherst College. My UMass office phone is 545-5784. My office hours there are Tuesdays 2:30-3:30pm, Thursdays 11am-12pm and other times by appointment. I am also happy to make an appointment to meet with you at AC instead. -
Passmore, J. (1967). Logical Positivism. in P. Edwards (Ed.). the Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Vol. 5, 52- 57). New York: Macmillan
Passmore, J. (1967). Logical Positivism. In P. Edwards (Ed.). The Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Vol. 5, 52- 57). New York: Macmillan. LOGICAL POSITIVISM is the name given in 1931 by A. E. Blumberg and Herbert Feigl to a set of philosophical ideas put forward by the Vienna circle. Synonymous expressions include "consistent empiricism," "logical empiricism," "scientific empiricism," and "logical neo-positivism." The name logical positivism is often, but misleadingly, used more broadly to include the "analytical" or "ordinary language philosophies developed at Cambridge and Oxford. HISTORICAL BACKGROUND The logical positivists thought of themselves as continuing a nineteenth-century Viennese empirical tradition, closely linked with British empiricism and culminating in the antimetaphysical, scientifically oriented teaching of Ernst Mach. In 1907 the mathematician Hans Hahn, the economist Otto Neurath, and the physicist Philipp Frank, all of whom were later to be prominent members of the Vienna circle, came together as an informal group to discuss the philosophy of science. They hoped to give an account of science which would do justice -as, they thought, Mach did not- to the central importance of mathematics, logic, and theoretical physics, without abandoning Mach's general doctrine that science is, fundamentally, the description of experience. As a solution to their problems, they looked to the "new positivism" of Poincare; in attempting to reconcile Mach and Poincare; they anticipated the main themes of logical positivism. In 1922, at the instigation of members of the "Vienna group," Moritz Schlick was invited to Vienna as professor, like Mach before him (1895-1901), in the philosophy of the inductive sciences. Schlick had been trained as a scientist under Max Planck and had won a name for himself as an interpreter of Einstein's theory of relativity. -
2.2 Glock Et Al
Journal for the History of Book Symposium: Analytical Philosophy Hans-Johann Glock, What is Analytic Philosophy? Volume 2, Number 2 Introduction Hans-Johann Glock..................... 1 Editor in Chief Mark Textor, King’s College London Commentaries Guest Editor Leila Haaparanta......................... 2 Mirja Hartimo, University of Helsinki Christopher Pincock....................6 Editorial Board Panu Raatikainen........................11 Juliet Floyd, Boston University Graham Stevens.......................... 28 Greg Frost-Arnold, Hobart and William Smith Colleges Ryan Hickerson, University of Western Oregon Replies Henry Jackman, York University Hans-Johann Glock..................... 36 Sandra Lapointe, McMaster University Chris Pincock, Ohio State University Richard Zach, University of Calgary Production Editor Ryan Hickerson Editorial Assistant Daniel Harris, CUNY Graduate Center Design Douglas Patterson and Daniel Harris ©2013 The Authors What is Analytic Philosophy? shall not be able to respond to all of the noteworthy criticisms and questions of my commentators. I have divided my responses ac- Hans-Johann Glock cording to commentator rather than topic, while also indicating some connections between their ideas where appropriate. Let me start by thanking the Journal for the History of Analytical Phi- losophy for offering me this opportunity to discuss my book What is Analytical Philosophy? (Cambridge, 2008). I am also very grateful Hans-Johann Glock for the valuable feedback from the contributors. And I thank both University of Zurich the journal and the contributors for their patience in waiting for [email protected] my replies. I was pleased to discover that all of my commentators express a certain sympathy with the central contention of my book, namely that analytic philosophy is an intellectual movement of the twentieth-century (with roots in the nineteenth and offshoots in the twenty-first), held together by family-resemblances on the one hand, ties of historical influence on the other.