BEHAVIORISM AND LOGICAL POSITIVISM: A REVISED ACCOUNT OF THE ALLIANCE (VOLUMES I AND II)

The primary aim of this work is to show that the widespread belief that the major behaviorists drew importantly upon logical positivist philosophy of science in formulating their approach to psychology is ill-founded. Detailed historical analysis of the work of the neobehaviorists Edward C. Tolman, Clark L. Hull, and B. F. Skinner leads to the following conclusions: (1) each did have significant contact with proponents of logical positivism; but (2) their sympathies with logical positivism were quite limited and were restricted to those aspects of logical positivism which they had already arrived at independently; (3) the methods which they are alleged to have imported from logical positivism were actually derived from their own indigenous conceptions of knowledge; and (4) each major neobehaviorist developed and embraced a behavioral epistemology which, far from resting on logical positivist assumptions, actually conflicted squarely with the anti-psychologism that was a cornerstone of logical positivism. It is suggested that the myth of an alliance between behaviorism and logical positivism arose from the incautious interpretations of philosophical reconstructions as historical conclusions. This and other historiographical issues are discussed in the concluding chapter, where it is argued that the anti-psychologism of the logical positivists is an unnecessary impediment to a fuller understanding of the phenomenon of knowledge

Usuzování s nekonzistentními informacemi

Tato dizertační práce studuje extenze čtyřhodnotové Belnapovy-Dunnovy logiky, tzv. superbelnapovské logiky, z pohledu abstraktní algebraické logiky. Popisujeme v ní globální strukturu svazu superbelnapovských logik a ukazu- jeme, že tento svaz lze zcela popsat pomocí tříd konečných grafů splňujících jisté uzávěrové podmínky. Také zde zavádíme teorii tzv. explozivních extenzí a používáme ji k důkazu nových vět o úplnosti pro superbelnapovské logiky. Poté rozvíjeme gentzenovskou teorii důkazů pro tyto logiky a použijeme ji k důkazu věty o interpolaci pro mnoho z těchto logik. Nakonec také studujeme rozšíření Belnapovy-Dunnovy logiky o operátor pravdivosti ∆. Klíčová slova: abstraktní algebraická logika, Belnapova-Dunnova logika, parakonzistentní logika, superbelnapovské logikyThis thesis studies the extensions of the four-valued Belnap-Dunn logic, called super-Belnap logics, from the point of view of abstract algebraic logic. We describe the global structure of the lattice of super-Belnap logics and show that this lattice can be fully described in terms of classes of finite graphs satisfying some closure conditions. We also introduce a theory of so- called explosive extensions and use it to prove new completeness theorems for super-Belnap logics. A Gentzen-style proof theory for these logics is then developed and used to establish interpolation for many of them. Finally, we also study the expansion of the Belnap-Dunn logic by the truth operator ∆. Keywords: abstract algebraic logic, Belnap-Dunn logic, paraconsistent logic, super-Belnap logicsKatedra logikyDepartment of LogicFaculty of ArtsFilozofická fakult

Play Among Books

How does coding change the way we think about architecture? Miro Roman and his AI Alice_ch3n81 develop a playful scenario in which they propose coding as the new literacy of information. They convey knowledge in the form of a project model that links the fields of architecture and information through two interwoven narrative strands in an “infinite flow” of real books

Inventing Intelligence: On the History of Complex Information Processing and Artificial Intelligence in the United States in the Mid-Twentieth Century

