How was the hypothetical character of theories of experience thought about throughout the history of science? The essays cover periods from the middle ages to the 19th and 20th centuries. It is fascinating to see how natural scientists and philosophers were increasingly forced to realize that a natural science without hypotheses is not possible.

The paper consists of three parts. The aim of the first part is to depict the concept of science in the analytic philosophy of science to point out its characteristic defects. The second part shows how the constructive philosophy of science is able to avoid these defects by honouring not special modes of research but speicial modes of foundation of results in research with its criteria for science. The third part finally refutes the main counter-arguments (...) of analytic philosophy of science against the constructive. (shrink)

The article explores specificities of thematization of science and scientific rationality in Martin Heidegger’s fundamental ontology. This analysis focuses on the concept of scienticity, character- istic for Heidegger’s “early” line of thought, as well as continuation and divergence of exposition of “science” and the nature of “theoretical attitude” as the subject of interpretation of transcen- dental phenomenology of E. Husserl. This research places an emphasis on particularity of Hei- degger’s explication of existential concept of science (...) as opposed to prevailing logico-epistemolog- ical philosophy of science, and foundation of thematization of scientific “subject matters” and theoretical attitude upon the universe of ontological understanding of being of entities (regional ontologies). It also focuses on Heidegger’s assertion of fundamental ontological projection in a status of a peculiar “science of knowledge”, which gives ground for a priori pre-conditions of specific sciences. Separate attention is paid to a specifically Heideggerian approach to explication of the rooting of initial scientific orientation in the sphere of pre-scientific experience, which ar- ticulates itself in so called “fundamental concepts”, as well as positioning of contemplative ‘present-at-hand’ paradigm of theoretical knowledge as a derivative modus of a primary use of ‘ready-to-handness’ as a phenomenological founding basis of everydayness’ experience. The author came to the attention that scientific knowledge is a project Dasein. It is within the framework of self-design that Dasein thematizes what happens to another region of being that is the subject of scientific knowledge. In other words, making things available in researching, applying themes, provided that the design allowed late as the systematic development of the most modern buildings, such as is done in the world, and possibly everyday greeting improvised performance. (shrink)

INTRODUCTION What relevance — if any — does philosophy of science have for science education? Unfortunately, this question has been largely unexplored. ...

In this systematic study, Professor Achinstein analyzes such concepts as definitions, theories, and models, and contrasts his view with currently held positions that he finds inadequate.

Three major phases can be distinguished in the history of the development of science. During the first phase, science had almost no link with production, craft, existed within philosophy and was considered to be elite activity. The radical change in the development of science occurs in the new time, when science having separated from philosophy becomes an independent area of knowledge. Science of new time not only discovers the laws of nature, it exists in close (...) relation with production, and to some extent represents a basis for production. In this respect, the machine based production had a major impact. The next radical change in the development of science and its relations with production starts with technical revolution, which is of principal significance for both development of a man and for the understanding of the nature and concept of science. The most important value of technical revolution consists in its substantive impact on the nature of science and the change of its essential definitions and characteristics. In the context of technical revolution, a radical change occurs in the relation between science and production. In the modern automated production, science as a concentrated expression of laws directly merges with production, i.e. science itself becomes a direct productive force. A radical change occurs also in the nature of science. In the context of technical revolution, science transforms from a form of knowledge into the unity of science and activity, and an organic merger of science and production occurs. (shrink)

This article is the first in a trilogy about the concept “science”. Section 1 considers the historical development of the meaning of the term science and shows its close relation to the terms “knowl­edge” and “philosophy”. Section 2 presents four historic phases in the basic conceptualizations of science science as representing absolute certain of knowl­edge based on deductive proof; science as representing absolute certain of knowl­edge based on “the scientific method”; science as representing (...) fallible knowl­edge based on “the scientific method”; science without a belief in “the scientific method” as constitutive, hence the question about the nature of science becomes dramatic. Section 3 presents four basic understandings of the scientific method: Rationalism, which gives priority to a priori thinking; empiricism, which gives priority to the collection, description, and processing of data in a neutral way; historicism, which gives priority to the interpretation of data in the light of “paradigm” and pragmatism, which emphasizes the analysis of the purposes, consequences, and the interests of knowl­edge. The second article in the trilogy focus on different fields studying science, while the final article presets further developments in the concept of science and the general conclusion. Overall, the trilogy illuminates the most important tensions in different conceptualizations of science and argues for the role of information science and knowl­edge organization in the study of science and suggests how “science” should be understood as an object of research in these fields. (shrink)

