Search Results

Starting from the perception that jurisprudence still predominantly but mostly unconsciously operates under the paradigm of logical empiricism, this chapter presents the following arguments: (i) logical empiricism is a doctrine that stands under fundamental tensions, namely between its logicistic and its empiristic tenets; (ii) Quine tried to solve this incompatibility by redefining the ambit of logicism and by saving empiricism in its redefined form of naturalism; (iii) Wilfrid Sellars, on the other hand, resolved the incoherence of logical empiricism by attacking its core thesis of empiricism as such; (iv) insight into Quine's arguments necessitate a move from legal positivism to legal naturalism; and (v) insight into Sellars' arguments necessitate a move from legal positivism to a non-empiricist theory of law of which so far we have only two (probably flawed) examples: Hegel's theory of Objective Spirit and Kelsen's Pure Theory of Law.

Wittgenstein’s account of ostensive definition is examined. Its influence upon the reflections of members of the Vienna Circle is outlined, and their misunderstandings of Wittgenstein’s account are clarified.

This chapter examines the widespread assumptions that intertheoretic reductions are common in the natural sciences and that reducibility serves as a kind of normative constraint upon the legitimacy of the special sciences. While this was the mainline view in philosophy of science in the mid‐twentieth century, it has received decisive criticism within philosophy of science since the 1970s. The basic reasons for this rejection of Carnap‐Nagel style reductionism are recounted in this chapter.

The chapter considers the rise of modern epistemological empiricism, from Gassendi and Locke to Spencer and the positivists. The chapter studies empirical philosophy in France (Condillac, Diderot, La Mettrie, Maine de Biran); Claude Bernard’s experimental medicine; the concept of experience in British idealism; the idea of “experimental life” in J. S. Mill and Nietzsche; Dilthey’s concept of experience (Erlebnis); Russell’s concept of sense data; and the value of experience in scientific philosophy (Mach) and logical empiricism (Carnap). Additionally the chapter discusses the emergence of observation as a scientific practice, the contributions of the social studies of science to our understanding of experimental practice, and surveys modern thought concerning visual perception.

This chapter reports the consequences of an extension of immanence for the classical domains of logic. It specifically illustrates the extent to which Gilles Deleuze's account of sense relates to, and differs from, that of logical empiricism and Edmund Husserl's transcendental logic. The ‘logic of sense’ would quite explicitly conflict the imperatives of logical positivism. Husserl's Formal and Transcendental Logic clearly show the aim and movement of Husserl's thought with respect to the question of logic. It is apparent that the Stoics depict a radical distinction between two planes of being: the real or profound being, force (dunamis); and the plane of effects, which take place on the surface of being, and constitute an endless multiplicity of incorporeal beings (attributes). The distance between Lewis Carroll and Antonin Artaud is the distance separating a language emitted at the surface and a language carved into the depth of bodies.

The pursuit of a definitive explanation of how scientists produce knowledge and what kinds of knowledge they produce became more urgent in the early twentieth century as science became increasingly important to society in the form of society-transforming technologies. As the century proceeded, philosophy of science emerged as a subdiscipline within philosophy, coordinate with the elusiveness of the goal of explaining science. By mid-century, philosophers, many trained in the physical sciences, had displaced scientists as the dominant figures in this effort. Henri Poincaré proposed a Mach-like relationalist theory of science, Bertrand Russell defended a logical atomism theory indebted to Ludwig Wittgenstein, and Percy Bridgman defended a theory he called operationalism. Concurrently, William James and John Dewey developed the pragmatism of Charles Sanders Peirce into an action- and belief-based explanation of science. But the dominant philosophy of science from the 1920s through the 1950s was logical positivism/empiricism.

This chapter examines McCulloch’s activities at Yale University during the 1930s, and the ways in which his work as a neurophysiologist was inseparable from his pursuits in scientific philosophy. Broadly speaking, it casts the growth of neurophysiology in the American interwar period as the result in part of efforts of the Rockefeller Foundation to rationalize scientific studies of the mind and bring the natural sciences to bear on the growing field of psychiatry. This period also witnessed increased fluidity between science and philosophy. McCulloch was transformed by both developments. His work in cerebral localization with Johannes Dusser de Barenne and his participation in Clark Hull’s seminars in on scientific foundations formed part of a unified project to generate a physiological theory of knowledge.

