The aim of this paper is to discuss the “Austro-American” logical empiricism proposed by physicist and philosopher Philipp Frank, particularly his interpretation of Carnap’s Aufbau, which he considered the charter of logical empiricism as a scientific world conception. According to Frank, the Aufbau was to be read as an integration of the ideas of Mach and Poincaré, leading eventually to a pragmatism quite similar to that of the American pragmatist William James. Relying on this peculiar interpretation, Frank intended to bring (...) about a rapprochement between the logical empiricism of the Vienna Circle in exile and American pragmatism. In the course of this project, in the last years of his career, Frank outlined a comprehensive, socially engaged philosophy of science that could serve as a “link between science and philosophy”. (shrink)

Reality contains information that becomes significances in the mind of the observer. Language is the human instrument to understand reality. But is it possible to attain this reality? Is there an absolute reality, as certain philosophical schools tell us? The reality that we perceive, is it just a fragmented reality of which we are part? The work that the authors present is an attempt to address this question from an epistemological, linguistic and logical-mathematical point of view.

Husserl’s philosophy, by the usual account, evolved through three stages: 1. development of an anti-psychologistic, objective foundation of logic and mathematics, rooted in Brentanian descriptive psychology; 2. development of a new discipline of "phenomenology" founded on a metaphysical position dubbed "transcendental idealism"; transformation of phenomenology from a form of methodological solipsism into a phenomenology of intersubjectivity and ultimately (in his Crisis of 1936) into an ontology of the life-world, embracing the social worlds of culture and history. We show that this (...) story of three revolutions can provide at best a preliminary orientation, and that Husserl was constantly expanding and revising his philosophical system, integrating views in phenomenology, ontology, epistemology and logic with views on the nature and tasks of philosophy and science as well as on the nature of culture and the world in ways that reveal more common elements than violent shifts of direction. We argue further that Husserl is a seminal figure in the evolution from traditional philosophy to the characteristic philosophical concerns of the late twentieth century: concerns with representation and intentionality and with problems at the borderlines of the philosophy of mind, ontology, and cognitive science. (shrink)

Lewis's account of the role of sensory experience in empirical knowledge rests on the theses: (1) that one's apprehension of what is given in sensory experience is certain; (2) that unless there were such certain apprehension of the given, No knowledge would be possible; (3) that justification of one's other justified empirical beliefs always derives from one's apprehension of the given. I show that all three theses are false. That they are false provides further motivation for the theory of justification (...) I call "foundherentist", Which is fallibilist and permits mutual support (see my "theories of knowledge; an analytic framework", "proceedings of the aristotelian society, Lxxxiii", 1982-3). (shrink)

In his 1927 Analysis of Matter and elsewhere, Russell argued that we can successfully infer the structure of the external world from that of our explanatory schemes. While nothing guarantees that the intrinsic qualities of experiences are shared by their objects, he held that the relations tying together those relata perforce mirror relations that actually obtain (these being expressible in the formal idiom of the Principia Mathematica). This claim was subsequently criticized by the Cambridge mathematician Max Newman as true but (...) trivial, insofar as from a closed body of observations (or “Ramsey sentence”) one can always generate other equally-satisfactory networks of relations, provided they respect the original set’s cardinality. Since any model thus generated will be empirically adequate, “[t]he defence is therefore driven back from the fairly safe fictitious-real classification to the much less tenable ‘trivial’ and ‘important’” (Newman 1928). Given the definitional rigour afforded by the initial appeal to isomorphism (via one-to-one correspondences in extension), the received assessment, shared by Russell himself, is that retreating to a pragmatic adjudication would betoken a fatal blow. However, I suggest that reliance on “importance” can be avoided if we incorporate an impersonal criterion of diachronic precedence. When collecting observations, an ordinality emerges alongside the cardinality which gives that underived structure an irrevocable epistemological privilege. Hence, I argue that, all other things being equal, any construct parasitic on an antecedent theory ought to be regarded as inferior/dispensable, since it was generated by an algorithm lacking the world-involving pedigree of its host structure. (shrink)

