This essay offers some reflections on the recent history of the disputes about the relation between history and philosophy of science (HPS) and the merits and prospects of HPS as an intellectual endeavor. As everyone knows, the issue was hotly debated in the 1960s and 1970s. That was the hey-day of the slogan "history without philosophy of science is blind, philosophy without history of science is empty" as well as of the many variations on the theme of HPS as a (...) "marriage of convenience," "intimate relation," or "marriage for the sake of reason." There was a flurry of interest in the early 1990s, as evidenced by sections in the 1992 and 1994 issues of PSA, entitled: "Do the History of Science and the Philosophy of .. (shrink)

The ability to process center‐embedded structures has been claimed to represent a core function of the language faculty. Recently, several studies have investigated the learning of center‐embedded dependencies in artificial grammar settings. Yet some of the results seem to question the learnability of these structures in artificial grammar tasks. Here, we tested under which exposure conditions learning of center‐embedded structures in an artificial grammar is possible. We used naturally spoken syllable sequences and varied the presence of prosodic cues. The results (...) suggest that mere distributional information does not suffice for successful learning. Prosodic cues marking the boundaries of the major relevant units, however, can lead to learning success. Thus, our data are consistent with the hypothesis that center‐embedded syntactic structures can be learned in artificial grammar tasks if language‐like acoustic cues are provided. (shrink)

Cognitive control processes, such as updating task-relevant information while switching between multiple tasks, are substantially impaired in older adults. However, it has also been shown that these cognitive control processes can be improved by training interventions, e.g., by training in task switching. Here, we applied an event-related potential approach to identify whether a cognitive training improves task-preparatory processes such as updating of relevant task goals. To do so, we applied a pretest-training-posttest design with eight training sessions. Two groups of older (...) adults were either trained in task switching or in performing single tasks and we compared their performance to a group of untrained younger adults. To foster cue updating in the treatment group, we applied a cue-based switching task in which the two task cues were randomly selected prior to target presentation so that participants had time to prepare for the upcoming task. In contrast, the control group also received task cues but those were redundant as only one task had to be performed. We also examined whether training in cue updating during task switching can be transferred to a similar cognitive control task measuring updating of context information, namely a modified version of the AX-Continuous Performance Task. The results revealed training-specific improvements in task switching, that is, a larger improvement in blocks requiring switching in comparison to single tasks at the behavioral level. In addition, training specific-effects were also found at the neuronal level. Older adults trained in cue updating while switching showed a reduction in mixing costs in the cue-related P3, indicating an improvement in preparatory updating processes. Additionally, P3 topography changed with training from a very broad to a parietally focused scalp distribution similar to the one found in younger adults. However, we did not obtain training-specific improvements in context updating in the AX-CPT neither at the behavioral level nor at the neuronal level. Results are discussed in the context of the ongoing debate on whether transfer of cognitive training improvements is possible. (shrink)

El presente trabajo aborda, como se indica en el título, un análisis historiográfico y descriptivo de la presencia e investigaciones fundamentales sobre los fenicios en el mediodía peninsular. De una parte, se trata de desmitificar, según el registro arqueológico, la existencia de las colonias griegas establecidas en las costas peninsulares mediterráneas —caso de Maninake— y su efecto en los cambios estructurales socioeconómicos y culturales. Tesis mantenida desde una posición etnocétrica griega. Y de otra, establecer un recorrido desde los primeros hallazgos (...) fenicios, a fines del siglo XIX, hasta la actualidad, centrándonos sobre todo en los principales hallazgos hasta la actualidad, que han propiciado explicaciones más ceñidas a la realidad y orientaciones hacia hipótesis para el análisis de la importancia fenicia en los procesos de cambio de la protohistoria del sur peninsular. Se ha insinuado que el concepto de colonización, en su acepción reciente, debe trocarse por el de interacción, al valorar el factor indígena, como debe hacerse cuando hablamos de fenicios en Occidente. Han quedado muchos aspectos sueltos y sin explicar, pero el objetivo del trabajo no era ni teórico ni absolutamente explicativo, sino historiográfico y descriptivo. Por último, se sugieren líneas de trabajos en investigaciones futuras, que parten del conocimiento y planteamiento que poseemos en la actualidad. (shrink)