The chief topics discussed in this carefully written book are the nature of definitions in science, the distinction between observational and theoretical terms, changes in scientific concepts and the role of analogies and models in science. The unifying theme is that of meaning in the sciences. Its treatment by Achinstein indicates a trend in recent philosophy of science toward finding a middle ground between two antithetical positions on the topic of the meaning of scientific terms. On the (...) one side stands the traditional positivist and logical empiricist account which distinguishes sharply between the meaning of observational and theoretical terms, and on the other side, the more recent views of Feyerabend, Kuhn, Hanson, Toulmin and others who stress the dependence of the meaning of observational terms on that of theoretical terms and the change of meaning of all terms connected with a theory when the theory changes. Achinstein argues cogently that the extreme versions of these positions will not work. Their main problem is that their treatment of meaning is too rigid and monolithic. His own discussion of meaning in the early chapters on definition bristles with distinctions, nuances, and concrete examples from the sciences. In terms of the distinctions of this part of the book he is later able to argue against Feyerabend and Kuhn that in changes of scientific concepts such as characterize scientific revolutions not all of the meaning connections of the various terms need be altered. He also argues that of the many ways proposed to distinguish between theoretical and observational terms, no one is fundamental, though each may be relevant to certain categories of questions one might want to raise about scientific terms. This book thus leads away from the simpler doctrinal statements of the past about the meaning of scientific terms toward a theory of meaning requiring more distinctions, qualifications, nuances, and more subtlety all around.--R. H. K. (shrink)

Do the changes that have taken place in the structures and methods of the production of scientific knowledge and in our understanding of science over the past fifty years justify speaking of an epochal break in the development of science? Gregor Schiemann addresses this issues through the notion of a scientific revolution and claims that at present we are not witnessing a new scientific revolution. Instead, Schiemann argues that after the so-called Scientific Revolution in the sixteenth and seventeenth (...) centuries, a caesura occurred in the course of the nineteenth century that constituted a departure from the early modern origins of science. This change was characterized by the loss of certainty on the part of the scientists, by the steadily increasing importance of scientific communities (rather than individuals), and by the systematic intertwinement of scientific and societal development. As to present science, Schiemann admits that important changes have occurred, but he denies the conflation of nature and culture: even the OncoMouse is a natural organism, though a seriously damaged one. (shrink)

The concept of mechanism in biology has three distinct meanings. It may refer to a philosophical thesis about the nature of life and biology (‘mechanicism’), to the internal workings of a machine-like structure (‘machine mechanism’), or to the causal explanation of a particular phenomenon (‘causal mechanism’). In this paper I trace the conceptual evolution of ‘mechanism’ in the history of biology, and I examine how the three meanings of this term have come to be featured in the philosophy of (...) biology, situating the new ‘mechanismic program’ in this context. I argue that the leading advocates of the mechanismic program (i.e., Craver, Darden, Bechtel, etc.) inadvertently conflate the different senses of ‘mechanism’. Specifically, they all inappropriately endow causal mechanisms with the ontic status of machine mechanisms, and this invariably results in problematic accounts of the role played by mechanism-talk in scientific practice. I suggest that for effective analyses of the concept of mechanism, causal mechanisms need to be distinguished from machine mechanisms, and the new mechanismic program in the philosophy of biology needs to be demarcated from the traditional concerns of mechanistic biology. (shrink)

This paper is an assessment of the key debates on Heidegger’s existential conception of science. It relates the topics to contemporary problems in the philosophy of the natural sciences, providing the reader with a framework to evaluate various versions of hermeneutic phenomenology of scientific research as alternatives to both, naturalistic and normativeepistemological conceptions of scientific research. The paper delineates a context of constitution that is irreducible to the context-distinction between discovery and justification. In this context, the tenets of the (...) doctrine of cognitive existentialism are formulated. (shrink)

