Ian Hacking (born in 1936, Vancouver, British Columbia) is most well-known for his work in the philosophy of the natural and social sciences, but his contributions to philosophy are broad, spanning many areas and traditions. In his detailed case studies of the development of probabilistic and statistical reasoning, Hacking pioneered the naturalistic approach in the philosophy of science. Hacking’s research on social constructionism, transient mental illnesses, and the looping effect of the human kinds make use of historical materials to shed (...) light on how developments in the social, medical, and behavioural sciences have shaped our contemporary conceptions of identity and agency. Hacking’s other contributions to philosophy include his work on the philosophy of mathematics (Hacking, 2014), philosophy of statistics, philosophy of logic, inductive logic (Hacking, 1965, 1979, 2001) and natural kinds (Hacking, 1991, 2007a). (shrink)

The way we experience, investigate and interact with reality changes drastically in the course of history. Do such changes occur gradually, or can we pinpoint radical turns, besides periods of relative stability? Building on Oswald Spengler, we zoom in on three styles in particular, namely Apollonian, Magian and Faustian thinking, guided by grounding ideas which can be summarised as follows: “Act in accordance with nature”, “Prepare yourself for the imminent dawn and “Existence equals will to power”. Finally, we reach the (...) present. How to characterise the new era we entered round the year 2000? (shrink)

In recent analytic philosophy, there is a growing interest in the project of conceptual engineering. This paper examines two ways this project might be applied to scientific research, specifically anthropological research. It argues that both of them are harmful to this research. Specifically, it argues that a reliance on the axiological standards of analytic philosophy conflicts with the goal of empirical adequacy. Section one proffers two forms that the engineering project might take when applied to the science. Section two proffers (...) a case study drawn from anthropology. Specifically, it lays out Evans-Pritchard’s Witchcraft, Oracles, and Magic Among the Azande, paying particular attention to the inconsistency he discovered in Azande witchcraft. Sections three and four argue that attempting to remove this inconsistency via the two forms of engineering disable critical features of emic research and discard empirical findings. Finally, I close by noting how the conflict between axiological standards and empirical adequacy might generalize beyond anthropology. (shrink)

Writing strategic documents is a major practice of many actors striving to see their educational ideas realised in the curriculum. In these documents, arguments are systematically developed to create the legitimacy of a new educational goal and competence to make claims about it. Through a qualitative analysis of the writing strategies used in these texts, I show how two of the main actors in the Czech educational discourse have developed a proof that a new educational goal is needed. I draw (...) on the connection of the relational approach in the sociology of education with Lyotard’s analytical semantics of instances in the event. The comparison of the writing strategies in the two documents reveals differences in the formation of a particular pattern of justification. In one case the texts function as a herald of pure reality, and in the other case as a messenger of other witnesses. This reveals different regimens of proof, although both of them were written as prescriptive directives – normative models of the educational world. (shrink)

This book on Philosophy of Science includes a comprehensive discussion of ontology, epistemology, and axiology of science in the constellation of various other knowledge, as well as the development of scientific knowledge holistically contained in each module in this course. These three things are branches of philosophy which are very useful for students of Teacher Training and Education in mediating the learning and learning process so that the essence of Philosophy of Science can then be implemented within the scope of (...) professionalism in particular and society in general and the challenges of the industrial era 4.0 in the 20th century 21 The discussion on ontology is focused on elements of empirical reality (empericism) such as facts, data, and information without releasing it from rational reality (rationalism), and its position in scientific activities. The epistemology of science is focused on the scientific method and its operationalization in research methodology. The axiology of science discusses the values ​​associated with scientific activities and their uses, both internally, externally, and socially. (shrink)

Some feminist epistemologists make the radical claim that there are varieties of epistemically valid warrant that agents access only through having lived particular types of contingent history, varieties of epistemic warrant to which, moreover, the confirmation-theoretic accounts of warrant favored by some traditional epistemologists are inapplicable. I offer Aristotelian virtue as a model for warrant of this sort, and use loosely Aristotelian vocabulary to express, and begin to evaluate, a range of feminist epistemological positions.

