Download or read book Naturalized Epistemology and Philosophy of Science written by Chienkuo Mi and published by Rodopi. This book was released on 2007 with total page 198 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Much has happened in the field of contemporary epistemology since Quine's Epistemology Naturalized was published in 1969. Even before Ronald Giere published his article Philosophy of Science Naturalized, naturalized philosophy of science had been influenced by the so-called historical approach. Kuhm, Lakatos, Feyerabend and Laudan all contributed importantly to this trend. In this light it has emerged, without a doubt, that philosophy of science is closely related to epistemology. This volume explores some of the relevant relations and will be of interest to epistemologist and philosophers of science.

Download or read book Feminism and Philosophy of Science written by Elizabeth Potter and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2006-04-18 with total page 201 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reflecting upon the recent growth of interest in feminist ideas of philosophy of science, this book traces the development of the subject within the confines of feminist philosophy. It is designed to introduce the newcomer to the main ideas that form the subject area with a view to equipping students with all the major arguments and standpoints required to understand this burgeoning area of study. Arranged thematically, the book looks at the spectrum of views that have arisen in the debate. It is broadly arranged into sections dealing with concepts such as the notion of value free-science, values, objectivity, point of view and relativism, but also details the many subsidiary ideas that have sprung from these topics.

Download or read book Feminist Interpretations of W V Quine written by Jack Nelson and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 2010-11-01 with total page 454 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As one of the preeminent philosophers of the twentieth century, W. V. Quine (1908&–2000) made groundbreaking contributions to the philosophy of science, mathematical logic, and the philosophy of language. This collection of essays examines Quine's views, particularly his holism and naturalism, for their value (and their limitations) to feminist theorizing today. Some contributors to this volume see Quine as severely challenging basic tenets of the logico-empiricist tradition in the philosophy of science&—the analytic/synthetic distinction, verificationism, foundationalism&—and accept various of his positions as potential resources for feminist critique. Other contributors regard Quine as an unrepentant empiricist and, unlike feminists who seek to use or extend his arguments, they interpret his positions as far less radical and more problematic. In particular, critics and advocates of Quine's arguments that the philosophy of science should be &"naturalized&"&—understood and pursued as an enterprise continuous with the sciences proper&—disagree deeply about whether such a naturalized philosophy is &"philosophy enough.&" Central issues at stake in these disagreements reflect current questions of special interest to feminists and also bridge the analytic and postmodern traditions. They include questions about whether and how the philosophy of science, as a form of practice, is or can be normative as well as questions concerning the implications of Quine's philosophy of language for the transparency and stability of meaning. In representing feminist philosophy centrally engaged with the analytic tradition, this volume is important not only for what it contributes to the understanding of Quine and naturalized epistemology but also for what it accomplishes in working against restrictive conceptions of the place of feminism within the discipline. Aside from the editors, the contributors are Kathryn Pyne Addelson, Louise M. Antony, Richmond Campbell, Lorraine Code, Jane Duran, Maureen Linker, Phyllis Rooney, and Paul A. Roth.

Download or read book Feminism Science and the Philosophy of Science written by J. Nelson and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 505 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Feminism, Science, and the Philosophy of Science brings together original essays by both feminist and mainstream philosophers of science that examine issues at the intersections of feminism, science, and the philosophy of science. Contributors explore parallels and tensions between feminist approaches to science and other approaches in the philosophy of science and more general science studies. In so doing, they explore notions at the heart of the philosophy of science, including the nature of objectivity, truth, evidence, cognitive agency, scientific method, and the relationship between science and values.