In this paper, I examine several commentaries and glosses on the prolegomenon of Najm al-Dīn al-Kātibī’s (d. 675/1276–77) Shamsiyya that relate to debates on the Aristotelian and Ibn Sīnān theory of science in the postclassical period. Chief among the commentaries of the Shamsiyya is Quṭb al-Dīn al-Rāzī’s (d. 766/1365) Taḥrīr al-qawāʿid al-manṭiqiyya. This commentary, rather than the base text of the Shamsiyya, set the stage for later interpretations by Mirak al-Bukhārī (fl. 733/1332), Naṣīr al-Dīn al-Qāshānī (d. 755/1354), Saʿd al-Dīn (...) al-Taftāzānī (d. 792/1390), al-Sayyid al-Sharīf al-Jurjānī (d. 816/1413), Dāwūd al-Khwāfī (fl. 839/1465) and ʿIṣām al-Dīn Isfarāyinī (d. 945/1538). I focus on three issues that were raised in these interpreta­tions of the Shamsiyya’s prolegomenon: (1) the place of the elements of sciences in logical corpus, (2) the notion of the prolegomenon and its content, and (3) the real essence of a science. I attend to the particular debates and contentions on these issues to reveal the general idea of science at that time. (shrink)

This treatise is divided int9 four chapters with footnotes appearing at the end of each chapter. Following the conclusion there are three appendices which clarify a few points introduced in the text but not treated there. Some changes have been made to secondary material. On occasion when quoting Kaufmann's Hegel: Texts and Commentary, the translation of Begriff as "Concept" is changed to "Notion". This was done only to preserve the flow of presentation. The majority of translations have Begriff as (...) "Notion". When these others are placed side by side with Kaufmann's or Knox's translations where Begriff is "Concept", the result is so times distracting. In addition, all titles to Hegel's sciences have been abbreviated. Thus, instead of referring to The Lectures on the History of Philosophy each time it is mentioned, an abbreviated name is given -- History of Philosophy. Instead of The Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion, we have placed Philosophy of Religion in the text. Again the readability of the treatise was the main concern. The objective of this study is to expound on Hegel's concept of science, to list its general features, and to provide a perspective with which one should be able to approach each of Hegel 's sciences individually and observe the concept at work. In the first chapter we have provided an outlined analysis of the concept and in the last chapter have carried this concept through each of five different sciences -- The Philosophy of Right, The Philosophy of History, The Philosophy of Art, The Philosophy of Religion, and The History of Philosophy. In the second chapter we have examined the universal-particular-individual progression that characterizes the dialectical method. In the third chapter we have considered the internal relations that serve to guarantee the scientific stature of the universal-to-individual progression. (shrink)

The first part of the book is an excellent historico-systematic analysis of the romantic reaction against science underlying and pervading the once popular philosophical currents within the last seventy-five years, such as, e.g., Austro-German empirio-criticism, English neo-Hegelianism, French intuitionism, and Anglo-American pragmatism. The second part studies the new theories of mathematics and physics--including non-Euclidean geometry, non-Aristotelian logic, and non-Newtonian physics--in relation to "the phenomenon of irrationalism" in contemporary thought. The book is definitely worth reading, and anyone acquainted with Morris (...) R. Cohen's Reason and Nature will readily come to realize how Aliotta anticipates remarkably the courageous position that great American classic in contemporary philosophy takes towards "the insurgence against reason" in recent times. (shrink)

How should we reason in science? Jan Sprenger and Stephan Hartmann offer a refreshing take on classical topics in philosophy of science, using a single key concept to explain and to elucidate manifold aspects of scientific reasoning. They present good arguments and good inferences as being characterized by their effect on our rational degrees of belief. Refuting the view that there is no place for subjective attitudes in 'objective science', Sprenger and Hartmann explain the value of (...) convincing evidence in terms of a cycle of variations on the theme of representing rational degrees of belief by means of subjective probabilities (and changing them by Bayesian conditionalization). In doing so, they integrate Bayesian inference—the leading theory of rationality in social science—with the practice of 21st century science. Bayesian Philosophy of Science thereby shows how modeling such attitudes improves our understanding of causes, explanations, confirming evidence, and scientific models in general. It combines a scientifically minded and mathematically sophisticated approach with conceptual analysis and attention to methodological problems of modern science, especially in statistical inference, and is therefore a valuable resource for philosophers and scientific practitioners. (shrink)

This paper argues that Carnap both did not view and should not have viewed Frege's project in the foundations of mathematics as misguided metaphysics. The reason for this is that Frege's project was to give an explication of number in a very Carnapian sense — something that was not lost on Carnap. Furthermore, Frege gives pragmatic justification for the basic features of his system, especially where there are ontological considerations. It will be argued that even on the question of the (...) independent existence of abstract objects, Frege and Carnap held remarkably similar views. I close with a discussion of why, despite all this, Frege would not accept the principle of tolerance. (shrink)

The contents of this book were originally delivered at Trinity College in the autumn of 1919 as the inaugural course of Tarner lectures.

