Abstracts of each chapter may be found by typing in your browser search bar, "Jeremy Horne, Managing Complexity Through Social Intelligence: Foundations of the Modern Organic Corporatist State", going to the Springer Publishing website and reading the abstracts for each chapter.

The claim of the freedom of the will (understood as an individual who is transcendent to Nature) in the name of XXth century scientific knowledge, against the perspective of XVIIIth-XIXth century scientific materialism, is analysed and refuted in the present paper. The hypothesis of reductionism finds no obstacle within contemporary natural sciences. Determinism in classical physics is irrefutable, unless classical physics is itself refuted. From quantum mechanics, some authors argue that free will is possible because there is an ontological indeterminism (...) in the natural laws, and that the mind is responsible for the wave function collapse of matter, which leads to a choice among the different possibilities for the body. However, here I defend the opposite thesis because indeterminism does not imply free will, and because the considerations about an autonomous mind sending orders to the body is against neuroscience or evolutionary theories about human beings. The quantum theory of measurement can be interpreted without the intervention of human minds, but other fields of science cannot contemplate the mentalist scenario. A fatalistic or materialist view, which denies the possibility of a free will, makes much more sense in scientific terms. (shrink)

This thesis explores and discusses foundational issues concerning the relationship between phenomenological philosophy and the enactive approach to cognitive science, with the aim of clarifying, developing, and promoting the project of enactive phenomenology. This project is framed by three general ideas: 1) that the sciences of mind need a phenomenological grounding, 2) that the enactive approach is the currently most promising attempt to provide mind science with such a grounding, and 3) that this attempt involves both a naturalization of phenomenology (...) and a phenomenologization of the concept of nature. More specifically, enactive phenomenology is the project of pursuing mutually illuminative exchanges between, on the one hand, phenomenological investigations of the structures of lived experience and embodied existence and, on the other, scientific accounts of mind and life – in particular those framed by theories of biological self-organization. The thesis consists of two parts. Part one is an introductory essay that seeks to clarify some of enactive phenomenology’s overarching philosophical commitments by tracing some of its historical roots. Part two is a compilation of four articles, each of which intervenes in a different contemporary debate relevant to the dissertation’s project. (shrink)

This article compares and contrasts the reception of Comte’s positivism in the works of William Whewell, John Stuart Mill and Franz Brentano. It is argued that Whewell’s rejection of positivism derives from his endorsement of a constructivist account of the inductive sciences, while Mill and Brentano’s sympathies for positivism are connected to their endorsement of an empiricist account. The mandate of the article is to spell out the chief differences between these two rival accounts. In the last, conclusive section, Whewell’s (...) anti-positivist argument is briefly assessed, and rebutted. (shrink)

Praised as a panacea for resolving all societal issues, and self-evidently presupposed as technological innovation, the concept of innovation has become the emblem of our age. This is especially reflected in the context of the European Union, where it is considered to play a central role in both strengthening the economy and confronting the current environmental crisis. The pressing question is how technological innovation can be steered into the right direction. To this end, recent frameworks of Responsible Innovation focus on (...) how to enable outcomes of innovation processes to become societally desirable and ethically acceptable. However, questions with regard to the technological nature of these innovation processes are rarely raised. For this reason, this paper raises the following research question: To what extent is RI possible in the current age, where the concept of innovation is predominantly presupposed as technological innovation? On the one hand, we depart from a post-phenomenological perspective to evaluate the possibility of RI in relation to the particular technological innovations discussed in the RI literature. On the other hand, we emphasize the central role innovation plays in the current age, and suggest that the presupposed concept of innovation projects a techno-economic paradigm. In doing so, we ultimately argue that in the attempt to steer innovation, frameworks of RI are in fact steered by the techno-economic paradigm inherent in the presupposed concept of innovation. Finally, we account for what implications this has for the societal purpose of RI. (shrink)

