Many formulations of scientific realism (SR) include some commitment to metaphysical realism (MR). On the other hand, authors like Schlick, Carnap and Putnam held forms of scientific realism coupled with metaphysical antirealism (and this has analogies in Kant). So we might ask: do scientific realists really need MR? or is MR already implied by SR, so that SR is actually incompatible with metaphysical antirealism? And if MR must really be added to SR, why is that so? And which additional arguments (...) scientific realists need to support it? After reviewing and classifying a number of different kinds of realisms, metaphysical and not, I answer that SR and MR are logically independent of each other, so that there is no logical inconsistency in holding SR while rejecting MR. However, I argue that the “no miracle” argument (NMA) not only is the “ultimate” argument for SR, but by the same token it also supports MR. Therefore one cannot effectively defend SR without also subscribing to MR, but this can be done at no additional argumentative cost. I show this by discussing not only the standard version of the NMA, but also three more versions which are not usually considered as such in the literature. (shrink)

Discutindo acerca das centenas de detecções de planetas extrassolares, que supostamente aconteceram desde 1989 e que ele considera (incorretamente) como instâncias de observações, Peter Kosso disse, justamente, que segundo os parâmetros de Bas van Fraassen esses objetos celestes seriam observáveis. Ora, tais astros poderiam sem dúvida ser observados diretamente (sem a necessidade de instrumentos), nas condições apropriadas. Mas, acrescenta Kosso, “esse tipo de epistemologia externalista, que permite que a justificação se baseie em informação que não temos a disposição (nós não (...) estamos em condição de ver planetas extrassolares a olho nu [atualmente]), não ajuda a decidir quais particulares afirmações científicas garantem a crença” (Kosso 2006, 225, nota 1). Van Fraassen provavelmente incorre em uma petição de princípio não muito diferente daquelas que ele muitas vezes desmascarou em textos de autores realistas, quando apela para o fato de o objeto detectado ser observável, para atribuir o estatuto de ‘observação’ a uma certa detecção. O ponto é, mais uma vez, entender o que vale como observação, particularmente quando isso envolve o uso de algum instrumento. Endossar aquilo que Otávio Bueno chama de ‘padrão internalista’ parece garantir solidez à qualificação de determinadas ações como observações. Uma das principais consequências dessa adoção é que tal critério, não operando nenhuma distinção relevante entre detecções ‘diretas’ e detecções mediadas por instrumentos, permite que a linha que separa observáveis e inobserváveis seja traçada de maneira diferente de como van Fraassen acredita que deveria ser, abarcando, entre os observáveis, mais (tipos de) entidades do que esse parece estar disposto a admitir. (shrink)

Platonism is the view that there exist such things as abstract objects — where an abstract object is an object that does not exist in space or time and which is therefore entirely non-physical and nonmental. Platonism in this sense is a contemporary view. It is obviously related to the views of Plato in important ways, but it is not entirely clear that Plato endorsed this view, as it is defined here. In order to remain neutral on this question, the (...) term ‘platonism’ is spelled with a lower-case ‘p’. (See entry on Plato.) The most important figure in the development of modern platonism is Gottlob Frege (1884, 1892, 1893-1903, 1919). The view has also been endorsed by many others, including Kurt Gödel (1964), Bertrand Russell (1912), and W.V.O. Quine (1948, 1951). (shrink)

Este artigo pretende mostrar que os argumentos sustentados por Ryle podem ser uma postura crítica ao problema do realismo e dos processos mentais: primeiramente, porque o realismo, diferentemente de algumas teorias da mente contemporâneas, separa a vida mental das outras propriedades que compõem o mundo e, posteriormente, porque tal argumento precisaria explicar como tais propriedades podem instanciar um conteúdo que não seria parte de um sistema físico [como o cérebro]. Deste modo, argumenta-se que, a partir de Ryle, a interação dos (...) processos mentais com a possibilidade da existência de objetos externos à consciência não depende de nenhuma arquitetura biológica, mas dos elementos semânticos que utilizamos cotidianamente para falar e dizer o mundo. Esta postura, por um lado, redesenha críticas à chamada doutrina oficial e, por outro, nutre uma parcela de argumentos realistas que deveriam ser atacados e dissolvidos pelas atuais teorias da mente. Palavras-chave: Realismo, linguagem, processos mentais, cognição, Ryle. (shrink)