Download or read book Ecological Thinking written by Lorraine Code and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2006-04-27 with total page 348 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How could ecological thinking animate an epistemology capable of addressing feminist, multicultural, and other post-colonial concerns? Starting from an epistemological approach implicit in Rachel Carson's scientific practice, Lorraine Code elaborates the creative, restructuring resources of ecology for a theory of knowledge. She critiques the instrumental rationality, abstract individualism, and exploitation of people and places that western epistemologies of mastery have legitimated, to propose a politics of epistemic location, sensitive to the interplay of particularity and diversity, and focused on responsible epistemic practice. Drawing on ecological theory and practice, on naturalized epistemology, and on feminist and post-colonial theories, Code analyzes extended examples from developmental psychology, and from two "natural" institutions of knowledge production--medicine and law. These institutions lend themselves well to a reconfigured naturalism. They are, in practice, empirically-scientifically informed, specifically situated, and locally interpretive. With human subjects as their "objects" of knowledge, they invoke the responsibility requirements central to Code's larger project. This book discusses a wide range of literature in philosophy, social science, and ethico-political thought. Highly innovative, it will generate productive conversations in feminist theory, and in the ethics and politics of knowledge more broadly conceived.

Download or read book The Cambridge Companion to Feminism in Philosophy written by Miranda Fricker and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2000-01-27 with total page 302 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The thirteen specially-commissioned essays in this volume are written by philosophers at the forefront of feminist scholarship, and are designed to provide an accessible and stimulating guide to a philosophical literature that has seen massive expansion in recent years. Ranging from history of philosophy through metaphysics to philosophy of science, they encompass all the core subject areas commonly taught in anglophone undergraduate and graduate philosophy courses, offering both an overview of and a contribution to the relevant debates. Together they testify to the intellectual value of feminism as a radicalizing energy internal to philosophical inquiry. This volume will be essential reading for any student or teacher of philosophy who is curious about the place of feminism in their subject.

Download or read book Science Studies as Naturalized Philosophy written by Finn Collin and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2010-10-22 with total page 255 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book approaches its subject matter in a way that combines a strong analytical and critical perspective with a historical and sociological framework for the understanding of the emergence of Science Studies. This is a novelty, since extant literature on this topic tends either to narrate the history of the field, with little criticism, or to criticize Science Studies from a philosophical platform but with little interest in its historical and social context. The book provides a critical review of the most prominent figures in Science Studies (also known as Science and Technology Studies) and traces the historical roots of the discipline back to developments emerging after World War II. It also presents it as an heir to a long trend in Western thought towards the naturalization of philosophy, where a priori modes of thought are replaced by empirical ones. Finally, it points to ways for Science Studies to proceed in the future.

Download or read book Social Mindscapes written by Eviatar Zerubavel and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 1999-10-15 with total page 180 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why do we eat sardines, but never goldfish; ducks, but never parrots? Why does adding cheese make a hamburger a cheeseburger whereas adding ketchup does not make it a ketchupburger? By the same token, how do we determine which things said at a meeting should be included in the minutes and which ought to be considered off the record and officially disregarded? In this wide-ranging and provocative book, Eviatar Zerubavel argues that cognitive science cannot answer these questions, since it addresses cognition on only two levels: the individual and the universal. To fill the gap between the Romantic vision of the solitary thinker whose thoughts are the product of unique experience, and the cognitive-psychological view, which revolves around the search for the universal foundations of human cognition, Zerubavel charts an expansive social realm of mind--a domain that focuses on the conventional, normative aspects of the way we think. With witty anecdote and revealing analogy, Zerubavel illuminates the social foundation of mental actions such as perceiving, attending, classifying, remembering, assigning meaning, and reckoning the time. What takes place inside our heads, he reminds us, is deeply affected by our social environments, which are typically groups that are larger than the individual yet considerably smaller than the human race. Thus, we develop a nonuniversal software for thinking as Americans or Chinese, lawyers or teachers, Catholics or Jews, Baby Boomers or Gen-Xers. Zerubavel explores the fascinating ways in which thought communities carve up and classify reality, assign meanings, and perceive things, defamiliarizing in the process many taken-for-granted assumptions.