Ian Hacking defines a “style of scientific thinking” loosely as a “way to find things out about the world” characterised by five hallmark features of a number of scientific template styles. Most prominently, these are autonomy and “self-authentication”: a scientific style of thinking, according to Hacking, is not good because it helps us find out the truth in some domain, it itself defines the criteria for truth-telling in its domain. I argue that Renaissance medicine, Mediaeval “demonology”, and magical thinking pass (...) muster as scientific according to Hacking's criteria. However, application of these thought styles to the entities they introduce generates statements that logically imply a set of “ordinary” statements—or what Bernard Williams calls “plain truths”—which, contra the claims of autonomy and self-authentication, allows styles to be assessed from a style- independent perspective. Using Williams’ notion of plain truth, I show that Renaissance medicine, demonology, and magical thinking, in reality issue in many plain falsehoods. This confronts us with what I call Hacking's dilemma: either define stricter necessary conditions on being a style of scientific thinking, or concede that some styles albeit scientific are not as good at finding things out about the world as others. I make three suggestions to deal with the dilemma. (shrink)

Are we entering a major new phase of modern science, one in which our standard, human modes of reasoning and understanding, including heuristics, have decreasing value? The new methods challenge human intelligibility. The digital revolution inspires such claims, but they are not new. During several historical periods, scientific progress has challenged traditional concepts of reasoning and rationality, intelligence and intelligibility, explanation and knowledge. The increasing intelligence of machine learning and networking is a deliberately sought, somewhat alien intelligence. As such, it (...) challenges the traditional, heuristic foresight of expert researchers. Nonetheless, science remains human-centered in important ways—and yet many of our ordinary human epistemic activities are alien to ourselves. This fact has always been the source of “the discovery problem”. It generalizes to the problem of understanding expert scientific practice. Ironically, scientific progress plunges us ever deeper into complexities beyond our grasp. But how is progress possible without traditional realism and the intelligibility realism requires? Pragmatic flexibility offers an answer. (shrink)

REVIEW (1): "Jeff Kochan’s book offers both an original reading of Martin Heidegger’s early writings on science and a powerful defense of the sociology of scientific knowledge (SSK) research program. Science as Social Existence weaves together a compelling argument for the thesis that SSK and Heidegger’s existential phenomenology should be thought of as mutually supporting research programs." (Julian Kiverstein, in Isis) ---- REVIEW (2): "I cannot in the space of this review do justice to the richness and range of Kochan's (...) discussion [...]. There is a great deal in this foundational portion of Kochan's discussion that I find tremendously interesting and engaging [...]." (David R. Cerbone, in Studies in History and Philosophy of Science) ---- REVIEW (3): "Science as Social Existence will be of interest not only to Heidegger scholars but to anyone engaged in science and technology studies. [...] This is an informative and original book. Kochan should be praised for his clear, pleasant-to-read prose." (Michael Butler, in CHOICE). (shrink)

Over the past 25 years, several new “medicines” have come screeching onto health care’s various platforms, including narrative medicine, personalized medicine, precision medicine and person-centred medicine. Philosopher Miriam Solomon calls the first three of these movements different “ways of knowing” or “methods,” and argues that they are each a response to shortcomings of methods that came before them. They should also be understood as reactions to the current dominant model of medicine. In this article, I will describe our dominant model, (...) which I call “the new medical model.” I will argue that several towering problems in modern medicine can be traced to its philosophical foundations, which calls for philosophical analysis. (shrink)

The question as to whether Ian Hacking’s project of scientific styles of thinking entails epistemic relativism has received considerable attention. However, scholars have never discussed it vis-à-vis Wittgenstein. This is unfortunate: not only is Wittgenstein the philosopher who, together with Foucault, has influenced Hacking the most, but he has also faced the same accusation of ‘relativism’. I shall explore the conceptual similarities and differences between Hacking’s notion of style of thinking and Wittgenstein’s conception of form of life. It is a (...) fact that whether or not the latter entails epistemic relativism is still a controversial question. From my comparative analysis, it will emerge that there are stronger reasons to conclude that Hacking’s notion of style leads to epistemic relativism than there are to reach the same conclusion in the case of Wittgenstein’s conception of form of life. This point will be at odds with the anti-relativistic stance that Hacking has taken in his more recent writings. (shrink)

