The ontology of medicine—the question of whether disease entities are real or not—is an underdeveloped area of philosophical inquiry. This essay explains the primary question at issue in medical ontology, discusses why answering this question is important from both a philosophical and a practical perspective, and argues that the problem of medical ontology is unique, i.e., distinct, from the ontological problems raised by other sciences and therefore requires its own analysis.

Are there any bona fide boundaries, i.e., boundaries that carve at the joints? Or is any boundary —hence any object—the result of a fiat articulation reflecting our cognitive biases and our so-cial practices and conventions? Does the choice between these two options amount to a choice between realism and wholesome relativism?

Relativism, roughly put, is the view that truth and falsity, right and wrong, standards of reasoning, and procedures of justification are products of differing conventions and frameworks of assessment and that their authority is confined to the context giving rise to them. More precisely, ‘relativism’ covers views which maintain that—at a level of high abstraction—at least some class of things have properties they have not simpliciter, but only relative to a given framework of assessment, and correspondingly, that the truth of (...) claims attributing these properties holds only once the relevant framework of assessment is specified or supplied. Relativists characteristically insist, furthermore, that if something is only relatively so, then there can be no framework-independent vantage point from which the matter of whether the thing in question is so can be established. Relativism has been, in its various guises, both one of the most popular and most reviled philosophical doctrines of our time. Defenders see it as a harbinger of tolerance and the only ethical and epistemic stance worthy of the open-minded and tolerant. Detractors dismiss it for its alleged incoherence and uncritical intellectual permissiveness. Debates about relativism permeate the whole spectrum of philosophical sub-disciplines. From ethics to epistemology, science to religion, political theory to ontology, theories of meaning and even logic, philosophy has felt the need to respond to this heady and seemingly subversive idea. Discussions of relativism often also invoke considerations relevant to the very nature and methodology of philosophy and to the division between the so-called ‘analytic and continental’ camps in philosophy. And yet, despite a long history of debate going back to Plato and a still developing large body of writing, it is still difficult to come to an agreed definition of what, at its core, relativism is, and what philosophical import it has. This entry attempts to provide a broad account of the many ways in which ‘relativism’ has been defined, explained, defended and criticized. (shrink)

The purported fact that geometric theories formulated in terms of points and geometric theories formulated in terms of lines are “equally correct” is often invoked in arguments for conceptual relativity, in particular by Putnam and Goodman. We discuss a few notions of equivalence between first-order theories, and we then demonstrate a precise sense in which this purported fact is true. We argue, however, that this fact does not undermine metaphysical realism.

Relativism has been, in its various guises, both one of the most popular and most reviled philosophical doctrines of our time. Defenders see it as a harbinger of tolerance and the only ethical and epistemic stance worthy of the open-minded and tolerant. Detractors dismiss it for its alleged incoherence and uncritical intellectual permissiveness. Debates about relativism permeate the whole spectrum of philosophical sub-disciplines. From ethics to epistemology, science to religion, political theory to ontology, theories of meaning and even logic, philosophy (...) has felt the need to respond to this heady and seemingly subversive idea. Discussions of relativism often also invoke considerations relevant to the very nature and methodology of philosophy and to the division between the so-called “analytic and continental” camps in philosophy. And yet, despite a long history of debate going back to Plato and an increasingly large body of writing, it is still difficult to come to an agreed definition of what, at its core, relativism is, and what philosophical import it has. This entry attempts to provide a broad account of the many ways in which “relativism” has been defined, explained, defended and criticized. (shrink)

This essay appeared as a contribution to a special issue of European Journal of Philosophy to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of P. F. Strawson’s The Bounds of Sense. In that book Strawson asks whether we should agree with Kant's claim, in his Critique of Pure Reason, that there can be only one world. What Kant means by this claim is that the four-dimensional realm that we inhabit must constitute the whole of empirical reality. Strawson gives reasons for (...) challenging this claim. This essay raises the question whether, even if Strawson is right, we may nevertheless have reason to believe that there can be only one world on a broader understanding of ‘world’. The aim is as much to clarify the issue as to settle it, although an attempt is made to motivate the view that there can indeed be only one world on this broader understanding. (shrink)

This paper attempts to delineate a kind of realism, which incorporates some anti-realistic insights regarding the perspective, situated, and historical character of our forms of knowing and being in the world, and which resonates with the basic tenets of Christian theism. The first part of the paper analyzes the challenges anti-realism poses to Christian theism, particularly regarding the role, which the doctrine of creation played in securing the correspondence theory of truth as well as the fundamental experience of God as (...) the foundation of order and meaning. Using Heidegger’s hermeneutics in the second part, it is shown that epistemic pluralism can be made compatible with realism. Given that this form of hermeneutic realism still has problems with integrating the transcendence of God, as well as his/ her presence and action in the “world,” the notion of continuous co-creation as the basis for a pluralist realism that is amenable to Christian theism is explored in the final part. (shrink)

After drawing attention to the basic importance of Goodman's workThe Structure of Appearance, this paper turns to a critical analysis of Goodman's claims concerning worldmaking. It stresses that Goodman's acceptance of a multiplicity of actual worlds doesnot involve the belief in an unknowable underlying reality; but that it is due to the non-mysterious fact that constructional systems allow for a multiplicity of disagreeing, right versions. However, from the point of view of truthmaker ontology, most worlds of constructional systems are not (...) genuine worlds; and so far it hasnot been shown that there are genuine truthmaker worlds that disagree.It is suggested that the construction of systems usually involves three conflicting aims: the logical, the ontological, and the psychological. Considering the current interest in cognitive psychology and phenomenology, the implications of the psychological aim, too, deserve to be reexamined. (shrink)