This volume, The Brazilian Studies in the Philosophy and History of Science, is the first attempt to present to a general audience, works from Brazil on this subject. The included papers are original, covering a remarkable number of relevant topics of philosophy of science, logic and on the history of science. The Brazilian community has increased in the last years in quantity and in quality of the works, most of them being published in respectable international journals on the subject. The (...) chapters of this volume are forwarded by a general introduction, which aims to sketch not only the contents of the chapters, but it is conceived as a historical and conceptual guide to the development of the field in Brazil. The introduction intends to be useful to the reader, and not only to the specialist, helping them to evaluate the increase in production of this country within the international context. (shrink)

During the past few decades, a radical shift has occurred in how philosophers conceive of the relation between science and philosophy. A great number of analytic philosophers have adopted what is commonly called a ‘naturalistic’ approach, arguing that their inquiries ought to be in some sense continuous with science. Where early analytic philosophers often relied on a sharp distinction between science and philosophy—the former an empirical discipline concerned with fact, the latter an a priori discipline concerned with meaning—philosophers today largely (...) follow Willard Van Orman Quine (1908-2000) in his seminal rejection of this distinction. -/- This book offers a comprehensive study of Quine’s naturalism. Building on Quine’s published corpus as well as thousands of unpublished letters, notes, lectures, papers, proposals, and annotations from the Quine archives, this book aims to reconstruct both the nature (chapters 2-4) and the development (chapter 5-7) of his naturalism. As such, this book aims to contribute to the rapidly developing historiography of analytic philosophy, and to provide a better, historically informed, understanding of what is philosophically at stake in the contemporary naturalistic turn. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Copernicus, Darwin, and Freud Some Views of Humankind Scientism and the Freudian Model of Personality The Social Sciences beyond Freud Evolution and the Social Sciences Freud and Revolutions in Thought Reading List Essay Questions.

The concept of innovation has entered a turbulent age. On the one hand, it is uncritically understood as ‘technological innovation’ and ‘commercialized innovation.’ On the other hand, ongoing research under the heading responsible research and innovation suggests that current global issues require innovation to go beyond its usual intent of generating commercial value. However, little thought goes into what innovation means conceptually. Although there is a focus on enabling outcomes of innovation processes to become more responsible and desirable, the technological (...) and commercial nature of these processes is rarely questioned. For these reasons, this paper poses the following research question: what concept of innovation is implicitly taken up by the RRI discourse and what implications does this concept have for the societal purpose of RRI? As a first step, we analyze the extent to which the concept of innovation in the RRI literature is uncritically presupposed to be technological. Subsequently, we examine the diverse meanings innovation has had over time and argue that while innovation originally had a political connotation it is only recently restricted to the meaning of technological innovation. We go on to show that even though the concept of technological innovation can contribute to the societal purpose of RRI, this requires certain conditions that are difficult to guarantee. Consequentially, we argue that future research should explore alternative understandings of innovation that better enable the overall feasibility of the emerging frameworks of RRI. (shrink)

Faced with the confused meanings of the concept of generation, this article defends the need to move from Karl Mannheim’s excessive emphasis on political and intellectual self-awareness as a pre-condition for generation formation to an enlarged social and cultural definition of generations. By developing the concept of social generations, we argue that rather than concrete groups, generations are better conceived as discourses with which individuals relate in order to build self-identification. Individuals living in similar historical contexts may share mental and (...) practical dispositions, but must always position themselves in face of the narratives that have come to be dominant to describe a given generational location. Such a contention implies redressing Mannheim’s culturalist view through a reformulation of his hierarchical view of the scheme of generations. By replacing generation-units by dominant ideas, we contend that generations are better conceived as discursive formations in the Foucauldian sense. (shrink)

This article calls for a new theoretical synthesis that overcomes the fragmentation, specialization and professionalization within the social sciences. As an alternative to utilitarianism and the colonization of the social sciences by rational choice models, it proposes a new articulation of social theory, the Studies and moral, social and political philosophy. Based on a positive anthropology that finds its inspiration in Marcel Mauss’s classic essay on the gift, it recommends a return to classical social theory and explores articulations between theories (...) of reciprocity, care and recognition. (shrink)

