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  1. A Beginner’s Guide to Crossing the Road: Towards an Epistemology of Successful Action in Complex Systems.Ragnar van Der Merwe & Alex Broadbent - 2024 - Interdisciplinary Science Reviews 49 (5):460-475.
    Crossing the road within the traffic system is an example of an action human agents perform successfully day-to-day in complex systems. How do they perform such successful actions given that the behaviour of complex systems is often difficult to predict? The contemporary literature contains two contrasting approaches to the epistemology of complex systems: an analytic and a post-modern approach. We argue that neither approach adequately accounts for how successful action is possible in complex systems. Agents regularly perform successful actions without (...)
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  • How pluralistic is pluralism really? A case study of Sandra Mitchell’s Integrative Pluralism.Ragnar Van der Merwe - 2023 - Theoria: Revista de Teoría, Historia y Fundamentos de la Ciencia 38 (3):319-338.
    Epistemic pluralists in the philosophy of science often argue that different epistemic perspectives in science are equally warranted. Sandra Mitchell – with her Integrative Pluralism (IP) – has notably advocated for this kind of epistemic pluralism. A problem arises for Mitchell however because she also wants to be an epistemological pluralist. She claims that, not only are different epistemic perspectives in science equally warranted in different contexts, but different understandings of these epistemic perspectives in science are also equally warranted in (...)
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  • Rational Decision-Making in a Complex World: Towards an Instrumental, yet Embodied, Account.Ragnar Van der Merwe - 2022 - Logos and Episteme 13 (4):381-404.
    Prima facie, we make successful decisions as we act on and intervene in the world day-to-day. Epistemologists are often concerned with whether rationality is involved in such decision-making practices, and, if so, to what degree. Some, particularly in the post-structuralist tradition, argue that successful decision-making occurs via an existential leap into the unknown rather than via any determinant or criterion such as rationality. I call this view radical voluntarism (RV). Proponents of RV include those who subscribe to a view they (...)
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  • How Darwin can help Post-Structuralists Maintain that Apartheid was Unconditionally Unjust.Ragnar van der Merwe - forthcoming - The Journal of Ethics.
    Generally, we want certain ethical claims to be unconditionally true. One such claim is “Apartheid was unjust”. In this paper, I discuss a group of South African post-structuralist philosophers who call their view Critical Complexity (CC). Because of post-structuralism’s radical contextualism, CCists can only claim that things are ‘as if’ Apartheid was unjust. They cannot claim that Apartheid was unconditionally unjust. Many will find this unsatisfying. I argue that a naturalised or Darwinian notion of rationality can help CCists (and perhaps (...)
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