A large part of Hilary Putnam’s latest work is spent on disagreeing with John McDowell’s conceptualist view of perception which has been expressed in Mind and World and the McDowellian disjunctivism. Nevertheless, Putnam does not articulate which specific aspects of McDowell’s view he disagrees with. This paper endeavours to: first, clarify what Putnam’s disagreement with McDowell precisely is based on an investigation of the views held by each of the two philosophers regarding the problem of the mind and perception, as (...) well as their attitudes toward the relevant sciences; and second, examine Putnam’s argument against McDowell, then reconstruct it in its most plausible form. Before diving into Putnam’s exact disagreement with McDowell in §3, I consider it important to first clarify the common stance that the two philosophers share, namely the stance which opposes reductionism and eliminativism about the mind. Following that, I will explicate the views held by each of the two philosophers as well as point out where they diverge or disagree on. We will see that Putnam has appreciated the virtue in McDowell’s conceptualist view of doxastic perception. Nevertheless, Putnam argues that perceptual experience is not exhausted by what must be put under the actualisation of the perceiving subject’s conceptual capacities, and there is the dimension of ‘sense impression’, together with the possibility for science’s intervention to our discussion on perception, that has been neglected by McDowell. Finally, in §4, I will discuss some problems I have found in Putnam’s argument and give my own solutions in the hope of contributing to today’s current debates. I argue that ‘sense impression’, though it exceeds the perceiver’s acquired conceptual capacities, must in principle be conceptual insofar as it can be intelligible to us. Putnam’s criticism of McDowell only stands if McDowell’s conceptualist view is understood as a static first-order metaphysical picture of human perception. Meanwhile, Putnam’s proposal for science’s intervention should be taken not as aiming at a better substitutive picture to McDowell’s, but as advocating a certain attitude towards our enterprise of studying human perception which is always open to possible collaborations between different disciplines as well as to possible critiques from future reflections. (shrink)

ABSTRACT My aim in this paper is to articulate a Foucauldian critique of scientific naturalism as well as a Foucauldian critique of the nomothetic framework underlying the Placement Problem. My Foucauldian post-structuralist critique of scientific naturalism questions the relations between our society’s imbrication of economic-political power structures and knowledge in a way that also effects some constructive critical alignment between Foucault and Habermas, helping to undermine the traditional view of their respective social critiques as incompatible. First, I will outline a (...) brief genealogical backstory for the rise of scientific naturalism, and I will then reconstruct the Placement Problem. In the second part of the paper, I introduce Foucault’s notion of pouvoir-savoir, namely his account of the interconnection between power and knowledge. I then go on to articulate the Foucauldian critique of scientific naturalism by arguing that the levelling nature of nomothetic rationality and its conservative naturalistic vocabulary involves regulative discourse: anything that resists placeability/locatability is labelled “odd”. By being thus visibly marked, “odd” phenomena become “queer” phenomena, which then become “problematic” phenomena. They are, thereby, construed in need of discipline. Understood in this Foucauldian way, scientific naturalist disciplinarity produces subjected and practised minds, “docile” minds. (shrink)

This chapter explores perspectivism in the American Pragmatist tradition. On the one hand, the thematization of perspectivism in contemporary epistemology and philosophy of science can benefit from resources in the American Pragmatist philosophical tradition. On the other hand, the Pragmatists have interesting and innovative, pluralistic views that can be illuminated through the lens of perspectivism. I pursue this inquiry primarily through examining relevant sources from the Pragmatist tradition. I will illustrate productive engagements between pragmatism and perspectivism in three areas: in (...) the pragmatists’ fallibilistic theories of inquiry and truth, in their pluralistic metaphysics, and in their views on cultural pluralism. While there are some potential sticking points between pragmatism and perspectivism, particularly around the visual metaphor of perspective, these philosophical approaches nonetheless have much to learn from each other. Perspectivism is in danger of falling between the horns of pernicious relativism and a platitudinous view of the limits of human perception and cognition. The pragmatists accounts of truth and reality open the possibility of a more thoroughgoing perspectivism. I will follow this thread through Charles S. Peirce’s, William James’, and John Dewey’s theories of inquiry and truth, Peirce’s evolutionary metaphysics, James’ radical pluralism, Dewey’s cultural naturalism, Richard Rorty’s anti-essentialism, Jane Addams’ standpoint epistemology, W.E.B. Du Bois’ theory of race consciousness, Horace Kallen’s and Alain LeRoy Locke’s cultural pluralism, and Mary Parker Follett’s account of pluralistic integration. (shrink)

Volume 27, Issue 1, February 2019, Page 73-102.