It is common to designate Lamarck and Lamarckism as the main historical references for conceptualizing the relationship between organisms and the environment. The Lamarckian principle of the inheritance of acquired characters is often considered to be the central aspect of the “environmentalism” developed in this lineage, up to recent debates concerning the possible Lamarckian origins of epigenetics. Rather than focusing only on heredity, this article will explore the materialist aspect of the Lamarckian conception of the environment, seeking to highlight that (...) the life-supporting function of physicochemical milieux was its cornerstone. Indeed, compared to the Darwinian conception of the environment, which focuses on interindividual and interspecific relationships in a given habitat, Lamarck’s emphasis on the dependencies of organisms on physicochemical environments appears to have given rise to a very active philosophical environmentalism. Studying the environmental Lamarckism of 19th-century philosophers and social scientists in France, Great Britain, and the United States, such as Comte, Quatrefages, Spencer, and Ward, I propose to analyze their contribution to the conceptualization of the environment. The social, moral, or psychological conceptions of human environments that proliferated in the second half of the 19th century deviated from Lamarck’s more material approach, but they were still referencing Lamarck. Examining the scope of their “Lamarckism,” this article seeks to highlight the common context of life sciences and social philosophy, in which the environment emerged as a central issue in the 19th century. (shrink)

The study is focused on the relation between theology and mathematics in the situation of increasing secularization. My main concern in the second part of this paper is the early-twentieth-century foundational crisis of mathematics. The hypothesis that pure mathematics partially fulfilled the functions of theology at that time is tested on the views of the leading figures of the three main foundationalist programs: Russell, Hilbert and Brouwer.

During the last several decades, the concept of social innovation has been a subject of scientific and practical discourse. As an important paradigm for innovation policies, social innovation is also an object of criticism and debate. Despite a significant proliferation of literature, the rate at which social innovation is a catalyst for coping with challenges of modern societies remains unclear. The goal of the paper is to gain a better understanding of social innovation by integrating past and present views on (...) the concept. Applying a historical overview covering the period from the 19th to the 21st century, we outline the milestones in the evolution of social innovation and distinguish seven trajectories that illustrate the commonalities in its interpretation. We consolidate the findings into a three-dimensional model that defines social innovation as an intervention that is targeted toward structural changes within a social dimension that, in terms of different functional settings (e.g., technological, business, organizational), are oriented on systemic improvements of societies. Reflecting on future avenues, we consider social innovation as an integrative part of a holistic intervention that acts across single societal dimensions and provides systemic impact for the sustainable development of societies. (shrink)

Over time, various thematic classifications have been put forward to organize science into a coherent system of specialized areas of research. From an analysis of the historical evolution of the criteria used to distinguish the sciences from one another, I propose in this paper a quadripartite typology for the different thematic classification systems propounded by scholars throughout the centuries. Basically, I argue that the criteria used to differentiate the sciences have been alternately drawn from their respective subject matters, kinds of (...) knowledge, methods and aims. Then, I show that several reclassifications occurred in the thematic structure of science. Finally, I argue that such changes in the structure of learning displaced the modalities of contact between the objects, knowledge, methods and aims of the various branches of science, with the result of outlining reshaped intellectual territories conducive to the emergence of new areas of research. (shrink)

This paper compares the two known logical forms of hierarchy, both of which have been used in models of natural phenomena, including the biological. I contrast their general properties, internal formal relations, modes of growth (emergence) in applications to the natural world, criteria for applying them, the complexities that they embody, their dynamical relations in applied models, and their informational relations and semiotic aspects.