The paper distinguishes between two kinds of mathematics, natural mathematics which is a result of biological evolution and artificial mathematics which is a result of cultural evolution. On this basis, it outlines an approach to the philosophy of mathematics which involves a new treatment of the method of mathematics, the notion of demonstration, the questions of discovery and justification, the nature of mathematical objects, the character of mathematical definition, the role of intuition, the role of diagrams in mathematics, and the (...) effectiveness of mathematics in natural science. (shrink)

Throughout the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, philosophers of various sorts, including Helmholtz, Avenarius, Husserl, Russell, Carnap, Neurath, and Heidegger, were united in promulgating a new, “scientific” philosophy. This article documents some of the varieties of scientific philosophy and argues that the history of scientific philosophy is crucial to the development of analytic philosophy and the division between analytic and continental philosophy. Scientific philosophy defined itself via criticisms of old-fashioned systematic metaphysics and, in the twentieth century, of Lebensphilosophie. It (...) offered a modernist vision of philosophy participating in a progressive, problem-solving, piecemeal, and collaborative scientific ethos. The article argues that the rise of scientific philosophy indicates a change of the conception of science as well as philosophy in the late nineteenth century and notes some tensions in the accounts of science offered by scientific philosophers. The article offers some preliminary lessons for the interpretation of logical empiricism and phenomenology as episodes within a larger history of scientific philosophy. (shrink)

My main purpose is to discuss what it is for philosophy to enlighten. In kant's sense, Enlightenment is what brings a rational outlook to social and political life. My second purpose is to display the self-Image of the vienna circle as philosophers of enlightenment. They thought the value of positivism was that it expressed the scientific spirit, Which was for them a moral viewpoint.

In the 1930s, Carnap set out to incorporate psychology into the unity of science, by showing that all cognitively meaningful sentences of psychology can be translated into the language of physics. I will argue that Carnap, relying on his notion of protocol languages, defends a physicalistic philosophy of psychology that shows due appreciation to 'introspection' as a strictly subjective, but reliable way to verify sentences about one’s own mind. Second, I will point out that Carnap’s philosophy of psychology not only (...) takes into account overt behaviour, but must comprise neurophysiological processes as well. Last, I will show that Carnap aims to develop a philosophy of psychology that does justice to the ongoing changeability of scientific knowledge. (shrink)

Historically, the Vienna Circle and the Dessau Bauhaus were related, with members of each group familiar with the ideas of the other. Peter Galison argues that their projects are related as well, through shared political views and methodological approach. The two main figures that connect the Vienna Circle to the Bauhaus—and the figures upon which Galison focuses—are Rudolf Carnap and Otto Neurath. Yet the connections that Galison develops do not properly capture the common themes between the Bauhaus and Neurath’s philosophical (...) projects. We demonstrate this by considering Neurath’s philosophical commitments. We suggest different connections between Neurath’s projects and the Bauhaus, connections that are both substantive and philosophically interesting. (shrink)

Frank Jackson’s knowledge argument (KA) aims to prove, by means of a thought experiment concerning the hypothetical scientist Mary, that conscious experiences have non-physical properties, called qualia. Mary has complete scientific knowledge of colours and colour vision without having had any colour experience. The central intuition in the KA is that, by seeing colours, Mary will learn what it is like to have colour experiences. Therefore, her scientific knowledge is incomplete, and conscious experiences have qualia. In this paper I consider (...) an objection to the KA raised by Daniel Dennett. He maintains that the KA is vitiated by Jackson’s account of Mary’s scientific knowledge. While endorsing this criticism, I will defend the plausibility and relevance of the type of strategy involved in the KA by offering an account of Mary’s scientific knowledge. This account involves formulating a reasonable and not immediately false version of the physicalist thesis with regard to colour experiences. Whether this version of the KA is successful against this type of physicalism is not investigated here. (shrink)

Perceptual content is conceptual. In this paper, some arguments against this thesis are examined and rebutted. The Richness argument, that we could not have concepts for all the colours, is queried: Doesn't the Munsell system give us such concepts? The argument that we can perceive colours and shapes without possessing the relevant concepts is rebutted: we cannot do this, but the kind of concept-possession that is relevant here is not intellectual but perceptual.