본 논문은 일본 최초의 근대철학자로 일컬어지는 니시 아마네의 과학개념을 ‘學’, ‘物理’, ‘格物’ 등의 어휘를 중심으로 살펴본 것이다. 니시는 오늘날 동아시아 한자문화권에서 사용되고 있는 많은 근대학술어들을 번역했을 뿐만 아니라, 서구 학문의 수용을 통해 ‘學域’, 즉 ‘학문의 영역’을 새롭게 구분한 인물로 알려진다. 본고에서 다루는 ‘學’, ‘物理’, ‘格物’ 등은 니시의 과학사상 안에서도 중요한 어휘들로, 원래 전통적 어휘들이었던 그것들이 어떠한 개념적 변용을 통해 근대적 학문을 가리키는 어휘로 탈바꿈했는가는 일본에서의 서구학문의 이식과정을 보여준다고 할 수 있다. 오늘날 science는 보통 ‘과학(科學)’으로 번역된다. 그러나 니시는 이 science를 ‘科學’이 (...) 아니라 ‘學’이라고 번역했다. 그에게 있어서 ‘學’은 ‘術(art)’과 반드시 연계된 개념으로, ‘學術’이란 곧 오늘날의 과학기술을 의미했다. 니시는 동시에 ‘科學’이라는 어휘를 사용했지만, 그것은 ‘分科의 學’이라는 메이지 초기 ‘科學’의 일반적인 용법을 따른 것이었다. 즉, 니시에게 있어서 ‘科學’과 science는 서로 독립적으로 사용되었고, 메이지 중기에 이르러서야 ‘科學’은 science의 역어로 정착하기 시작했다. 아울러 니시는 ‘物理’를 physics의 역어로서가 아니라 동식물을 포함한 자연계 일반의 법칙을 가리키는 어휘로 사용했다. 사실상 박물학적 개념에 가까웠던 니시의 ‘物理’ 개념은 물리현상뿐만 아니라 생명현상과 화학현상까지를 포괄했다는 점에서 서양의 physics보다는 오히려 에도시대의 전통적 ‘物理’ 개념과 유사했다고 볼 수 있다. 한편, 니시는 ‘格物’을 오늘날의 물리학을 가리키는 어휘로 사용했다. 특히 니시의 ‘格物’에 보이는 ‘物’ 개념은 주자학의 格物致知에 보이는 ‘物’ 개념으로부터 완전한 개념적 전회를 이룬 것으로, 그것은 matter의 번역어에 다름 아니었다. 즉, 니시가 ‘格物’이라는 전통 주자학의 어휘를 사용하면서도, 뉴턴 이후 체계화된 서양과학의 물질관을 수용할 수 있었던 것은 ‘物’ 개념에 대한 새로운 이해 때문이었다. 니시의 ‘物理’에 보이는 ‘物’ 개념과 ‘格物’에 보이는 ‘物’ 개념에는 차이가 있다. ‘物理’의 ‘物’ 개념이 동식물을 포괄하는 자연계 일반을 가리켰다면, ‘格物’의 ‘物’은 matter로 한정되었다. 그것은 니시가 주자학의 ‘物’ 개념을 세분화시켰음을 보여준다. 즉, ‘物’에 대한 그 같은 세분화된 이해는 니시가 ‘物理’와 ‘格物’을 구분할 수 있었던 근거가 되었고, 나아가 물리학과 화학 등 여타의 자연과학 분야의 ‘學域’ 또한 구분할 수 있었던 배경이 되었다. (shrink)

Increasing public knowledge of science is a widely recognized goal, but what that knowledge might consist of is rarely unpacked. Existing measures of science literacy tend to focus on textbook knowledge of science. Yet constructing a meaningful list of facts, even facts in application, is not only difficult but less than satisfying as an indicator of what people actually know—or need to know—as citizens. Revisiting this concept from a more sociological perspective yields a rather different (...) class='Hi'>concept that is here termed “critical science literacy.” The implications of this reconsideration for thinking about citizen perspectives, for the work of science journalists and other professional interpreters, and for the design and evaluation of new approaches to science communication are explored. (shrink)

