Karl Popper Reference: Thornton, Stephen, 2005
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John Locke's Historical Method
RUCH FILOZOFICZNY LXXV 2019 4 Zbigniew Pietrzak University of Wrocław, Wrocław, Poland ORCID: 0000-0003-2458-1252 e-mail: [email protected] John Locke’s Historical Method and “Natural Histories” in Modern Natural Sciences DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.12775/RF.2019.038 Introduction Among the many fundamental issues that helped shape the philosophy of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, one concerned the condi- tion of philosophy and scientific knowledge, and in the area of our inter- est – knowledge about nature.1 These philosophical inquiries included both subject-related problems concerning human cognitive abilities and object-related ones indicating possible epistemological boundaries that nature itself could have generated. Thus, already at the turn of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, from Francis Bacon, Galileo, and 1 These reflections are an elaboration on the topic I mentioned in the article “His- toria naturalna a wiedza o naturze” [“Natural History vs. Knowledge of Nature”], in: Rozum, człowiek, historia, [Mind, Man, History], ed. Jakub Szczepański (Cracow: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Jagiellońskiego, 2018); as well as in my master’s thesis: The Crisis of Cognition, the Crisis of Philosophy (not published). It is also a debate over the content of Adam Grzeliński’s article entitled “‘Rozważania dotyczące rozu- mu ludzkiego’ Johna Locke’a: teoria poznania i historia” [“John Locke’s ‘An essay on human understanding’: cognition theory and history”], in: Rozum, człowiek, historia, ed. Jakub Szczepański, (Cracow: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Jagiellońskiego, 2018), as well as some of the themes of the author’s monograph Doświadczenie i rozum. Empiryzm Johna Locke’a [Experience and reason. The empiricism of John Locke] (To- ruń: Wydawnictwo Naukowe Uniwersytetu Mikołaja Kopernika, 2019). -
Would ''Direct Realism'' Resolve the Classical Problem of Induction?
NOU^S 38:2 (2004) 197–232 Would ‘‘Direct Realism’’ Resolve the Classical Problem of Induction? MARC LANGE University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill I Recently, there has been a modest resurgence of interest in the ‘‘Humean’’ problem of induction. For several decades following the recognized failure of Strawsonian ‘‘ordinary-language’’ dissolutions and of Wesley Salmon’s elaboration of Reichenbach’s pragmatic vindication of induction, work on the problem of induction languished. Attention turned instead toward con- firmation theory, as philosophers sensibly tried to understand precisely what it is that a justification of induction should aim to justify. Now, however, in light of Bayesian confirmation theory and other developments in epistemology, several philosophers have begun to reconsider the classical problem of induction. In section 2, I shall review a few of these developments. Though some of them will turn out to be unilluminating, others will profitably suggest that we not meet inductive scepticism by trying to justify some alleged general principle of ampliative reasoning. Accordingly, in section 3, I shall examine how the problem of induction arises in the context of one particular ‘‘inductive leap’’: the confirmation, most famously by Henrietta Leavitt and Harlow Shapley about a century ago, that a period-luminosity relation governs all Cepheid variable stars. This is a good example for the inductive sceptic’s purposes, since it is difficult to see how the sparse background knowledge available at the time could have entitled stellar astronomers to regard their observations as justifying this grand inductive generalization. I shall argue that the observation reports that confirmed the Cepheid period- luminosity law were themselves ‘‘thick’’ with expectations regarding as yet unknown laws of nature. -
Truth, Rationality, and the Growth of Scientific Knowledge
....... CONJECTURES sense similar to that in which processes or things may be said to be parts of the world; that the world consists of facts in a sense in which it may be said to consist of (four dimensional) processes or of (three dimensional) things. They believe that, just as certain nouns are names of things, sentences are names of facts. And they sometimes even believe that sentences are some- thing like pictures of facts, or that they are projections of facts.7 But all this is mistaken. The fact that there is no elephant in this room is not one of the processes or parts ofthe world; nor is the fact that a hailstorm in Newfound- 10 land occurred exactIy I I I years after a tree collapsed in the New Zealand bush. Facts are something like a common product oflanguage and reality; they are reality pinned down by descriptive statements. They are like abstracts from TRUTH, RATIONALITY, AND THE a book, made in a language which is different from that of the original, and determined not only by the original book but nearly as much by the principles GROWTH OF SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE of selection and by other methods of abstracting, and by the means of which the new language disposes. New linguistic means not only help us to describe 1. THE GROWTH OF KNOWLEDGE: THEORIES AND PROBLEMS new kinds of facts; in a way, they even create new kinds of facts. In a certain sense, these facts obviously existed before the new means were created which I were indispensable for their description; I say, 'obviously' because a calcula- tion, for example, ofthe movements of the planet Mercury of 100 years ago, MY aim in this lecture is to stress the significance of one particular aspect of carried out today with the help of the calculus of the theory of relativity, may science-its need to grow, or, if you like, its need to progress. -