Relativists about knowledge ascriptions think that whether a particular use of a knowledge-ascribing sentence, e.g., “Keith knows that the bank is open” is true depends on the epistemic standards at play in the assessor’s context—viz., the context in which the knowledge ascription is being as- sessed for truth or falsity. Given that the very same knowledge-ascription can be assessed for truth or falsity from indefinitely many perspectives, relativism has a striking consequence. When I ascribe knowledge to someone (e.g., when I (...) say that, at a particular time, “Keith knows that the bank is open”), what I’ve said does not get a truth-value absolutely, but only relatively. If this semantic thesis about the word “knows” and its cognates is true, what implications would this have for epistemology, the philosophical theory of knowledge? e present aim will be to engage with this mostly unexplored question, and then to consider how the epistemological conclusions drawn might bear on the plausibility of a relativist semantics for “knows”. (shrink)

The analytical notion of ‘scientific style of reasoning’, introduced by Ian Hacking in the middle of the 1980s, has become widespread in the literature of the history and philosophy of science. However, scholars have rarely made explicit the philosophical assumptions and the research objectives underlying the notion of style: what are its philosophical roots? How does the notion of style fit into the area of research of historical epistemology? What does a comparison between Hacking’s project on styles of thinking and (...) other similar projects suggest? My aim in this paper is to answer these questions. Hacking has denied that his project of styles of thinking falls into the field of historical epistemology. I shall challenge his remark by tracing out the connections of the notion of style with historical epistemology and, more in general, with a tradition of thought born in France in the beginning of twentieth-century. (shrink)

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)

In recent decades, investigation of brain injuries associated with amnesia allowed progress in the philosophy and science of memory, but it also paved the way for the hubris of assuming that memory is an exclusively neural phenomenon. Nonetheless, there are methodological and conceptual reasons preventing a reduction of the ecological and contextual phenomenon of memory to a neural phenomenon, since memory is the observed action of an individual before being the simple output of a brain (or, at least, so we (...) will argue), and there is no good reason to suppose that it is necessary to postulate a more basic reality to memory lying behind the mere individual actions. (shrink)

Social studies of science have often treated natural field sites as extensions of the laboratory. But this overlooks the unique specificities of field sites. While lab sites are usually private spaces with carefully controlled borders, field sites are more typically public spaces with fluid boundaries and diverse inhabitants. Field scientists must therefore often adapt their work to the demands and interests of local agents. I propose to address the difference between lab and field in sociological terms, as a difference in (...) style. A field style treats epistemic alterity as a resource rather than an obstacle for objective knowledge production. A sociological stylistics of the field should thus explain how objective science can co-exist with radical conceptual difference. I discuss examples from the Canadian North, focussing on collaborations between state wildlife biologists and managers, on the one hand, and local Aboriginal Elders and hunters, on the other. I argue that a sociological stylistics of the field can help us to better understand how radically diverse agents may collaborate across cultures in the successful production of reliable natural knowledge. (shrink)

The topic of epistemic normativity has come to the fore of recent work in epistemology, and so naturally, theories of knowledge, truth and justification have been increasingly held accountable to preserving normative epistemological platitudes. Central to discussions of epistemic normativity are questions about epistemic agency and epistemic value. Here, our aim is to take up some of these issues as they come to bear on the rather unconventional brand of epistemology that was defended by Richard Rorty. Our purpose is to (...) explore whether Rorty’s epistemology—or perhaps his replacement for epistemology—can preserve these normative platitudes about epistemic agency, responsibility, achievement, and the value of knowledge. Our conclusion is a negative one: that Rorty’s commitments leave him firmly at odds with some of the most plausible assumptions about epistemic agency and epistemic value. (shrink)

The ArgumentThe paper argues for the restricted viability of the concept of style in the history of science. Since historians of science borrow this term from art history or the sociology of knowledge, the paper outlines its emergence and function in these disciplines, in order to show that the need for ever subtler stylistic distinctions in historical description inevitably leads to the dissolution of the concept of style itself.“Style” will be defined in predominantly cognitive or technical terms when imputed to (...) an individual; in social or moral terms when thought to be carried by some collective entity. Both descriptions are given normative interpretations. A good individual style, then, is regarded as the pledge for valid knowledge or insights of a “higher order,” while a collective style, understood as the vehicle of successful intra group communication, involves the acceptance of certain rhetorical norms and/or socially shared values that are supposed to structure that style. “National styles” belong to the latter category; the emergence of this dubious notion can best be explained in sociological terms.If historians of science insist on adopting the concept of style, they will have to agree on its meaning. The paper concludes, therefore, with a rough typology of its most frequent meanings and uses. (shrink)

