This article raises issues of science, politics, economics and ethics. The first section presents the ontological transition from the first Copernican revolution to the second Copernican revolution in the global study of sustainability and the ethics of climate change. The second section describes the «Giddens’s paradox» and the Hilbertian program of the Earth System Science, that presuppose a paradigmatic challenge. Finally, the third section links this methodological challenge to the description of the «post-normal science» and the «transdisciplinarity chain» in a (...) post-Kuhnian epistemology.  . (shrink)

The concept of natural kind is center stage in the debates about scientific realism. Champions of scientific realism such as Richard Boyd hold that our most developed scientific theories allow us to “cut the world at its joints” (Boyd, 1981, 1984, 1991). In the long run we can disclose natural kinds as nature made them, though as science progresses improvements in theory allow us to revise the extension of natural kind terms.

Tarski’s conceptual analysis of the notion of logical consequence is one of the pinnacles of the process of defining the metamathematical foundations of mathematics in the tradition of his predecessors Euclid, Frege, Russell and Hilbert, and his contemporaries Carnap, Gödel, Gentzen and Turing. However, he also notes that in defining the concept of consequence “efforts were made to adhere to the common usage of the language of every day life.” This paper addresses the issue of what relationship Tarski’s analysis, and (...) Béziau’s further generalization of it in universal logic, have to reasoning in the everyday lives of ordinary people from the cognitive processes of children through to those of specialists in the empirical and deductive sciences. It surveys a selection of relevant research in a range of disciplines providing theoretical and empirical studies of human reasoning, discusses the value of adopting a universal logic perspective, answers the questions posed in the call for this special issue, and suggests some specific research challenges. (shrink)

Explanations of the growth of scientific knowledge can be characterized in terms of logical, cognitive, and social schemas. But cognitive and social schemas are complementary rather than competitive, and purely social explanations of scientific change are as inadequate as purely cognitive explanations. For example, cognitive explanations of the chemical revolution must be supplemented by and combined with social explanations, and social explanations of the rise of the mechanical world view must be supplemented by and combined with cognitive explanations. Rational appraisal (...) of cognitive and social strategies for improving knowledge should appreciate the interdependence of mind and society. (shrink)

The relationship between economics and the philosophy of natural science has changed substantially during the last few years. What was once exclusively a one-way relationship from philosophy to economics now seems to be much closer to bilateral exchange. The purpose of this paper is to examine this new relationship. First, I document the change. Second, I examine the situation within contemporary philosophy of science in order to explain why economics might have its current appeal. Third, I consider some of the (...) issues that might jeopardize the success of this philosophical project. (shrink)

This chapter contains section titled: The Theory Theory The Theory Theory vs. Other Empiricist Alternatives Innate Theories and Starting‐state Nativism Phenomenological and Social Objections Universality, Uniformity, and Learning Theory Formation and Language.

We members of settler colonial culture—the latest form of what novelist and cultural critic Daniel Quinn calls Taker culture—are constrained by myriad institutions that leave us with little choice but to engage in practices that are profoundly damaging to the planet, to others, and to ourselves. Our path to living otherwise, Andrew Frederick Smith argues, lies in the threefold struggle, which is inspired by Quinn's focus on the interweaving roots of ecological, social, and personal wellbeing. These three forms of wellbeing (...) are co-implicated. We cannot enjoy one without equally enjoying the others; they are a package deal. As such, what works for people individually and collectively works for the planet, and vice versa. Reclaiming our lives and revitalizing our human and more-than-human communities are salient acts of resistance against Taker culture. They offer means of escape from our cultural captivity and an opportunity for full-spectrum wellbeing. (shrink)