The concept of empiricism evokes both a historical tradition and a set of philosophical theses. The theses are usually understood to have been developed by Locke, Berkeley, and Hume. But these figures did not use the term “empiricism,” and they did not see themselves as united by a shared epistemology into one school of thought. My dissertation analyzes the debate that elevated the concept of empiricism (and of an empiricist tradition) to prominence in English-language philosophy. -/- In the 1870s and (...) ’80s a lively debate about psychology emerged. Neo-Kantian idealists criticized the very idea that the mind can be studied scientifically. A group of philosopher-psychologists responded, often in Mind. They were among the first to call themselves “empiricists,” arguing that psychology could provide a scientific basis for philosophical progress. Idealists held that empirical psychology depended on premises developed by Locke, Berkeley, and Hume. These premises were allegedly absurd because they rendered ideas of extension, as well as other ideas crucial to natural science, unreal. Those who wanted to advance psychology towards becoming a legitimate science were forced to engage these philosophical attacks, while at the same time to develop empirical theories that could successfully explain some characteristics of experience. I show how James’s theory of space perception accomplished both tasks. -/- In developing this theory, James found he had to reject the Lockean notion that reality is associated with passively-registered sensations. James also abandoned Berkeley and Hume’s claim that ideas are ultimately derived from atomic sensations. Instead, James presented experimental evidence that sensation is a continuous stream. The mind must actively parse this stream if it is to gain a coherent representation of its environment. I argue that James’s stream-of-thought thesis served as a presupposition of his entire psychology. The thesis showed how the labor of investigating the mind could be divided between philosophers and scientists, and in a manner sensitive to the concerns of both. The stream thesis also provided a scientific basis for a new philosophical empiricism that, I argue, has a hidden legacy in the history of analytic philosophy. (shrink)

In this paper, we describe "metaphysical reductions", in which the well-defined terms and predicates of arbitrary mathematical theories are uniquely interpreted within an axiomatic, metaphysical theory of abstract objects. Once certain (constitutive) facts about a mathematical theory T have been added to the metaphysical theory of objects, theorems of the metaphysical theory yield both an analysis of the reference of the terms and predicates of T and an analysis of the truth of the sentences of T. The well-defined terms and (...) predicates of T are analyzed as denoting abstract objects and abstract relations, respectively, in the background metaphysics, and the sentences of T have a reading on which they are true. After the technical details are sketched, the paper concludes with some observations about the approach. One important observation concerns the fact that the proper axioms of the background theory abstract objects can be reformulated in a way that makes them sound more like logical axioms. Some philosophers have argued that we should accept (something like) them as being logical. (shrink)

The paper offers a new analysis of the difficulties involved in the construction of a general and substantive correspondence theory of truth and delineates a solution to these difficulties in the form of a new methodology. The central argument is inspired by Kant, and the proposed methodology is explained and justified both in general philosophical terms and by reference to a particular variant of Tarski's theory. The paper begins with general considerations on truth and correspondence and concludes with a brief (...) outlook on the "family" of theories of truth generated by the new methodology. (shrink)

This paper states three counterexamples to the claim that testimony cannot generate knowledge, that a hearer can only acquire testimonial knowledge from a speaker who knows: a twins case, the fossil case, and an inversion case. The paper provides an explanation for why testimony can generate knowledge. Testimonial knowledge involves the flow of information from a speaker to a hearer through the linguistic channel.

Michael Friedman has recently argued that Carnap'sLogical Syntax of Language is fundamentally flawed in a way that reveals the ultimate failure of logical positivism. Friedman's argument depends crucially on two claims: (1) that Carnap was committed to the view that there is a universal metalanguage and (2) that given what Carnap wanted from a metalanguage, in particular given that he wanted a definition of analytic for an object language, he was in fact committed to a hierarchy of stronger and stronger (...) metalanguages. We argue that neither of these claims need be accepted. We show that there is no textual evidence for (1) and that if metalanguages are to be used for merely descriptive and not also justificatory purposes, Carnap does not need to define analyticity sufficiently for proving consistency, and so could have given a definition that does not entail a hierarchy of metalanguages. (shrink)