In the mid-1950s, researchers in the United States melded formal theories of problem solving and intelligence with another powerful new tool for control: the electronic digital computer. Several branches of western mathematical science emerged from this nexus, including computer science (1960s–), data science (1990s–) and artificial intelligence (AI). This thesis offers an account of the origins and politics of AI in the mid-twentieth century United States, which focuses on its imbrications in systems of societal control. In an effort to denaturalize the power relations upon which the field came into being, I situate AI’s canonical origin story in relation to the structural and intellectual priorities of the U.S. military and American industry during the Cold War, circa 1952 to 1961. This thesis offers a detailed and comparative account of the early careers, research interests, and key outputs of four researchers often credited with laying the foundations for AI and machine learning—Herbert A. Simon, Frank Rosenblatt, John McCarthy and Marvin Minsky. It chronicles the distinct ways in which each sought to formalise and simulate human mental behaviour using digital electronic computers. Rather than assess their contributions as discontinuous with what came before, as in mythologies of AI's genesis, I establish continuities with, and borrowings from, management science and operations research (Simon), Hayekian economics and instrumentalist statistics (Rosenblatt), automatic coding techniques and pedagogy (McCarthy), and cybernetics (Minsky), along with the broadscale mobilization of Cold War-era civilian-led military science generally. I assess how Minsky’s 1961 paper 'Steps Toward Artificial Intelligence' simultaneously consolidated and obscured these entanglements as it set in motion an initial research agenda for AI in the following two decades. I argue that mind-computer metaphors, and research in complex information processing generally, played an important role in normalizing the small- and large-scale structuring of social behaviour using mathematics in the United States from the second half of the twentieth century onward