For interdisciplinarity between physics and mathematics to take its proper place in secondary schools, its value must be demonstrated and used during the future teacher’s university education. We have observed from examples and surveys, however, that an ever-widening gulf is emerging between degree courses in mathematics and physics. This article therefore develops comparative approaches to some common concepts to demonstrate their complementarities from the angle of the relation between mechanics and analysis. The example of the differential, which is described as (...) an obstacle to the “mathematization” of physics, is used to transform it into a tool to aid conceptualization, offering a dual approach to the concepts and their applications. This should enable students to have a better understanding that is related to their specific curriculum. (shrink)

To foster an adequate understanding of relational sociology, it is necessary to consider the theoretical grounds upon which it is based. The first aspect to highlight is the realist assumption of social relations as the causal force from which society originates. It is upon this decisive dimension that the difference between non-contingent and contingent aspects of the social is founded. Overlooking this difference issues in an inadequate understanding both of the autonomy of, and of the interaction between, actors and social (...) structures. Moving from these considerations, in the second part of this essay I will consider a third foundational aspect of social relations: social relations as ‘determination’ of reciprocity, and conclude my investigation by tackling the crucial theme of the social time of change and its connection to social relations. (shrink)

Suspicion of “physics envy” surrounds the standard statistical toolbox used in the empirical sciences, from biology to psychology. Mainstream methods in these fields, various lines of criticism point out, often fall short of the basic requirements of measurement. Quantitative scales are applied to variables that can hardly be treated as measurable magnitudes, like preferences or happiness; hypotheses are tested by comparing data with conventional significance thresholds that hardly mention effect sizes. This article discusses what I call “shmeasurement.” To “shmeasure” is (...) to fail to apply quantitative tools to quantitative questions. We “shmeasure” when we try to measure what cannot be measured, or, conversely, when we ask binary questions of continuous measurements. Following the critics of standard statistical tools, it is argued that our statistical toolbox is indeed less concerned with the measurement of magnitudes than we take it to be. This article adds, however, that measurement is not all there is to scientific activity. Most techniques of proof do not resemble measurement as much as voting—a practice that makes frequent use of numbers, figures, or measurements, yet is not chiefly concerned with assessing quantities. Measurement is only one among three functions of the scientific toolbox, the other two being collating observations and deciding which hypotheses to relinquish. I thus make a plea for “shmeasurement”: the mismeasure of things starts to make more sense once we take into account the nonquantitative side of scientific practice. (shrink)

The modern sciences are divided into two groups: law-formulating and natural historical sciences. Sciences of both groups aim at describing the world, but they do so differently. Whereas the natural historical sciences produce “transcriptions” intended to be literally true of actual occurrences, laws of nature are expressive symbols of aspects of the world. The relationship between laws and the world thus resembles that between the symbols of classical iconography and the objects for which they stand. The natural historical approach was (...) founded by Aristotle and is retained in such present-day sciences as botany. Modern physics differentiated itself from the natural historical sciences and developed a symbolizing approach at the hands of Galileo and Descartes. Our knowledge of the physical domain is provided by two disciplines: the law-formulating science of physics and a natural historical science on which we depend in the everyday manipulation of our surroundings. (shrink)

This paper is concerned with the reversal in meaning of the word positivism, which has come to mean ‘theory which assumes the existence of a world beyond our ideas’ whereas once it meant ‘theory which is agnostic about the existence of a world beyond our ideas', and with educational writers’ persistent mistakes in using quotation marks, as a consequence of this reversal.

It is widely accepted that knowledge of certain of one’s own mental states is authoritative in being epistemically more secure than knowledge of the mental states of others, and theories of self-knowledge have largely appealed to one or the other of two sources to explain this special epistemic status. The first, ‘detectivist’, position, appeals to an inner perception-like basis, whereas the second, ‘constitutivist’, one, appeals to the view that the special security awarded to certain self-knowledge is a conceptual matter. I (...) argue that there is a fundamental class of cases of authoritative self-knowledge, ones in which subjects are consciously thinking about their current, conscious intentional states, that is best accounted for in terms of a theory that is, broadly speaking, introspectionist and detectivist. The position developed has an intuitive plausibility that has inspired many who work in the Cartesian tradition, and the potential to yield a single treatment of the basis of authoritative self-knowledge for both intentional states and sensation states. (shrink)

La relación existente entre filosofía y psicología se remonta a sus mismos orígenes, a lo largo del presente artículo analizaremos su relación en temas claves como la mente, el cerebro, la conciencia y los diversos fundamentos filosóficos en que se basan muchas aseveraciones de la psicología. También se analizará desde la perspectiva de la filosofía de la ciencia y la epistemología la evolución que ha tenido la psicología en sus distintos paradigmas, focalizados especialmente en el funcionalismo.