Download or read book Theory and Reality written by Peter Godfrey-Smith and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2009-12-11 with total page 287 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How does science work? Does it tell us what the world is "really" like? What makes it different from other ways of understanding the universe? In Theory and Reality, Peter Godfrey-Smith addresses these questions by taking the reader on a grand tour of one hundred years of debate about science. The result is a completely accessible introduction to the main themes of the philosophy of science. Intended for undergraduates and general readers with no prior background in philosophy, Theory and Reality covers logical positivism; the problems of induction and confirmation; Karl Popper's theory of science; Thomas Kuhn and "scientific revolutions"; the views of Imre Lakatos, Larry Laudan, and Paul Feyerabend; and challenges to the field from sociology of science, feminism, and science studies. The book then looks in more detail at some specific problems and theories, including scientific realism, the theory-ladeness of observation, scientific explanation, and Bayesianism. Finally, Godfrey-Smith defends a form of philosophical naturalism as the best way to solve the main problems in the field. Throughout the text he points out connections between philosophical debates and wider discussions about science in recent decades, such as the infamous "science wars." Examples and asides engage the beginning student; a glossary of terms explains key concepts; and suggestions for further reading are included at the end of each chapter. However, this is a textbook that doesn't feel like a textbook because it captures the historical drama of changes in how science has been conceived over the last one hundred years. Like no other text in this field, Theory and Reality combines a survey of recent history of the philosophy of science with current key debates in language that any beginning scholar or critical reader can follow.

Download or read book How Scientists Explain Disease written by Paul Thagard and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2018-06-05 with total page 285 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How do scientists develop new explanations of disease? How do those explanations become accepted as true? And how does medical diagnosis change when physicians are confronted with new scientific evidence? These are some of the questions that Paul Thagard pursues in this pathbreaking book that develops a new, integrative approach to the study of science. Ranging through the history of medicine, from the Hippocratic theory of humors to modern explanations of Mad Cow Disease and chronic fatigue syndrome, Thagard analyzes the development and acceptance of scientific ideas. At the heart of the book is a case study of the recent dramatic shift in medical understanding of peptic ulcers, most of which are now believed to be caused by infection by the bacterium Helicobacter pylori. When this explanation was first proposed in 1983, it was greeted with intense skepticism by most medical experts, but it became widely accepted over the next decade. Thagard discusses the psychological processes of discovery and acceptance, the physical processes involving instruments and experiments, and the social processes of collaboration, communication, and consensus that brought about this transformation in medical knowledge. How Scientists Explain Disease challenges both traditional philosophy of science, which has viewed science as largely a matter of logic, and contemporary science studies that view science as largely a matter of power. Drawing on theories of distributed computing and artificial intelligence, Paul Thagard develops new models that make sense of scientific change as a complex system of cognitive, social, and physical interactions. This is a book that will appeal to all readers with an interest in the development of science and medicine. It combines an engaging style, significant research, and a powerfully original argument.

Download or read book The Fate of Knowledge written by Helen E. Longino and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2018-06-05 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Helen Longino seeks to break the current deadlock in the ongoing wars between philosophers of science and sociologists of science--academic battles founded on disagreement about the role of social forces in constructing scientific knowledge. While many philosophers of science downplay social forces, claiming that scientific knowledge is best considered as a product of cognitive processes, sociologists tend to argue that numerous noncognitive factors influence what scientists learn, how they package it, and how readily it is accepted. Underlying this disagreement, however, is a common assumption that social forces are a source of bias and irrationality. Longino challenges this assumption, arguing that social interaction actually assists us in securing firm, rationally based knowledge. This important insight allows her to develop a durable and novel account of scientific knowledge that integrates the social and cognitive. Longino begins with a detailed discussion of a wide range of contemporary thinkers who write on scientific knowledge, clarifying the philosophical points at issue. She then critically analyzes the dichotomous understanding of the rational and the social that characterizes both sides of the science studies stalemate and the social account that she sees as necessary for an epistemology of science that includes the full spectrum of cognitive processes. Throughout, her account is responsive both to the normative uses of the term knowledge and to the social conditions in which scientific knowledge is produced. Building on ideas first advanced in her influential book Science as Social Knowledge, Longino brings her account into dialogue with current work in social epistemology and science studies and shows how her critical social approach can help solve a variety of stubborn problems. While the book focuses on epistemological concerns related to the sociality of inquiry, Longino also takes up its implications for scientific pluralism. The social approach, she concludes, best allows us to retain a meaningful concept of knowledge in the face of theoretical plurality and uncertainty.