Carnap ja tieteiden ykseys

This dissertation concentrates on a particular exemplification of the ideal of the unity of science in the history of twentieth-century philosophy. Taking Rudolf Carnap (1891--1970) as an exemplar of a scholar whose work in philosophy of science was at bottom motivated by the ideal of a unified conception of science, it attempts to distillate the essential characteristics and methodological significance of such a conception by a combination of historical and systematic analysis. Given the conspicuously holoscopic character of Carnap's philosophical orientation, there arises an interesting question about the relation of his work to that of other prominent ``seekers of the wider view'' in the history of philosophy (and history of science). On a more general level, we ask what kind of intellectual and moral characteristics are associated with a scholar who is motivated by the unification of science. Making it explicit: if a coherent conception of a unified conception of science is conceivable, what kind of normative criteria can then be applied to a scholar and his actions? In other words, what are the external and internal qualifications of scholar's vocation under the unified conception of science? In the first part of the dissertation we provide a general account of the problem's background in the intersection of intellectual history and systematics. In the first chapter main emphasis will be put to the dialectic between agent-based and structural explanations in historiography. The survey of a few exemplars of models of historical explanation is intended to provide a background framework for discussing the relation between descriptive analysis and analysis of values. In as much as our modern scientific world conception and the general, essentially human, consciousness of the domain of validity seem to be in a fundamental conflict, a philosophical clarification of the issues that depend on this fundamental distinction is contingent on having proper tools at its disposal. Indeed, it is necessary to acknowledge -- with respect to both scientific knowledge and moral positions -- that the issues of genesis and validity have little in common. Both the image of nature, built upon the masses of scientific and technological knowledge gathered, and the modern conceptions of the moral have developed in the course of history. The lesson that historicism can teach us is the possibility to adopt a symmetrical attitude with respect to the status of the questions of genesis and validity within these (very different) domains. This symmetric attitude enables us to see that the validity of a theory or position (in science or in moral philosophy) cannot depend on the diachronic aspects of its genesis. Rather, it is precisely the case that the late appearance of certain scientific theories and certain moral positions is an index that they are complex and presuppose a great deal genetically, and this is seen to be a common feature of all good theories. Thus, in order to approach the evolution of these ideas from a general perspective, we have to acknowledge their fundamental ontological difference and adopt a variety of tools to study these domains. I present four different approaches to the study of historical phenomena that appertain to the themes of this dissertation. In the second chapter we provide a synopsis of the important thematic about the relationship between morals and science. After a brief examination of the concepts of the moral and the scientific, we proceed to give an account of the concept of scientific self which acts as a kind of normative meta-concept co-ordinating the interaction between the epistemic and the ethical requirements appertaining to the education and professional formation of a scientist. From a historical perspective it is easy to to see that the intension of the concept of scientific self varies according to the contingent factors such as the external conditions of education and the requirements set by new experimental techniques, but the essential, axiologically relevant, internal determinates of the concept are seen to accumulate over time in a conservative manner. Especially interesting here are the determinates that can be traced back to the complementary intellectual traditions of Enlightenment and Romanticism. One of the most important exemplifications of an articulated conception of scientific self can be found in J. G. Fichte's ``Vorlesungen über die Bestimmung des Gelehrten'' of 1794. In these lectures Fichte develops a beautiful -- and still highly relevant -- conception of the true goals of a scholar as well as the qualifications he must fulfill to attain those goals. From Fichte we turn to study the history of one particular intellectual virtue that has direct relevance for the questions tackled in the second part of the dissertation, viz. tolerance. In the third chapter we focus on the importance of a priori knowledge for both ethics and science. These themes are developed only in their barest outlines in order to provide some theoretical support to the fundamental philosophical thesis of the dissertation concerning the distinction between Is and Ought, and its relevance for the question of the unity of science. We will briefly touch upon the question about the relationship of a priori and empirical knowledge in ethics, and provide a brief synopsis of the relevance of the distinction