I argue that scientific progress is precisely the accumulation of scientific knowledge.

In this paper I draw a connection between Kuhn and the empiricist legacy, specifically between his thesis of incommensurability, in particular in its later taxonomic form, and van Fraassen's constructive empiricism. I show that if it is the case the empirically equivalent but genuinely distinct theories do exist, then we can expect such theories to be taxonomically incommensurable. I link this to Hacking's claim that Kuhn was a nominalist. I also argue that Kuhn and van Fraassen do not differ as (...) much as might be thought as regards the claim that observation is theory laden. (shrink)

Public reason liberalism is defined by the idea that laws and policies should be justifiable to each person who is subject to them. But what does it mean for reasons to be public or, in other words, suitable for this process of justification? In response to this question, Kevin Vallier has recently developed the traditional distinction between consensus and convergence public reason into a classification distinguishing three main approaches: shareability, accessibility and intelligibility. The goal of this paper is to defend (...) the accessibility approach by demonstrating its ability to strike an appealing middle course in terms of inclusivity between shareability and intelligibility. We first argue against Vallier that accessibility can exclude religious reasons from public justification. Second, we use scientific reasons as a case study to show that accessibility excludes considerably fewer reasons than shareability. Throughout the paper, we connect our discussion of accessibility to John Rawls’s model of public reason, so as to give substance to the accessibility approach and to further our understanding of Rawls’s influential model. (shrink)

Philosophers have traditionally described themselves as “intuitive scientists”: people seeking the most justified theories about distinctive aspects of the world. Relying on insights from philosophers as Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Williams James, I argue that philosophers should be described instead as “intuitive lawyers” who defend a point of view largely by appealing to non-cognitive reasons.

I argue that, in analysing the structure and development of moral traditions, MacIntyre relies primarily on Kuhn's model of scientific tradition, rather than on Lakatos' model. I unpack three foci of Kuhn's conception of the sciences, namely: the ‘crisis’ conception of scientific development, what I call the ‘systematic conception’ of scientific paradigms, and the view that successive paradigms are incommensurable. I then show that these three foci are integrated into MacIntyre's account of the development of moral traditions with a surprising (...) degree of faithfulness to Kuhn. And crucially, I argue against the overall cogency of his account, given the disparities I pinpoint between scientific and moral traditions. My overall critique is, however, fundamentally friendly, since nothing I have to say invalidates the very notion of a moral tradition, and all I am calling for are less problematic construals of that notion. (shrink)

Thomas Kuhn’un 1962 yılında yayımlamış olduğu “Bilimsel Devrimlerin Yapısı” adlı kitabı bilimsel gelişme, bilimin doğası ve bilimsel bilginin özerkliği gibi çeşitli bilim felsefesi konularında alanında rölativist ya da göreci bir anlayışa katkıda bulunarak bilimin sarsılmaz statüsüne zarar verip vermediğine yöneliktir. Kuhn’un rölativistlikle suçlanmasına yol açan argümanlardan ön plana çıkan ikisi; iki farklı rakip paradigmaya bağlı olan kuramların kıyaslanmasının mümkün olmadığını ileri süren metodolojik eşölçülemezlik argümanı ile kuramdan bağımsız nötr gözlem önermelerinin olamayacağını belirten gözlemlerin kuram yüklü olduğu savıdır. Kuhn bu argümanlar (...) çerçevesinde kendisine getirilen görecilik iddialarına karşı çıkar ve bilim felsefecilerinin ona yöneltmiş olduğu eleştirilere yıllar içerisinde “Bilimsel Devrimlerin Yapısı” kitabının ek bölümlerinde cevap vermektedir. Bu bağlamda, Kuhn’un bu iddialara ikna edici bir cevap verip vermediğini tespit edebilmek ve onun gerçekten bilim ve bilimsel bilginin statüsü konusunda rölativist olup olmadığını soruşturmak için ortaya konulan eleştirilerin etraflıca ele alınması gerekliliği ortaya çıkmaktadır. Diğer bir deyişle, Kuhn'un görecilik konusu ile ilgili bir neticeye varabilmek amacıyla onun bütün bilim anlayışının göz önünde bulundurulması önemlidir. Dolayısıyla Kuhn'un genel bilim tasviri bu çalışmanın odağını oluşturmaktadır. Bu bakımdan çalışmada, ilk olarak kısaca “göreciliğin” ne anlama geldiği ortaya konulacak, ardından Kuhn’un eşölçülemezlik ve kuram yüklülük tezleri ayrıntılandırılarak, bu çerçeve içerisinde neden rölativist olarak kabul edildiği serimlenecektir. Nihai olarak, Kuhn'un kendisine getirilen eleştirilere karşı ortaya koyduğu cevapların rölativist suçlamalardan sıyrılması için sağlam gerekçeleri sağlayamadığı ortaya konulacaktır. (shrink)