Mueller et al. discuss the role of acoustic cues in detecting language structure more generally. Across languages, there are clear links between acoustic cues and syntactic structure. They show that AGL experiments implementing analogous links demonstrate that prosodic cues, as well as various auditory biases, facilitate the learning of structural rules. Some of these biases, e.g. for auditory grouping, are also present in other species.

This essay is a contribution to the history of methodological thought. I focus on key methodological criteria for successful experimentation, replication and multiple determinations of empirical evidence. Drawing on reports of experiments with viper venom from the late seventeenth and late eighteenth centuries, as well as on present-day methodological thought I examine whether past experimenters regarded repetition, replication, and multiple determinations as criteria for validity; what exactly they meant by this; what they hoped to gain by repeating, varying, triangulating, and (...) replicating; and how relevant these criteria were for them. I also consider if this analysis has implications for current philosophical work on the methodology of experimental practice. (shrink)

Depression is a disorder of impaired emotion regulation. Consequently, examining individual differences in the habitual use of emotion-regulation strategies has considerable potential to inform models of this debilitating disorder. The aim of the current study was to identify cognitive processes that may be associated with the use of emotion-regulation strategies and to elucidate their relation to depression. Depression has been found to be associated with difficulties in cognitive control and, more specifically, with difficulties inhibiting the processing of negative material. We (...) used a negative affective priming task to assess the relations among inhibition and individual differences in the habitual use of rumination, reappraisal, and expressive suppression in clinically depressed, formerly depressed, and never-depressed participants. We found that depressed participants exhibited the predicted lack of inhibition when processing negative material. Moreover, within the group of depressed participants, reduced inhibition of negative material was associated with greater rumination. Across the entire sample, reduced inhibition of negative material was related to less use of reappraisal and more use of expressive suppression. Finally, within the formerly depressed group, less use of reappraisal, more use of rumination, and greater expressive suppression were related to higher levels of depressive symptoms. These findings suggest that individual differences in the use of emotion-regulation strategies play an important role in depression, and that deficits in cognitive control are related to the use of maladaptive emotion-regulation strategies in this disorder. (shrink)

Although Kirk Lougheed recognises the need to integrate diverse frameworks into its predominantly Anglo-American tradition,1 his argument contains a limited understanding of vital force as well as a restricted view of communal relationships. We therefore suggest a broader framework for understanding vitality, community and what is permissible by emphasising how African beliefs by the Akan, advance care directives and Afro-Caribbean religious practice such as Santería expand perspectives within global bioethics and thus encourage more inclusive approaches to addressing bioethical dilemmas. For (...) the Akan (in Ghana), the fundamental concept of ‘being’ is construed on the belief that Okra (considered as soul, or the life-giving spirit in man) and Nkrabea (considered as destiny) determine the life of every individual. Individual autonomy in the matter of ‘death’ is linked to the collective responsibility for the preservation of life. For a terminally ill person, his family and community members, this responsibility is upheld by allowing Nkrabea (destiny) to take its natural course without any human intervention especially in matters of ‘death’. Thus, the Akan belief and conviction concerning Nkrabea or destiny run contrary to the approval of euthanasia.2 The impermissibility of euthanasia, from this perspective …. (shrink)

This essay is concerned with the epistemic roles of error in scientific practice. Usually, error is regarded as something negative, as an impediment or obstacle for the advancement of science. However, we also frequently say that we are learning from error. This common expression suggests that the role of error is not—at least not always—negative but that errors can make a fruitful contribution to the scientific enterprise. My paper explores the latter possibility. Can errors play an epistemically productive role in (...) scientific research? The paper begins with a review of several twentieth-century approaches to error and the various agendas behind them. It is shown that only very few scholars have considered whether errors can be productive. The main part of the paper examines a concrete debate in early nineteenth-century microscopy and analyses how the microscopists coped with the problem of error. Drawing on this material, the article offers some terminological clarifications of the common notion ‘learning from error’. The conclusion argues that error can indeed play epistemically productive roles in scientific practice.Keywords: Error; Nineteenth-century microscopic anatomy. (shrink)