Religious Language and Verificationism
© Michael Lacewing Religious language and verificationism AYER’S ARGUMENT In the 1930s, a school of philosophy arose called logical positivism, concerned with the foundations and possibility of knowledge. It developed a criterion for meaningful statements, called the principle of verification. On A J Ayer’s version (Language, Truth and Logic), the principle of verification states that a statement only has meaning if it is either analytic or empirically verifiable. (can be shown by experience to be probably true/false). ‘God exists’, and so all other talk of God, is such a statement, claims Ayer. Despite the best attempts of the ontological argument, we cannot prove ‘God exists’ from a priori premises using deduction alone. So ‘God exists’ is not analytically true. Therefore, to be meaningful, ‘God exists’ must be empirically verifiable. Ayer argues it is not. If a statement is an empirical hypothesis, it predicts our experience will be different depending on whether it is true or false. But ‘God exists’ makes no such predictions. So it is meaningless. Some philosophers argue that religious language attempts to capture something of religious experience, although it is ‘inexpressible’ in literal terms. Ayer responds that whatever religious experiences reveal, they cannot be said to reveal any facts. Facts are the content of statements that purport to be intelligible and can be expressed literally. If talk of God is non-empirical, it is literally unintelligible, hence meaningless. Responses We can object that many people do think that ‘God exists’ has empirical content. For example, the argument from design argues that the design of the universe is evidence for the existence of God. -
Mill's Conversion: the Herschel Connection
volume 18, no. 23 Introduction november 2018 John Stuart Mill’s A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive, being a connected view of the principles of evidence, and the methods of scientific investigation was the most popular and influential treatment of sci- entific method throughout the second half of the 19th century. As is well-known, there was a radical change in the view of probability en- dorsed between the first and second editions. There are three differ- Mill’s Conversion: ent conceptions of probability interacting throughout the history of probability: (1) Chance, or Propensity — for example, the bias of a bi- The Herschel Connection ased coin. (2) Judgmental Degree of Belief — for example, the de- gree of belief one should have that the bias is between .6 and .7 after 100 trials that produce 81 heads. (3) Long-Run Relative Frequency — for example, propor- tion of heads in a very large, or even infinite, number of flips of a given coin. It has been a matter of controversy, and continues to be to this day, which conceptions are basic. Strong advocates of one kind of prob- ability may deny that the others are important, or even that they make Brian Skyrms sense at all. University of California, Irvine, and Stanford University In the first edition of 1843, Mill espouses a frequency view of prob- ability that aligns well with his general material view of logic: Conclusions respecting the probability of a fact rest, not upon a different, but upon the very same basis, as conclu- sions respecting its certainly; namely, not our ignorance, © 2018 Brian Skyrms but our knowledge: knowledge obtained by experience, This work is licensed under a Creative Commons of the proportion between the cases in which the fact oc- Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 License. -
Brsq #142-144
THE BERTRAND RUSSELL SOCIETY QUARTERLY Fall 2009 Issue Numbers 142 -144 / May -November 2009 THE ROAD TO CONNECTICUT Published by The Bertrand Russell Society with the support of Lehman College - City University of New York THE BERTRAND RUSSELL SoCIET¥ QUARTERLY is the official organ of the THE BERTRAND RUSSELL SOCIETY Bertrand Russell Society. It publishes Society news and proceedings, and QUARTERLY articles on the history of analytic philosophy, especially those on Russell's life and works, including historical materials and reviews of recent work on Fall 2009 Issue Russell. Scholarly articles appearing in the a"crrfer/,v are peer-reviewed. Numbers 142-144 / May -November 2009 Co-EDITORS: Rosalind Carey and John Ongley ASSOCIATE EDITOR: Ray Perkins Jr. EDITORIAL BOARD Rosalind Carey, Lehman College-CUNY THE ROAD TO CONNECTICUT John Ongley, Bloomsburg University Raymond Perkins, Jr., Plymouth State University Christopher Pincock, Purdue University David Hyder, University of Ottawa CONTENTS Anat Biletzki, Tel Aviv University SuBMISsloNS : All communications to the Ber/ra#cJ Rwssc// Soci.edy gwcrr/er- In This Issue /y, including manuscripts. book reviews, and letters to the editor, should be Society News sent to: Prof. Rosalind Carey, Philosophy Department, Lehman College- ln Memoriam: Theo Meijer CUNY, 250 Bed ford Park Blvd. West, Bronx, NY 10468, USA, or by email to: [email protected]. Feature SuBSCRlpTloNS: The BRS gwc}rfedy is free to members of the Bertrand Rus- sell Society. Society membership is $35 a year for individuals, $40 for cou- Nicholas Griffin Speaks His Mind: An Interview by ples, and $20 for students and limited income individuals. -
