Popper, Polanyi and Duncker represent the widely held position that theoretical and experimental scientific research are motivated by problems to which discoveries are solutions. According to the argument here, their views are unsupported and - in light of counter-instances, anomalous chance discoveries, and the force of curiosity - over-generalized.

Beginning by offering a conceptual analysis of change – a statement of what change of any kind is – the paper sets out to examine possible ways of understanding a very common and important variety of change that may be called ‘evolutionary’. These changes include anything from the production of a clay pot on a potter's wheel to the emergence of a system of management, or from the effects of an analgesic drug to the development of a new programme of (...) care. As few philosophers have discussed such topics, theories are borrowed from the philosophy of science that attempt to explain the development and rationality of science. The ideas of Karl Popper and Thomas Kuhn are discussed and criticized, before turning to evolutionary theories: Darwinian and Lamarckian. The paper ends by offering a model that, it is hoped, may help in thinking about a wide range of changes. (shrink)

This paper starts with an intuitive notion of representational spaces, which is intended to provide an improved version of Kuhn's concept of paradigms. It then proceeds to study the following topics in terms of this new notion: incommensurability, paradigm change, explanation of anomalies, explanation of regularities, explanation of irregularities, and physical necessity. In the course of the investigation, "representational space" gets clarified and defined. It is envisaged that this new concept should throw light on many issues in the philosophy of (...) science. (shrink)

The point of this paper is to provide a principled framework for a naturalistic, interactivist-constructivist model of rational capacity and a sketch of the model itself, indicating its merits. Being naturalistic, it takes its orientation from scientific understanding. In particular, it adopts the developing interactivist-constructivist understanding of the functional capacities of biological organisms as a useful naturalistic platform for constructing such higher order capacities as reason and cognition. Further, both the framework and model are marked by the finitude and fallibility (...) that science attributes to organisms, with their radical consequences, and also by the individual and collective capacities to improve their performances that learning organisms display. Part A prepares the ground for the exposition through a critique of the dominant Western analytic tradition in rationalising science, followed by a brief exposition of the naturalist framework that will be employed to frame the construction. This results in two sets of guidelines for constructing an alternative. Part B provides the new conception of reason as a rich complex of processes of improvement against epistemic values, and argues its merits. It closes with an account of normativity and our similarly developing rational knowledge of it, including (reflexively) of reason itself. (shrink)

(1985). Underlying Theoretical Assumptions and the Evaluation of Management Motivation in Higher Education. Educational Studies: Vol. 11, No. 2, pp. 159-166.

Börje Holmberg; A Paradigm for Research in Education, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 16, Issue 1, 30 May 2006, Pages 19–33, https://doi.org/10.1111/.

The structuralist approach, as developed by Balzer et al. (1987) in An Architectonic for Science (abbreviated as Architectonic in the following), should be combined with a holistic semantics. A significant, but widely neglected intuition about the empirical claim of a theory appears to be representable only within a holistic framework. This intuition may be called the promise of a theory. It consists of the claim that the theory will, at least in the future, be able to describe all phenomena of (...) (an interpreted version of) its T-non-theoretical conceptual frame. The argument will be outlined within the semantics developed by Holger Andreas on the basis of Carnap’s dual-level conception. (shrink)

The evolutionary origin of phobias is strongly supported by behavioral genetics and monkey vicarious conditioning data. Prepared Pavlovian conditioning may be only one of the mechanisms mediating the evolutionarily determined outcome in phobias, avoidance. Davey's alternative biased expectancy hypothesis has merit in accounting for some aspects of laboratory data, but it is insufficient to explain the unconscious origin of phobic fear.

In this paper I briefly reply to Shant Shahbazian’s comments on my paper “Austere quantum mechanics as a reductive basis for chemistry” and argue that quantum theory of atoms in molecules can be characterised as a research programme in the theories of chemistry. I also explore the areas in which Shahbazian and me agree and disagree.

For many, Rorty was a postmodern relativist and Popper was a positivist and Cold War liberal ideologue. The argument developed here rejects such views and explores how Rorty?s work is best understood from a Popperian problem-solving perspective. It is argued that Rorty erred in seeking justification for beliefs, unlike Popper who replaced the search for justification with criticism. Nonetheless, Rorty?s arguments about post-Nietzschean theory and reformism function as important updates to Popper?s arguments about methodological essentialism and piecemeal social engineering, respectively.

A novel experimental paradigm that measured theory change and confidence in participants' theories was used in three experiments to test the effects of anomalous evidence. Experiment 1 varied the amount of anomalous evidence to see if “dose size” made incremental changes in confidence toward theory change. Experiment 2 varied whether anomalous evidence was convergent or replicating. Experiment 3 varied whether participants were provided with an alternative theory that explained the anomalous evidence. All experiments showed that participants' confidence changes were commensurate (...) with the amount of anomalous evidence presented, and that larger decreases in confidence predicted theory changes. Convergent evidence and the presentation of an alternative theory led to larger confidence change. Convergent evidence also caused more theory changes. Even when people do not change theories, factors pertinent to the evidence and alternative theories decrease their confidence in their current theory and move them incrementally closer to theory change. (shrink)

A definition of pseudoscience is proposed, according to which a statement is pseudoscientific if and only if it (1) pertains to an issue within the domains of science, (2) is not epistemically warranted, and (3) is part of a doctrine whose major proponents try to create the impression that it is epistemically warranted. This approach has the advantage of separating the definition of pseudoscience from the justification of the claim that science represents the most epistemically warranted statements. The definition is (...) used to explain why proponents of widely divergent criteria for the demarcation between science and pseudoscience tend to be in almost complete agreement on the particular demarcations that should presumably be based on these general criteria. (shrink)

The present commentary emphasizes that the acquisition of fear always involves complex changes in several quasi-independent response systems. Stimulus-specific electrodermal response differentiation as well as the bias to overestimate the belongingness of certain stimulus pairs mainly indicates cognitive processes of selective orienting and attention. Emotion, however, also involves the activation of subcortical motivational circuits. Why certain stimuli acquire rapid access to these basic motivational systems is not explained by the expectancy bias model.