Recently, some philosophers of science (e.g., Gürol Irzik, Michael Friedman) have challenged the ‘received view’ on the relationship between Rudolf Carnap and Thomas Kuhn, suggesting that there is a close affinity (rather than opposition) between their philosophical views. In support of this argument, these authors cite Carnap and Kuhn’s similar views on incommensurability, theory-choice, and scientific revolutions. Against this revisionist view, I argue that the philosophical relationship between Carnap and Kuhn should be regarded as opposed rather than complementary. In particular, (...) I argue that a consideration of the fundamentally disparate nature of the broader philosophical projects of Carnap (logic of science) and Kuhn (providing a theory of scientific revolutions)renders the alleged similarities between their views superficial in comparison to their fundamental differences. In defense of the received view, I suggest that Carnap and Kuhn are model representatives of two contrasting styles of doing philosophy of science, viz., logical analysis and historical analysis respectively. This analysis clarifies the role played by Kuhn’s Structure of Scientific Revolutions in the demise of logical empiricism in the second half of the twentieth-century. (shrink)

법을 공부하고 법을 가르치는 법학도나 법학 교수, 그리고 현실 사회에서 법과 정의를 구현하기 위하여 묵묵히 자신의 책무를 수행하는 일선 법률가들을 생각하며 조금이라도 도움이 될 수 있는 글을 써 보겠다는 마음으로 페북에 글을 올리기 시작한지 어언 5년 가까이 되고 있다. 우리 법률전문가들은 세상의 진실에 눈을 감고 진리를 왜곡하는 곡학아세의 길을 걷는 것을 항상 경계하여야 한다. 특히 좌우 정치가 자리를 잡아가면서 법률가들 마저 파벌을 이루어 법을 생각하기 앞서 자파의 이익을 생각하는 현실을 부인하기 어렵다. 이는 우리에게 양심의 회복을 질책한다. 무매한 민중을 호도하고 국가의 (...) 기강이자 바른 초석이어야 할 법과 법지식을 우롱하는 것이라 아니할 수 없다. 이는 민주주의와 함께 우뚝 서야 할 법치주의를 갉아 먹는 행태라 아니할 수 없다. 조심스러운 마음에서 같이 공부하여야겠다는 생각으로 ‘인간과 사회 그리고 법에 관한 성찰’이라는 제목으로 책을 출간하기로 마음 먹었다. 본서는 한 법률과목을 전문적으로 다루었다거나, 법이론이나 법해석학 관련 주제를 체계적으로 다룬 서적이 아니다. 그렇다고 법 실무에 도움이 될 수 있는 구체적이고 실무적인 문제를 다루고 있는 것도 아니다. 본서는 우리의 일상을 기반으로 법에 관한 단상, 그리고 관련되는 이론들을 생각나는대로 기술한 책이다. 변호사. 법률가. 법학교수, 법학도 등이 제 1차로 독자가 될 수 있을 것이지만, 그 밖에 인간, 사회, 법에 관심 있는 시민 모두가 즐겁게 읽을 수 있도록 엮으려고 노력하였다. 천학비재한 주제에도 화광동진(和光同塵)의 심정으로 출간에 나아가면서 감히 일독을 권하는 바이다. (shrink)

A collective volume in memoriam Mihail Radu Solcan.

This is my personal homepage. Find my philosophical papers under "Philosophy".

