Perceived Risks of EMFs and Landowner Compensation

Although public concerns about EMFs may eventually prove groundless, they can nevertheless depress the market value of residential property near powerlines. Ms. Orel argues that the scientific truth, as courts increasingly recognize, should play no role in determining whether or how much landowners should recover

The Legitimate Route to the Scientific Truth - The Gondor Principle

We leave in a beautiful and uniform world, a world where everything probable is possible. Since the epic theory of relativity many scientists have embarked in a pursuit of astonishing theoretical fantasies, abandoning the prudent and logical path to scientific inquiry. The theory is a complex theoretical framework that facilitates the understanding of the universal laws of physics. It is based on the space-time continuum fabric abstract concept, and it is well suited for interpreting cosmic events. However, it is not well suited for handling of small, local topics as global warming, local energy issues, and overall common humanity matters. We now forward may fancy theories and spend unimaginable effort to validate them, even when we are perhaps headed in a wrong direction. For example, in our times matters of climate changes are debated by politicians based on economical considerations that are as illogical as they come. The venerable paths of scientific method developed during centuries by prominent scientists and philosophers has been willingly ignored and abandoned for various and prejudiced purpose. Contact email: [email protected]

The linguistic - cultural nature of scientific truth

While we typically think of culture as defined by geography or ethnicity (e.g., American culture, Mayan culture), the term also applies to the practices and expectations of smaller groups of people. Though embedded in the larger culture surrounding them, such subcultures have their own sets of rules like those that scientists do. Philosophy of science has as its main object of studio the scientific activity. A way in which we have tried to explain these scientific practices is from the actual ontological commitments that scientists do through their scientific theories. Certainly, we know scientific theories through some specific scientific language, which is, in its turn, a subset of the natural language developed by a particular culture. This study is conducted to explore and evaluate some of the most important epistemological consequences of these ontological commitments, specially the so-called ‘truth-commitment’ and its relation with a linguistic-cultural framework. There is an interesting debate between advocates and opponents of scientific realistic view of the natural world. Some lines of scientific realism argumentation assure that: (i) Mature scientific theories are approximately true. (ii) There are entities and organisms in the world that correspond with the ontology presupposed by the best scientific theories within a specific domain of scientific research and (iii) The new acceptable scientific theories should explain why past theories were successful predecessors (Colyvan 2008, Cocchiarella 2007 & Laudan 1981). Contrary, anti- realist positions ensure against the realist’s true - claim that is a semantic commitment - that the purpose of scientific theories to found the truth it is simple an unattainable goal, especially if the kind of truth they are looking for is a corresponding relation between scientific theories and the ontology of the world. Anti-realist positions held that this relation could be circular and unknowable. I do believe that there is a deep confusion between the way in which we accede to the knowledge of the constitutive structures, entities and organisms of the world (which is an epistemological matter) and the way these structures, entities and organisms are (which is an ontological matter). It seems that there is a bridge between the epistemological and ontological aspect in need for conceptual clarification. I do propose that the type of link between the two extremes have to be linguistic in nature

Critique [of American Medical and Intellectual Reaction to African Health Issues, 1850-1960: From Racialism to Cross-Cultural Medicine by David McBride]

Theories about inherent racial characteristics, both those purporting to be scientifically (empirically) based and those emanating from the soft sciences, have changed dramatically over the past century and a half. As David McBride notes, the basis for research about the etiology of disease and the provision of health care in the United States has been and continues to be empirically questionable. McBride further argues that the American health care approach has been significantly influenced by cultural, social, and economic factors which had little or no relation to scientific truth

Althusserian Theory: From Scientific Truth to Institutional History

Scholars have emphasized the scientific and the rationalist features of Althusser\u27s work, but few have noted its post-structuralist aspects, especially its Foucauldian accounts of discourse and power. In the early Pour Marx, Althusser divides ideological practices from objective science and theoretical norms from empirical facts; however, in several later essays Althusser repudiates his earlier faith in theory\u27s normative force as well as his broad distinction between science and ideology. He argues that every discipline establishes its own relationship between its ideological history and its formal, scientific ideals. This argument, together with Althusser\u27s earlier rejection of totalizing approaches, establishes important parallels with Foucault\u27s archaeological studies. The literary theory of Tony Bennett, who develops a Foucauldian critique of traditional and Marxist aesthetics, illuminates the rich implications of these parallels for cultural analyses