In this paper, I discuss the key role played by Carl G. Hempel's work on theoretical realism and scientific explanation in effecting a crucial philosophical transition between the beginning and the end of the twentieth century. At the beginning of the century, the dominant view was that science is incapable of furnishing explanations of natural phenomena; at the end, explanation is widely viewed as an important, if not the primary, goal of science. In addition to its intellectual benefits, this transition (...) has important practical consequences with respect to dealing with the global problems humans everywhere will face in the twenty-first century. (shrink)

Resemblance Nominalism is the view that denies universals and tropes and claims that what makes F-things F is their resemblances. A famous argument against Resemblance Nominalism is Russell's regress of resemblances, according to which the resemblance nominalist falls into a vicious infinite regress. Aristocratic Resemblance Nominalism, as opposed to Egalitarian Resemblance Nominalism, is the version of Resemblance Nominalism that claims that what makes F-things F is that they resemble the F-paradigms. In this paper I attempt to show that a recently (...) advocated strategy to stop Russell's regress by using paradigms does not succeed. (shrink)

Husserl's mathematical philosophy of science can be considered an anticipation of the contemporary postpositivistic semantic approach, which regards mathematics and not logic as the appropriate tool for the exact philosophical reconstruction of scientific theories. According to Husserl, an essential part of a theory's reconstruction is the mathematical description of its domain, that is, the world (or the part of the world) the theory intends to talk about. Contrary to the traditional micrological approach favored by the members of the Vienna Circle, (...) Husserl, inspired by modern geometry and set theory, aims at a macrological analysis of scientific theories that takes into account the global structures of theories as structured wholes. This is set in the complementary theories of manifolds and theory forms considered by Husserl himself as the culmination of his formal theory of science. (shrink)

In recent times it has become fashionable to emphasize the role of conceptual change in the history of science. To judge from recent writers, every significant theoretical change in science is first and foremost a revolution in scientific concepts—a conceptual revolution. According to this view, every level of experience is affected by each fundamental theoretical change: physical theory, experimental practice and even perceptual experience. The Aristotelian patrician who watched the sun sink beneath the horizon not only had different beliefs about (...) the phenomenon but actually saw something different from the Newtonian gentleman who saw the horizon rise above his eye-sun line, and the Einsteinian professional who saw the sun's varying geometrical relations to the world light-geodesics on which successive temporal stages of his eye world-line lay. Moreover, such is the completeness of the conceptual-experiential shifts undergone in a fundamental scientific change that it is impossible to meaningfully discuss the one theory within the confines of the other or, indeed, to provide any systematic, cumulative comparison of successive theories. (shrink)

Maria Rosa Antognazza's work has issued a historical challenge to the thesis that the analysis of knowledge (as justified true belief) attacked by epistemologists from Gettier onwards was indeed the standard view traditionally upheld from Plato onwards. This challenge led to an ongoing reappraisal of the historical significance of intuitive knowledge, in which the knower is intimately connected to what is known. Such traditional accounts of intuition, and their accompanying claims to epistemological primacy, constituted the precise target of Moritz Schlick's (...) critique. Schlick engages with this topic throughout his oeuvre, from some of his early epistemological writings, to his anti-metaphysical stance as a leading Logical Empiricist. Schlick crucially distinguishes knowledge from mere acquaintance, denying that the latter has epistemic status. He therefore argues that the very notion of ‘intuitive knowledge’ is a contradictio in adjecto. (shrink)

In this introductory article we reconstruct several broad developments in the scholarship on Kant’s theory of natural science with a particular focus on the Anglophone context over the past half-century. Our goal is to illuminate the co-development of Kant scholarship and the philosophy of science during this period and to identify points of influence in both directions. In section 2 we present an overview of the scholarship on Kant’s account of natural laws. In section 3 we survey the diverse interpretations (...) of Kant’s views on biology and consider recent appeals to Kant by philosophers of biology. In section 4 we explore several recent developments in philosophy of science that have potential synergies with Kant scholarship. Our aim is not simply to establish that Kant’s philosophy can have relevance for philosophy of science but also to point out where it has been and continues to be relevant. Appreciating this relevance, we suggest, can help identify productive lines of inquiry for Kant studies. (shrink)