This article identifies a fundamental distinction in scientific practice: the mismatch between what scientists do and what they state they did when they communicate their findings in their publications. The insight that such a mismatch exists is not new. It was already implied in Hans Reichenbach's distinction between the contexts of discovery and justification, and it is taken for granted across the board in philosophy of science and science studies. But while there is general agreement that the mismatch exists, the (...) epistemological implications of that mismatch are not at all clear. Philosophers, historians, and sociologists of different stripes have expressed widely different views about how one should understand and interpret the relation between what scientists do and what they state they did. This article surveys a number of approaches to the mismatch. Based on this survey, I offer an assessment of the epistemological significance of the mismatch and identify the major meta-epistemological challenges that it poses for the analysis of scientific practice. *Received May 2007; revised April 2008. †To contact the author, please write to: Department of History and Philosophy of Science, 1011 East Third Street, Goodbody Hall 130, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN 47405; e-mail: jschicko@indiana.edu. (shrink)

This paper discusses two methodological notions, the concepts Gegenprobe (countercheck) and Gegenversuch (counter-trial), which were widely applied, discussed, relied upon, and defended in German-language writings about empirical inquiry. In the decades around 1800, they were common in physiology; medicine; agriculture; chemistry; various technologies, such as printing, metallurgy, and mining; accounting; and legal and political argumentation. The ubiquity of those concepts signals a broad concern with securing empirical findings and empirical knowledge. Gegenproben and Gegenversuche – the terms as well as the (...) practices – are evidence for the close connection among explicitly knowledge-seeking endeavors and crafts and technologies. Physiological experiments, chemical analyses, agricultural or vaccination trials were indebted to applied and practical procedures of making and assaying. What united these different fields was the fact that the problems that had to be solved were very complex yet at the same time of immediate relevance to everyday lives (like diseases or crops) or highly controversial (like vital forces or spontaneous generation). We know that late eighteenth-century and early nineteenth-century practices of inquiry were firmly embedded in applied, technical contexts; this essay shows that methodological notions were anchored in applied, technical contexts as well. (shrink)

While painted wooden icons of the Nursing Virgin were relatively common in fifteenth-century Ethiopia, only one miniature of the motif of the time has come to light. This image, bound into a later manuscript of the Miracles of Mary, is painted in a decidedly abstract style, comparable to other representations of the Virgin in fifteenth-century Ethiopian book illustration. Relying on Peirce’s distinction between index and icon, this article considers how such abstract representations might have been meant to evoke the divine (...) presence of Mary as a spiritual trace of the artist’s and the audience’s devotional practices, rather than as a potentially miracle-working depiction of her corporeal presence based on figural likeness, as was the case with painted wooden panels. Incorporating references to Ethiopian and Western theorists of modernity, the essay further proposes to view the multiple and interlocking mirror effects in book art as instances of second-order observation, in which, for example, the Virgin sees herself depicted in a book of her miracles, the compilation of which she commissioned and aided; the scribe and artist is featured in one of the miracles he himself is writing and illustrating; and the donor is depicted gazing at the viewer. Whether enabling skeptical distance or a more fully immersive spiritual experience undisturbed by attempts to capture corporeal likeness, or both, this essay proposes to analyze the politics and theology of abstraction in fifteenth-century Ethiopian book art by centering on a rare depiction of the Nursing Virgin. (shrink)

Resenha referente ao livro MATA, Sérgio da. A fascinação weberiana. As origens da obra de Max Weber. Belo Horizonte: Fino Traço, 2013.