We examine the most famous controversy between economists as a means of shedding fresh light on the current debate about economic methodology. By focusing on the controversy as the primary unit of analysis, we show how methodological considerations are but one of a whole set of stratagems strategically employed by each opponent. We argue that each opponent's preference for a particular kind of stratagems expresses his own specific scientific style (within the general scientific and cultural style of an age). We (...) also describe a dynamic dimension of the controversy, independent of the participants' intentions. Such a dimension is analysed in a "cycle" of the controversy, which begins with a well-defined issue and expands to additional topics, without reaching a "solution" to the initial issue. The definition and re-definition of the issue(s) at stake and of the difference between both participants is an essential and recurrent feature of such cycles; the conclusion of a cycle does not imply a real "closure" of the controversy, but only that each opponent has reached a satisfying degree of self-clarification. The controversy, thus, does not yield persuasion -- its ostensible aim. Rather, its "benefit" seems to lie in an unintended result -- clarification and deepening of contrasting approaches to the discipline -- due to its peculiar dynamics. In so far as the history of a discipline requires a reconstruction of such contrasts, it is indispensable for it to take into account the controversies where they emerge, and to view both the positive doctrines and the methodological posture of the contenders as parts of a wider framework, that is a scientific style. (shrink)

The linguistic turn is a central aspect of Richard Rorty’s philosophy, informing his early critiques of foundationalism in Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature and subsequent critiques of authoritarianism in Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity. It is argued that we should interpret the linguistic turn as a methodological suggestion for how philosophy can take a non-foundational perspective on normativity. It is then argued that although Rorty did not succeed in explicating normativity without foundations (or authority without authoritarianism), we should take seriously (...) the ambition motivating his project. But taking that ambition seriously may require reconsidering the linguistic turn. (shrink)

Epistemic relativists often appeal to an epistemic incommensurability thesis. One notable example is the position advanced by Wittgenstein in On certainty (1969). However, Ian Hacking’s radical denial of the possibility of objective epistemic reasons for belief poses, we suggest, an even more forceful challenge to mainstream meta-epistemology. Our central objective will be to develop a novel strategy for defusing Hacking’s line of argument. Specifically, we show that the epistemic incommensurability thesis can be resisted even if we grant the very insights (...) that lead Hacking to claim that epistemic reasons are always relative to a style of reasoning. Surprisingly, the key to defusing the argument is to be found in recent mainstream work on the epistemic state of objectual understanding. (shrink)

The arguments for and against a truth-relativist semantics for propositional knowledge attributions (KTR) have been debated almost exclusively in the philosophy of language. But what implications would this semantic thesis have in epistemology? This question has been largely unexplored. The aim of this paper is to establish and critique several ramifications of KTR in mainstream epistemology. The first section of the paper develops, over a series of arguments, the claim that MacFarlane's (2005, 2010) core argument for KTR ultimately motivates (for (...) better or worse) the extension of a truth-relativist semantics to a subset of understanding attributions – attributions of understanding-why. I conclude by presenting some reasons to think that even if KTR were otherwise plausible, a truth-relativist semantics for understanding-why attributions is not. These claims, taken together, constitute a kind of epistemological argument against MacFarlane-style truth-relativism for knowledge attributions. (shrink)

The current discussions of conceptual schemes and related topics are misguided; for they have been focused too much on the truth-conditional notions of meaning/concepts and translation/interpretation in Tarski's style. It is exactly due to such a Quinean interpretation of the notion of conceptual schemes that the very notion of conceptual schemes falls prey to Davidson's attack. We argue that what should concern us in the discussions of conceptual schemes and related issues, following the initiatives of I. Hacking, T. Kuhn, and (...) N. Rescher, is not the truth-values of assertions, but rather the truthvalue-status of the sentences used to make the assertions. This is because the genuine conceptual innovation between alternative theories/languages does not lie in differences in determining the truth-values of their sentences, but turns on whether these sentences have truth-values when considered within the context of a competing one. The core of conceptual relativism does not consist in the claim that different conceptual schemes may yield incommensurable truth claims, but rather that different conceptual schemes may yield incompatible truth-value-status and therefore lead to distinct perceptions of reality. Conceptual schemes are no longer seen as sentential languages consisting of a set of sentences accepted as true, but rather seen as metaphysical presuppositions of presuppositional languages.[ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]. (shrink)