Download or read book Theory Construction and Selection in Modern Physics written by James T. Cushing and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1990 with total page 436 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Analyses what criteria should determine how scientific theories are selected and justified.

Download or read book The Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Social Science written by Lee McIntyre and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2016-12-08 with total page 475 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 37 Why Is There No Philosophy of Political Science?

Download or read book The Philosophy of Biology written by Kostas Kampourakis and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2013-06-18 with total page 765 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book brings together for the first time philosophers of biology to write about some of the most central concepts and issues in their field from the perspective of biology education. The chapters of the book cover a variety of topics ranging from traditional ones, such as biological explanation, biology and religion or biology and ethics, to contemporary ones, such as genomics, systems biology or evolutionary developmental biology. Each of the 30 chapters covers the respective philosophical literature in detail and makes specific suggestions for biology education. The aim of this book is to inform biology educators, undergraduate and graduate students in biology and related fields, students in teacher training programs, and curriculum developers about the current state of discussion on the major topics in the philosophy of biology and its implications for teaching biology. In addition, the book can be valuable to philosophers of biology as an introductory text in undergraduate and graduate courses.

Download or read book Pragmatics and the Flexibility of Word Meaning written by Eniko Nemeth and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2022-02-22 with total page 341 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Recently, the investigation of word meaning in utterances has connected two different fields: lexical semantics and pragmatics. A new linguistic discipline, namely lexical pragmatics, is emerging. The eleven papers of the present book constitute a unit in the sense that they have a common aim: to explore the interaction between lexical semantics and pragmatics. The authors examine phenomena such as productive sense extension, regular polysemy, multifunctionality, implicit arguments and predicates, and non-typical anaphoric pronouns, on the basis of linguistic data, for instance, from English, Norwegian, Russian, and Hungarian, as well as using a great variety of frameworks (optimality framework, two-level semantics, the theory of generative lexicon, cognitive grammar, Gricean theory, and relevance theory.

Download or read book Borrowed Knowledge written by Stephen H. Kellert and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2009-05-15 with total page 303 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What happens to scientific knowledge when researchers outside the natural sciences bring elements of the latest trend across disciplinary boundaries for their own purposes? Researchers in fields from anthropology to family therapy and traffic planning employ the concepts, methods, and results of chaos theory to harness the disciplinary prestige of the natural sciences, to motivate methodological change or conceptual reorganization within their home discipline, and to justify public policies and aesthetic judgments. Using the recent explosion in the use (and abuse) of chaos theory, Borrowed Knowledge and the Challenge of Learning across Disciplines examines the relationship between science and other disciplines as well as the place of scientific knowledge within our broader culture. Stephen H. Kellert’s detailed investigation of the myriad uses of chaos theory reveals serious problems that can arise in the interchange between science and other knowledge-making pursuits, as well as opportunities for constructive interchange. By engaging with recent debates about interdisciplinary research, Kellert contributes a theoretical vocabulary and a set of critical frameworks for the rigorous examination of borrowing.

Download or read book Cognitive Semantics and Scientific Knowledge written by András Kertész and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 2004-04-29 with total page 271 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The book focuses on the question of how and to what extent cognitive semantic approaches can contribute to the new field of the cognitive science of science. The argumentation is based on a series of instructive case studies which are intended to test the prospects and limits of the metascientific application of both holistic and modular cognitive semantics. The case studies show that, while cognitive semantic research is able to solve problems which have traditionally been the domain of the philosophy of science, it also encounters serious limits. The prospects and the limits thus revealed suggest new research topics which in future can be tackled by cognitive semantic approaches to the cognitive science of science.