This paper introduces the philosophy of Grace Andrus de Laguna in order to renew interest in it. I show that, in the 1910s and 1920s, she develops ideas and arguments that are also found playing key roles in the development of analytic philosophy decades later. Further, I describe her sympathetic, but acute, criticism of pragmatism and Heideggerian ontology, and situate her work in the tradition of American, speculative philosophy. Before 1920, we will see, de Laguna appeals to multiple realizability to (...) undermine reductionism in science, to support perspectival, scientific realism and, with help from a private language argument, to favour the view that mental states are classified by behavioural, teleological roles over what came to be called ‘type physicalism’. Her view of speech, mostly developed in the 1920s, tells us that its primary role is coordinating group behaviour rather than expressing thoughts. Belief is understood in terms of its causal role, including its causal relations to other kinds of mental states, when coordinating group behaviour. Thought is similarly understood. In developing her theory of mind, de Laguna rejects the pragmatist claims that belief can be reduced to dispositions to behaviour and that thought’s function is to address specific, rather than general, problems. She also favours meaning holism and rejects the analytic–synthetic distinction. In later work, de Laguna argues that individuals’ activity of self-maintenance brings universals, conceived of as irreducible potentialities, into being and makes them increasingly determinate. Further, she identifies the existence of all individuals with forms of self-maintenance and takes the existence of people to include maintenance of the cultural world. Such a unified treatment of existence, she holds, permits making its evolution intelligible. Heidegger’s view of being is rejected for not permitting this. All de Laguna’s work, we will see, fits a vision of philosophy as the systematic, imaginative and naturalistic examination of being as well as a source of criticism of science. (shrink)

A. J. Ayer’s Language, Truth, and Logic had been responsible for introducing the Vienna Circle’s ideas, developed within a Germanophone framework, to an Anglophone readership. Inevitably, this migration from one context to another resulted in the alteration of some of the concepts being transmitted. Such alterations have served to facilitate a number of false impressions of Logical Empiricism from which recent scholarship still tries to recover. In this paper, I will attempt to point to the ways in which LTL has (...) helped to foster the various mistaken stereotypes about Logical Empiricism which were combined into the received view. I will begin by examining Ayer’s all too brief presentation of an Anglocentric lineage for his ideas. This lineage, as we shall see, simply omits the major 19th century Germanophone influences on the rise of analytic philosophy. The Germanophone ideas he presents are selectively introduced into an Anglophone context, and directed towards various concerns that arose within that context. I will focus on the differences between Carnap’s version of the overcoming of metaphysics, and Ayer’s reconfiguration into what he calls the elimination of metaphysics. Having discussed the above, I will very briefly outline the consequences that Ayer’s radicalisation of the Vienna Circle’s doctrines had on the subsequent Anglophone reception of Logical Empiricism. (shrink)

The books’ goal is to answer the question: Do the weaknesses of value-free economics imply the need for a paradigm shift? The author synthesizes criticisms from different perspectives (descriptive and methodological). Special attention is paid to choices over time, because in this area value-free economics has the most problems. In that context, the enriched concept of multiple self is proposed and investigated. However, it is not enough to present the criticisms towards value-free economics. For scientists, a bad paradigm is better (...) than no paradigm. Therefore, the author considers whether value-based economics with normative approaches such as economics of happiness, capability approach, libertarian paternalism, and the concept of multiple self can be the alternative paradigm for value-free economics. This book is essential reading to everyone interested in the current state of economics as a discipline. (shrink)

I aim to stand the received view about verificationism on its head. It is commonly thought that verificationism is a powerful philosophical tool, which we could deploy very effectively if only it weren’t so hopelessly implausible. On the contrary, I argue. Verificationism - if properly construed - may well be true. But its philosophical applications are chimerical.