This paper tries to motivate three desiderata for historical epistemologies: (a) that they should be reflective about the pedigree of their conceptual apparatus; (b) that they must face up to the potentially relativistic consequences of their historicism; and (c) that they must not forget the hard-won lessons of microhistory (i.e. historical events must be explained causally; historical events must not be artificially divided into internal/intellectual and external/social “factors” or “levels”; and constructed series of homogenous events must not be treated as (...) quasi-organisms). Ian Hacking’s work on styles of reasoning and Lorraine Daston’s and Peter Galison’s investigation into epistemic virtues are used to identify the costs of neglecting these desiderata. (shrink)

Koopman’s book revolves around the notion of transition, which he proposes is one of the central ideas of the pragmatist tradition but one which had not previously been fully articulated yet nevertheless shapes the pragmatist attitude in philosophy. Transition, according to Koopman, denotes “those temporal structures and historical shapes in virtue of which we get from here to there”. One of the consequences of transitionalism is the understanding of critique and inquiry as historical pro...

The paper begins with a detailed reconstruction of the development of Ian Hacking’s theory of scientific ‘styles of reasoning’, paying particular attention to Alistair Crombie’s influence, and suggesting that Hacking’s theory deserves to come under the title ‘historical epistemology’. Subsequently, the paper seeks to establish three critical theses. First, Hacking’s reliance on Crombie leads him to adopt an outdated historiographical position; second, Hacking is unsuccessful in his attempt to distance historical epistemology from epistemic relativism; and third, Hacking has not offered (...) convincing criteria for individuating styles of reasoning. Keywords: Styles of reasoning; Historical epistemology; Ian Hacking; Alistair Crombie; Relativism; Sociology of scientific knowledge. (shrink)

Despite Donald Davidson's influential criticism of the very notion of conceptual schemes, the notion continues enjoying its popularity in contemporary philosophy and, accordingly, conceptual relativism is still very much alive. There is one major reason responsible for Davidson's failure which has not been widely recognized: What Davidson attacks fiercely is not the very notion, but a notion of conceptual schemes, namely, the Quinean notion of conceptual schemes and its underlying Kantian scheme-content dualism. However, such a notion simply cannot carry the (...) weight of conceptual relativism for it does not catch the essences of conceptual relativism. Consequently, I argue that the very notion of conceptual schemes and conceptual relativism have survived Davidson's attack. Therefore, the failure of the Quinean notion of conceptual schemes and Kantian scheme-content dualism, even if Davidson can claim victory, does not mark the end of the very notion of conceptual schemes.[ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]. (shrink)

Continental philosophies of science tend to exemplify holistic themes connecting order and contingency, questions and answers, writers and readers, speakers and hearers. Such philosophies of science also tend to feature a fundamental emphasis on the historical and cultural situatedness of discourse as significant; relevance of mutual attunement of speaker and hearer; necessity of pre-linguistic cognition based in human engagement with a common socio-cultural historical world; role of narrative and metaphor as explanatory; sustained emphasis on understanding questioning; truth seen as horizonal, (...) aletheic, or perspectival; and a tolerance for paradoxical and complex forms of expression. Continental philosophy of science is thus more comprehensive than philosophy of science in the analytic tradition, including (and as analytic philosophy of science does not tend to include) perspectives on the history of science as well as the social and practical dimensions of scientific discovery. Where analytic philosophy is about reducing or, indeed, eliminating the perennial problems of philosophy, Continental philosophy is all about thinking and that will mean, as both Heidegger and Nietzsche emphasize, making such problems more not less problematic. (shrink)

