In this study, the existing definitions of thought experiments and the origin of this concept with its first usage in history will be discussed. Then, the epistemology of Ernst Mach, who conducted the first systematic research on thought experiments, will be provided in order to grasp his views on this subject correctly. In this context, the views of James Brown and John Norton, who support different positions, will be briefly described in order to draw the general framework of the epistemological (...) status of thought experiments. Finally, it will be revealed that the biological theory of knowledge and the doctrine of the economy of thought are the sources of Mach’s ‘instinctive knowledge’ argument about scientific thought experiments. (shrink)

There are two interrelated but distinct programs which go by the name evolutionary epistemology. One attempts to account for the characteristics of cognitive mechanisms in animals and humans by a straightforward extension of the biological theory of evolution to those aspects or traits of animals which are the biological substrates of cognitive activity, e.g., their brains, sensory systems, motor systems, etc. (EEM program). The other program attempts to account for the evaluation of ideas, scientific theories and culture in general by (...) using models and metaphors drawn from evolutionary biology (EET program). The paper begins by distinguishing the two programs and discussing the relationship between them. The next section addresses the metaphorical and analogical relationship between evolutionary epistemology and evolutionary biology. Section IV treats the question of the locus of the epistemological problem in the light of an evolutionary analysis. The key questions here involve the relationship between evolutionary epistemology and traditional epistemology and the legitimacy of evolutionary epistemology as epistemology. Section V examines the underlying ontological presuppositions and implications of evolutionary epistemology. Finally, section VI, which is merely the sketch of a problem, addresses the parallel between evolutionary epistemology and evolutionary ethics. (shrink)

Sensationalistic Phenomenalism and Economy of Thought. On Ernst Mach's Concept of Science. Ernst Mach, natural scientist and major precursor of the Vienna Circle, never wants to be a philosopher. Nevertheless his writings are full of valuable hints for a modern theory of human knowledge – with respect to economical, historical and evolutionary aspects. His kind of phenomenalism is sensationalistic, monistic and instrumentalistic. This article deals with some contributions of his approach to actual debates in the general philosophy of science.

In the middle of the nineteenth century, advances in experimental psychology and the physiology of the sense organs inspired so-called "Back to Kant" Neo-Kantians to articulate robustly psychologistic visions of Kantian epistemology. But their accounts of the thing in itself were fraught with deep tension: they wanted to conceive of things in themselves as the causes of our sensations, while their own accounts of causal inference ruled that claim out. This paper diagnoses the source of that problem in views of (...) one Neo-Kantian, F. A. Lange, and argues that it is solved only by Ernst Mach. No less than Lange and other Neo-Kantians, Mach was inspired to develop a psychologistic account of the foundations of knowledge, but his account also includes a coherent denial of things in themselves' existence. Finally, this paper uses this account of Lange and Mach on things in themselves to illuminate Mach's relation to a certain strain of the Neo-Kantian philosophy of his own time: his views constitute a more fully coherent version of the psychologistic theory of knowledge Back to Kant figures tried to articulate. (shrink)

In 1941/42 Konrad Lorenz suggested that Kant's transcendental categories ofa priori knowledge could be given an empirical interpretation in Darwinian material evolutionary terms: a priori propositional knowledge was an organ subject to natural selection for adaptation to its specific environments. D. Campbell extended the conception, and termed evolution a process of knowledge. The philosophical problem of what knowledge is became a descriptive one of how knowledge developed, the normative semantic questions have been sidestepped, as if the descriptive insights would automatically (...) resolve them. This came at a time when the traditional concept of knowledge as universally true, justified beliefs had been challenged by subjectivist, intercommunicative coherence frameworks. Much of the literature on evolutionary epistemology claimed that knowledge in general, and science as its epitome in particular, evolved along lines analogous to organic biological evolution. I refer here only to the view of knowledge as an extension of material biological evolution. These theories of evolutionary epistemology, contrary to the relativist notions of naturalized epistemology, adopted strict realist positions.Although there is no contention with the claim that biological evolution provided the raw material and the constraints for human knowledge, cognition is not knowledge and knowledge is not constrained by it beyond some trivial truisms. The view that sees evolution as a knowledge/cognition process is coercing a loosely defined term into the status of a phenotypic trait on which selection could act. This disregards the intricate many-to-many relationship between correlates of knowledge and biological capacities. But even if we grant the correlates of knowledge the status of selectable traits, the heritability of alternative phenotypes would be low and unpredictable due to the high, open-ended environmental malleability of such complex characters in the course of development. Such concepts are therefore biologically inconsequential. (shrink)

Some popular views of Ernst Mach cast him as a philosopher-scientist averse to imaginative practices in science. The aim of this analysis is to address the question of whether or not imagination is compatible with Machian philosophy of science. I conclude that imagination is not only compatible, but essential to realizing the aim of science in Mach’s biologico-economical view. I raise the possible objection that my conclusion is undermined by Mach’s criticism of Isaac Newton’s famous “bucket experiment.” I conclude that (...) Mach’s issue lies not with thought experimentation, tout court, but with the improper use of thought experimentation as it relates to the aim of the biologico-economical development of science. (shrink)

Some popular views of Ernst Mach cast him as a philosopher-scientist averse to imaginative practices in science. The aim of this analysis is to address the question of whether or not imagination is compatible with Machian philosophy of science. I conclude that imagination is not only compatible but essential to realizing the aim of science in Mach’s biologico-economical view. I raise the possible objection that my conclusion is undermined by Mach’s criticism of Isaac Newton’s famous “bucket experiment.” I conclude that (...) Mach’s issue lies not with thought experimentation, tout court, but with the improper use of thought experimentation as it relates to the aim of the biologico-economical development of science. (shrink)