The Ontic Account of Scientific Explanation
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The Ontological-Ontic Character of Mythology
Western University Scholarship@Western Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository 8-25-2017 12:00 AM The Ontological-Ontic Character of Mythology Jeffrey M. Ray The University of Western Ontario Supervisor Dr. John Verheide The University of Western Ontario Graduate Program in Theory and Criticism A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the equirr ements for the degree in Master of Arts © Jeffrey M. Ray 2017 Follow this and additional works at: https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/etd Part of the Continental Philosophy Commons, History of Philosophy Commons, and the Metaphysics Commons Recommended Citation Ray, Jeffrey M., "The Ontological-Ontic Character of Mythology" (2017). Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository. 4821. https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/etd/4821 This Dissertation/Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by Scholarship@Western. It has been accepted for inclusion in Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository by an authorized administrator of Scholarship@Western. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Abstract This thesis submission interrogates the concept of mythology within the opposing philosophical frameworks of the world as either an abstract totality from which ‘truth’ is derived, or as a chaotic background to which the subject brings a synthetic unity. Chapter One compares the culturally dominant, classical philosophical picture of the world as a necessary, knowable totality, with the more recent conception of the ‘world’ as a series of ideational repetitions (sense) grafted on to material flows emanating from a chaotic background (non-sense). Drawing on Plato, Kant, and Heidegger, I situate mythology as a conception of the false—that which fails to correlate with the ‘world’ as a necessary whole. -
Arguments Vs. Explanations
Arguments vs. Explanations Arguments and explanations share a lot of common features. In fact, it can be hard to tell the difference between them if you look just at the structure. Sometimes, the exact same structure can function as an argument or as an explanation depending on the context. At the same time, arguments are very different in terms of what they try to accomplish. Explaining and arguing are very different activities even though they use the same types of structures. In a similar vein, building something and taking it apart are two very different activities, but we typically use the same tools for both. Arguments and explanations both have a single sentence as their primary focus. In an argument, we call that sentence the “conclusion”, it’s what’s being argued for. In an explanation, that sentence is called the “explanandum”, it’s what’s being explained. All of the other sentences in an argument or explanation are focused on the conclusion or explanandum. In an argument, these other sentences are called “premises” and they provide basic reasons for thinking that the conclusion is true. In an explanation, these other sentences are called the “explanans” and provide information about how or why the explanandum is true. So in both cases we have a bunch of sentences all focused on one single sentence. That’s why it’s easy to confuse arguments and explanations, they have a similar structure. Premises/Explanans Conclusion/Explanandum What is an argument? An argument is an attempt to provide support for a claim. One useful way of thinking about this is that an argument is, at least potentially, something that could be used to persuade someone about the truth of the argument’s conclusion. -
Notes on Pragmatism and Scientific Realism Author(S): Cleo H
Notes on Pragmatism and Scientific Realism Author(s): Cleo H. Cherryholmes Source: Educational Researcher, Vol. 21, No. 6, (Aug. - Sep., 1992), pp. 13-17 Published by: American Educational Research Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1176502 Accessed: 02/05/2008 14:02 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=aera. Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit organization founded in 1995 to build trusted digital archives for scholarship. We enable the scholarly community to preserve their work and the materials they rely upon, and to build a common research platform that promotes the discovery and use of these resources. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. http://www.jstor.org Notes on Pragmatismand Scientific Realism CLEOH. CHERRYHOLMES Ernest R. House's article "Realism in plicit declarationof pragmatism. Here is his 1905 statement ProfessorResearch" (1991) is informative for the overview it of it: of scientificrealism. -
Form and Explanation
Form and Explanation Jonathan Kramnick and Anahid Nersessian What does form explain? More often than not, when it comes to liter- ary criticism, form explains everything. Where form refers “to elements of a verbal composition,” including “rhythm, meter, structure, diction, imagery,” it distinguishes ordinary from figurative utterance and thereby defines the literary per se.1 Where form refers to the disposition of those elements such that the work of which they are a part mimes a “symbolic resolution to a concrete historical situation,” it distinguishes real from vir- tual phenomena and thereby defines the task of criticism as their ongoing adjudication.2 Both forensic and exculpatory in their promise, form’s ex- planations have been applied to circumstances widely disparate in scale, character, and significance. This is nothing new, but a recent flurry of de- bates identifying new varieties of form has thrown the unruliness of its application into relief. Taken together, they suggest that to give an account of form is to contribute to the work of making sense of linguistic meaning, aesthetic production, class struggle, objecthood, crises in the humanities and of the planet, how we read, why we read, and what’s wrong with these queries of how and why. In this context, form explains what we cannot: what’s the point of us at all? Contemporary partisans of form maintain that their high opinion of its exegetical power is at once something new in the field and the field’s 1. René Wellek, “Concepts of Form and Structure in Twentieth-Century Criticism,” Concepts of Criticism (New Haven, Conn., 1963), p. -
What Is a Philosophical Analysis?