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)

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)

La discussion sur le langage privé que l’on trouve dans les Recherchesphilosophiques a été écrite entre 1937 et 1945, après que les 190 premières remarques de la partie I du livre eurent presque atteint leur forme finale. Les textes post-1936 sur le langage privé constituent un nouveau départ, dans sa lettre et son esprit, par rapport au matériau d’avant 1936.Néanmoins, entre 1929 et 1936, Wittgenstein s’est penché à plusieurs reprises sur l’idée d’un langage « que moi seul peux comprendre ». (...) Un volet de cette question qui, lui, est abordé directement dans les Recherches, c’est l’idée que « si j’appliquais le mot “douleur” uniquement à ce que j’ai nommé jusqu’ici “ma douleur”, et les autres “la douleur de L.W.”, je ne ferais ainsi aucun tort aux autres, si toutefois l’on avait prévu une notation qui d’une façon ou d’une autre, permettrait de pallier l’absence du mot “douleur” dans d’autres combinaisons ». Cependant, la discussion de cette question dans les Recherches est beaucoup plus brève que dans les textes d’avant 1936. J’examine le rapport entre ce § 403 des Recherches d’un côté, et de l’autre côté les textes des cahiers de 1929 et les Remarques philosophiques , en retraçant le développement initial de cette argumentation et en explorant les principales lignes de continuité et de discontinuité dans le traitement que Wittgenstein réserve à la question du langage privé.The discussion of private language in the Investigations was written between 1937 and 1945, after the first 190 remarks of Part I of the book had almost reached their final form. The post-1936 writing on private language represents a fresh start, both in wording and in conception, on the pre-1936 material.Nevertheless, Wittgenstein did repeatedly discuss the idea of a language which “only I myself can understand” during 1929-36. One strand in this discussion that is directly taken up in the Investigations is the idea that “If I were to reserve the word ‘pain’ solely for what I had hitherto called ‘my pain”, and others “L.W.’s pain,” I should do other people no injustice, so long as a notation were provided in which the loss of the word ‘pain’ in other connexions were somehow supplied.” However, the discussion of this topic in the Investigations is much briefer than in the pre-1936 writing. I look at the relationship between §403 and texts from the 1929 notebooks and the Philosophical Remarks, assembled in the spring of 1930, mapping out the earlier development of this line of argument and exploring the principal continuities and discontinuities in Wittgenstein’s treatment of private language. (shrink)

The main goal of this paper is to argue against Karl Rogers's attacks on realism in physics. Rogers argues that electrons do not exist independently of the relevant socio-technological process, but I show that such an assumption would make our best scientific theories incomprehensible. While the paper supports Rogers's attempts to refute positivism, it demonstrates that his own position is positivistic, and it corrects his overemphasis on the roles of technology and the experimenter. Rogers assumes that the founders of modern (...) science were simply mechanists, but I show how they were actually Platonic realists. Contrary to Rogers, realist faith in the fundamental unifying power of the laws of physics is shown to be reasonable, and any denial of this belief would imply that science is impossible. (shrink)

The major contributions of operationism have been negative, largely because operationists failed to distinguish logical theories of reference from empirical accounts of language. Behaviorism never finished an adequate formulation of verbal reports and therefore could not convincingly embrace subjective terms. But verbal responses to private stimuli can arise as social products through the contingencies of reinforcement arranged by verbal communities.

This paper has three interdependent aims. The first is to make Reichenbach’s views on induction and probabilities clearer, especially as they pertain to his pragmatic justification of induction. The second aim is to show how his view of pragmatic justification arises out of his commitment to extensional empiricism and moots the possibility of a non-pragmatic justification of induction. Finally, and most importantly, a formal decision-theoretic account of Reichenbach’s pragmatic justification is offered in terms both of the minimax principle and the (...) dominance principle. (shrink)

My objective in this essay is to argue for two things. The first is that intellectual mental states are not physicalistically reducible, just as qualia are not reducible. The second is that thoughts and qualia are not as different as is sometimes believed, but not because thoughts are qualia-like by being mental images, but because qualia are universals and their apprehension is a proto-intellectual act. I shall mainly be concerned with the first of these topics.

This article is about Otto Neurath’s infamous proposal to combat metaphysics by creating and publishing an index of prohibited words. The logic of this proposal is explicated in the frameworks of Neurath’s philosophy of science and his International Encyclopedia of Unified Science. I reconstruct two arguments within Neurath’s project to defend the proposal against criticisms from Neurath’s colleagues and against the charge that philosophers ought not be censors.

