Search Results

The aim of this chapter is to discuss the moral relevance of the theory of the division of soul. Firstly, it is examined why it is impossible to reconcile this doctrine with instrumentalism. Secondly, how the desires of the three different parts of the soul may be harmonised is investigated. Thirdly, after an elaborate study of the different parts of the soul, the reasons for this tripartition of the soul are introduced. Finally, it is examined whether or not the partition of the soul results in different kinds of happiness.

Chapter 4 focuses on the Euthydemus to discuss Socrates’ theories of happiness and wisdom. Firstly, it is pointed out that Socrates may be labelled as “eudamonist” because of the claim he makes in the Euthydemus that happiness is a general and not a particular virtue. Secondly, Socrates’ instrumentalist view according to which the different virtues may be means to one end, i.e., happiness, is examined. Thirdly, several arguments are discussed according to which Socrates demonstrates that wisdom is the only good.

The core of the fifth chapter is the study of the problems that appear to be involved in Socrates’ prospective. After a consideration of the difficulties that seem to emerge from Socrates’ instrumentalist approach to happiness, attention is devoted to the role played by the craft analogy. According to this analogy, virtue is similar to a craft since a knowledge of the means is necessary for a separate end. This doctrine is illustrated making reference to Aristotle because, although used by Socrates, the craft analogy is never defined in the dialogues.

The core argument of chapter 9 is the thesis that the epistemological distinction between knowledge and beliefs introduced in the Meno plays a crucial role in the consideration of virtues. Thanks to this distinction, Plato can indeed dismiss the theory according to which virtues are only instrumental. Therefore, it is demonstrated that the theory of virtue of the early dialogues is the result of having knowledge of the importance of virtues but not a proper and true knowledge of them.

This chapter observes how recent Finnish municipal and regional cultural strategies signify and value culture. On the basis of a thematic analysis of 21 strategies, I construct three main categories of their 'culture speech': the first is to approach culture as an instrument that unites different administrative sectors, on the one hand, and helps them to achieve extra-cultural – mostly social and economic – objectives, on the other. The second, is where culture is attached to individuals and communities and their expressions. It is also seen as an 'instrument' benefitting and serving them. The third, is economic. Culture is associated with the cultural and creative industries, and with economic impacts in general. My concluding argument is that culture has, to an increasing extent, become strategically instrumentalised in local and regional public governance. Many municipalities and regions seem to expect that arts and culture can bring desired innovations to develop their economies and social cohesion, for instance.

This chapter discusses the differences between philosophers John Dewey and Max Scheler in relation to the homo faber doctrine. This doctrine was originally conceived by Henri Bergson and expounded by Dewey. Scheler criticized the primary features of the doctrine that considers humankind as uniquely a sign-making animal. The irony of Scheler's position with respect to the Instrumentalism of Dewey and Sidney Hook is that he took the continuity between human beings and the higher primates much more seriously in concrete terms than they did, thereby admitting the involvement of the higher primates in symbolic behavior and their use of simple forms of language.

This chapter addresses some of the big issues consumers and scholars assume, even implicitly, matter to committed organic movement farmers: the environment and health. Certainly, these concerns play a role in organic practices. However, this chapter shows that they are rarely explicitly addressed. Instead, such issues take on an instrumentalism and practicality in everyday experiences. Concerns about health and the environment were directly related to visceral experiences of farming, like experiencing the simple pleasure of eating a sun-warmed tomato off the vine. The big issues of sustainability acquire a taken-for-granted character, propagated in farmers’ networks of relationships. This chapter shows, once again, the centrality of lifestyle considerations in the making of organic practices. However, lifestyle concerns can also thwart more sustainable practices. For some farmers, the pursuit of a comfortable lifestyle required abandoning hallmarks of organic practice, like fallow periods for their fields in order to increase the amount of land under cultivation. As farmers struggle for livelihoods, they can become caught in a cycle of intensification that gradually erodes alternative practices. The chapter also discusses how the ability to remain alternative in light of such pressures is necessarily tied to forms of privilege—especially access to land and consumers.

Instrumental nominalism is the view that it is important to conceptualize what collections of particulars have in common, but as the collections grow larger and the concepts more abstract (e.g., Truth), they become increasingly obscure and applied to a contradictory list of instances. There are three ways of making sense of such abstractions. They can be compared with contrast concepts, decomposed into component concepts, and stratified into more homogeneous sets of cases. Instrumental nominalism is inspired by Charles Peirce's pragmatist view that we are never at the beginning or end of inquiry, but always in the middle. We cannot divest ourselves of all assumptions, including abstract metaphysical assumptions, but we can temporarily isolate and critically analyze any assumption in order to make conceptual progress. The chapter closes by articulating a pragmatist perspective on the coherence and correspondence theories of truth.