Karl Popper is famous for having proposed that science advances by a process of conjecture and refutation. He is also famous for defending the open society against what he saw as its arch enemies – Plato and Marx. Popper’s contributions to thought are of profound importance, but they are not the last word on the subject. They need to be improved. My concern in this book is to spell out what is of greatest importance in Popper’s work, what its failings (...) are, how it needs to be improved to overcome these failings, and what implications emerge as a result. The book consists of a collection of essays which dramatically develop Karl Popper’s views about natural and social science, and how we should go about trying to solve social problems. Criticism of Popper’s falsificationist philosophy of natural science leads to a conception of science that I call aim-oriented empiricism. This makes explicit metaphysical theses concerning the comprehensibility and knowability of the universe that are an implicit part of scientific knowledge – implicit in the way science excludes all theories that are not explanatory, even those that are more successful empirically than accepted theories. Aim-oriented empiricism has major implications, not just for the academic discipline of philosophy of science, but for science itself. Popper generalized his philosophy of science of falsificationism to arrive at a new conception of rationality – critical rationalism – the key methodological idea of Popper’s profound critical exploration of political and social issues in his The Open Society and Its Enemies, and The Poverty of Historicism. This path of Popper, from scientific method to rationality and social and political issues is followed here, but the starting point is aim-oriented empiricism rather than falsificationism. Aim-oriented empiricism is generalized to form a conception of rationality I call aim-oriented rationalism. This has far-reaching implications for political and social issues, for the nature of social inquiry and the humanities, and indeed for academic inquiry as a whole. The strategies for tackling social problems that arise from aim-oriented rationalism improve on Popper’s recommended strategies of piecemeal social engineering and critical rationalism, associated with Popper’s conception of the open society. This book thus sets out to develop Popper’s philosophy in new and fruitful directions. The theme of the book, in short, is to discover what can be learned from scientific progress about how to achieve social progress towards a better world. (shrink)

Kuhn’s view of science is as follows. Science involves two key phases: normal and extraordinary. In normal science, disciplinary matrices (DMs) are large and pervasive. DMs involve “beliefs, values, techniques, and so on shared by the members of a given community” (Kuhn 1996, 175). “And so on” is regrettably vague, but Kuhn (1977, 1996) mentions three other key elements: symbolic generalizations (such as F=dp/dt), models (such as Bohr’s atomic model), and exemplars. These components of DMs overlap somewhat. For instance, symbolic (...) generalizations may feature in techniques and beliefs, and models may exhibit values. To be a (genuine) scientist, in the normal science phase, is to puzzle solve within the boundaries of the DM. It is to buy into the ruling dogma (Kuhn 1963) and to accept that “failure to achieve a solution discredits only the scientist ... ‘It is a poor carpenter who blames his tools’” (Kuhn 1996, 80). Puzzle solving involves a wide variety of activities, including. (shrink)

Some academics and state officials in Indonesia argue for the adoption of Pancasila as a scientific paradigm for the country's scientific endeavours. They believe that using Pancasila as a foundation could give Indonesian science a distinct and unique character. However, this article seeks to reevaluate the feasibility of Pancasila as a scientific paradigm. By reviewing the literature on Pancasila and the philosophy of science, it arrives at the conclusion that Pancasila cannot serve as a scientific paradigm, either in a narrow (...) or comprehensive sense. Two primary reasons support this conclusion. Firstly, Pancasila lacks the necessary characteristics of a well-established scientific achievement. As a result, it cannot function as a scientific paradigm in the narrow sense defined by Kuhn. Secondly, Pancasila carries theological baggage that surpasses science’s capacity to accommodate it. This aspect prevents Pancasila from becoming a comprehensive scientific paradigm. Consequently, I propose that Pancasila is more suitable as an axiological basis for science, rather than a scientific paradigm. Unlike a scientific paradigm, this axiological foundation does not fall within the epistemic scope of science. (shrink)

I argue that the reception of Hegel in the sub-field of history and philosophy of science has been in part impeded by a misunderstanding of his mature metaphilosophical views. I take Alan Richardson’s influential account of the rise of scientific philosophy as an illustration of such misunderstanding, I argue that the mature Hegel’s metaphilosophical views place him much closer to the philosophers who are commonly taken as paradigms of scientific philosophy than it is commonly thought. Hegel is commonly presented as (...) someone who conceived of philosophy as a science that relied on the solitary genius of the individual thinker, and as a science whose propositions could not and should not be made accessible to “the common people”. Against this view, I argue that Hegel in fact thought that philosophy was a thoroughly anti-individualistic activity, and that he emphasized the importance of the intersubjective accessibility of philosophical discourse. I argue that when we carefully reconstruct Hegel’s reasons for his break with Schelling, and if we pay close attention to his explicit metaphilosophical pronouncements, we can see that he in fact adhered to what I call a “proto-modernist” conception of philosophy as a science. I conclude by pointing out how the mischaracterization of Hegel has served to obscure the existence of a strand of scientific philosophy that emerged by way of an immanent critique of Hegel, namely Marxist philosophy. (shrink)