Many scientists routinely generalize from study samples to larger populations. It is commonly assumed that this cognitive process of scientific induction is a voluntary inference in which researchers assess the generalizability of their data and then draw conclusions accordingly. We challenge this view and argue for a novel account. The account describes scientific induction as involving by default a generalization bias that operates automatically and frequently leads researchers to unintentionally generalize their findings without sufficient evidence. The result is unwarranted, overgeneralized (...) conclusions. We support this account of scientific induction by integrating a range of disparate findings from across the cognitive sciences that have until now not been connected to research on the nature of scientific induction. The view that scientific induction involves by default a generalization bias calls for a revision of the current thinking about scientific induction and highlights an overlooked cause of the replication crisis in the sciences. Commonly proposed interventions to tackle scientific overgeneralizations that may feed into this crisis need to be supplemented with cognitive debiasing strategies against generalization bias to most effectively improve science. (shrink)

A constantly changing social reality means economic theories, even if correct today, need to be constantly revised, updated, or abandoned. To maintain an up-to-date understanding of its subject matter, economists have to continuously assess their theories even those that appear to be empirically corroborated. Economics could gain from a method that describes and is capable of generating novel explanatory hypotheses. A pessimistic view on the existence of such a method was famously articulated by Karl Popper in The Logic of Scientific (...) Discovery. He wrote ‘there is no such a thing as a logical method of having ideas or a logical reconstruction of this process.’ Herbert Simon responded to Popper and argued the opposite, namely, that there is a model of discovery and its name is abduction. Simon acknowledges his debt to Charles Peirce – the first modern logician to explicitly formulate a theory of abduction – and explains that abduction is a model of discovery that works as a problem-solving heuristic encoded.. (shrink)

During the first half of the twentieth century, mainstream answers to the foundational crisis, mainly triggered by Russell and Gödel, remained largely perfectibilist in nature. Along with a general naturalist wave in the philosophy of science, during the second half of that century, this idealist picture was finally challenged and traded in for more realist ones. Next to the necessary preliminaries, the present paper proposes a structured view of various philosophical accounts of mathematics indebted to this general idea, laying the (...) ground for a desirable integration of their strenghts. (shrink)

In accounting for the way we explain and predict behavior, two major positions are the theory-theory and the simulation theory. Recently, several authors have advocated a hybrid position, where elements of both theory and simulation are part of the account. One popular strategy for incorporating simulation is to note that we sometimes assign mental states to others by performing cognitive operations in ourselves that mirror what has occurred in the target. In this article, I argue that this way of thinking (...) about simulation is misguided. The confusion stems from a failure to appreciate how the application of any internal theory, including folk psychology, requires the employment of other cognitive sub-systems and mechanisms. Just as we need to use our visual system to see what another person is seeing, so too we sometimes need to use our own internal sub-systems to ascertain facts about another's mental states. In many such cases, our cognitive mechanisms are used more as ?fact-finders? rather than as simulators. After spelling all this out, I offer two ways to demarcate cognitive processes that are real simulation from those that are simply used in the application of a theory. (shrink)

Inspired by Ronald Giere’s cognitive approach to scientific models, Cognitive Structural Realism has presented a naturalist account of scientific representation. CSR characterises the structure of theories in terms of cognitive structures. These are informational structures embodied in the brains of scientists. CSR accounts for scientific representation in terms of the dynamical relationship between the organism and its environment. The proposal has been criticised on account of its negligence of social aspects of scientific practice. The present paper aims to chart out (...) a reply to the objection. It shows that cognitive structures do not need to be put inside the brains of single individuals. Cognitive structures are redefined as extended structures in distributed cognitive systems under Free Energy Principle. (shrink)