This article focuses on the completely neglected relation between Collingwood and Heidegger's concepts of metaphysics by highlighting their respective reactions to Alfred J. Ayer and Rudolf Carnap. In his article “The Elimination of Metaphysics through Logical Analysis of Language” from 1931, Carnap exposed the metaphysical statements, used by Heidegger in his inaugural lecture What is Metaphysics?, as pseudo-statements. Three years later, Ayer published the article “Demonstration of the Impossibility of Metaphysics”.In the late 1930s, Ayer's position was attacked by Collingwood in (...) An Essay on Metaphysics. In the British debate, the tables of the German debate were thus turned. Whereas the analytic philosopher Carnap reacted against the metaphysician Heidegger, the metaphysician Collingwood reacted against the analytic philosopher Ayer. Accordingly, a correct understanding and evaluation of the relation between Collingwood's and Heidegger's concepts of metaphysics are dependent on knowledge of their respective reactions to Ayer and Carnap.Three steps are taken. First, the discussion between Carnap and Heidegger is presented. Second, the friction between Ayer and Collingwood is outlined. In the final section, the similarities and differences between Collingwood and Heidegger's concepts of metaphysics are explored and situated within their divergent views on the Western history of philosophy. (shrink)

In this paper we compare two different notions of 'power', both of which attempt to provide a realist understanding of quantum mechanics grounded on the potential mode of existence. For this propose we will begin by introducing two different notions of potentiality present already within Aristotelian metaphysics, namely, irrational potentiality and rational potentiality. After discussing the role played by potentiality within classical and quantum mechanics, we will address the notion of causal power which is directly related to irrational potentiality and (...) has been adopted by many interpretations of QM. We will then present the notion of immanent power which relates to rational potentiality and argue that this new concept presents important advantages regarding the possibilities it provides for understanding in a novel manner the theory of quanta. We end our paper with a comparison between both notions of 'power', stressing some radical differences between them. (shrink)

In his “Epistemology Naturalized,” Quine embraces a form of Humeanism. In this paper, I try to work out the significance of this Humeanism. In particular, I argue that it represents an anti-metaphysical position that Quine shares with Carnap. Crucial to my account is that contrary to much contemporary thinking on metaphysics, Carnap, and Quine following him, recognize both an ontological and an epistemological sense of metaphysics. As commentators have frequently acknowledged, Carnap and Quine disagree over rejecting metaphysics in the ontological (...) sense. I will argue, though, that they agree in rejecting metaphysics in their shared epistemological sense of the term. (shrink)

Carnap’s 1931 attack against metaphysics notoriously utilises Heidegger’s work to exemplify the meaninglessness of metaphysical pseudo‐statements. This paper interprets Carnap’s metametaphysics as concerned with delimiting theoretical dialogue in such a manner as to exclude unresolvable disagreements. It puts forth a revised version of Carnap’s argument against the viability of metaphysics, by setting aside his stronger claims that rely on verificationism and focusing instead on his account of metaphysical claims as mere expressions of what he calls “Lebensgefühl,” or a general attitude (...) towards life. Such attitudes, Carnap argues, are unsuitable objects of theoretical dialogue, insofar as disagreements that concern them are unresolvable. Carnap thus recommends abandoning the attempt to resolve metaphysical disagreements as if they were theoretical. As long as it does not enter into unresolvable disagreements, art, rather than theory, is the appropriate medium for expressing Lebensgefühl. (shrink)

This article analyses the relationship between the concept of single aspect similarity and proposed measures of similarity. More precisely, it compares eleven measures of similarity in terms of how well they satisfy a list of desiderata, chosen to capture common intuitions concerning the properties of similarity and the relations between similarity and dissimilarity. Three types of measures are discussed: similarity as commonality, similarity as a function of dissimilarity, and similarity as a joint function of commonality and difference. Relative to the (...) desiderata, it is found that a measure of the second type fares the best. However, rather than recommend this measure alone as a measure of similarity, it is suggested that there are at least three separate concepts of single aspect similarity, corresponding to the three types of measures. In light of this proposal, three of the eleven measures (and variants of these) are deemed acceptable. (shrink)