When questioning whether political deception can be ethically warranted, two competing intuitions jump to the fore. First, political deception is a fact of human life, used in the realpolitik of governance. Second, the ethical warrant of truth asserts itself as inexorably and indefatigably preferable to falsehood. Unfortunately, a cursory examination of the history of philosophy reveals a paucity of models to marry these basic intuitions. Some thinkers (e.g., Augustine, Aquinas, Grotius, Kant, Mill, and Rawls) privilege the truth by neglecting the (...) realpolitik, i.e., the truth is inviolate. Others (e.g., Machiavelli, Bentham, and the often infamous caché of 20th century dictators) focus upon the realpolitik to the exclusion of the primacy of the truth. A third group of critical thinkers (e.g., Arendt and Bok) examine the topic but offer no positive, systematic treatment of deception. Lacking are theories which simultaneously recognize that political untruth is often necessary, but that untruth is only justified when a) truth is politically impossible, b) the necessity of untruth is demonstrable, and c) the truth can be replaced with a minimally injurious untruth. Plato offers one such account in the Republic, arguing that deceit must be applied medicinally to the city. However, his account is problematic in detail. One of Plato’s inheritors, the 10th century thinker al-Fārābī, advanced Plato’s theoretical account, arguing that political governance requires restrained political deception. This deception, the expression of philosophical truths through the symbols of religion, meets the criteria mentioned above, being necessary, demonstrably necessary, and minimally injurious. But while al-Fārābī provides a valuable model for what justified political deception could look like, the lengths to which he must go in order to create a viable model for political deception reveals the untenability of the notion of justified political deception writ large. One must orchestrate an entire cosmos around the notion, notably a cosmos that does not match our own. One must adopt very specific conceptions of human nature, association, and happiness, as well as a particular metaphysics and epistemology. For, while al-Fārābī shows that political deception can be justifiable, he also reveals its unjustifiability outside an idealized setting. (shrink)

Debates about scientific realism are closely connected to almost everything else in the philosophy of science, for they concern the very nature of scientific knowledge. Scientific realism is a positive epistemic attitude toward the content of our best theories and models, recommending belief in both observable and unobservable aspects of the world described by the sciences. This epistemic attitude has important metaphysical and semantic dimensions, and these various commitments are contested by a number of rival epistemologies of science, known collectively (...) as forms of scientific antirealism. This article explains what scientific realism is, outlines its main variants, considers the most common arguments for and against the position, and contrasts it with its most important antirealist counterparts. (shrink)

(i) Scientific realism is primarily a metaphysical doctrine about the existence and nature of the unobservables of science. (ii) There are good explanationist arguments for realism, most famously that from the success of science, provided abduction is allowed. Abduction seems to be on an equal footing, at least, with other ampliative methods of inference. (iii) We have no reason to believe a doctrine of empirical equivalence that would sustain the underdetermination argument against realism. (iv) The key to defending realism from (...) the pessimistic meta-induction is that we have greatly improved our capacity to understand the unobservable world over recent centuries. (shrink)

Population ageing and increased digitalization each constitute an ongoing and profound transformation within contemporary modes of living, as growing advances in technological development mix and intermingle with the lived realities of older people as the final recipients. It is against the backdrop of this interplay that user involvement has enjoyed ever-rising advocacy to an almost normative degree. Beyond articulating methodological principles, however, the literature has remained surprisingly vague as to the practical implementation of the approach. Less appears to be known, (...) both empirically and conceptually, about how design and user involvement are done in practice and how they would matter to bring about intentional or unintentional effects. To engage with these developments, this thesis aims at taking the practices of user involvement and design to the centre of its inquiry by adopting a perspective from Science and Technology Studies. Specifically, the thesis seeks to both build on and contribute to the established body of STS on the connection between technology design and older users and ask: What is there to learn about user involvement as a method, if we focus on the practices of doing user involvement? To answer this question, the thesis studies four different aspects of the practices of user involvement and design. In particular, the thesis reviews the literature on how user involvement mattered in previous empirical projects that include older people, it examines how different configurations of participation matter in design workshops, it scrutinizes the achievement of user involvement in corporate practices and it traces the circumstantial performances of such practices. The largest empirical piece comes from a two-year ethnographic study of a small- to medium-sized enterprise, the material from which informed Paper III and Paper IV. The findings highlight how user involvement in practice is both contingent and transformative, as it selectively enrols different participants and performs multiple realities. In practice, user involvement appears to be dependent on a set of underlying premises and socio-material conditions and thus is always a dynamic and momentary achievement. Furthermore, the thesis shows how the practices of user involvement themselves may bring into existence different realities, articulating and materializing particular versions of objects and images of ageing. Accordingly, the thesis contributes theoretically by illuminating the underlying socio-material facets of user involvement, and by emphasizing ageing as a particular object/image of design. Specifically, the appended papers encompass a conceptual framework, as well as three new concepts: design multiple, shifting interstices and viscous image landscape, in order to theorize the underlying conditions for user involvement, its relationship with design and its entanglement with ageing. Practically, the thesis enunciates three main implications regarding questions of goodness, politics and ethics. (shrink)