This essay initiates a fundamental discussion about education’s nature and character, and raises the questions: Is education reliant on other disciplines as, for example, psychology, sociology and philosophy? Or may education be thought of independently, without being reliant on other disciplines? These questions are discussed in the light of Theodor Litt’s educational reading of Hegel’s understanding of dialectics, as it appears in the book Phenomenology of Spirit, in order to support that education has a relational and dialectic nature. In the (...) second part, we connect the concept of ‘Hegelian dialectic structure’ with scientific theory. More specifically, we introduce a theoretically oriented concept, based on semantic theory construction; namely, ‘relational parameter bundles’. This concept clarifies the difference between education and other ‘scientific,’ often more empirically based disciplines, such as psychology, on which education, or rather, educational researchers, traditionally rely. Through our theoretical approach we aim to uncover fundamental differences within different disciplines’ scientific thinking, and their use of theories and models, which then manifest themselves in the discipline’s scientific assessments and practical actions. An uncritical integration of other disciplines in education may destroy the ‘true’ nature of education, and thus pose a danger to education’s character, problem areas and ways of conducting research. That does not mean that education shall be isolated from other disciplines, it is rather a question of when perspectives from other disciplines should be included in educational matters. Not before the educational questions are raised and worked through will it be appropriate to obtain knowledge from other disciplines, if, that is, it is deemed necessary based on educational judgment. (shrink)

While the extended cognition (EC) thesis has gained more followers in cognitive science and in the philosophy of mind and knowledge, our main goal is to discuss a different area of significance of the EC thesis: its relation to philosophy of science. In this introduction, we outline two major areas: (I) The role of the thesis for issues in the philosophy of cognitive science, such as: How do notions of EC figure in theories or research programs in cognitive science? Which (...) versions of the EC thesis appear, and with which arguments to support them? (II) The potentials and limits of the EC thesis for topics in general philosophy of science, such as: Can naturalism perhaps be further advanced by means of the more recent EC thesis? Can we understand “big science” or laboratory research better by invoking some version of EC? And can the EC thesis help in overcoming the notorious cognitive/social divide in science studies? (shrink)

Part I Introduction The specific problem adressed in this thesis is: what is the rational use of theory and experiment in the process of scientific discovery, in theory and in the practice of drug research for Parkinson’s disease? The thesis aims to answer the following specific questions: what is: 1) the structure of a theory?; 2) the process of scientific reasoning?; 3) the route between theory and experiment? In the first part I further discuss issues about rationality in science as (...) introduction to part II, and I present an overview of my case-study of neuropharmacology, for which I interviewed researchers from the Groningen Pharmacy Department, as an introduction to part III. Part II Discovery In this part I discuss three theoretical models of scientific discovery according to studies in the fields of Logic, Cognition, and Computation. In those fields the structure of a theory is respectively explicated as: a set of sentences; a set of associated memory chunks; and as a computer program that can generate the observed data. Rationality in discovery is characterized by: finding axioms that imply observation sentences; heuristic search for a hypothesis, as part of problem solving, by applying memory chunks and production rules that represent skill; and finding the shortest program that generates the data, respectively. I further argue that reasoning in discovery includes logical fallacies, which are neccesary to introduce new hypotheses. I also argue that, while human subjects often make errors in hypothesis evaluation tasks from a logical perspective, these evaluations are rational given a probabilistic interpretation. Part III Neuropharmacology In this last part I discusses my case-study and a model of discovery in a practice of drug research for Parkinson’s disease. I discuss the dopamine theory of Parkinson’s disease and model its structure as a qualitative differential equation. Then I discuss the use and reasons for particular experiments to both test a drug and explore the function of the brain. I describe different kinds of problems in drug research leading to a discovery. Based on that description I distinguish three kinds of reasoning tasks in discovery, inference to: the best explanation, the best prediction and the best intervention. I further demonstrate how a part of reasoning in neuropharmacology can be computationally modeled as qualitative reasoning, and aided by a computer supported discovery system. (shrink)

This essay evaluates the epistemic potential of the scientific method of 'thought experiments', i.e. how far one can progress in science by just thinking about experimental situations without doing real empirical research. The analysis of many episodes from the history of science suggests that thought experiments play an essential role in the formation of new conceptual and normative frames during phases of revolutionary theory change. Thought experiments do not tell us, how things are, but how they might be explained, thus (...) allowing us to reflect the intentional components within scientific theories. The author later wrote a Dr.-phil.-thesis on this subject: "Die Methode des Gedankenexperiments. Untersuchung zur Rationalität naturwissenschaftlicher Theoriereformen." (Bremen University, submitted October 5th 2001, summa cum laude) an abridged version of which has been published in the book: Ulrich Kühne, Die Methode des Gedankenexperiments. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag 2005. 410 pages, ISBN: 978-3-518-29342-3. (shrink)