analytic/synthetic in this domain. Finally we address cursorily the ontologically crucial problem about the moral element in man and present -- with a view to the Enlightenment virtues -- a synopsis of the process of the dissociation of the concept of the moral from the concept of the scientific. We describe the characteristics of ethical impulse in modern times and the quite idiosyncratic view on morals and especially on moral justification advocated by the members of Vienna Circle. We will see how the dissociation of the moral from the domain of the rational discourse inevitably results in the philosophically poverished stance of moral non-cognitivism which Carnap maintained throughout his career. In the second part of the dissertation we can finally address the adduced problem in its particular ramifications in the philosophy of Rudolf Carnap. Given this general problematic, we attempt to vindicate the underlying overall motivation of Carnap's philosophy and to reconstruct the architectonic of Carnap's systematic thought in the light of recent research. One of the main tasks is to evaluate the coherence of interpretations provided in the research literature which place Carnap in the continuum of thinkers that are, in some sense, committed to the ideals and values of Enlightenment. The most explicit rendering of this line of thought is the recent monograph, Carnap and Twentieth-Century Thought, by A.W. Carus which puts Carnap's method of explication on center stage. I critically examine this line of interpretation indicated by Carus and explore more deeply its historical dimensions. Over and above the interpretation of Carus, we assess to what extent Carnap's philosophical program fulfills the criteria that are imposed upon it by the requirement of an Enlightenment conception of unified science. The central significance of logic and mathematics in Carnap's philosophical program is seen to derive from the fundamental conception of Carnap that within the total system of knowledge logic and mathematics are performing the essential role of supplying the forms of concepts, statements, and inferences, forms which are then applicable everywhere, hence also to non-logical knowledge. Therefore, the demarcation between logical and non-logical expressions, along with the Principle of Tolerance and logical pluralism, constitutes one of the central strands of Carnap's thought. Indeed, the Principle of Tolerance and the logicality criterion are seen to be two inextricably entwined aspects of a solution to a fundamental problem that Carnap searches a solution to and which characterizes his aspirations throughout the period under consideration here, i.e. the problem of the rationality of scientific discourse under the variability of linguistic systems of knowledge representation. I depict the overall development of Carnap's philosophy with this central idea continually in focus. As a supplement to the interpretation of Carnap's program as a concerted attempt to look for the fundamental invariants of thought and experience, I provide the view that a necessary condition for implementing his ideal of explication is a coherent formulation of what might be called the task of providing genealogies of important scientific concepts and ideas. This complies with the attractive account represented by Howard Stein about the two basic functions of philosophy, i.e., a distinction between ``the enterprise of knowledge'' and the ``enterprise of understanding''. It is argued here that an essential ingredient of Carnap's method of explication is a variety of philosophical history of science which provides the necessary insight into the problem complex one is tackling with under the purview of explication. Therefore, a significant role is bestowed upon historical knowledge and historiography. I attempt to accommodate this aspect of the ``enterprise of understanding'' within the more explicitly confined ``enterprise of knowledge'' that Carnap was overtly concerned with. However, it is argued that the ``enterprise of understanding'' constituted an equally important aspect of Carnap's philosophical program, although it remained covert in his publications.Väitöskirjan aihepiirinä on tieteen ykseyden ideaalin merkitys Rudolf Carnapin (1891 - 1970) ajattelussa ja tuotannossa, sekä tämän ideaalin ja sen julkilausumattomien ennakkoedellytysten analyysi tieteenfilosofian ja -historian modernissa traditiossa. Keskittymällä Rudolf Carnapin ajatteluun työssä pyritään tuomaan esille tieteen ykseyden ideaalin olennaiset piirteet ja metodologinen merkitys historiallisen ja systemaattisen analyysin valossa. Yleisellä tasolla työssä kysytään, minkälaisia intellektuaalisia ja moraalisia piirteitä voidaan liittää tutkijaan ja hänen työhönsä, erityisesti sellaisen tutkijaan, joka ammentaa vaikutteensa tieteen ykseyden ideaalista. Työssä pyritään eksplikoiman ne normatiiviset ehdot, joita voidaan soveltaa tutkijaan ja hänen työhönsä carnapilaisen tieteenkäsityksen puitteissa; toisin sanoen esitetään ne ulkoiset sekä sisäiset epistemologiset ja moraalifilosofiset kriteerit, jotka tutkijan työtä määrittävät tieteen ykseyden ideaalin mukaisesti. Työn ensimmäisessä osassa tarkastellaan tieteiden ykseyden ja tieteentekijän moraalisen kehityksen välistä suhdetta historiallisesta ja systemaattisesta perspektiivistä. Keskeisenä tieteenhistoriallisena vertailukohtana on objektiivisuuden