Ordinary Language Philosophy has largely fallen out of favour, and with it the belief in the primary importance of analyses of ordinary language for philosophical purposes. Still, in their various endeavours, philosophers not only from analytic but also from other backgrounds refer to the use and meaning of terms of interest in ordinary parlance. In doing so, they most commonly appeal to their own linguistic intuitions. Often, the appeal to individual intuitions is supplemented by reference to dictionaries. In recent times, (...) Internet search engine queries for expressions of interest have become quite popular. Apparently, philosophers attempt to surpass the limits of their own linguistic intuitions by appealing to experts or to factual uses of language. I argue that this attempt is commendable but that its execution is wanting. Instead of appealing to dictionaries or Internet queries, philosophers should employ computer-based linguistic corpora in order to confirm or falsify hypotheses about the factual use of language. This approach also has some advantages over methods employed by experimental philosophers. If the importance of ordinary language is stressed, the use of linguistic corpora is hardly avoidable. (shrink)

This thesis aims to propose and defend a new way of analysing and understanding the origin of genetics (from Mendel to Bateson). Traditionally philosophers used to analyse the history of genetics in terms of theories. However, I will argue that this theory-based approach is highly problematic. In Chapter 1, I shall critically review the theory-driven approach to analysisng the history of genetics and diagnose its problems. In Chapter 2, inspired by Kuhn’s concept “exemplar”, I shall make a new interpretation of (...) exemplar and introduce an exemplar-based approach. Before introducing my exemplar-based analysis, I find it necessary to scrutinise the origin of genetics from Mendel to Bateson. In Chapter 3, I shall reinterpret Mendel’s work on Pisum by re-examining Mendel’s paper (1865) and its historical research context. In Chapter 4, by carefully examining the conceptual changes, I argue that the rediscovery event in 1900 should be better characterised as attempts of incorporating Mendel’s work with the work of “rediscoverers” (i.e. de Vries, Correns, Tschermak, and Bateson) rather than a mere reintroduction to Mendel’s work. In Chapter 5, I shall use the exemplar-based approach to analysing and interpreting the origin of genetics from Mendel to Bateson. In Chapter 6, I shall defend my exemplar-based characterisation of the origin of genetics by dismissing the potential responses from the theory-driven one, critically examining a potential mechanism-based analysis, and making the further notes on the implication of taking the exemplar-based approach to investigate scientific practice. (shrink)

The philosophical or theoretical commitments informing psychological research are sometimes characterized, even by theoretical psychologists themselves, as nonempirical, outside the bounds of methodological consideration, and/or nonrational. We argue that this characterization is incoherent. We illustrate our concern by analogy with problematic appeals to Kuhn’s work that have been influential in theoretical psychology. Following the contemporary pragmatist tradition, we argue that our philosophical/theoretical commitments are part of our larger webs of belief, and that for any of these beliefs to have meaning (...) their content must be informed by our practical engagement with the world, i.e., they are based on empirical evidence, broadly construed. It is this empirical basis that allows us to recognize our commitments at all and rationally to assess and criticize them when necessary. We conclude by demonstrating a rational assessment of the philosophical/theoretical commitments underlying a recent study in the social psychology of religion. (shrink)

In this paper, I investigate the logical relation between two claims: observations are theory-laden1 and there is no empirical common ground upon which to evaluate successive scientific theories that belong to different paradigms. I, first, construct an argument where is the main premise and is the conclusion. I argue that the term „theory-laden” has three distinct senses: semantic, psychological and epistemic. If ‘theory-laden’ is understood in either epistemic or psychological senses, then the conclusion becomes a claim about people. If incommensurability (...) is to be a claim about theories, then ‘theory-laden’ in the main premise should be understood in the semantic sense. I, then, argue that there is a further distinction to be drawn between the absolute and relative senses of theory-laden. The relative sense of theory-laden allows observations that are relatively neutral between the theories under examination. I then conclude that the argument from theory-ladenness only shows that foundational empiricism is not a tenable philosophical position, but it fails to show that no empirical test can decide between successive theories that belong to different paradigms. (shrink)

In her paper ‘An Awkward Relationship: the Case of Feminism and Anthropology’, Marilyn Strathern argues that feminist research cannot produce a paradigm shift in social anthropology. I reconstruct her arguments and evaluate them, revealing that they are insufficient for ruling out this possibility.