JEFFREY C. KING WHAT IS A PHILOSOPHICAL ANALYSIS? (Received 24 January 1996) It is common for philosophers to offer philosophical accounts or analyses, as they are sometimes called, of knowledge, autonomy, representation, (moral) goodness, reference, and even modesty.1 These philosophical analyses raise deep questions. What is it that is being analyzed (i.e. what sorts of things are the objects of analysis)? What sort of thing is the analysis itself (a proposition? sentence?)? Under what conditions is an analysis correct? How can a correct analysis be informative? How, if at all, does the production of philo- sophical analyses differ from what scientists do? The purpose of the present paper is to provide answers to these questions. The traditional answers to the ®rst and last of these questions are that concepts are the objects of philosophical analysis and that philo- sophical analyses differ from the results of scienti®c investigation in being conceptual analyses. Like many philosophers I am suspicious of the notions of concept and conceptual analysis as traditionally understood. Though the critique of these notions is beyond the scope of the present work, the answers I shall give to the questions raised above shall not invoke concepts (understood as things distinct from properties).2 I count it as a virtue of my account that it is able to provide answers to the questions raised above without an appeal to concepts. And to the extent that it has been felt that concepts are needed to answer these questions, the present account weakens the case for positing concepts. Before addressing these questions, however, we shall make the simplifying assumption that analyses are given in a ªcanonical formº. -
Generics Analysis Canberra Plan.Pdf
Philosophical Perspectives, 26, Philosophy of Mind, 2012 CONCEPTS, ANALYSIS, GENERICS AND THE CANBERRA PLAN1 Mark Johnston Princeton University Sarah-Jane Leslie2 Princeton University My objection to meanings in the theory of meaning is not that they are abstract or that their identity conditions are obscure, but that they have no demonstrated use.3 —Donald Davidson “Truth and Meaning” From time to time it is said that defenders of conceptual analysis would do well to peruse the best empirically supported psychological theories of concepts, and then tailor their notions of conceptual analysis to those theories of what concepts are.4 As against this, there is an observation — traceable at least as far back to Gottlob Frege’s attack on psychologism in “The Thought” — that might well discourage philosophers from spending a week or two with the empirical psychological literature. The psychological literature is fundamentally concerned with mental representations, with the mental processes of using these in classification, characterization and inference, and with the sub-personal bases of these processes. The problem is that for many philosophers, concepts could not be mental items. (Jerry Fodor is a notable exception, we discuss him below.) We would like to set out this difference of focus in some detail and then propose a sort of translation manual, or at least a crucial translational hint, one which helps in moving between philosophical and psychological treatments of concepts. Then we will consider just how, given the translation, the relevant -
Analysis - Identify Assumptions, Reasons and Claims, and Examine How They Interact in the Formation of Arguments
Analysis - identify assumptions, reasons and claims, and examine how they interact in the formation of arguments. Individuals use analytics to gather information from charts, graphs, diagrams, spoken language and documents. People with strong analytical skills attend to patterns and to details. They identify the elements of a situation and determine how those parts interact. Strong interpretations skills can support high quality analysis by providing insights into the significance of what a person is saying or what something means. Inference - draw conclusions from reasons and evidence. Inference is used when someone offers thoughtful suggestions and hypothesis. Inference skills indicate the necessary or the very probable consequences of a given set of facts and conditions. Conclusions, hypotheses, recommendations or decisions that are based on faulty