Understanding the Progress of Science
Understanding the Progress of Science C. D. McCoy 30 May 2018 The central problem of epistemology has always been and still is the problem of the growth of knowledge. And the growth of knowledge can be studied best by studying the growth of scientific knowledge. —(Popper, 2002b, xix) Merely fact-minded sciences make merely fact-minded people. —(Husserl, 1970, 6) The growth of human knowledge is realized most dramatically in the growth of scientific knowledge. What we have come to know through science about the workings of our human bodies and the workings of heavenly bodies, among much else, astounds, especially in comparison to our accumulating knowledge of the commonplace and everyday. Impressed by the evident epistemic progress made by science, many philosophers during the 20th century thought that studying how scientific knowledge increases is a crucial task of epistemological inquiry, and, indeed, the progress of science has been a topic of considerable interest. Yet, eventually, late in the century, attention waned and for the most part shifted to other tasks. Recently, however, a provocative article by Bird has re-ignited philosophical interest in the topic of scientific progress (Bird, 2007). Bird criticizes what he takes to have been the most prominent accounts advanced in the 20th century and presses for what he views as a venerable but lately overlooked one. He claims that realist philosophers of science have often presumed that truth is the goal of science and progress to be properly characterized by an accu- mulation of truth or truths, and notes that anti-realists have often rejected truth as a goal of science and characterized progress in terms of, among other things, “problem-solving effectiveness.”1 He criticizes the former for overlooking the relevance of justification to progress and the latter for giving up on truth. -
Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge
CRITICISM AND THE GROWTH OF KNOWLEDGE Proceedings of the International Colloquium in the Philosophy of Science, London, ig 6^, volume 4 Edited by IMRE LAKATOS Professor of Logic, University of London ALAN MUSGRAVE Professor of Philosophy, University of Otago CAMBRIDGE AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS 1970 CONTENTS Published by the Syndics of the Cambridge University Press Page Bentley House, 200 Euston Road, London N.W .i Preface vii American Branch: 32 East 57th Street, New York, N.Y. 10022 T. s. KUHN: Logic of Discovery or Psychology of Research? i © Cambridge University Press 1970 Library of Congress Catalogue Card Number 78-105496 Discussion: j. w. N. WATKINS: Against ‘Normal Science’ 25 Standard Book Number: 521 07826 i toulmin: Does the Distinction between Normal and Revolutionary Science Hold Water? 39 L. PEARCE williams: Normal Science, Scientific Revolutions / ^ d the History of Science 49 popper: Normal Science and its Dangers 5^ uJVfiC^ARET masterman: The Nature of a Paradigm 59 i I: Lakatos: Falsification and the Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes 9^ K„ feyer aben d : Consolations for the Specialist 197 s. KUHN: Reflections on my Critics 231 Index 279 Printed in Great Britain at the University Press, Aberdeen PREFACE This book constitutes the fourth volume of the Proceedings of the 1965 International Colloquium in the Philosophy of Science held at Bedford College, Regent’s Park, London, from i i to 17 July 1965. The Colloquium was organized jointly by the British Society for the Philosophy of Science and the London School of Economics and Political Science, under the auspices of the Division of Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science of the International Union of History and Philosophy of Seience. -
Against Historicism/ for Theory: a Reply to Levine Author(S): Jeffrey Alexander Source: Sociological Theory, Vol
Against Historicism/ for Theory: A Reply to Levine Author(s): Jeffrey Alexander Source: Sociological Theory, Vol. 7, No. 1 (Spring, 1989), pp. 118-120 Published by: American Sociological Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/202067 Accessed: 26/05/2010 11:26 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=asa. 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 service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. John Wiley & Sons and American Sociological Association are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Sociological Theory. http://www.jstor.org AGAINST HISTORICISM/ FOR THEORY: A REPLY TO LEVINE JEFFREY ALEXANDER U.C.L.A. -
Reexamining the Problem of Demarcating Science and Pseudoscience by Evan Westre B.A., Vancouver Island University, 2010 a Thesis