In this paper the truth is studied in the frame of autonomous systems theory. The method of the truth verification is worked out in its functional aspect. The verification is based on comparison of the predicted inner state of the autonomous agent, that is the cognitive subject, to the achieved inner state of the agent. The state is achieved as the result of performing the action in the real world—the agent’s environment. The action design is created on the basis of (...) the agent’s model of the world. The truth is defined as the adequacy of the model of the real world in the context of the goal that is assumed to be reached as the effect of the performed action. The concepts of the cognitive subject, the truth bearings and the knowledge are redefined. The classical problems of aletheiology and epistemology are discussed in the light of the proposed approach. The cybernetic construct of an autonomous agent allows the researcher to consider a wide class of cognitive entities, which, in the previous approaches, have been limited only to human beings as cognitive subjects. (shrink)

The more one reads about the topic of natural kinds, the more one is reminded of that famous scene in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy in which Deep Thought—after a mere 7.5 million years of doing calculations—reveals that the answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe and Everything was 42. Faced with bewildered reactions from the eager audience, Deep Thought explains: “I think the problem, to be quite honest with you, is that you’ve never actually known what (...) the question is” .In the case of the growing literature on natural kinds, it is easy to get a feeling that something similar is going on. While philosophers keep advancing novel accounts of natural kinds, at the same time there is considerable disagreement about what exactly the problem is that such accounts should solve. To some, natural kinds are real kinds in nature that exist in the world independently of human interests and practices. At the very least, they are human-made kinds that correspon .. (shrink)

SummaryThe main question of this paper is — how do representational pictures convey information? I argue: 1) This question is approached from three opposing metaphysical frameworks. a) Monism answers this question by treating representational pictures as a species of cognitive symbolism. b) Polarism answers this question by sharply distinguishing between natural symbolism and languages; and, between symbolism and reality — representational pictures are natural symbols, mimics of reality. c) Pluralism treats pictures as occupying a mid‐point between the scales of reality (...) /illusion, knowledge/deception — representational pictures are quasi‐symbolic simulations. 2) The occurrence of institutionalized deception , the game of creating/having false visual hypotheses without the making of false intellectual hypotheses — undermines monism and polarism. Consequently, 3) the pluralist approach — we gain information on the intellectual plane by the use of perceptual deception — is the most promising for explaining how representational pictures convey information.RésuméLa question principale dont s'occupe cet article est »Comment les images représentatives transmettent de l'information?« Mon argumentation: 1) Cette question est abordée dans trois cadres métaphysiques opposés: a) le monisme répond à cette question en la traitant comme une variété de symbolisme cognitif; b) le polarisme y répond en distinguant strictement entre le symbolisme naturel et les langages et entre le symbolisme et la réalité— les images représentatives sont des symboles naturels, des imitations de la réalité; c) le pluralisme traite les images comme occupant un point médian entre les échelles »realité/illusion«, »connaissance/erreur«. Les images représentatives sont des simulations quasi‐symboliques. 2) L'existence de »tromperies institutionalisées« , le jeu consistant á créer/avoir des hypothèses visuelles fausses sans faire des hypothèses intellectuelles fausses, condamnent le monisme et le polarisme. Par conséquent 3) l'approche pluraliste constitue la voie la plus prometteuse pour expliquer comment les images représentatives apportent de I'information.ZusammenfassungDie Hauptfrage, die in dem vorliegenden Aufsatz behandelt wird, ist die, wie repräsentationale Bilder Information vermitteln. Meine Argumentation lautet: 1.) Die Frage wird von drei entgegengesetzten metaphysischen Standpunkten her angegangen. a) Der Monismus beantwortet die Frage, indem er repräsentationale Bilder als eine Art von kognitiven Symbolen behandelt. b) Der Polarismus beantwortet die Frage, indem er scharf zwischen natürlichen Symbolen und Sprachen einerseits und zwischen Symbolismus und Wirklichkeit anderseits unterscheidet . c) Der Pluralismus behandelt Bilder als ein Zwischending, das in der Mitte von Wirklichkeit Illusion der Wissen/Täuschung lokalisiert wird . 2) Das Vorkommen von institutionalisierter Täuschung , das Spiel, das darin besteht, falsche visuelle Hypothesen zu schaffedhaben ohne falsche intellektuelle Hypothesen zu machen untergraben die Position des Monismus und des Polarismus. Folglich ist 3.) der pluralistische Standpunkt wonach wir auf intellektueller Ebene durch den Gebrauch von Wahrnehmungstäuschung Information gewinnen, der vielversprechenste für die Erklärung, wie repräsentationale Bilder Information vermitteln. (shrink)

Patrick Suppes'' set-theoretical approach to the analysis of theories, and Joseph D. Sneed''s metatheory are briefly outlined. The notions of observation, illusion and hallucination are reconstructed according to these approaches. It is argued that the terms perception and truth are theoretical with respect to observation but nontheoretical with respect to illusion and hallucination. Hallucination is construed as a special kind of illusion.

Resumo: Nesta exposiçáo proponho efetuar uma apresentaçáo dos problemas interpretativos fundamentais e das diferentes leituras que se tem realizado em relaçáo à filosofia das formas simbólicas cassireriana. Palabvas chaves: Cassirer. Filosofia das formas simbólicas. Formas simbólicas.

Patrick Suppes' set-theoretical approach to the analysis of theories, and Joseph D. Sneed's metatheory are briefly outlined. The notions of observation, illusion and hallucination are reconstructed according to these approaches. It is argued that the terms ‘perception’ and ‘truth’ are theoretical with respect to observation but nontheoretical with respect to illusion and hallucination. Hallucination is construed as a special kind of illusion.