This chapter describes work in philosophy in the period 1900-1940 that influenced European linguists, and work that called for greater interest in the nature and structure of language. Edmund Husserl’s work is little cited today, but his views on logic have left a mark on how linguists work. Logical positivism and logical empiricism, developed in Vienna and Berlin, also expressed a view of scientific knowledge that reinforced the ideas of Leonard Bloomfield and those influenced by him. Rudolf Carnap’s work in turn would influence those who, like Noma Chomsky, began to think about syntax in a highly formal way.

In this chapter, the answer of systematicity theory to the question what science is is compared with answers that have been given in the history of philosophy. The aim of this chapter is to gain additional argumentative support to the main thesis of the book. Most of the historical answers to the question what science is are special cases of the answer given in this book, thus indirectly supporting its main thesis. The others are shown to be compatible with the main thesis in one way or other.

It is not just other societies’ sciences that are culturally embedded; so too are modern Western sciences. Recent histories demonstrate that the value-free commitment of logical empiricist philosophy became so compelling not solely for epistemological reasons, but also because it provided badly needed protection against McCarthyism and Cold War politics for these philosophers and generations of their students. Logical empircism’s still powerful commitment to the value-freedom of scientific research was not itself value-free. Since the Cold War ended in 1989, isn’t it past the time to rethink such philosophic commitments? Recently philosophers of science have begun to explore the benefits of the actual disunity of science, and even the pluralism of scientific ontologies and epistemologies. Yet they tend to shy away from advocating active support of such phenomena. This is unfortunate since from a global perspective one can see that the political, cultural, and social disunity and pluralism that have been so intellectually fruitful and ethically desirable tend to be steadily reduced by ever-expanding globalization.

As a theory of marketing and voting behavior, rational choice theory presupposed free markets and contested elections. Since Marxists did not accept these presuppositions, the theory had to be elevated into a normative account of the human mind as such in order to counter them. This chapter argues that Hans Reichenbach’s The Rise of Scientific Philosophy accomplishes that elevation. Restricting reason to scientific method, it institutes rational choice (among theories) as central to science. In so doing, it accepts all the salient theses of rational choice theory, but views them as components of the properly operating human mind. Excluded from reason, as in rational choice theory, are emotions and history; knowledge is founded on observation, which, as in rational choice theory, is subjected to mathematical procedures. Causal sequences are retained, but are interpreted probabilistically. Morality is merely the imposition of one’s preferences on others; as in rational choice theory, preferences are not subjected to criticism (except when inconsistent). Though Reichenbach claims to begin from an empirically adequate account of science, his account of science attracted early and wide criticism; at least seven of its problematic components can be found in rational choice theory.

This chapter sifts through some of the most important intuitions and assumptions that have guided the debate over laws of nature since the concept’s invention in the seventeenth century. Competing positions on laws of nature are typically evaluated by their ability to satisfy various pre-theoretical desiderata. Laws, for example, are supposed to govern; they are supposed to explain; and they are supposed to allow predictions. But what do these desiderata really amount to? We argue that only by examining the provenance of these intuitions can we properly weigh them. Some of these requirements turn out to be artifacts of the origin and development of the concept of a law of nature. Progress can be made only if we take a critical approach toward our own intuitions, informed by the history of the debate over laws of nature.

This chapter contributes to the long-term project of a general theory of innovation through a comparative analysis of the reasons for the neglect of innovation and novelty in diverse fields throughout much of the twentieth century and through a reflection on the various ways in which this bias is being overcome. It explores the three areas in which long-term neglect of innovation has been the rule rather than the exception: evolutionary biology and the hardening of the modern synthesis, neoclassical economics, and logical empiricism and the abandonment of the discovery program. This chapter suggests that EvoDevo biology today appears to be on the most promising track in evolutionary core.

This chapter discusses how Kurt Gödel found his theorem. He started to study physics at the University of Vienna in 1924, then changed to mathematics in 1926. That same year, he started attending the meetings of the Vienna Circle. These were weekly gatherings on philosophical topics that were headed by the philosopher Moritz Schlick. The philosophy of the circle came to be known as logical empiricism and had an enormous effect on the world of philosophy. Gödel later wanted to emphasize that he by no means shared all of the philosophical ideas of the circle. In the meetings, Gödel came to know the philosopher Rudolf Carnap and the mathematician Karl Menger, in whose mathematical colloquium he later presented many of his results.