The goal of this paper is to better understand Kant’s conception of philosophy as a “world concept”, which is at the heart of the Architectonic of Pure Reason. This is pursued in two major parts. The first evaluates the textual foundation for reading Kant’s world concept of philosophy as cosmopolitanism and concludes that he most probably never himself equated philosophy as a world concept with any form of cosmopolitanism. The second major part of the paper clarifies this (...) concept of philosophy through the specific role it plays in the argument of the Architectonic. Kant’s unique concept of science is examined and compared with several specific applications of it found elsewhere in Kant’s writings. From this it is concluded that Kant’s intention in the Architectonic was to derive his world concept of philosophy from its logical counterpart, namely the scholastic concept of philosophy, and that its function there is to provide the idea from which the entire structure of Kantian critical metaphysics can be derived. Philosophy as a world concept, it is further argued, is the complete system of critical or Kantian metaphysics in application and the philosopher in this sense is the ideal critical metaphysician who fully realizes its laws through her own understanding and will. (shrink)

The proposal that the concept of innateness expresses a 'folk biological' theory of the 'inner natures' of organisms was tested by examining the response of biologically naive participants to a series of realistic scenarios concerning the development of birdsong. Our results explain the intuitive appeal of existing philosophical analyses of the innateness concept. They simultaneously explain why these analyses are subject to compelling counterexamples. We argue that this explanation undermines the appeal of these analyses, whether understood as analyses (...) of the vernacular concept or as explications of that concept for the purposes of science. (shrink)

This paper argues that science is not dependent on philosophical assumption and does not entail philosophical consequences. The concept of dependence and entailment is understood logically, that is, are defined via consequence operation. Speaking more colloquially, the derivation of scientific theorems does not use philosophical statements as premises and one cannot derive philosophical theses from scientific assertions. This does not mean that science and philosophy are completely separated. In particular, sciences leads to some philosophical insights, but it (...) must be preceded by a hermeneutical interpretation. (shrink)

Scientists have used models for hundreds of years as a means of describing phenomena and as a basis for further analogy. In Scientific Models in Philosophy of Science, Daniela Bailer-Jones assembles an original and comprehensive philosophical analysis of how models have been used and interpreted in both historical and contemporary contexts. Bailer-Jones delineates the many forms models can take (ranging from equations to animals; from physical objects to theoretical constructs), and how they are put to use. She examines early (...) mechanical models employed by nineteenth-century physicists such as Kelvin and Maxwell, describes their roots in the mathematical principles of Newton and others, and compares them to contemporary mechanistic approaches. Bailer-Jones then views the use of analogy in the late nineteenth century as a means of understanding models and to link different branches of science. She reveals how analogies can also be models themselves, or can help to create them. The first half of the twentieth century saw little mention of models in the literature of logical empiricism. Focusing primarily on theory, logical empiricists believed that models were of temporary importance, flawed, and awaiting correction. The later contesting of logical empiricism, particularly the hypothetico-deductive account of theories, by philosophers such as Mary Hesse, sparked a renewed interest in the importance of models during the 1950s that continues to this day. Bailer-Jones analyzes subsequent propositions of: models as metaphors; Kuhn's concept of a paradigm; the Semantic View of theories; and the case study approaches of Cartwright and Morrison, among others. She then engages current debates on topics such as phenomena versus data, the distinctions between models and theories, the concepts of representation and realism, and the discerning of falsities in models. (shrink)

This article is a translation into english of a lecture given by paneth in 1931. The content of the work is described by the section titles: (1) the need for epistemological clarification of the fundamental concepts of chemistry, (2) the concept of substance in chemistry, (3) the epistemological standpoint of the ancient atomists, (4) the epistemological position of the concept of element introduced by lavoisier, (5) the double meaning of the chemical concept of element: 'basic substance' and (...) 'simple substance', And (6) the double meaning of other chemical concepts. Sections (4)-(6) are published in the following number of this journal. (staff). (shrink)

. The concept of bodily health is problematic for mechanists like Descartes, as it seems that they need to appeal to something extrinsic to a machine, i.e., its purpose, to determine whether the machine is working well or badly, and so healthy or unhealthy. I take issue with this claim. By drawing on the history of medicine, I suggest that in the seventeenth century there was space for a non-teleological account of health. I further argue that mechanists can and (...) did appeal to structural integrity, as a non-teleological notion of form, to ground the norms required for ascriptions of health. (shrink)