The bias paradox emerges out of a tension between objectivism and relativism.If one rejects a certain the conception objectivity as absolute impartiality and value-neutrality (i.e., if all views are biased), how, then, can one hold that some epistemic perspectives are better than others? This is a problem that has been most explicitly dealt with in feminist epistemology, but it is not unique to feminist perspectives. In this paper, I wish to clearly lay out the nature of the paradox and the (...) various attempts to avoid it. I also intend to show why it is a problem for any epistemological view that rejects absolute objectivity. Finally, I wish to briefly outline a possible solution to the paradox, a solution that requires recognizing that rationality necessarily requires both objective and subjective elements. (shrink)

In this paper I link two hitherto disconnected sets of results in the philosophy of emotions and explore their implications for the computational theory of mind. The argument of the paper is that, for just the same reasons that some computationalists have thought that cognition may be a natural kind, so the same can plausibly be argued of emotion. The core of the argument is that emotions are a representation-governed phenomenon and that the explanation of how they figure in behaviour (...) must as such be undertaken in those terms. I conclude with some interdisciplinary reflections in defence of the hypothesis that emotions might be more fundamental in the organization of behaviour than cognition; that, in effect, we may be emoters before we are cognizers . The aim of the paper is: (1) to introduce a number of promising results in philosophical and empirical emotion theory to a wider audience; and (2) to begin the task of organizing those results into a computational theoretical framework. (shrink)

Ludwik Fleck’s Genesis and Development of a Scientific Fact is an extended argument for the inclusion of social factors in the history and philosophy of science. Fleck uses the history of syphilis as his case study, which falls into two parts. In the first two chapters of his book, Fleck presents a history of the change of the concept of syphilis as a “carnal scourge with strong moralistic connotations” in the middle ages to the modern concept of syphilis as an (...) infectious disease (1979, 77). In the second part of the book, he presents a detailed account of the development of a serum test for syphilis, the Wasserman reaction. Fleck also argues that perception is theory-laden, for example, in his comparative study of anatomical drawings, and for the importance of social pressures on the development of science, for example, in his discussion of the rivalry between nations to first develop a cure for syphilis, as demanded by politicians (1979, 133 ff. and 68). (shrink)

Immanuel Kant claims that transcendental idealism yields a form of realism at the empirical level. Polite silence might best describe the reception this assertion has garnered among even sympathetic interpreters. This book challenges that prejudice, offering a controversial presentation and rehabilitation of Kant's empirical realism that places his realist credentials at the centre of the account of representation he offers in the Critique of Pure Reason. This interpretation ranges over the major themes contained in the Analytic of Principles and relevant (...) portions of the Dialectic. Kant's analysis of the conditions necessary for determinate representation is shown to involve a realist understanding of the relation of mind and world. The realist character of Kant's account of empirical truth, and his commitment to the unity of nature, are defended against competing empiricist, pragmatist, and methodological readings. This title links Kant studies to contemporary philosophical debates, and will appeal to scholars and students of Kant, as well as epistemologists, metaphysicians, and philosophers of science interested in a powerful, experience-sensitive, form of realism. (shrink)

ABSTRACT (ENG) One of the concerns of Greek philosophy centred on the question of how a manifold and ordered universe arose out of the primitive state of things. From the mythical accounts dating around the seventh century B.C. to the cosmologies of the Classical period in Ancient Greece, many theories have been proposed in order to answer to this question. How these theories differ in positing a “something” that pre-existed the ordered cosmos has been widely discussed. However, scholars have rarely (...) made explicit how they differ in style of thought. In the span of four centuries the first deductive arguments of the Eleatic philosophers culminated in the emergence of logical proof and a form of explanation of natural phenomena, which consisted of searching for the simplest and fewest premises and deducting implications. In this paper it will be discussed how, at distinct stages of its development, the deductive thinking informed the solutions proposed to solve the chaos-order problem, that of how an ordered universe has been possible. -/- ABSTRACT (ITA) Una delle più importanti questioni della filosofia greca è stata quella di comprendere come sia stato possibile un universo ordinato a partire da uno stato primordiale. Dalle teogonie del VII secolo a.C. fino alle cosmologie dei filosofi dell’età classica, sono state proposte diverse teorie per dare risposta a questa domanda. Come esse differiscano nel postulare l’esistenza di un “qualcosa” di primordiale che preesisteva all’ordine del cosmo è stato molto discusso. Pochi studiosi, però, le hanno esaminate sullo sfondo della lenta evoluzione del pensiero deduttivo, culminata nella dimostrazione in geometria e in una forma di spiegazione dei fenomeni che consisteva nel cercare semplici premesse e inferire conclusioni. In questo articolo si mostrerà come il lento affermarsi della spiegazione razionale prima, dell’argomento deduttivo e della dimostrazione in geometria poi, abbiano dato forma alle diverse risposte al problema caos-ordine, e in particolare alla domanda su come sia sorto un universo ordinato. (shrink)