analysis, misinformation, bad data or biased evaluations can turn out to be mistaken, even if they have reached using excellent inference skills. Evaluative - assess the credibility of sources of information and the claims they make, and determine the strength and weakness or arguments. Applying evaluation skills can judge the quality of analysis, interpretations, explanations, inferences, options, opinions, beliefs, ideas, proposals, and decisions. Strong explanation skills can support high quality evaluation by providing evidence, reasons, methods, criteria, or assumptions behind the claims made and the conclusions reached. Deduction - decision making in precisely defined contexts where rules, operating conditions, core beliefs, values, policies, principles, procedures and terminology completely determine the outcome. Deductive reasoning moves with exacting precision from the assumed truth of a set of beliefs to a conclusion which cannot be false if those beliefs are untrue. Deductive validity is rigorously logical and clear-cut. -
C. Aesthetics of Existence Nietzsche and Heidegger
C. AESTHETICS OF EXISTENCE NIETZSCHE AND HEIDEGGER CI) LIFE AND ETERNAL RECURRENCE NIETZSCHE Introduction Nietzsche revalues the question of freedom in response to what he considers the repressive, life-denying moral laws underwritten by an over-bearing conceptual ratio since the time of Socrates and Plato. What has become the culturally instilled dualism of body and mind, an exclusion of somatic drives from any determining influence in the process of so-called rational thought, Nietzsche argues, continues to distort the modern questions of freedom and moral truth. Critical of the transcendental a priori character of Kant's categorical imperative and the dialectical rationality governing Hegel's secular metaphysics of Spirit, Nietzsche severs any necessary link between freedom and the conceptual ratio. Freedom now finds expression in the existential poiesis of an inner, self-reflexive pathos of aesthetic sensibility. This means that freedom is no longer tied to normative social relations with others nor to a metaphysical telos altogether beyond reach, but rather to values which best suit an individual's particular existential goals. No longer governed by any conceptually determinate, legislative moral judgement, these goals and the values supporting them are determined through a process of aesthetic evaluation. The actions resulting from this self-reflexive, aesthetic evaluation resemble those of an artist when producing a work of art. Indeed Nietzsche considers the actualisation of freedom to be indistinguishable from the actualisation of life as a work of art. Nietzsche thereby revalues the will to freedom as a self-styled evaluative aesthetics. What sustains this specifically aesthetic revaluation of freedom, Nietzsche indicates_ is a faith in the fateful principle of eternal recurrence. -
Conceptual Analysis and Reductive Explanation
Conceptual Analysis and Reductive Explanation David J. Chalmers and Frank Jackson Philosophy Program Research School of Social Sciences Australian National University 1 Introduction Is conceptual analysis required for reductive explanation? If there is no a priori entailment from microphysical truths to phenomenal truths, does reductive explanation of the phenomenal fail? We say yes (Chalmers 1996; Jackson 1994, 1998). Ned Block and Robert Stalnaker say no (Block and Stalnaker 1999). A number of issues can be distinguished: (1) Is there an a priori entailment from microphysical truths to ordinary macroscopic truths? (2) If there is no a priori entailment from microphysical truths to phenomenal truths, does reductive explanation of the phenomenal fail? (3) If there is no a priori entailment from microphysical truths to phenomenal truths, is physicalism about the phenomenal false? (4) Is there an a priori entailment from microphysical truths to phenomenal truths? We hold that the first three questions should be answered positively (with some qualifications to be outlined). Block and Stalnaker hold that the first three questions should be answered negatively. Their central strategy is to argue for a negative answer to the first question, and to use this conclusion to argue for a negative answer to the second and third questions. They argue that truths about water and about life, for example, are not entailed a priori by microphysical truths, but that this is no bar to the reductive explanation and physical constitution of water and of life. In this paper, we will address Block and Stalnaker’s arguments for a negative answer to the first three questions, while remaining neutral on the fourth. -