From the origin of ancient Greek philosophy to the philosophy of medieval ages, although it appeared the discussion of "nominalism" and "realism" in medieval times, the exploration of the concept of "objective but non-real" did not get further developed. From the view of the inherent integration of the unity of general rationality on science and philosophy, professor Wu Kun revived the concept of "objective but non-reality" and creatively developed his "philosophy of information" system. Because the existence of (...) "objective but non-reality" is inherently a kind of "crossover" field in the traditional philosophy, it certainty solve the problems of traditional philosophy from the ontology, which will lead to the breakthrough in the fundamental paradigm in philosophy, and the philosophy begin its fundamental turn. (shrink)

The purpose of the study is to reveal the influence of articles about the spontaneous renewal of icons and church domes on the formation of the concept of a miracle among the population of Ukraine on the basis of publications in the Ukrainian press of the early 20s of the XX century. The scientific novelty of the study lies in the fact that for the first time a layer of poorly accessible newspaper publications was analyzed, on the basis of (...) which it was established what information background was formed around rumors about miracles that occurred in 1920-1925, and how it could influence the emergence of the corresponding narratives. As a result, it was revealed that stories about miracles in Ukraine during this period were characteristic of both rural and urban environments, and affected almost all layers of society, including the emergence of a stratum of the population that ironically laughed at miracles. It is shown that miracles very quickly entered into everyday reality, and they ceased to see supernatural features. Concrete examples demonstrate that miracles in this period increasingly began to be left to the mercy of science and technology. (shrink)

I mention the main, technophile and technophobe, positions towards technology in the Western 18th century, as the criterion of this paper. Then I show that, however unexpected would this be, the concept of technics – opening the problem of technics – was explicitly present within the transcendental philosophy. From its multiple meanings outlined in the logic of this philosophy, I focus on the technical instruments of science. Kant considered them optimistically, but insisted that they are only means subordinated (...) to the capability of reason that alone is able to give knowledge. And the vault key of knowledge is the moral law (the moral telos) given by the human reason. Thus, answering to Rousseau, Kant indicates that the progress of knowledge is ultimately determined by this moral, and not by the enrichment of cognisance as a result of technical instruments. If we consider them as a model for the treatment of the technical objects in the broad sense of this term, Kant introduced the criticism of the technophile reductionism, while creating the frame of the positivist science and the humanistic philosophy of the 19th century. Keywords: Kant, technical instruments of science, technic/technology, technophilia and technophobia, moral law. (shrink)

As one may have noticed, the title of this paper is somewhat provocative. We found Roman Krzanowski’s (2020a,b,c; 2022) proposed approach to the problem of information very intriguing. Our aim here is to highlight some advantages when it comes to answering some fundamental questions in the philosophy of physics and metaphysics, as well as the philosophy of information and computer science. This issue is of great importance, so we propose that the introduction of some subtle distinctions between ontological and (...) epistemological information can be regarded as being analogous to G.F.R. Ellis’s analyses of the passage of time in his concept of the Crystallizing Block Universe (Ellis and Goswami, 2012). This analogy could be useful when further studying the relations between different types of information. We also suggest some subjects for further study, ones where Krzanowski’s proposal could serve as a very solid foundation for examining traditional metaphysical issues by combining classical philosophical doctrines with the new approach. (shrink)

Modern psychology does not address the great variety of elements constituting subjective experience or the relations among them. This essay examines ideas on the fine structure of awareness and suggests a more precisely characterized set of variables, useful to all psychologists interested in awareness, whether their focus is on computer simulation, neuroscience, or clinical intervention. This view builds on William James' insight into the qualitative differences among the parts of subjective experience, a concept nearly forgotten until recently reinterpreted in (...) contemporary cognitive terms by Mangan. I review, revise, and expand these ideas, and suggest their application to self-monitoring in several domains, including metacognition, action, and emotion. Sharpening and extending the distinctions James drew among key descriptive aspects of awareness gives us a more differentiated vocabulary for research and theory. (shrink)