The author investigates carnap's rejection of "problems of reality" (both metaphysics and epistemology). This includes a section on positivism and ethics. He concludes that correspondence theories are untenable. (staff).

Some philosophers argue that many contemporary debates in metaphysics are “illegitimate,” “shallow,” or “trivial,” and that “contemporary analytic metaphysics, a professional activity engaged in by some extremely intelligent and morally serious people, fails to qualify as part of the enlightened pursuit of objective truth, and should be discontinued” (Ladyman and Ross, Every thing must go: Metaphysics naturalized , 2007 ). Many of these critics are explicit about their sympathies with Rudolf Carnap and his circle, calling themselves ‘neo-positivists’ or ‘neo-Carnapians.’ Yet (...) despite the fact that one of the main conclusions of logical positivism was that metaphysical statements are meaningless, many of these neo-positivists are themselves engaged in metaphysical projects. This paper aims to clarify how we may see a neo-positivist metaphysics as proceeding in good faith, one that starts with serious engagement with the findings of science, particularly fundamental physics, but also has room for traditional, armchair methods. (shrink)

As a system of knowledge, nursing has utilized a range of subjects and reconstituted them to reflect the thinking and practice of health care. Often drawn to a holistic model, nursing finds it difficult to resist the reductionist tendencies in biological and medical thinking. In this paper I will propose a relational approach to knowledge that is able to address this issue. The paper argues that biology is not characterized by one stable theory but is often a contentious topic and (...) employs philosophically diverse models in its scientific research. Biology need not be seen as a reductionist science, but reductionism is nonetheless an important current within biological thinking. These reductionist currents can undermine nursing knowledge in four main ways. Firstly, that the conclusions drawn from reductionism go far beyond their data based on an approach that prioritizes biological explanations and eliminates others. Secondly, that the methods employed by biologists are sometimes weak, and the limitations are insufficiently acknowledged. Thirdly, that the assumptions that drive the research agenda are problematic, and finally that uncritical application of these ideas can be potentially disastrous for nursing practice. These issues are explored through an examination of the problems reductionism poses for the issue of gender, mental health, and altruism. I then propose an approach based on critical realism that adopts an anti‐reductionist philosophy that utilizes the conceptual tools of emergence and a relational ontology. (shrink)

Although now largely forgotten, the international language movement was, from the 1880s to the end of the Second World War, a matter of widespread public interest, as well as a concern of numerous scientists and scholars. The primary goal was to establish a language for international communication, but in the early twentieth century an increasing accent was placed on philosophical considerations: wanted was a language better suited to the needs of modern science and rational thought. In this paper, we examine (...) the example of the English scholar C.K. Ogden's international language Basic English and his efforts to win the Vienna Circle philosophers Otto Neurath and Rudolf Carnap over to the project. Basic is shown to be an implementation of key ideas in Ogden's philosophy of language, ideas shared to a large extent with Neurath and Carnap. This we see through an examination of their unpublished correspondence, as well as through the collaboration that emerged between Ogden and Neurath, in which Neurath's Isotype, a system for graphically representing statistical data, became closely aligned with Basic. Through the ideas and endeavours we investigate here, we gain a new perspective on this crucial period in the history of analytic philosophy. (shrink)

The Post-genomic Era includes features both from a methodological and epistemic point of view and from an ontological perspective. Firstly, it incorporates new methods of high-throughput sequencing of DNA and RNA, and the development of complete genomes that allow a precise reference of the molecular results obtained. In addition, from an ontological perspective, the centre of gravity of the molecular processes is placed on the expression of genes, and the way in which such expression is regulated; these features turn the (...) attention towards the study of Gene Regulatory Networks, and in particular to the role of RNA. This new molecular-biological perspective based on new methodologies and approaches is affecting the existing Molecular Genetics Theory including the definition of gen and Central Dogma of Molecular Biology. An important philosophical challenges posed by this new situation is the question whether there is a sophistication of the present theory or a New Theory of Molecular Genetics and whether there is an incommensurability between this theory and the accepted theory. In this work we evaluate these changes in the light of Kuhn’s theory of scientific revolution in order to propose an alternative between a moderate and a strong view. According to the moderate one, the Post-genomic changes do not properly involve a paradigm shift or, if they do, they constitute a minor revolution. The strong view considers that, the anomalies disclosed in the Molecular Genetics Theory at conceptual and methodological level and the Post-genomic changes they lead to suppose a scientific paradigm shift. (shrink)