In his mature works, Kuhn abandons the concept of a paradigm and becomes more interested in the analysis of the conceptual structure of scientific theories. These changes are interpreted as resulting from a ‘linguistic turn’ that Kuhn underwent sometimes around the 1980s. Much of the philosophical discussions about Kuhn’s post-‘linguistic turn’ philosophy revolves around his views on taxonomic concepts. Apart from taxonomy, however, the mature Kuhn introduces other concepts, such as conceptual networks and lexicons. This article distinguishes these three concepts (...) and shows that adopting each one of them has different impacts on Kuhn’s model of science. After distinguishing and assessing the concepts of taxonomy, network, and lexicon, it will be argued that the latter not only fits the Kuhnian model of science better, but it also helps capture the wide sense of Kuhn’s early concept of a paradigm. (shrink)

ABSTRACT BEER, P. A. C. The matter of truth in knowledge production about psychic suffering: considerations from Ian Hacking and Jacques Lacan. 2020. 250p. Thesis (PhD) – Instituto de Psicologia, Universidade de São Paulo, São Paulo, 2020. The thesis aims to reaffirm the importance of the debate around the matter of truth in relation to the production of knowledge concerning psychic suffering. Its point of departure is the understanding that the matter of truth contains two main appearances: as employed to (...) legitimize produced knowledge while establishing normative patterns, and as presenting itself in a critical form as a disruptive element to established knowledge. As such, it is a discussion that embraces both an affirmation of knowledge’s necessary character and of its variability. It will be argued in the above sense that the term “truth” must be taken as an inclusive and reciprocal gathering of epistemological, ontological, ethical and political elements. Ian Hacking’s historicized understanding of science enables such a consideration of contingent bases to scientific practice, while still producing necessary knowledge. It thus becomes is possible to establish a field in which normative understandings about scientific praxis might be criticized without it resulting in any kind of refusal or disqualification of the relevant, produced knowledge. Hacking’s proposition of a “historical ontology” and of a “dynamic nominalism” also represents an important contribution to the accumulation of knowledge production about psychic suffering debate, by affirming the ontological effects of knowledge. The way as truth is mobilized within Lacanian psychoanalysis flows from that standpoint, seen as focused on three main elements: truth’s autonomy towards the subject, (truth speaks), the opposing and temporary character of a positivized truth facing established knowledge ,(truth as critique), and the negative dimension of truth which relates to the inexhaustibility of this dialectical process of negations, (truth as radical difference). It is argued that it is possible to sustain a particular reasoning style, (in Hacking’s terms), for psychoanalysis, which is based on radical negativity. It is further argued, that the above rationalities in question work with a historicized understanding of knowledge that does not have any external (nor internal) criteria to warrant its truth. However, psychoanalysis takes negativity — arguably the base of knowledge’s variability and of truth’s disruptive character — beyond Hacking’s philosophy of science, and can thus offer even wider possibilities of thinking about the causality of psychic suffering. Even if with different intensities, both approaches signal the necessity of ethical and political implication in knowledge’s production and employment. Once there is no epistemological warranty to knowledge, its production value reverts to social agreements and ethical positioning. There is, therefore, the necessity of considering power relations. Finally, it is argued that the radical negativity sustained from psychoanalysis locates the political as an actually necessary field, inescapable by the very fact that it is not possible to crystalize any form of truth which is not the affirmation of radical difference. It is maintained then that introducing the matter of truth has as horizon the production of a kind of knowledge about psychic suffering which puts into question, at all time, its epistemological, ontological, ethical and political assumptions. (shrink)

What cognitive goods do children plausibly have a right to in an education? In attempting to answer this question, I begin with a puzzle centred around Joel Feinberg's observation that a denial of certain cognitive goods can violate a child's right to an open future. I show that propositionalist, dispositionalist and objectualist characterisations of the kinds of cognitive goods children have a right to, run in to problems. A promising alternative is then proposed and defended, one that is inspired in (...) the main by Wittgenstein's ‘hinge’ epistemology as developed in his posthumous On Certainty. (shrink)