Scientific Truth and Judicial Truth: Philosophy and Method

A sinthetic excursus of modern epistemology across some methodological contributes of Aristotle, Descartes, Galilei and Freud, with special regard to alethic and verisimilar knowledge in law sciences and legal reasoning, in order to analyse dialectic opposition of involved parts in legal argumentations and verdict’s rational motivation in trials

Hypatia's silence. Truth, justification, and entitlement.

Hartry Field distinguished two concepts of type-free truth: scientific truth and disquotational truth. We argue that scientific type-free truth cannot do justificatory work in the foundations of mathematics. We also present an argument, based on Crispin Wright's theory of cognitive projects and entitlement, that disquotational truth can do justificatory work in the foundations of mathematics. The price to pay for this is that the concept of disquotational truth requires non-classical logical treatment

On Three Philosophical Premises of Religious Tolerance

My contention is to adumbrate three general premises leading to religious tolerance. The first is that emphasis should be laid much more on ethics than on metaphysics. Religions greatly differ in supernatural beliefs but all advocate justice, love, truthfulness, self-control and other virtues. Second, the beliefs about God are not true in their exact meaning, but rather as remote analogies to scientific truth. Religion is more resemblant of poetry than science. Third, real tolerance consists in the readiness to assimilate some of the values of other religions, since no one has expressed the transcendent in an exhausting and perfect way. Key Words: tolerance, ethics, objective knowledge, world religions, openness for the Othe

Humility, Climate Change, and the Pursuit of Scientific Truth

This Essay begins with the understanding that environmental law could not exist without science. The tolerable amount of pollution, the proximity of a species to extinction, and the threats presented by climate change are just some of the questions that environmental law depends on science to answer. Often environmental law insists that science alone is relevant to a particular regulatory action, such as an air pollution standard or an endangered species listing. It is not surprising, therefore, that many disputes about environmental law are really disputes about science. Science, however, does not always yield the information that environmental law needs or that interested parties want. Disputes over the status of the pika illustrate this predicament. The pika is a small mammal that lives in rock piles in very high elevations in the Rocky Mountains. Pikas were thought to be especially vulnerable to climate change because they live only at high elevations with chilly weather. But we have since learned that pikas may be more adaptable to a warming climate than scientists once believed. The federal government thus concluded in 2010 that the pika is not in danger of extinction within the meaning of the ESA. The ESA, like many other environmental laws, asks a purely scientific question: Is the pika in danger of going extinct? If it is, the pika gets listed and protected by the law. If the pika is not in danger of going extinct, it remains legally unprotected from any activities that would cause it harm. The ESA demands that science and science alone-answer the question of whether the pika is an endangered species eligible for the protection of the law. Only then, if the pika is found to be endangered, does the ESA broaden its view and incorporate other values, including economic ones, into decisions about how to rescue the species. Yet even that single inquiry ( Is the pika in danger of going extinct? ) illustrates many of the challenges that confront the application of science to environmental law. First, environmental law presumes there is an objectively true answer to the scientific question. Second, the science that informs environmental law is subject to uncertainty. Third, environmental law must confront the fact that scientific teaching is sometimes subject to unbelief. My argument is that the virtue of humility provides a needed framework for addressing each of these challenges. Christian teaching-particularly evangelical thinking-may seem like a strange place to turn to engage environmental law\u27s reliance on science. Yes, those at the forefront of the scientific revolution were Christian adherents who perceived science as a means of understanding more about the world that God created. But the Christian roots of modern science weakened over the course of several centuries. Evangelicals became wary of scientific claims that they regarded as contrary to biblical teaching, such as Darwin\u27s theory of evolution. There is a notable diversity of opinion among evangelicals with respect to the precise relationship between biblical teaching about creation and scientific teaching about evolution, but it remains true that evangelicals are more cautious in approaching evolutionary science than are other segments of the public