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. -
58 Bruno Cassara∗ A-Priority and Hermeneutics: the Scientificity of Phenomenology from Husserl to Heidegger 1. Hermeneutics An
Bruno Cassara ∗ A-Priority and Hermeneutics: The Scientificity of Phenomenology from Husserl to Heidegger Abstract Like Husserl, the young Heidegger was preoccupied with the a-priority of phenomenology. He also incorporates hermeneutics into phenomenology, though Husserl was convinced that the a-priority of phenomenology removed all interpretation from its analyses. This paper investigates how the early Heidegger is able to make hermeneutics a general condition of understanding while maintaining, in line with Husserl, that phenomenology is an a-priori science. This paper also provides insight into key debates in the history of phenomenology. I examine two places in which Heidegger departs from Husserl’s phenomenology – the doctrine of categorial intuition and the “as-structure” of understanding – to show that a-priority and hermeneutic understanding come together, ontically, in facticity as the only possible starting point for phenomenology. Ontologically, however, a-priority and hermeneutics come together in the co-affection of Dasein as understanding and being as pre-given. This co-affection is itself dependent on Temporality as “the condition of any possible earlier”. Keywords : Apriori, Heidegger, Hermeneutics, Husserl, Idea of Science 1. Hermeneutics and the A-Priori: Incompatibility and Coincidence As an enthusiastic student of Husserl, the young Heidegger was preoccupied with the a-priori status of phenomenology from the very beginning. In fact, since its inception Husserl framed phenomenology as an a-priori science. Already at the time of its inauguration with the Logical Investigations , Husserl sought to secure the necessary and universal character of logic from the contingency of psychologism 1, and by 1910 became concerned with assuring the a-priority of phenomenology as the absolute philosophical foundation for all sciences 2. -
The Scope of Hermeneutics in Natural Science
Fordham University Masthead Logo DigitalResearch@Fordham Hermeneutic and Phenomenological Philosophies Research Resources of Science 1998 The copS e of Hermeneutics in Natural Science Patrick A. Heelan Georgetown University, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://fordham.bepress.com/phil_research Part of the Continental Philosophy Commons, and the Philosophy of Science Commons Recommended Citation Heelan, Patrick A., "The cS ope of Hermeneutics in Natural Science" (1998). Research Resources. 12. https://fordham.bepress.com/phil_research/12 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Hermeneutic and Phenomenological Philosophies of Science at DigitalResearch@Fordham. It has been accepted for inclusion in Research Resources by an authorized administrator of DigitalResearch@Fordham. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Preprint 1998: The Scope of Hermeneutics in Natural Science THE SCOPE OF HERMENEUTICS IN NATURAL SCIENCE PATRICK A. HEELAN Georgetown University Washington, DC 20057 Abstract: Hermeneutics or interpretation is concerned with the generation, transmission, and acceptance of meaning within the lifeworld and was the original method of the human sciences stemming from F. Schleiermacher and W. Dilthey. Hermeneutic philosophy refers mostly to M. Heidegger’s. This paper addresses natural science from the perspective of Heidegger’s analysis of meaning and interpretation. Its purpose is to incorporate into the philosophy of science those aspects of historicality, culture, and tradition that are absent from the traditional analysis of theory and explanation, to re-orient the current discussion about scientific realism around the hermeneutics of meaning and truth in science, and to establish some relationship between the current philosophy of natural science and hermeneutical philosophy.