What is the relationship between intellectual and cultural history? An answer to this question may be found in the area between the two poles of inquiry commonly known as internalist and externalist methods. The first of these deals with old-fashioned `ideas' (in Lovejoy's sense) and the second with social and political context and the sociology and anthropology of knowledge. This article reviews this question in the light of the earlier historiography of philosophy, literature and science, and debates over the role (...) of context in determining historical meaning. Within the horizon-structure of experience and interpretation the short answer is that cultural history is the outside of intellectual history and intellectual history the inside of cultural history. Ideally, historians ought to work both sides of the historical street. (shrink)

The concept of altruism is used in very different forms by computer scientists,economists, philosophers, social scientists, psychologists and biologists. Yet, in order to be useful in social simulations, the concept altruism requires a more precise meaning. A quantitative formulation is proposed here, based on the cost/benefit analysis of the altruist and of society at large. This formulation is applied in the analysis of the social dynamic working of behaviors that have been called altruistic punishments, using the agent based computer model (...) Sociodynamica. The simulations suggest that altruistic punishment on its own cannot maintain altruistic behaviors. Altruistic behavior is sustainable in the long term only if these behaviors trigger synergetic forces in society that eventually make them produce benefits to most individuals. The simulations suggest however that altruistic punishment may work as a social investment , and is thus better called decentralized social punishment. This behavior is very efficient in enforcing social norms. The efficiency of decentralized social punishment in enforcing norms was dependent on the type of labor structured of the virtual society. I conclude that what is called altruistic punishment emerges as a type of social investment that can evolve either through individual and/or group selection, as a successful device for changing or enforcing norms in a society. Social simulations will help us in better understanding the underlying dynamic working of such devices. (shrink)

Religion is a significant social force on organizational practice yet has been relatively underexamined in organization theory. In this article, I assert that the institutional logics perspective is especially conducive to examine the macrolevel role of religion for organizations. The notion of the religious logic offers conceptual means to explain the significance of religion, its interrelationship with other institutional orders, and embeddedness into and impact across interinstitutional systems. I argue for intrainstitutional logic plurality and show that specifically the intrareligious logic (...) plurality has been rather disregarded with a relative focus on Christianity and a geographical focus on “the West.” Next, I propose the concept of interinstitutional logic prevalence and show that the religious logic in particular may act as a metalogic due to its potential for uniqueness, ultimacy, and ubiquity. Through illustrations from Islamic Finance and Entrepreneurship, I exemplify implications of logic plurality and prevalence for organizations and societies. (shrink)

This paper analyzes the impact that Lamarckian evolutionary theory had in the scientific community during the period between the advent of Zoological Philosophy and the publication Origin of Species. During these 50 years Lamarck’s model was a well known theory and it was discussed by the scientific community as a hypothesis to explain the changing nature of the fossil record throughout the history of Earth. Lamarck’s transmutation theory established the foundation of an evolutionary model introducing a new way to research (...) in nature. Darwin’s selectionist theory was proposed in 1859 to explain the origin of species within this epistemological process. In this context, Charles Lyell’s Principles of Geology and Auguste Comte’s Cours de Philosophie Positive appear as two major works for the dissemination of Lamarck’s evolutionary ideology after the death of the French naturalist in 1829. (shrink)

Claude Bernard (1813–1878) and Emil du Bois-Reymond (1818–1896) rank as two of the most influential scientists of the nineteenth century. Renowned for their experiments, lectures, and writing, Bernard and du Bois-Reymond earned great prestige as professors of physiology in a time when Paris and Berlin reigned as capitals of science. Yet even though they were equals in every way, du Bois-Reymond’s reputation has fallen far more than Bernard’s. This essay compares aspects of the two men’s attitudes to philosophy, history, and (...) biology in an attempt to explain why Bernard remains the better known. The answer lies less in the value of du Bois-Reymond’s contributions than in the way that science is remembered in France and Germany. (shrink)