Reexamining the Problem of Demarcating Science and Pseudoscience By Evan Westre B.A., Vancouver Island University, 2010 A Thesis Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements For the Degree of MASTER OF ARTS ©Evan Westre, 2014 All Rights Reserved. This thesis may not be reproduced in whole or in part, by photocopy or other means, without the permission of the author. Supervisory Committee Reexamining the Problem of Demarcating Science and Pseudoscience By Evan Westre B.A., Vancouver Island University, 2010 Dr. Audrey Yap: Supervisor (Department of Philosophy) Dr. Jeffrey Foss: Departmental Member (Department of Philosophy) ii Abstract Supervisory Committee Dr. Audrey Yap: Supervisor (Department of Philosophy) Dr. Jeffrey Foss: Departmental Member (Department of Philosophy) The demarcation problem aims to articulate the boundary between science and pseudoscience. Solutions to the problem have been notably raised by the logical positivists (verificationism), Karl Popper (falsificationism), and Imre Lakatos (methodology of research programmes). Due, largely, to the conclusions drawn by Larry Laudan, in a pivotal 1981 paper which dismissed the problem of demarcation as a “pseudo-problem”, the issue was brushed aside for years. Recently, however, there has been a revival of attempts to reexamine the demarcation problem and synthesize new solutions. My aim is to survey two of the contemporary attempts and to assess these approaches over and against the broader historical trajectory of the demarcation problem. These are the efforts of Nicholas Maxwell (aim-oriented empiricism), and Paul Hoyningen-Huene (systematicity). I suggest that the main virtue of the new attempts is that they promote a self-reflexive character within the sciences. -
Alfred Jules Ayer 1910–1989
Copyright © The British Academy 1997 – all rights reserved Proceedings of the British Academy, 94, 255–282 Alfred Jules Ayer 1910–1989 SIR ALFRED AYER, as A. J. or Freddie Ayer came to be known to some extent after 1970, was born on 29 October 1910. His father was Jules Ayer, a French-speaking Swiss from Neufchaˆtel, who had lived in England since coming here to join his mother at the age of seventeen. He worked for some years in Rothschild’s Bank and as secretary to Alfred Rothschild, and died in 1928 at the time when A. J. Ayer was preparing to move from Eton to Oxford. He had married in 1909 Reine Citroe¨n, who was of an Ashkenazi Jewish family from Holland. Her uncle Andre´ set up the car firm which bears the family name, and her father, David, was also in the car business and established the Minerva company. He rescued Jules from bankruptcy in 1912 and set him up in the timber business, where he seems to have prospered mildly. The grandfather appears to have been a larger presence in A. J. Ayer’s early life than Jules. Ayer was born in the family flat in St John’s Wood and lived the solitary urban life of an only child of not very assimilated parents. In 1917 he was sent to a preparatory school at Eastbourne, which Ayer thought resembled the St Cyprians of George Orwell and Cyril Con- nolly, against which matches were played. He worked hard and was well taught, gaining the third classical scholarship to Eton in an exam- ination he was sitting simply as a trial run for a later assault on Charterhouse. -
1 Phil. 4400 Notes #1: the Problem of Induction I. Basic Concepts
Phil. 4400 Notes #1: The problem of induction I. Basic concepts: The problem of induction: • Philosophical problem concerning the justification of induction. • Due to David Hume (1748). Induction: A form of reasoning in which a) the premises say something about a certain group of objects (typically, observed objects) b) the conclusion generalizes from the premises: says the same thing about a wider class of objects, or about further objects of the same kind (typically, the unobserved objects of the same kind). • Examples: All observed ravens so far have been The sun has risen every day for the last 300 black. years. So (probably) all ravens are black. So (probably) the sun will rise tomorrow. Non-demonstrative (non-deductive) reasoning: • Reasoning that is not deductive. • A form of reasoning in which the premises are supposed to render the conclusion more probable (but not to entail the conclusion). Cogent vs. Valid & Confirm vs. Entail : ‘Cogent’ arguments have premises that confirm (render probable) their conclusions. ‘Valid’ arguments have premises that entail their conclusions. The importance of induction: • All scientific knowledge, and almost all knowledge depends on induction. • The problem had a great influence on Popper and other philosophers of science. Inductive skepticism: Philosophical thesis that induction provides no justification for ( no reason to believe) its conclusions. II. An argument for inductive skepticism 1. There are (at most) 3 kinds of knowledge/justified belief: a. Observations b. A priori knowledge c. Conclusions based on induction 2. All inductive reasoning presupposes the “Inductive Principle” (a.k.a. the “uniformity principle”): “The course of nature is uniform”, “The future will resemble the past”, “Unobserved objects will probably be similar to observed objects” 3.