Up to the introduction of the term and concept of incommensurability by T. S. Kuhn and P. K. Feyerabend in the early 1960s, scientific texts were supposed to pose no problem as regards their translation, unlike literature, which was thought very difficult to translate. After the introduction of the term, translation of scientific language became equally problematic because, due to conceptual and perceptual incommensurability, there was no common observation basis to ground linguistic equivalences between languages of incommensurable paradigms. This article (...) highlights the presuppositions that link incommensurability to dramatic consequences (impossibility of communication, translation, and comparative evaluation of paradigms) and tries to sketch an alternative way of understanding incommensurability and translation drawing on Kuhn’s work. From this perspective, translation is not an all-or-nothing affair for either science or literature and becomes a problem to be solved for each particular set of circumstances. (shrink)

In philosophy of science, the literature on abduction and the literature on styles of thinking have existed almost totally in parallel. Here, for the first time, we bring them together and explore their mutual relevance. What is the consequence of the existence of several styles of scientific thinking for abduction? Can abduction, as a general creative mode of inference, have distinct characteristic forms within each style? To investigate this, firstly, we present the concept of abduction; secondly we analyze what is (...) understood by styles of thinking; thirdly, we give some comments on abduction and styles of thinking by analyzing examples of scientific discovery or innovation within each style. We develop a case-based comparative investigation of creative aspects of abductive reasoning with examples drawn from different styles of scientific thinking and doing as understood by the Crombie/hacking tradition. We argue that abduction, as a general mode of reasoning, can have a variety of specific expressions enabled and constrained by the styles of scientific thinking. Finally, we draw some conclusions on the relationship between abduction and styles of thinking suggesting that scientific discovery is a dynamical goal-directed activity within the scientific community that benefits from distinct styles of thinking and doing research. (shrink)

What cognitive goods do children plausibly have a right to in an education? In attempting to answer this question, I begin with a puzzle centred around Feinberg’s observation that a denial of certain cognitive goods can violate a child’s right to an open future. I show that propositionalist, dispositionalist and objectualist characterisations of the kinds of cognitive goods children have a right to run in to problems. A promising alternative is then proposed and defended, one that is inspired in the (...) main by Wittgenstein’s ‘hinge’ epistemology as developed in his posthumous On Certainty. (shrink)

According to the received translational interpretation of incommensurability, incommensurability is viewed as untranslatability due to radical variance of meaning or reference of the terms in two competing scientific languages. The author argues that the translational approach to incommensurability does not effectively clarify the concept of incommensurability. Since it cannot provide us with tenable, integrated concept of incommensurability, it should be rejected.

Anthropology?its methodology, its paths to knowing; but also its epistemology, its modes of knowing?saturates the practices of Science and Technology Studies (STS). In a nutshell, anthropology has helped STS find ways to break open the discourses of science. If we were to believe our ?natives??scientists?and accept what they say about what they do and know on their own terms, we would not be able to add anything to these stories. And so in STS, we have modified the anthropological propensity to (...) make the strange familiar and invented the technique of making the familiar strange. Now we can reimagine our natives? stories, note how they are told, and investigate why they are told the way they are?relating them to the practices from which they spring. Our terminological tinkering?refusing to adopt the terms of the actors?is, then, also an epistemological tinkering; we account for these practices in terms of our own. (shrink)

Styles of reasoning are important devices to understand scientific practice. As I use the concept, a style of reasoning is a pattern of inferential relations that are used to select, interpret, and support evidence for scientific results. In this paper, I defend the view that there is a plurality of styles of reasoning: different domains of science often invoke different styles. I argue that this plurality is an important source of disunity in scientific practice, and it provides additional arguments in (...) support of the disunity claim. I also contrast Ian Hacking’s broad characterization of styles of reasoning with a narrow understanding that I favor. Drawing on examples from molecular biology, chemistry and mathematics, I argue that differences in style of reasoning lead to differences in the way the relevant results are obtained and interpreted. The result is a pluralist view about styles of reasoning that is sensitive to nuances of inferential relations in scientific activity. (shrink)