Of the Merits of History for Philosophy of Science. This essay is inspired by some of the contributions to the two special issues “History of Science and Philosophy of Science” of the journal Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte. I consider possible roles of historical study for philosophy of science. The first part of the essay discusses contributions to the Anglo‐American debate about history and philosophy of science in the 1960s and 1970s. I present two approaches. According to Larry Laudan and others, philosophy (...) of science should be regarded as an empirical theory of science, which has to be tested against historical episodes. I show why this conception of philosophy of science is problematic. According to Dudley Shapere and others, by contrast, philosophical analysis of science requires hermeneutic understanding and should include the study of the development of scientific knowledge. I agree that the method of philosophy of science is best described as hermeneutic. To defend a genuine historical‐hermeneutic philosophy of science, however, one would have to demonstrate the privilege of historical analysis over other forms of science studies, such as sociology of science or studies of science communication. I do not think that such a demonstration can be made. (shrink)

This volume thus clears the ground for the productive and fruitful integration of these new developments into philosophy of science.

ABSTRACT This paper discusses the place and significance of comparative trials in German agricultural writings around 1800. In the second half of the eighteenth century, practitioners of agriculture began to discuss the role and design of agricultural trials. The notion of comparative experimentation played a significant role in these discussions, but it could mean quite different things: comparative assessment of treatments in terms of yield, cost-effectiveness, and adequacy for an intended purpose; comparative input variations to explore the multitude of effects (...) of certain causes; and the comparison of something treated with something untreated, to establish the effects of a treatment more securely. Some German agriculturists developed their methodologies explicitly in contrast to the laboratory experiment, as they conceived it. Others invoked systematic variations and practices of quality control that they imported from technological contexts. Yet others drew on philosophical discussions of cause–effect relations. (shrink)

Sustained negative affect is a hallmark feature of depressive episodes. The ability to regulate emotional responses to negative events may therefore play a critical role in our understanding of this debilitating disorder. Individual differences in cognitive processes such as attention, memory, and interpretation may underlie difficulties in emotion regulation and numerous studies have identified cognitive biases and deficits that characterise depressed people. Few studies, however, have explicitly linked these biases to the difficulties in emotion regulation that are associated with depression. (...) In this paper we discuss relations among cognitive processes and emotion regulation and review the depression literature to identify cognitive biases and deficits that may underlie maladaptive responses to negative events and mood states. Our review suggests that difficulties in the disengagement from negative material, memory biases, and deficits in cognitive control are frequently observed in depressive disorders and may be associated with the use of maladaptive emotion regulation strategies, such as rumination. These biases may also be related to difficulties implementing strategies that are effective for non-depressed people, such as recall of mood-incongruent material and reappraisal. Our review also suggests, however, that empirical studies linking cognitive biases and emotion regulation in depression are still largely missing and would present an important goal for future research in this area. (shrink)

In Extragalactic Reality: The Case of Gravitational Lensing Hacking resumes the discussion of scientific realism from the last chapter of Representing and Intervening. Since the criterion of manipulability cannot be applied to astronomical objects, experimental entity realism seems to be restricted to terrestrial entities. In fact, Hacking explicitly argues against astronomical realism. The case at issue is the existence of gravitational lenses. In this paper, I question Hacking 's chief witness for astronomical antirealism: the gravitational lens system “0957+ 561”. It (...) will be shown that Hacking 's argumentation is misleading. Discussing astronomical realism as theory realism, Hacking focuses on the question of how to infer the existence of gravitational lenses from the truth of gravitational lens theory. But neither the reconstruction of gravitational lensing in terms of inference to the best explanation nor the argument of underdetermination are tenable under closer inspection. My thesis is that a realist account of gravitational lensing can be given by relying on observation, causal capacities and home truths. (shrink)