Sceptics vis-à-vis introspection often base their scepticism on ‘phenomenological disputes’, ‘introspective disagreement’, or ‘introspective disputes’ (Kriegel, 2007; Bayne and Spener, 2010; Schwitzgebel, 2011): introspectors massively diverge in their opinions about experiences, and there seems to be no method to resolve these issues. Sceptics take this to show that introspection lacks any epistemic merit. Here, I provide a list of paradigmatic examples, distill necessary and sufficient conditions for IDs, present the sceptical argument encouraged by IDs, and review the two main strategies (...) to reject such a scepticism. However, both types of strategies are unsatisfactory. In order to save introspection from the looming sceptical threat, I advocate a deflationary strategy, based on either an ‘Argument from Perceptual Kinship’ or an ‘Argument from Ownership’. In the end, there cannot be any genuine IDs, for nothing can fulfil the reasonable conditions for IDs. What looks like IDs may instead be indicators of phenomenal variation. Debates that look like IDs may then arise even if introspection were a perfect method to know one’s mind. Thus, scepticism vis-à-vis introspection based on IDs rests on shaky grounds. (shrink)

In the present article, we discuss the specificity of the object of the history of science as an autonomous and interdisciplinary field of studies by nature and origin, placed at the interface of history, epistemology and science, and focus on some key historiographical views. Within this context, Georges Canguilhem stands out for contributions such as calling the attention to the relevance of epistemology in science history research and the discontinuity-continuity antithesis, among many others. An accurate understanding of Canguilhem’s ideas demands (...) an unbiased review of Auguste Comte’s work, particularly his views on science in general, the various sciences in particular and the methods to present them, to wit, the historical and the dogmatic. We finish with a short description of our theoretical-methodological work and its implications for studies in the history of science. (shrink)

In the introduction to his famous book, La Science et l’hypothèse, Poincaré remarks on the necessary role and legitimacy of hypotheses. He establishes a triple classification of hypotheses, dividing them into verifiable, useful, and apparent. However, in chapter 9, entitled ‘Les hypothèses en physique’, he gives a slightly different triadic classification: natural hypotheses, indifferent hypotheses, and real generalizations. The origin of this second classification is a lecture given at the International Congress of Physics, Paris, 1900. What are the similarities and (...) differences between these two classifications? My main purpose is to provide a possible equivalence between the two classifications in order to clarify the role of hypotheses in Poincaré’s epistemology of natural science. The discussion will be based on the two fundamental texts mentioned above and on the contrast between Poincaré’s use of the notion of hypothesis and that of some of his contemporaries. (shrink)

ABSTRACT In this paper, I analyze Brentano’s fourth habilitation thesis, according to which the philosophical method should be none other than the natural scientific one. The meaning of this thesis can be initially assessed through an examination of Brentano’s views on the relationship between natural and human sciences. His arguments for methodological unity in this debate show that he actually argues for an overarching idea of scientific knowledge, which is not restricted to the fields already recognized as scientific, but which (...) can also be applied to philosophical domain. A fuller comprehension of that idea is provided by Brentano’s writings on Comte’s positivism. RESUMO No presente artigo, analiso a quarta tese de habilitação de Brentano, de acordo com a qual o método da Filosofia tem de ser aquele da ciência natural. O sentido desta tese pode ser abordado inicialmente por meio de um exame da perspectiva de Brentano acerca da relação entre as ciências humanas e naturais. Seus argumentos em favor de uma unidade metodológica neste debate mostram que ele está efetivamente argumentando por uma ideia omni-abrangente de conhecimento científico, que não pode ser restrita aos campos já reconhecidos como científicos, mas que pode também ser aplicada ao domínio filosófico. Uma compreensão mais robusta dessa ideia é oferecida pelos escritos de Brentano acerca do positivismo de Comte. (shrink)