Histories of British rule in Egypt have long construed colonial public works projects simply in terms of the revenue they generated for debt repayment. This chapter focuses on one such project—the construction of thousands of kilometres of unpaved dirt roads during the 1890s—to resituate such new public works at the centre of the occupation’s efforts to render the imagined difference between “Oriental despotism” and “British justice” palpable at the level of everyday experience in the countryside. By following the category of “public utility” from ministerial debates into peasant petitions and onto the pages of the Egyptian press, the chapter shows how this spectacular elaboration of agrarian infrastructures contributed to new understandings of the state as an instrument or machine that could be seized and manipulated by particular interests. In this way, public works forged the material terrain upon which subsequent critical engagements with British rule would unfold.

This contribution addresses Hempel’s well-known “The Theoretician’s Dilemma” from the viewpoint of philosophy of chemistry. While from the viewpoint of mainstream philosophy of science it might appear that the issues raised by this paper, published in 1958, are well settled, philosophy of chemistry has the potential to reopen the debate on theoretical terms in an interesting way. In this contribution I will reopen the debate and approach the problem of theoretical terms in a fashion which may be instructive to the wider philosophy of science. In “The Theoretician’s Dilemma” the argument hinges on the purpose of theoretical terms. Theoretical terms either serve their purpose (that is, they form part of a deductive chain that establishes definite connections between observables), or they don’t. Hempel then mounts an argument to show that if theoretical terms serve their purpose, they can be dispensed with. On the other hand, of course, if the theoretical terms don’t serve their purpose, they should be dispensed with. Hence the dilemma shows that theoretical terms are unnecessary. Hempel’s way out of the dilemma is to attack its premise. Hempel argues that theoretical terms do more than just establish a convenient shorthand to describe observations. Theoretical terms, argues Hempel, serve an ontological function in addition to theoretical systematization. Theoretical terms pick out some essential feature of nature such that they allow theories to “track truth” (in the words of Psillos 1999). From the viewpoint of philosophy of chemistry, the issue is this. Chemical theories frequently refer to entities, such as “atoms,”“chemical elements,”“electrons,”and “orbitals” that have some counterpart of the same name in theories of physics. Such chemical theories, as per the quote from Nagel above, are generally formulated with great care, as are their counterparts in physics. Yet is also the case that the use of such terms in the theories of chemistry is in many cases inconsistent with how these same terms are conceived in physics.

This chapter presents an overview of the philosophy of science. why study this philosophy? Here is my justification. we know that the software process is a transformation from the identification of a need in-the-world into a set of computer programs that operate in-the-computer. The process begins with an idea, a concept, something that may defy a complete description, and it ends with the delivery of a formal model that executes in the computer. As we have seen, there is a fundamental tension in this transformation, a tension between what we want and how we make it work, between the requirements in-the-world and their realization in-the-computer, between the subjective and the objective, the conceptual and the formal. This book seeks to resolve that tension. Science faces a similar problem, and so I start by examining its solutions. Science begins with something very complex and poorly represented—the real world—and its goal is to describe aspects of that reality with theories and models. we know that science is successful. It is reasonable to look, therefore, into its strengths and limitations for insight into resolving the software process’ central tension. To gain this insight, I turn to the philosophy of science because it constitutes a kind of meta-science. It examines the nature of science from a theoretical perspective; it helps us appreciate what is knowable and what can be represented formally. I note at the outset, this is not my area of expertise. Moreover, the philosophers of science have not reached a consensus. Philosophical inquiry is, by its very nature, controversial and argumentative, and the theme of this chapter is the underlying controversies regarding the nature of science and scientific knowledge. If we are to find “scientific foundations,” then we must first understand what science is (and is not)—the topic of what follows. I warn the reader that this chapter conforms to truth in labeling; as its title indicates, it literally is about the philosophy of science. There are a few explanatory comments that tie the material to the immediate needs of a software engineer, but this really is a chapter about philosophy.

This Chapter offers a brief summary of the history of the scientific realism debate, mentioning some of the most important figures who have shaped the debate, as well as some of the most important strategies employed on both sides of the debate. We are particularly interested in the challenge to scientific realism posed by the history of science. Each contribution to the volume is summarised for the reader.

The concept of sectarianism is often problematic because it leads to simplistic analysis and fails to take into account a range of other factors such as power politics in understanding conflict. The term itself carries derogatory connotations and is often used expansively to denote a range of in-group/out-group associations. Primordialist, Ethnonationalist and Instrumentalist explanations for sectarianism posit grand narratives that are often generalized and too deterministic. A useful lens, therefore, is Constructivist Realism that focuses on processes whereby particular identities, such as sect, become more or less salient. Constructivist Realism strikes the appropriate balance between structure and agency, acknowledging that actors make their own history but not in circumstances of their making.