käsitteen kehitys, jota mm. Lorraine Daston ja Peter Galison ovat ansiokkaasti kuvanneet teoksessaan Objectivity (2007). Sen lisäksi että Daston ja Galison esittävät tieteen metodologiaan liittyviä keskeisiä huomioita objektiivisuuden käsitteen merkityksestä ja soveltamisesta eri aikoina, he asettavat keskeiselle sijalle minän, persoonan tai itsen käsitteen tieteellisessä tutkimusprosessissa. Tarkastelemalla kuinka erilaiset käsitykset itsestä -- ja etenkin nk. "tieteellisestä itsestä" ("scientific self") -- ovat kehittyneet objektiivisuuden käsitteen rinnalla, he päätyvät tulokseen, että ns. episteemiset hyveet ovat kiinteässä vuorovaikutuksessa eettisiin arvoihin sekä yksilön moraaliseen kehitykseen, ja muodostavat välttämättömät ehdot tieteenharjoittamiselle. Episteemisten hyveiden keskeisenä tehtävänä on ohjata tieteellistä tutkimusta siten, että ne vahvistavat tiedonhankinnan pragmaattista tehokkuutta ja edistävät "totuuteen pyrkivää tutkimusta" vetoamalla eettisiin arvoihin -- arvoihin, jotka ohjaavat yksilön intellektuaalista ja moraalista kehitystä ja luovat pohjan erilaisille tavoille ("techniques of the self") harjoittaa kykyjä, taitoja ja taipumuksia, jotka ovat tieteenharjoittamisessa keskeisiä. Historian valossa on selvää, että käsitykset "tieteellisestä itsestä" ovat muuttuneet aikojen kuluessa. Syynä tähän ovat olleet mm. kehittyneet käsitykset objektiivisuudesta sekä tieteen tavoitteista ja menetelmistä. Myös havaintolaitteiden kehityksellä on ollut tässä ratkaiseva merkitys (esimerkiksi kameran (daguerrotypia) ja fonografin keksiminen 1800-luvulla). Erityisen kiinnostavia ovat ne käsitykset itsestä, jotka liittyvät valistuksen ja romantiikan rikkaisiin traditiohin. Yhden merkittävän näkemyksen tieteellisestä itsestä ja tutkijan ammatin merkityksestä esitti J. G. Fichte luennoissaan ``Vorlesungen über die Bestimmung des Gelehrten'' vuodelta 1794. Näissä luennoissa Fichte esittelee kauniin -- ja edelleen ajankohtaisen -- näkemyksen tieteellisestä tutkimuksesta ja niistä ehdoista, jotka tutkijan tulisi täyttää saavuttaakseen tavoitteensa. Fichten näkemysten esittelyn jälkeen siirrytään tutkimaan yhden Carnapin filosofianäkemyksen kannalta keskeisen käsitteen, suvaitsevaisuusperiaatteen (Principle of Tolerance), historiaa. Lisäksi eritellään niitä apriorisen tiedon ja empiirisen tiedon lajeja, joilla on merkitystä moraalifilosofian kannalta ja toisaalta analyysin käsitteen historiaa siltä osin, kuin se muodostaa olennaisen taustan Carnapin filosofian ja filosofisen metodin ymmärtämiselle. Työn toisessa osassa siirrytään tarkastelemaan eksplisiittisesti Rudolf Carnapin filosofiaa ja sen kehitystä 1900-luvun ensimmäisiltä vuosikymmeniltä 1950-luvulle. Työn ensimmäisessä osassa esitellyn problematiikan valossa yritetään kuvata ja perustella Carnapin filosofianäkemyksen taustalla vaikuttava keskeinen motivaatio sekä esittää hänen ajattelunsa kokonaisrakenne, sen "arkkitektoniikka" viimeaikaisen tutkimuksen pohjalta. Yksi tutkimuksen keskeisiä tavoitteita on arvioida tutkimuskirjallisuudessa esiintyneitä tulkintoja, jotka asettavat Carnapin niiden ajattelijoiden jatkumoon, jotka ovat jossakin mielessä sidoksissa valistuksen traditioon, sen arvoihin ja ideaaleihin. Yksi tässä suhteessa tärkeimmistä tulkinnoista esitetään A. W. Caruksen monografiassa Carnap and Twentieth-Century Thought (2007), joka asettaa Carnapin eksplikaation metodin tutkimukselliseen keskiöön. Arvioin kriittisesti Caruksen tulkintaa ja tutkin syvemmin sen historiallisia ennakkoehtoja ja aatetaustaa. Pyrin arvioimaan sitä, missä määrin Carnapin filosofinen ohjelma täyttää ne ehdot, jotka liittyvät valistukselle ominaiseen tieteiden ykseyden käsitykseen. Logiikan ja matematiikan keskeinen merkitys Carnapin filosofiassa seuraa siitä Carnapin perustavasta näkemyksestä, että tiedon kokonaisesityksessä logiikan ja matematiikan tehtävänä on tarjota käsitteiden, lausumien ja päättelyjen formaaliset mallit (muodot), mallit jotka ovat siten sovellettavissa kaikkialla, myös ei--loogisen tiedon piirissä. Siten jako loogisten ja ei-loogisten ilmaisujen välillä sekä toleranssiperiaate ja tähän liittyvä looginen pluralismi muodostavat Carnapin ajattelun yhden keskeisen säikeen. Kuvaan Carnapin ajattelun kehitystä tämä keskeinen ajatus silmämääränäni. Täydentävänä näkökulmana käsitykselle, että Carnapin ohjelma tarkoitti keskitettyä yritystä etsiä systemaattisesti ajattelun ja kokemuksen perustavia invariansseja, tuon esille näkemyksen, jonka mukaan eksplikaation ideaalin välttämättömänä ehtona on koherentti muotoilu ja määritelmä sille, mitä voitaisiin kutsua tärkeiden tieteellisten käsitteiden ja ideoiden syntyhistorioiden esitykseksi. Tämä on yhdenmukaista sen Howard Steinin esittämän näkemyksen kanssa, jonka mukaan Carnapin filosofiaa luonnehtii kaksi toisiaan täydentävää tutkimuslinjaa. Stein erottelee yhtäältä "tiedon hankkeen" ("enterprise of knowledge") ja "ymmärtämisen hankkeen" ("enterprise of understanding"). Esitän, että olennainen osa Carnapin eksplikaation metodia on filosofisen tieteenhistorian tutkimusote, joka tarjoaa välttämättömät ennakkoedellytykset -- käsitteelliset mahdollisuudet eksplikaatioavaruudessa -- annetun eksplikaatiotoiminnan piirissä. Tästä syystä historiallisella tiedolla ja "ymmärtämisen hankkeella" on keskeinen merkitys Carnapin metodin kannalta, vaikkakin tämä ulottuvuus säilyi pitkälti julkilausumattomana hänen julkaistuissa teoksissaan