This article sets out to provide a conceptual contribution to theoretical and empirical work on the level of media repertoires. We will first discuss theoretical approaches which allow for an explanation of media repertoires and relate them to the most prominent approaches to selective audience behavior. Secondly, in order to empirically analyze media repertoires we propose a combination of secondary analyses of existing surveys on media use and qualitative studies on the internal ‘architecture’ of these repertoires and their practical meaning (...) in the user's everyday life. These proposals for secondary analyses are illustrated by two examples based on different data sets and referring to different levels of analysis. (shrink)

The Grotian Moment concept provides a lens through which to reflect on the enduring hold of state sovereignty on international environmental law. The article traces the development of the field’s customary rule framework and canvasses efforts to push its conceptual boundaries beyond the inter-state paradigm. Given their dominant role in the field, the article then provides a brief overview of treaty-based approaches to the development of international environmental law. It focuses on the global response to the climate emergency, as illustrative (...) of how international environmental law has evolved in response to the challenges posed by complex crises. The article concludes by suggesting that international environmental law is unlikely to see a Grotian Moment at the level of customary international law, but that it does hold potential for the new thinking and new approaches that could produce a ‘quasi’ Grotian Moment. (shrink)

Marsilio Ficino, Protegé Cosimos, Pieros und Lorenzos von Medici, gilt als Zentralgestalt des italienischen Renaissance-Platonismus. Mit den Übersetzungen der Dialoge Platons, der Schriften Plotins und des Corpus Hermeticum sowie durch eine theoretische Verknüpfung von antiker Philosophie mit christlicher Religion übte er einen unübersehbar grossen Einfluss auf die europäische Wissenschafts- und Geistesgeschichte aus. Im Zentrum seines Theorie-Gebäudes steht ein komplexes Konzept von Magie, dessen Konstruktion bis heute erforscht wird. Es hat dem Band den Titel gegeben, dessen Themen sich Ficinos intellektuellem Horizont (...) entsprechend jedoch in eine Vielzahl weiterer Aspekte ausdifferenzieren. Diese literarisch-künstlerischen, literaturwissenschaftlichen, wissenschaftshistorischen und philosophisch-theologischen Implikationen von Ficinos Schriften werden paradigmatisch und vergleichend behandelt. (shrink)

This paper addresses the question to what extent locative/situational proforms such as German da, Dutch er/daar and English there are to be considered expletives. It considers the main contexts of use for all three languages, their appearance as modifiers, in existential constructions and in other potential expletive positions, such as Spec,TP and Spec,CP, as well as the uses as correlates to clauses. The paper argues that all three locative-based proforms act as situation proforms, though they show differences in their syntax. (...) English there is restricted to locative modifier uses and can only appear as situation proform in the existential constructions; German da appears in existential contexts, and it also has a situation proform use in modifier position. Dutch er has the broadest distribution ranging from existential to Spec,TP and — resulting from that — Spec,CP positions. Finally, Dutch er and German da occur as correlate with prepositional object clauses. The paper offers a comparative analysis in which the difference between those elements result from different base positions and other general differences between the languages. (shrink)

Los soberanos de la dinastía Naṣrí de Granada se intitulan sultanes o Amīr al-Muslimīn en su abundante correspondencia exterior con otros príncipes musulmanes o cristianos. Sin embargo, a partir de la segunda dinastía, comienzan a utilizar también el título califal aunque parece que de forma privada, dentro del entorno familiar o el cortesano, tal como prueban determinados documentos (cartas privadas, lápidas, inscripciones palaciegas o poemas) emanados del Dīwān al-Inšā’ naṣrí. El califato ostentado por los Naṣríes no es el mismo que (...) el de los Omeyas o los Almohades que llevaba emparejado el título de Amīr al-Mu’minīn y Jalīfat Rasūl Allāh, sino que lo acompañan del título de Jalīfat al-Raḥmān o Jalīfat Allāh, como otros soberanos musulmanes de la baja Edad Media. Su legitimidad está basada en una genealogía que les hace entroncar con los Jazārŷ, es decir con los Anṣār de Sa‘d b. ‘Ubāda, que pretendió proclamarse Califa a la muerte de Muḥammad. (shrink)