In his “Wissenschaftslogik: The Role of Logic in the Philosophy of Science,” Michael Friedman argues that Carnap’s philosophy of science “is fundamentally anti-metaphysical—he aims to use the tools of mathematical logic to dissolve rather [than] solve traditional philosophical problems—and it is precisely this point that is missed by his logically-minded contemporaries such as Hempel and Quine”. In this paper, I take issue with this claim, arguing that Quine, too, is a part of this anti-metaphysical tradition. I begin in section I (...) with Russell’s account of scientific philosophy, focusing on its critique of metaphysics and its reliance on logical constructions. I then argue that each of Carnap and Quine take up this call to scientific philosophizing but that they both find Russell’s account of logic wanting. In section II, I first provide an account of Carnap’s critique of metaphysics and its reliance on developments in logic. This is followed by a discussion of his appeal to the analytic/synthetic distinction so as to improve upon Russell’s account of logic. Section III follows this same structure but focuses on Quine. In the end, though, Quine turns not to the analytic/synthetic distinction but to holism to provide an account of logic suitable to scientific philosophy. Carnap had claimed to be “more Russellian than Russell,” and in this final move by Quine I argue that he is “being more Carnapian than Carnap.” I conclude by showing how, contrary to Friedman’s view, Quine’s rejection of the analytic/synthetic distinction does not yield a return to the kind metaphysics that he, Carnap, and Russell all objected to. (shrink)

I argue that the best interpretation of the general theory of relativity has need of a causal entity, and causal structure that is not reducible to light cone structure. I suggest that this causal interpretation of GTR helps defeat a key premise in one of the most popular arguments for causal reductionism, viz., the argument from physics.

In ‘Brentano’s Methodology as a Path through the Divide’, Röck makes two related claims. Röck argues that there exists a philosophical dilemma between description and logical analysis, and that the current divide between continental phenomenology and analytic philosophy may be seen as a consequence of the dilemma. Röck further argues that Brentano’s work integrates description and logical analysis in a way which ‘can provide a suitable starting point for an equally successful integration of these methods in contemporary philosophy’. Without disputing (...) Röck’s claim about the suitability of Brentano’s work for such an integration, this paper questions by examining the influence of Brentano and his school on early analytic philosophy. As recent scholarship in the history of analytic philosophy demonstrates, contrary to Röck’s contention, many prominent analytic philosophers conversed with Brentano and his school’s conceptions of phenomenological description. (shrink)

Neuroscience is a multidisciplinary effort to understand the structures and functions of the brain and brain-mind relations. This effort results in an increasing amount of data, generated by sophisticated technologies. However, these data enhance our descriptive knowledge, rather than improve our understanding of brain functions. This is caused by methodological gaps both within and between subdisciplines constituting neuroscience, and the atomistic approach that limits the study of macro- and mesoscopic issues. Whole-brain measurement technologies do not resolve these issues, but rather (...) aggravate them by the complexity problem. The present article is devoted to methodological and epistemic problems that obstruct the development of human neuroscience. We neither discuss ontological questions nor review data, except when it is necessary to demonstrate a methodological issue. As regards intradisciplinary methodological problems, we concentrate on those within neurobiology and psychology. As regards interdisciplinary problems, we suggest that core disciplines of neuroscience can be integrated using systemic concepts that also entail human-environment relations. We emphasize the necessity of a meta-discussion that should entail a closer cooperation with philosophy as a discipline of systematic reflection. The atomistic reduction should be complemented by the explicit consideration of the embodiedness of the brain and the embeddedness of humans. The discussion is aimed at the development of an explicit methodology of integrative human neuroscience, which will not only link different fields and levels, but also help in understanding clinical phenomena. (shrink)