The artificial intelligence models with machine learning that exhibit the best predictive accuracy, and therefore, the most powerful ones, are, paradoxically, those with the most opaque black-box architectures. At the same time, the unstoppable computerization of advanced industrial societies demands the use of these machines in a growing number of domains. The conjunction of both phenomena gives rise to a control problem on AI that in this paper we analyze by dividing the issue into two. First, we carry out an (...) epistemological examination of the AI’s opacity in light of the latest techniques to remedy it. And second, we evaluate the rationality of delegating tasks in opaque agents. (shrink)

It is a familiar experience to perceive a material object as maintaining a stable shape even though it projects differently shaped images on our retina as we move with respect to it, or as maintaining a stable color throughout changes in the way the object is illuminated. We also perceive sounds as maintaining constant timbre and loudness when the context and the spatial relations between us and the sound source change over time. But where does this perceptual invariance ‘come from’? (...) What is it about our perceptual systems that makes them able to ‘transform’ incoming unstable and fluctuating sensory inputs into generally stable and coherent conscious experiences? And what exactly do we experience as invariant in cases like those described above? There are two main approaches to the Problem of Perceptual Invariance: the Local-Inferential approach and the Global-Structural approach. Although both approaches include an account of the sub-personal perceptual mechanisms ‘stabilizing’ variant and invariant components in incoming sensory stimulation and a proposal regarding the phenomenology of perceptual invariance, in this paper I argue that the latter provides a better solution to the problem overall. (shrink)

Pierre Duhem can be looked upon as one of the heirs of a tradition of historical and philosophical researches that flourished in the second half of the nineteenth century. This tradition opposed the naïve historiography and epistemology of the positivist school. Beside the positivists of different leanings such as Littré, Laffitte, Wyrouboff, and Berthelot, we find Cournot, Naville, and Tannery, who developed sophisticated histories and philosophies of science focusing on the real scientific practice and its history. They unfolded elements of (...) continuity and discontinuity in the history of science, and enlightened the complex relationship among experimental, mathematical, logical and philosophical components in scientific practice. In Pierre Duhem we find a systematic and vivid interpretation of these meta-theoretical issues, and a meaningful development of a cultural tradition that re-emerged in the second half of the twentieth century. (shrink)

I present a systematic interpretation of the foundational purpose of constructions in ancient Greek geometry. I argue that Greek geometers were committed to an operationalist foundational program, according to which all of mathematics—including its entire ontology and epistemology—is based entirely on concrete physical constructions. On this reading, key foundational aspects of Greek geometry are analogous to core tenets of 20th-century operationalist/positivist/constructivist/intuitionist philosophy of science and mathematics. Operationalism provides coherent answers to a range of traditional philosophical problems regarding classical mathematics, such (...) as the epistemic warrant and generality of diagrammatic reasoning, superposition, and the relation between constructivism and proof by contradiction. Alleged logical flaws in Euclid can be interpreted as sound operationalist reasoning. Operationalism also provides a compelling philosophical motivation for the otherwise inexplicable Greek obsession with cube duplication, angle trisection, and circle quadrature. Operationalism makes coherent sense of numerous specific choices made in this tradition, and suggests new interpretations of several solutions to these problems. In particular, I argue that: Archytas’s cube duplication was originally a single-motion machine; Diocles’s cissoid was originally traced by a linkage device; Greek conic section theory was thoroughly constructive, based on the conic compass; in a few cases, string-based constructions of conic sections were used instead; pointwise constructions of curves were rejected in foundational contexts by Greek mathematicians, with good reason. Operationalism enables us to view the classical geometrical tradition as a more unified and philosophically aware enterprise than has hitherto been recognised. (shrink)