Summary The first systematic studies on the velocity of chemical reactions (now called reaction rates) were published in the 1850s and 1860s. Inquiring about the course of chemical change, their authors established empirical equations on the basis of their measurement results. But these laws, which represented reaction velocities as proportional to the actual concentration of the reagents, could not be given a physical foundation. The chemists themselves regarded their propositions as mere ad hoc hypotheses. In 1867 Leopold Pfaundler formulated a (...) qualitative theory of chemical processes based on Clausius's version of the kinetic gas theory (and more specifically on his theory of evaporation), and on Saint-Claire Deville's investigations of dissociation processes. Pfaundler's theory was based on farreaching analogies: between evaporation and dissociation; between the gaseous state and the activated state; and between evaporation- and chemical-equilibrium. Four points of Pfaundler's theory must be regarded as essential: (1) the reduction of chemical change to randomly occurring molecular collisions, only showing regularities in great numbers according to the laws of probability; (2) the idea that molecules are in different states of internal and external motion, which determines whether a collision results in a reaction; (3) the view of the reaction step as a transition from internal to external motion and vice versa; and (4) the introduction of a new molecular-kinetic definition of chemical affinity as the maximum of internal motion. With these assumptions, Pfaundler provided the empirical rate equations with a new statistical interpretation and a physical Justification. (shrink)

Exploring the concepts of Freezing: Theoretical and empirical perspectives. Theoretical advancement. Ur Shlonsky and Luigi Rizzi: Criterial Freezing in small clauses and the cartography of copular constructions -- Angel J. Gallego: Freezing Effects in a free-Merge System -- Gereon Maller: Freezing in complex prefields. Empirical domains. Norbert Corver: The Freezing points of the (Dutch) adjectival system -- Jutta M. Hartmann: Freezing in it-clefts: Movement and focus -- Josef Bayer: Criterial Freezing in the syntax of particles -- Michael S. Rochemont: (...) Only syntax -- Maria Polinsky: Freezing and phi-feature agreement: On the role of [PERSON] -- BalÃízs SurÃínyi and Gerg Turi: Freezing, Topic Opacity and Phase-based Cyclicity in Subject Islands. Interface extensions. Peter W. Culicover and Susanne Winkler: Freezing: Between grammar and processing -- Andreas Konietzko: Heavy NP shift in context: On the interaction of information structure and subextraction from shifted constituents -- Rui P. Chaves: Freezing as a probabilistic phenomenon -- Marion Jaeger: An experimental study on freezing and topicalization in English. (shrink)

This article examines a metaphilosophical issue, namely existing disagreements in philosophy of science about the significance of using multiple means of determination in scientific practice. We argue that this disagreement can, in part, be resolved by separating different questions that can be asked about the use of multiple means of determination, including the following: what can be concluded from the convergence of data or the convergence of claims about phenomena? Are the conclusions drawn from the convergence of data and of (...) statements about phenomena of special importance to the debate about realism and antirealism? Do inferences based on multiple means of determination have stronger epistemic force than inferences that are secured in other ways? Is the epistemic goal of deploying multiple means of determination well entrenched within the scientific community? Most of these questions can be discussed both in a formal and in an empirical perspective. If the differences in perspective are taken into account, some disagreements can be easily resolved. In part, however, the disagreements reflect historiographical challenges that are very difficult, if not impossible to meet. (shrink)

This introduction to the special issue of the same title sets out the context for a critical examination of contemporary developments in sociotechnical systems deployed in the name of security. Our focus is on technologies of tracking, with their claims to enable the identification of those who comprise legitimate targets for the use of violent force. Taking these claims as deeply problematic, we join a growing body of scholarship on the technopolitical logics that underpin an increasingly violent landscape of institutions, (...) infrastructures, and actions, promising protection to some but arguably contributing to our collective insecurity. We examine the asymmetric distributions of sociotechnologies of security; their deadly and injurious effects; and the legal, ethical, and moral questions that haunt their operations. (shrink)