Michael Friedman’s Dynamics of Reason is a welcome contribution to the ongoing articulation of philosophical perspectives for understanding the sciences in the context of post-positivist philosophy of science. Two perspectives that have gained advocacy since the demise of the “received view” are Quinean naturalism and Kuhnian relativism. In his 1999 Stanford lectures, Friedman articulates and defends a neo-Kantian perspective for philosophy of science that opposes both of these perspectives. His proffered neo-Kantian perspective is presented within the context of the problem (...) of theory change or “scientific revolutions,” and its main feature is a conception of scientific knowledge that requires “relativized constitutive a priori principles.” The lectures make up the first part of the book; the second part of the book, “Fruits of Discussion,” is a further elaboration and defence of the ideas advanced in the lectures. The resulting book serves as a useful sequel to Friedman’s impressive historical studies in Foundations of Space-Time Theories, Kant and the Exact Sciences, and Reconsidering Logical Positivism. In the preface, Friedman tells us that this book represents the philosophical viewpoint that he has arrived at as a result of completing these works. As such, it is not surprising that the prominent themes of the book are ones that have occupied Friedman’s attention in the past, viz., the importance of a priori principles in the exact sciences, the conventionalism of the logical positivists, and, more generally, an articulation of what remains defensible in neo-Kantian philosophy of science. (shrink)

The main task in this paper is to detail and investigate Carnap’s conception of a “linguistic framework”. On this basis, we will see whether Carnap’s dichotomies, such as the analytic-synthetic distinction, are to be construed as absolute/fundamental dichotomies or merely as relative dichotomies. I argue for a novel interpretation of Carnap’s conception of a LF and, on that basis, will show that, according to Carnap, all the dichotomies to be discussed are relative dichotomies; they depend on conventional decisions concerning the (...) logical syntax of LF. Thus, all of the dichotomies directly hinge on the conception of the LF. The LF’s logical structure, in turn, is an immediate consequence of adopting the linguistic doctrine of logical truths. As we will see, no appeal to any of these distinctions is necessary in establishing a LF and all of its components. I will also draw attention to the differences between what Carnap labels a “way of speaking”, “language”, and “artificial language”. Consequently, I will briefly conclude that none of Quine’s major objections address the main points of Carnap’s theory. (shrink)

In this dissertation I consider the problem of external world skepticism and attempts at providing an argument to the best explanation against it. In chapter one I consider several different ways of formulating the crucial skeptical argument, settling on an argument that centers on the question of whether we're justified in believing propositions about the external world. I then consider and reject several options for getting around this issue which I take to be inadequate. I finally conclude that the best (...) option available to us at the moment is to argue that the antiskeptical view is the best explanation of our ordinary experiences In chapter two I argue that, if we hope to ground what counts as defending antiskepticism in common sense, there is an argument against the possibility of ever knowing one has succeeded in defending antiskepticism. After showing that common sense is no place to look in setting a goal for our antiskeptical project, I present the view that what will be crucial to settling on our antiskeptical goal is coming to a successful analysis of the nature of physical objects. I suggest some minimal criteria that must be met by a view in order to be antiskeptical based on our intuitions about core skeptical cases, but acknowledge that a fully successful response to external world skepticism will require the antiskeptic to engage in some much more difficult analysis. In chapter three I consider various views of the nature of explanation and conclude, tentatively, that explanation as it interests the antiskeptic is fundamentally causal. In chapter four I consider and reject some of the core views on which best explanation facts are so fundamental that a project of attempting to vindicate probabilistically the virtues which make explanations epistemically good. In this chapter I show that views which analyze justification in terms of best explanation factors fail. In chapter five I attempt to vindicate the various explanatory virtues probabilistically. In doing so I attempt to express or translate the various explanatory virtues in terms of probabilities in order to show that having those virtues makes a view at least prima facie more probable. In chapters six and seven I explain and evaluate the various arguments to the best explanation against skepticism present in current philosophical literature. I attempt to show that extant arguments fail to appreciate the virtues possessed by classical skeptical scenarios. In chapter eight I briefly consider some options that may be open to the antiskeptic moving forward. All routes forward contain considerable obstacles, but there are some fruitful areas of research to pursue. (shrink)