In this essay I try to give some overall statements in order to show that new realism is to be understood as a kind of positive philosophy. Against constructivism, I argue that there is a prevalence of the objects themselves on our understanding of them because reality offers a resistance to our attempt to grasp it depending on its level of dependence from our own understanding, which is different in the case of natural objects, ideal object and social object. This (...) negativity leads to an ontological necessity of facticity. In the second part of this paper I will describe – through the exposition of three key concepts of new realism, i.e. “unamendability”, “interaction” and “affordance” – an ascending path for which the negative and the resistance turn into positivity. (shrink)

This essay clarifies quantifier variance and uses it to provide a theory of indefinite extensibility that I call the variance theory of indefinite extensibility. The indefinite extensibility response to the set-theoretic paradoxes sees each argument for paradox as a demonstration that we have come to a different and more expansive understanding of ‘all sets’. But indefinite extensibility is philosophically puzzling: extant accounts are either metasemantically suspect in requiring mysterious mechanisms of domain expansion, or metaphysically suspect in requiring nonstandard assumptions about (...) mathematical objects. Happily, the view of quantifier meanings that underwrites quantifier variance can be used to provide an account of indefinite extensibility that is both metasemantically and metaphysically satisfying. Section 1 introduces the puzzle of indefinite extensibility; section 2 develops and clarifies the metasemantics of quantifier variance; section 3 solves section 1's puzzle of indefinite extensibility by applying section 2's account of quantifier meanings; and section 4 compares the theory developed in section 3 to several other theories in the literature. (shrink)

Although adverbialism is not given much attention in current discussions of phenomenal states, it remains of interest to philosophers who reject the representationalist view of such states, in suggesting an alternative to a problematic ‘act-property’ conception. We discuss adverbialism and the formalization Tye once offered for it, and criticize the semantics he proposed for this formalization. Our central claim is that Tye’s ontological purposes could have been met by a more minimal view, which we dub “attributeism”. We then show that (...) there is no incompatibility between the ontology of attributeism and the postulation of pictorial representations in the brain. (shrink)

This work is an analysis of F. P. Ramsey's philosophy of science. Twentieth-century philosophy of science was marked by attempts to consider the relation between scientific theories and our knowledge of the empirical world through considerations of abstract mathematical structure. Such considerations led Bertrand Russell to an account of the relation between our theoretical picture of the world and its real nature as a relation of structural similarity. Subsequently, Max Newman gave what has become a well-known logico-mathematical objection to this (...) account. William Demopoulos recently showed that Newman's problem applied not only to Russell's realist account, but also to a variety of otherwise disparate accounts of theoretical knowledge. The common element underlying these accounts is a conception of theories as abstract formal structures. Many such accounts have incorporated key elements of Ramsey's views, most notably the Ramsey-sentence. Moreover, Demopoulos has interpreted Ramsey's own view of theories as sharing the essential features of those abstract views, and therefore their common problem. My analysis aims to show that this abstract conception of theories does not adequately characterize Ramsey's view. Namely, his account of theories was not an attempt to do the epistemology of science in the fashion of Russell or Eddington, or of subsequent structuralist views that have adopted the Ramsey-sentence. I show this by a broader exposition of Ramsey's work on the nature of theories, comparing his seminal paper with his many other remarks on the nature and purpose of theories. I begin by discussing the historical context of Newman's objection, and a generalization of it that shows its broad applicability to abstract characterizations of theoretical knowledge. I then reconstruct Ramsey's view of theories, to show how far it extends beyond the Ramsey-sentence picture. Finally, I discuss the relevance of this view to contemporary debates concerning realism and instrumentalism. I characterize Ramsey's view as focused not on grounding our theoretical knowledge in abstract structure, but instead on demystifying the role of theoretical language and concepts in a theory's application to the world. (shrink)