ON JUDGEMENT: PSYCHOLOGICAL GENESIS, INTENTIONALITY AND GRAMMAR

This thesis explores conceptions of judgement which have been central to various philosophical and scientific traditions. Beginning with Hume, I situate his conception of judgement within his overarching constructivist program, his science of man. Defending Hume from criticism regarding the naturalistic credentials of this program, I argue that Hume’s science of man, along with the conception of judgement which is integral to it, is appropriately understood as a forerunner to contemporary cognitive science. Despite this, I contend that Hume’s conception of judgement prompts a problem regarding the intentionality of judgement – a problem which he does not adequately address. In the second part of my thesis I show how the intentionality problem which Hume grapples with is also crucial, constituting a point of departure, for Kant’s transcendental undertaking. Following Kant’s reasoning, I illustrate how an original concern with this intentionality issue leads Kant to a distinct conception of judgement, according to which concepts only exist in the context of a judgement. Having arrived at Kant’s conception of a judgement, the remainder of the thesis is devoted to the issue of judgement forms. Kant’s postulation of these forms is closely related to his conception of judgement, and I seek to establish both how these forms ought to be understood and how they might be derived. In relation to this latter issue, I suggest that there may a role for contemporary work in Generative Grammar. Specifically, I suggest that it may be viable to understand the forms of judgement as grammatical in nature, thereby securing an interdisciplinary connection between a philosophy of judgement and the empirical investigation of grammar

Symbols Purely Mechanical: Language, Modernity, and the Rise of the Algorithm, 1605–1862

In recent decades, scholars in both Digital Humanities and Critical Media Studies have encountered a disconnect between algorithms and what are typically thought of as “cultural” concerns. In Digital Humanities, researchers employing algorithmic methods in the study of literature have faced what Alan Liu has called a “meaning problem”—a difficulty in reconciling computational results with traditional forms of interpretation. Conversely, in Critical Media Studies, some thinkers have questioned the adequacy of interpretive methods as means of understanding computational systems. This dissertation offers a historical account of how this disconnect came into being by examining the attitudes toward algorithms that existed in the three centuries prior to the development of the modern computer. Bringing together the histories of semiotics, poetics, and mathematics, I show that the present divide between algorithmic and interpretive methods results from a cluster of assumptions about historical change that developed in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and that implicates attempts to give meaning to algorithms in the modern narrative of technological progress. My account organizes the early-modern discourse on algorithms into three distinct intellectual traditions that arose in subsequent periods. The first tradition, which reached its peak in the mid-seventeenth century, held that the correspondence between algorithm and meaning was guaranteed by divine providence, making algorithms a potential basis for a non- arbitrary mode of representation that can apply to any field of knowledge, including poetics as well as mathematics. A second tradition, most influential from the last decades of the seventeenth century to around 1800, denied that the correspondence between algorithm and meaning was pre-ordained and sought, instead, to create this correspondence by altering the ways people think. Finally, starting in the Romantic period, algorithms and culture came to be viewed as operating autonomously from one another, an intellectual turn that, I argue, continues to inform the way people view algorithms in the present day. By uncovering this history, this dissertation reveals some of the tacit assumptions that underlie present debates about the interface between computation and culture. The reason algorithms present humanists with a meaning problem, I argue, is that cultural and technical considerations now stand in different relations to history: culture is seen as arising from collective practices that lie beyond the control of any individual, whereas the technical details of algorithms are treated as changeable at will. It is because of this compartmentalization, I maintain, that the idea of progress plays such a persistent role in discussions of digital technologies; similarly to the Modernist avant garde, computing machines have license to break with established semantic conventions and thus to lead culture in new directions. As an alternative to this technocratic arrangement, I call for two complementary practices: a philology of algorithms that resituates them in history, and a poetic approach to computation that embraces misalignments between algorithm and meaning