Over the past twenty years, Husserlian phenomenology has increasingly drawn the attention of the cognitive community, thereby leading to the emergence of what might be called a phenomenological trend within contemporary cognitive studies. What this phenomenological trend really amounts to is however a matter of debate. The reason is that it embodies, in fact, a multifaceted reflection about the relevance of Husserlian phenomenology to the current efforts towards a scientific theory of cognition, and, to a lesser degree, about the reciprocal (...) relevance of these efforts to the fate of the Husserlian tradition. Indeed, it covers a wide array of perspectives on these questions, ranging from tentative demonstrations of the cognitively misleading character of Husserl's ideas, inasmuch as they would incarnate the same foundational errors as cognitivism, to diametrically opposed views arguing that the naturalist bent of contemporary cognitive science is ill-conceived, and that only the brand of transcendentalism defended by Husserl can provide it with adequate foundations. (shrink)

This paper compares the claims about our knowledge of the external world presented by Rudolf Carnap, in the book known as the Aufbau, to those of Clarence Irving Lewis, in Mind and the World-Order. This comparison is made in terms of the opposition to Kantian epistemology that both books establish; the Aufbau is regarded as the peak of the logicist tradition and Mind and the World-Order is taken in continuity with pragmatism. It is found that both books present knowledge of (...) the external world as a consequence of a structural organization of human experience. However, there is an important point of divergence: the concept of verification each author adopts is different, such a concept was even a matter of discussion between Lewis and the Vienna Circle. This paper shows this disagreement but also shows how Carnap changed his point of view in the decade after the Aufbau was published, towards a standpoint which is much closer to Lewis’s ideas. In that process, nevertheless, Carnap changed his focus and did not deal with the problem of the external world anymore. This paper also seeks to draw attention to some features of the relation between Carnap and the pragmatist tradition which have only recently started to attract interest. (shrink)

In developing resemblance nominalism, Rodriguez-Pereyra attempts to meet the challenge that truths involving abstract nouns pose to the doctrine. He holds that one can render sentences containing abstract nouns without invoking attributes and defends this view by giving nominalistic sentences that express the truthmakers of two such sentences: ‘Scarlet is a colour’ and ‘Carmine resembles vermillion more than it resembles French blue.’ This article argues that his renderings have serious problems and fall far short of meeting the challenge posed by (...) truths involving abstract nouns. (shrink)

Michael Friedman’s Dynamics of Reason is a welcome contribution to the ongoing articulation of philosophical perspectives for understanding the sciences in the context of post-positivist philosophy of science. Two perspectives that have gained advocacy since the demise of the “received view” are Quinean naturalism and Kuhnian relativism. In his 1999 Stanford lectures, Friedman articulates and defends a neo-Kantian perspective for philosophy of science that opposes both of these perspectives. His proffered neo-Kantian perspective is presented within the context of the problem (...) of theory change or “scientific revolutions,” and its main feature is a conception of scientific knowledge that requires “relativized constitutive a priori principles.” The lectures make up the first part of the book; the second part of the book, “Fruits of Discussion,” is a further elaboration and defence of the ideas advanced in the lectures. The resulting book serves as a useful sequel to Friedman’s impressive historical studies in Foundations of Space-Time Theories, Kant and the Exact Sciences, and Reconsidering Logical Positivism. In the preface, Friedman tells us that this book represents the philosophical viewpoint that he has arrived at as a result of completing these works. As such, it is not surprising that the prominent themes of the book are ones that have occupied Friedman’s attention in the past, viz., the importance of a priori principles in the exact sciences, the conventionalism of the logical positivists, and, more generally, an articulation of what remains defensible in neo-Kantian philosophy of science. (shrink)

Ante la constatación de que eEn la actualidad aún subsiste una contraposición metodológica y epistémica entre las ciencias experimentales las ciencias humanísticas, el presente trabajo trata de encontrar, desde los métodos fenomenológico y hermenéutico, elementos para establecer un diálogo fecundo entre los dos modos de indagar la realidad, buscando el ser holístico. La fenomenología contribuye al diálogo inter-ciencias, poniendo entre paréntesis los aspectos que resultan distractores en la búsqueda de la cosa en sí. La hermenéutica, entiende los prejuicios históricos como (...) intentos anticipados en la búsqueda de la verdad; la cual es comprendida, no por la aplicación mecánica de un método, sino por la razón inquieta que la busca con espontaneidad óntica. Desde aquí se propone un encuentro entre hermenéutica y fenomenologíapara un diálogo integrador en la ciencia contemporánea. (shrink)