Philip Kitcher's The Advancement of Science sets out, programmatically, a new naturalistic view of science as a process of building consensus practices. Detailed historical case studies—centrally, the Darwinian revolutio—are intended to support this view. I argue that Kitcher's expositions in fact support a more conservative view, that I dub ‘Legend Naturalism’. Using four historical examples which increasingly challenge Kitcher's discussions, I show that neither Legend Naturalism, nor the less conservative programmatic view, gives an adequate account of scientific progress. I argue (...) for a naturalism that is more informed by psychology and a normative account that is both more social and less realist than the views articulated in The Advancement of Science. (shrink)

This paper proposes to recover the topic of the philosophy of scientific method from its late nineteenth-century roots. The subject matter of scientific method sprouted from key inferential ingredients identified by Charles Peirce. In this paper, the historical path is traversed from the viewpoint of contemporary Cognitive Structural Realism (CSR). Peirce’s semiotic theory of methods and practices of scientific inquiry prefigured CSR’s reliance on embodied informational structures and experimentation upon forms of relations that model generic scientific domains. Three results are (...) shown to follow from this convocation: (i) a naturalization of Peirce’s interconnected abductive, deductive and inductive stages of the logic of science, here characterized de novo in terms of CSR. (ii) a perspective to scientific modeling that incorporates processes of abstraction and generalization as originated from Peirce’s logic of science, and (iii) diagrammatic reasoning as a pivotal method in analyzing scientific reasoning in experimental practices. (shrink)

This paper argues that, as all available accounts of how scientific and non-scientific goals might be distinguished rely upon distinctions as much in need of explication as the notion of scientific goals itself, naturalized accounts of science should reject the notion that there are characteristically scientific goals for a given time and place and instead countenance only the goals which happen to be had by individual scientists or their communities. This argument and the recommendation that follows from it are illustrated (...) by reference to Watson and Crick's discovery of the structure of DNA. (shrink)

In this article, the author focuses on Philip Kitcher's and Alvin Goldman's economic models of the social character of scientific knowledge production. After introducing some relevant methodological issues in the social sciences and characterizing Kitcher's and Goldman's models, the author goes on to show that special problems arise directly from the concept of an agent invoked in the models. The author argues that the two distinct concepts of agents, borrowed from economics and cognitive psychology, are inconsistent. Finally, the author discusses (...) some of the normative implications that arise from adopting economic concepts of agents in the study of science. (shrink)

The concept of attention is defined by multiple inconsistent metaphors that scientists use to identify relevant phenomena, frame hypotheses, construct experiments, and interpret data. (1) The Filter metaphor shapes debates about partial vs. complete filtering, early vs. late selection, and information filtering vs. enhancement. (2) The Spotlight metaphor raises the issue of space‐ vs. object‐based selection, and it guides research on the size, shape, and movement of the attentional focus. (3) The Spotlight‐in‐the‐Brain metaphor is frequently used to interpret imaging studies (...) of attention. (4) The debate between supramodal and pre‐motor theories of attention replays the dichotomy between the Spotlight and the Vision metaphors of attention. Our analysis reveals the central role of metaphor in scientific theory and research on attention, exposes hidden assumptions behind various research strategies, and shows the need for flexibility in the use of current metaphors. (shrink)

In relatively recent years, quite a number of diverse case studies concerning the use of visual displays—such as graphs, diagrams, tables, pictures, drawings, etc.—in both the physical and biological sciences have been offered in the literature of the history and philosophy of science —see, e.g., Miller 1984; Lynch and Woolgar 1990; Baigrie 1996; Pauwels 2006. These case studies have shown that visual representations fulfill important functions in both the theoretical and experimental practices of science, thereby emphasizing the non-verbal dimension of (...) scientific inquiry that had been neglected by the traditional language-based conception of science, which takes the production, justification and... (shrink)