Consider people’s ordinary concept of belief. This concept seems to pick out a particular psychological state. Indeed, one natural view would be that the concept of belief works much like the concepts one finds in cognitive science – not quite as rigorous or precise, perhaps, but still the same basic type of notion. But now suppose we turn to other concepts that people ordinarily use to understand the mind. Suppose we consider the concept happiness. Or (...) the concept love. How are these concepts to be understood? One obvious hypothesis would be that they are best understood as being more or less like the concept of belief. Maybe these concepts, too, pick out a particular mental state and thereby enable people to predict, explain and understand others’ behavior. We will argue that this hypothesis is mistaken. Instead, we suggest that the different concepts people use to understand the mind are fundamentally different from each other. Some of these concepts do indeed serve simply to pick out a particular mental state, but others allow a role for evaluative judgments. So, for example, our claim will be that when people are wondering whether a given agent is truly ‘happy’ or ‘in love,’ they are not merely trying to figure out whether this agent has a particular sort of mental state. They are also concerned in a central way with evaluating the agent herself. In short, our aim is to point to a striking sort of difference between the different concepts that people use to pick out psychological attitudes. We will be.. (shrink)

Aristotelova koncepcia definície v Druhých analytikách nepredstavuje len zásadný komponent dokazovacej vedy, ale v rôznych podobách je tiež zosobnená v spisoch jednotlivých vied a významným spôsobom ovplyvňuje podobu jeho filozofických a vedeckých skúmaní. I keď je systematickému výkladu spôsobov definovania venovaná celá druhá kniha tohto spisu, plné vyjasnenie účelu definícií sa ukáže až v širšom kontexte Aristotelovho modelu vedy. Cieľom štúdie je systematická interpretácia konceptu definície a predstavenie dvoch hlavných postupov definovania na podklade metódy vedeckého skúmania v spisoch Organonu.Podobu definície (...) do značnej miery utvára povaha objektov, ktoré vstupujú do vedeckého skúmania. V prvom rade je nutné zabezpečiť definície elementárnych objektov a vlastností, ktoré konštituujú predmet vedy. V tomto význame vystupujú definície ako jeden z bezprostredných počiatkov vedeckého sylogizmu. Postavenie takzvaných bezprostredných definícií je o to význačnejšie, že ich úlohou nie je len fixovať významy elementárnych pojmov vedeckého jazyka. Aristotelova metodológia vedy je vystavaná na esencialistických základoch a definície tak majú za úlohu zachycovať všetky nutné vlastnosti popisovaného druhu objektov, pričom zároveň z výmeru vylúčia tie vlastnosti, ktoré sú pre neho náhodné. Z toho nasleduje, že jednému druhu nutne náleží len jedna úplná a adekvátna definícia, čo vedcovi umožňuje vytvoriť spoľahlivý základ pre dokazovaciu fázu skúmania zaistením pravdivých premís, ktoré vyčerpávajúcim spôsobom popisujú svoj objekt.Na opačnom konci procesu vedeckého skúmania stoja sylogistické definície. Na rozdiel od prvého typu objektu definície, ich predmety sú komplexné a esencia nie je zjavná. Nakoľko cieľom definície je práve zobrazenie esencie, Aristoteles používa dôkaz ako nástroj jej zobrazenia. V tomto kontexte uvádza príklady prírodných fenoménov zatmenia a hromu, ktorých príčina je od nich odlišná, čo vytvára potrebu tohto špecifického postupu ich uchopenia. Na podklade Aristotelovho výkladu, štúdia analyzuje tieto dva typy definovania ako integrálnu súčasť vedeckej metódy a prirodzený dôsledok potreby adekvátneho postihnutia esencie predmetu skúmania. (shrink)

Abstract In this chapter, we challenge the presupposed concept of innovation in the responsible innovation literature. As a first step, we raise several questions with regard to the possibility of ‘responsible’ innovation and point at several difficulties which undermine the supposedly responsible character of innovation processes, based on an analysis of the input, throughput and output of innovation processes. It becomes clear that the practical applicability of the concept of responsible innovation is highly problematic and that a more (...) thorough inquiry of the concept is required. As a second step, we analyze the concept of innovation which is self-evidently presupposed in current literature on responsible innovation. It becomes clear that innovation is self-evidently seen as (1) technological innovation, (2) is primarily perceived from an economic perspective, (3) is inherently good and (4) presupposes a symmetry between moral agents and moral addressees. By challenging this narrow and uncritical concept of innovation, we contribute to a second round of theorizing about the concept and provide a research agenda for future research in order to enhance a less naïve concept of responsible innovation. (shrink)