Many states recognize a legal right to bodily integrity, understood as a right against significant, nonconsensual interference with one’s body. Recently, some have called for the recognition of an analogous legal right to mental integrity: a right against significant, nonconsensual interference with one’s mind. In this chapter, we describe and distinguish three different rationales for recognizing such a right. The first appeals to case-based intuitions to establish a distinctive duty not to interfere with others’ minds; the second holds that, if (...) we accept a legal right to bodily integrity, then we must, on pain of philosophical inconsistency, accept a case for an analogous right over the mind; and the third holds that recent technological developments create a need for a legal right to mental integrity. (shrink)

The paper is devoted to Richard Rorty’s thought, with the aim of exploiting a certain contention of his and directing it, as it were, against Rorty himself. Here is the contention: he thinks that – when it comes to metaphysical questions such as realism and anti-realism – the only kind of argument a pragmatist has at her disposal is rhetorical. Following the lines of the well-known wager Blaise Pascal laid on the belief in the existence of God, I will try (...) to show that the realist can avail herself of a rhetorical argument in favor of her view which is more convincing than any rhetorical argument of a Rortyan kind, while abiding by the Rortyan maxim according to which ‘What has no bearing on our practice, shouldn’t have a bearing on philosophy’. This will allow me to challenge Rorty standing on his home ground. (shrink)

Realism comes in many varieties, in science and elsewhere. Van Fraassen's influential formulation took scientific realism to include the view that science aims to give us, in its theories, a literally true story of what the world is like. So understood, a quantum realist takes quantum theory to aim at correctly representing the world: many would add that its success justifies believing this representation is more or less correct. But quantum realism has been understood both more narrowly and more broadly. (...) A pragmatist considers use prior to representation and this has prompted some to dub pragmatist views anti-realist, including the view of quantum theory I have been developing recently. But whether a pragmatist view of quantum theory should be labeled anti-realist depends not only on its ingredients but also on how that label should be applied. Pragmatism offers a healthy diet of quantum realism. (shrink)

This article will highlight the distinctive role of Cavell in renewing a dawn of American philosophy. Following Emerson’s remark, ‘the inmost in due time becomes the outmost’, Cavell develops his distinctive line of antifoundationalist thought. To show how unique and valuable Cavell’s endeavor to resuscitate Emerson’s and Thoreau’s voice in American philosophy is, this paper discusses the political implications of Cavell’s Emersonian moral perfectionism. This involves a reconsideration of what measures justice and what justifies happiness. While Cavell is sometimes said (...) to be too personal and too subjective to be political, I shall argue that his Emersonian perfectionism, with its concomitant idea of the conversation of justice, is in fact thoroughly political and democratic. I shall illustrate this by examining his writing on a Hollywood film, Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936). The film shows vividly that happiness is a condition for achieving democracy from within. In conclusion, I shall propose that a readiness for the risk inherent in speech, rather than, say, acquiescing in received ideas or hiding behind the words of others, is at the heart of perfectionist education for globally minded citizens. (shrink)

There have been monumental advances in the study of the social dimensions of knowledge in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. But it has been common within a wide variety of fields--including social philosophy, cognitive science, epistemology, and the philosophy of science--to approach the social dimensions of knowledge as simply another resource to be utilized or controlled. I call this view, in which other people's epistemic significance are only of instrumental value, manipulationism. I identify manipulationism, trace its manifestations in (...) the aforementioned fields, and explain how to move beyond it. The principal strategy that I employ for moving beyond manipulationism consists of synthesizing enactivism and neo-Kuhnian social epistemology. Specifically, I expand the enactivist concept of participatory sense-making by linking it to recent conceptual innovations in social epistemology, such as the concept of immanent cogent argumentation. (shrink)

The organic unity between the head and the vital arms of the octopus is proposed as a metaphor for science and religion as an academic field. While the specific object of the field is to pursue second-order reflections on existing and possible relations between sciences and religions, it is argued that several aspects of realism and normativity are constitutive to the field. The vital arms of the field are related to engagements with distinctive scientific theories, specialized philosophy of science, representative (...) theological proposals, and the input from the study of world religions. (shrink)