1,004 research outputs found

    Relativist Stances, Virtues and Vices

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    Was Heidegger a Relativist?

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    The structure of this article is very simple. In the first half, I will introduce a sophisticated way of reading Heidegger as a relativist; I draw here on the work of Kusch and Lafont. In the second half, I present the counter-argument. As I see it, Heidegger is not a relativist; but understanding the relations between his approach and a relativistic one is crucial for an evaluation of both his own work and the broader trajectory of post-Kantian thought

    Scientific change and the meanings of terms : an examination of P.K. Feyerabend's incommensurability theses

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    Feyerabend's incommensurability thesis concerning scientific change engenders a number of logical problems. While it is possible to examine Feyerabend's theory in relation to his historical arguments, the defects implicit in his arguments for the theory render more appropriate an analytical approach. These defects arise from the conjunction of presuppositions and theses that form the background to Feyerabend's claims for an incommensurability thesis. This background contains Feyerabend's criticisms of the traditional empiricism of the twentieth century and its reductionist account of scientific development, his objections to any attempt to rationalize science, his claim that there are fundamental conceptual and ontological changes in science, and his adoption of a meaning variance thesis which envisages wholesale changes in the meanings of all descriptive terms when one theory is replaced by another. While the criticism against traditional empiricism can be upheld, it does not necessitate the conclusion that alternative theories are incommensurable. Feyerabend's attack on Lakatos' rational Reconstructionism is not conclusive: he overlooks the possibility that there do exist standards of criticism, which can be termed "rational", operating within the sciences. The suggestion, supported by Hanson and Kuhn, that there are fundamental conceptual changes in science is open to criticism. The case against radical meaning variance is more complex as it requires the support of a theory of meaning. It is not clear that Feyerabend can, using Wharf's controversial ideas about language, provide a suitable theory of meaning to support his claims. A more satisfactory theory of meaning, based on views of Frege and Wittgenstein, while not denying some changes in the meanings of scientific terms, does not entail the consequence that there are necessarily radical changes in meaning from theory to theory. Although the objections to traditional empiricism are sound and a moderate thesis of meaning variance is acceptable, these do not give rise to the view that competing theories are incommensurable. Historical evidence shows the need to take into consideration the gradual, rather than revolutionary, nature of scientific development. This is compatible both with a moderate thesis of meaning variance and with a modification of the network model developed by Duhem, Quine and Hesse

    Lines of Descent: Kuhn and Beyond

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    yesThomas S. Kuhn is famous both for his work on the Copernican Revolution and his ‘paradigm’ view of scientific revolutions. But Kuhn later abandoned the notion of paradigm (and related notions) in favour of a more ‘evolutionary’ view of the history of science. Kuhn’s position therefore moved closer to ‘continuity’ models of scientific progress, for instance ‘chain-of-reasoning’ models, originally championed by D. Shapere. The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the debate around Kuhn’s new ‘developmental’ view and to evaluate these competing models with reference to some major innovations in the history of cosmology, from Copernicanism to modern cosmology. This evaluation is made possible through some unexpected overlap between Kuhn’s earlier discontinuity model and various versions of the later continuity models. It is the thesis of this paper that the ‘chain-of-reasoning’ model accounts better for the cosmological evidence than both Kuhn’s early paradigm model and his later developmental view of the history of science

    Do Kuhn’s Cases of the Theory-Change from Newtonian to Einsteinian Physics Support His Incommensurability Thesis?

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    In order to support his revolutionary view on scientific change, Kuhn suggests that there exist two separate aspects of the theory-change from Newtonian to Einsteinian physics that support his incommensurability thesis. For the evidence of his thesis, Kuhn offers the conceptual change in the meaning of the notion of “mass” in the theory-change. And he claims the absence of any neutral observational basis to evaluate the strengths of the two theories. This essay argues that these two cases fail to support his incommensurability thesis

    Epistemic relativism and pragmatic encroachment.

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    Proponents of pragmatic encroachment in epistemology claim that a variety of epistemic matters, such as knowledge and epistemic virtue, are sensitive to practical factors, and so the pragmatic encroaches on the epistemic. After surveying pragmatist views that have been presented in the literature, we find that while these pragmatist views are superficially relativistic, they reject a central tenet of epistemic relativism,that competing epistemic frameworks are incommensurable and cannot be compared from a neutral standpoint. Thus, I conclude the discussion by exploring a novel pragmatist view about measures of epistemic strength and propose that this radical position may be attractive to both anti-skeptical infallibists and epistemic relativists

    Modeling Scientific Revolutions: GĂ€rdenfors and Levi on the Nature of Paradigm Shifts

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    GĂ€rdenfors' and Levi's theories of rational belief changes will be compared to Kuhn's theory of scientific progress. GĂ€rdenfors' proposal to analyze scientific revolutions in terms of big changes in epistemic entrenchment will be criticized for not being able to represent the important constituting function of the paradigms. Parts of Levi's theory that are incompatible with Kuhn's theory will be shown to be either too restrictive or too broad for a model of scientific progress. The paper will end with a comparison of Levi's conceptual frameworks to Kuhn's theory of scientific change. Some characteristics of scientific revolutions will also be discussed
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