This inaugural handbook documents the distinctive research field that utilizes history and philosophy in investigation of theoretical, curricular and pedagogical issues in the teaching of science and mathematics. It is contributed to by 130 researchers from 30 countries; it provides a logically structured, fully referenced guide to the ways in which science and mathematics education is, informed by the history and philosophy of these disciplines, as well as by the philosophy of education more generally. The first handbook to cover the (...) field, it lays down a much-needed marker of progress to date and provides a platform for informed and coherent future analysis and research of the subject. -/- The publication comes at a time of heightened worldwide concern over the standard of science and mathematics education, attended by fierce debate over how best to reform curricula and enliven student engagement in the subjects There is a growing recognition among educators and policy makers that the learning of science must dovetail with learning about science; this handbook is uniquely positioned as a locus for the discussion. -/- The handbook features sections on pedagogical, theoretical, national, and biographical research, setting the literature of each tradition in its historical context. Each chapter engages in an assessment of the strengths and weakness of the research addressed, and suggests potentially fruitful avenues of future research. A key element of the handbook’s broader analytical framework is its identification and examination of unnoticed philosophical assumptions in science and mathematics research. It reminds readers at a crucial juncture that there has been a long and rich tradition of historical and philosophical engagements with science and mathematics teaching, and that lessons can be learnt from these engagements for the resolution of current theoretical, curricular and pedagogical questions that face teachers and administrators. (shrink)

Social ontology is the study of the nature and properties of the social world. It is concerned with analyzing the various entities in the world that arise from social interaction. -/- A prominent topic in social ontology is the analysis of social groups. Do social groups exist at all? If so, what sorts of entities are they, and how are they created? Is a social group distinct from the collection of people who are its members, and if so, how is (...) it different? What sorts of properties do social groups have? Can they have beliefs or intentions? Can they perform actions? And if so, what does it take for a group to believe, intend, or act? -/- Other entities investigated in social ontology include money, corporations, institutions, property, social classes, races, genders, artifacts, artworks, language, and law. It is difficult to delineate a precise scope for the field (see section 2.1). In general, though, the entities explored in social ontology largely overlap with those that social scientists work on. A good deal of the work in social ontology takes place within the social sciences (see sections 5.1–5.8). -/- Social ontology also addresses more basic questions about the nature of the social world. One set of questions pertains to the constituents, or building blocks, of social things in general. For instance, some theories argue that social entities are built out of the psychological states of individual people, while others argue that they are built out of actions, and yet others that they are built out of practices. Still other theories deny that a distinction can even be made between the social and the non-social. -/- A different set of questions pertains to how social categories are constructed or set up. Are social categories and kinds produced by our attitudes? By our language? Are they produced by causal patterns? And is there just one way social categories are set up, or are there many varieties of social construction? -/- The term ‘social ontology’ has only come into wide currency in recent years, but the nature of the social has been a topic of inquiry since ancient Greece. As a whole, the field can be understood as a branch of metaphysics, the general inquiry into the nature of entities. (shrink)

_(MA thesis)_ Immunity to error through misidentification (IEM) describes a sort of immunity against such a situation that the thinker wrongly identifies something as other things. Philosophers consider it as being especially relevant to first-person or de se judgments. Many philosophers seem to advance IEM as an alternative to a Cartesian method of defining first-person privilege and of circumscribing the first-person perspective. However, as more and more representative instances are substantiated as being vulnerable to error through misidentification, it is thus (...) necessary to offer an account sufficient to explain IEM. Then, there are roughly two approaches in the literature: the identification-freedom approach and the metasemantic approach. The former is characterised by the claim that the presence of IEM is always explained by the absence of an identificatory-component in the thought's grounds. The latter is more heterogeneous than the former. Nevertheless, it can be roughly described by their focus on explaining the IEM of de se thoughts based on an account of how the reference of de se thoughts is fixed, rather than just on the grounds of particular de se thoughts. However, there are still some problems with the existing accounts. More specifically, some problems from the indexical thoughts put at risk Recanati's appeal, which is viewed as a representative of the metasematic approach. Nonetheless, I think these problems can be resolved competently by pointing out the fact that there are three levels of reflection in introspection. Thoughts produced by the first level of reflection (first-level thoughts, hereafter) correspond to Recanati's implicit thoughts; Third-level thoughts are Recanati's explicit thoughts (whether it is made explicit by an extra reflective act, as Recanati puts it). However, second-level thoughts, which include a sort of aboutness in their content, could explain the subject appearing in indexical statements with IEM, guaranteeing IEM of these thoughts in the meanwhile. (shrink)