http://dx.doi.org/10.5007/1808-1711.2012v16n1p99 This paper presents a possible but controversial characterization of two periods in Rudolf Carnap’s work: foundationalism and anti-foundationalism. I will argue that even with the identification of two periods, it is possible to argue in favor of the unity of Carnap’s work concerning the unity of science and the principle of linguistic tolerance. To do so, I will count on the analysis of some revisionist views advocated by Friedman and Uebel. Therefore I intend to contribute to a discussion that, (...) since the second half of the twentieth century, seemed to have been overcome, but that, at the end of that century is resumed due to the importance of issues such as the unity of science, observability and interpretation of the scientific language for the philosophy of science. (shrink)

Paul Feyerabend once made a remark to the effect that his pragmatic theory of observation can be traced back to proposals put forward by leading Logical Empiricists during the height of the protocol sentence debate. In this paper I want to vindicate the systematic side of Feyerabend’s remark and show that a pragmatic theory of observation can in fact be found in Rudolf Carnap’s writings of 1932. I first proceed to dispel a misunderstanding concerning the term “pragmatic” raised by Thomas (...) Oberdan. Following Morris’ and Carnap’s documented usage, I show that the intended meaning of “pragmatic” refers to a specific semiotic relation between users of a language and their environment describable by empirical means. I reconstruct such a pragmatic theory in terms of a detector model that interprets observation sentences as bodily dispositions indicating physical events in the surroundings of the detector. I then proceed to show how Feyerabend’s later theory of observation picks up central features of Carnap’s account and also shares some of the motivations. I conclude by noting how an empirical theory of observation sentences offers a bootstrapping solution to the “basis problem”. (shrink)

Hartry Field has argued that Alfred Tarski desired to reduce all semantic concepts to concepts acceptable to physicalism and that Tarski failed to do this. In the two succeeding decades, Field has been charged with being too lenient with Tarski; but it has been almost universally accepted that an objection at least as strong as Field's is telling against Tarski's theory. Close examination of the relevant literature, most of it printed in this journal in the 1930s, reveals that Field's conception (...) of physicalism is anachronistic. Tarski did succeed in furthering the sort of physicalist program he had in mind. (shrink)

A dialectical contradiction can be appropriately described within the framework of classical formal logic. It is in harmony with the law of noncontradiction. According to our definition, two theories make up a dialectical contradiction if each of them is consistent and their union is inconsistent. It can happen that each of these two theories has an intended model. Plenty of examples are to be found in the history of science.

Between World War I and World War II, the students of Columbia University's John Dewey and Frederick J. E. Woodbridge built up a school of philosophical naturalism sharply critical of claims to value-neutrality. In the 1930s and 1940s, the second-generation Columbia naturalists and their students who later joined the department reacted with dismay to the arrival on American shores of logical empiricism and other analytic modes of philosophy. These figures undermined their colleague Ernest Nagel's attempt to build an alliance with (...) the logical empiricists, accusing them of ignoring the scholar's primary role as a public critic. After the war, the prestige of analytic approaches and a tendency to label philosophies either???analytic??? or???Continental??? eclipsed the Columbia philosophers??? normatively inflected naturalism. Yet in their efforts to resist logical empiricism, the Columbia naturalists helped to construct a sturdy, canonical portrait of???American philosophy??? that proponents still hold up as a third way between analytic and Continental approaches. (shrink)

C. A. W. Manning was an important figure in the early days of what became known as the English School, and was one of the most philosophically explicit articulators of the interpretivist approach t...