Realism and evidence in the philosophy of mind

This thesis evaluates a variety of important modern approaches to the study of the mind/brain in the light of recent developments in the debate about how evidence should be used to support a theory and its constituent hypotheses. Although all these approaches are ostensibly based upon the principles of scientific realism, this evaluation will demonstrate that all of them fall well short of these requirements. Consequently, the more modern, co-evolutionary theories of the mind/brain do not constitute the significant advance upon more traditional theories that their authors take them to be. There are two fundamental elements within my discussion of the relationship between evidence and the constituent hypotheses of a theory. Firstly, I shall demonstrate that the traditional veil-of-perception issue has a wider relevance than that which has historically been attributed to it, since it is the paradigm case of an attempt to construct a two level theory on the basis of evidence tha~ does not adequately support either hypothesis. This interpretation of the issue can be represented by constructing a semantically inconsistent tetrad. It is shown that similar tetrads can be constructed for each of the theories of the mind/brain discussed in this thesis. Secondly, I shall argue that the theories discussed all employ a variety of the bootstrap strategy. This strategy is a relatively recent development in the philosophy of science, which suggests a way in which the same evidence can be used to generate both a general and a specific hypothesis within a theory without violating the constraints of scientific realism. However, I contend that recent use of this strategy in the investigation of mind is largely unsatisfactory as a result of a neglect of structural as well as more informal influences upon the kinds of evidence employed to support the hypotheses contained in the theories. The thesis is divided into three major sections. The first (Section A) discusses the influence of the motivations of the individual theorists upon their arguments and provides a critical discussion of the issues of the veil-of-perception and bootstrapping. The second section (Section B) comprises a detailed examination of a range of modern theories of the mind/brain and critically analyses their success. The final section (Section C) draws together general conclusions and methodological consequences of the detailed analysis of the nature of realism and evidence in the philosophy of mind

A Pluralism Worth Having: Feyerabend\u27s Well-Ordered Science

The goal of this dissertation is to reconstruct, critically evaluate, and apply the pluralism of Paul Feyerabend. I conclude by suggesting future points of contact between Feyerabend’s pluralism and topics of interest in contemporary philosophy of science. I begin, in Chapter 1, by reconstructing Feyerabend’s critical philosophy. I show how his published works from 1948 until 1970 show a remarkably consistent argumentative strategy which becomes more refined and general as Feyerabend’s thought matures. Specifically, I argue that Feyerabend develops a persuasive case against rationalism, or the thesis that there exist normative and exclusive rules of scientific rationality. In Chapter 2, I reconstruct Feyerabend’s pluralism and detail its relationship to his humanitarianism and epistemological anarchism. I understand Feyerabend’s pluralism as the combination of the principles of proliferation and tenacity. I show the evolution and justification of these principles from Feyerabend’s early papers until the late 1970s. In Chapter 3, I defend Feyerabend’s pluralism from its most prominent criticisms. I then clarify that Feyerabend’s pluralism amounts to a conception of the logic of theory pursuit and modify his view using insights from C.S. Peirce, Pierre Duhem, and Michael Polanyi. From Peirce, I show how economic, sociological, and value-laden features of theory pursuit may be used to constrain proliferation and tenacity. From Duhem and Polanyi, I try to show the proper role of tacit knowledge within a Feyerabendian framework. Finally, I show what implications Feyerabend’s pluralism has for models of distributing funds within scientific communities. I contend that it provides a more promising model that the ‘well-ordered science’ proposal advanced by numerous philosophers and social scientists. Specifically, I aim to understand what taking Feyerabend’s pluralism seriously entails for principles of balancing funding allocation decisions and the role of peer-review in evaluating the potential success of research proposals. I conclude by suggesting future lines of research for further analyzing and applying Feyerabend’s pluralism

Use of multimedia in engineering education

Learning (CAL) by the computing industry, there remained a shortage of suitable titles insome subject areas, including engineering.Investigation revealed that the most significant barrier to the exploitation ofmultimedia technology concerned justification and payback for the substantial amount ofdevelopment effort required to produce software of this kind. It was found that the size ofthe potential audience for a programme was all too easily limited by the exorbitantcomputer system requirements and limited flexibility which tended to be built into thesoftware by default. It was aimed to investigate whether the elements of a multimediaprogramme which contributed greatly to its computer system requirements, cost andinflexibility were so closely linked to its educational effectiveness.The research was experimental in nature. It involved the creation of several pieces ofmultimedia software, this being an experiment in itself since it allowed measurement ofthe amount of effort required to incorporate the various media into an educationalprogramme. Two particularly significant pieces of software are described in detail in thethesis; an advisory system meant to promote design for testability among electronicengineers, and a CAL system offering an introduction to process planning. Both of thesefeatured, in places, a highly interactive style, involving the dynamic generation of imagesand animations in response to users’ input. This represented a radical departure from theconventional approach to multimedia, which was normally based upon the sequentialplayback of prerecorded material.The process planning software was used with groups of students; their commentswere invited and their performance was measured in a test which used a novel method toidentify any students who had prior knowledge of the subject. (Correct answers from suchpeople could not reasonably be claimed to indicate that learning had taken place, but theresults of the remaining students provided a more accurate sample.) Knowing how wellstudents had performed on each question, when taught in a variety of different styles, itwas possible to compare the educational effectiveness of each approach. Since the amountof time spent adding each feature and medium to the software was known, it was thenpossible to identify which media had been the most efficient.It was found that interactivity is the most vital single ingredient in CAL software.Experimental results clearly showed that learning was most likely to occur when thesubjects were required to play an active role. Attractive, informative media such as photographs and diagrams did generally help to facilitate learning, but the effect of thesewas comparatively minor.The author theorises that effective computer-based education does not necessarilyinvolve extensive use of high quality digital video and the like; rather that the means toeffective computer-based learning predate the multimedia era

Situating Objectivity: A Feminist Conceptualization

This dissertation focuses on the ideal of objectivity in science. My aim is to understand and situate how objectivity has been conceptualized in the philosophy of science, and to question whether these conceptualizations are consistent with the actual ways in which objectivity has been sought in scientific practice. I examine the dominant views of objectivity in mainstream philosophy of science and feminist reactions to them. Ultimately, I argue that Helen Longino’s understanding of objectivity, complemented by some aspects of Sandra Harding’s “strong objectivity”, provides a more comprehensive and practical ideal to guide scientific practice than the received view’s conception where objectivity is sought by adopting an impersonal methodology. One of the main criticisms against feminist epistemologies, which argue for the gender specificity of knowledge, is that they lead to epistemic relativism. And hence it is argued that feminist epistemologies undermine “scientific objectivity”. In arguing for the fruitfulness and consistency of a feminist account of objectivity, I examine in what ways claims about the gender specificity of knowledge could be understood without rendering the notion of objectivity redundant