scholarly journals From Philosophy of Science to Philosophy of Literature (and Back) via Philosophy of Mind: Philip Kitcher’s Philosophical Pendulum

2013 ◽  
Vol 28 (2) ◽  
pp. 257-264 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bence Nanay
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Science ◽  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
Philosophy Of Literature

Causal Powers

2017 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Science ◽  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
Scientific Practice ◽  
Laws Of Nature ◽  
Causal Powers ◽  
Important Work ◽  
Space And Time ◽  
Metaphysics Of Mind

This collection brings together new and important work by both emerging scholars and those who helped shape the field on the nature of causal powers, and the connections between causal powers and other phenomena within metaphysics, philosophy of science, and philosophy of mind. Contributors discuss how one who takes causal powers to be in some sense irreducible should think about laws of nature, scientific practice, causation, modality, space and time, persistence, and the metaphysics of mind.

scholarly journals Is Science Eliminating Ordinary Talk?

1970 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 25-41
Author(s):  
Louis Caruana
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Science ◽  
Common Sense ◽  
Natural Science ◽  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
Science Philosophy ◽  
Actual Operation ◽  
Theories Of Meaning ◽  
Methodology Of Science ◽  
Broad Overview

Discussions dealing with natural science, philosophy and common sense are bound to draw on long-standing debates dealing with realism, methodology of science, philosophy of mind, metaphysics, epistemology, theories of meaning, and other topics. Instead of presenting a broad overview of these main trends, which will necessarily be superficial, I will do a kind of case study. The aim is to present just one particular debate which is of relevance to current research. The presentation is meant to give a taste of how these various long-standing debates are brought to bear on a specific issue. In this way, the very practice of engaging in a particular area of philosophy of science will serve as a platform from where the major areas can be seen in actual operation. The paper has four sections: the nature of ordinary talk; the ontological implications of this; the recently proposed account of the mental; an evaluation.

John King-Farlow and Roger A. Shiner (Eds.): New Essays in the Philosophy of Mind

Dialogue ◽  
1976 ◽  
Vol 15 (4) ◽  
pp. 679-685
Author(s):  
Myles Brand
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Science ◽  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
Philosophy Of Language ◽  
Action Theory ◽  
General Quality

It is difficult to understand why this volume is named New Essays in the Philosophy of Mind. Some of the essays are better classified as metaphysics, some as philosophy of science, and at least one as philosophy of language. But no matter, the name of the volume is unimportant: it is the contents that count. And the contents are very interesting. The general quality of the papers is high, higher than is often found in contemporary journals. The articles all share the methodological trait of being well-argued, and perhaps it is this trait more than anything else that unifies the volume. In what follows, I shall comment briefly on two articles on action theory, and then even more briefly on the remaining six papers.

Missing Elements: What Philosophers of Science Might Discover in Chemistry

2000 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrea Woody ◽  
Clark Glymour
Keyword(s):  
Quantum Theory ◽  
Philosophy Of Science ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Top Quark ◽  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
Ideal Gas ◽  
Contemporary Philosophy ◽  
Late Middle Ages ◽  
Analysis And Synthesis ◽  
Special Value

In the late middle ages, chemistry was the science and technology closest to philosophy, the material realization of the method of analysis and synthesis. No longer. Contemporary philosophy is concerned with many sciences—physics, psychology, biology, linguistics, economics—but chemistry is not among them. Why not? Every discipline has particular problems with some philosophical coloring. Those in quantum theory are famous; those in psychology seem endless; those in biology and economics seem more sparse and esoteric. If, for whatever reason, one’s concern is the conceptual or theoretical problems of a particular science, there is no substitute for that science, and chemistry is just one among others. Certain sciences naturally touch on substantive areas of traditional philosophical concern: quantum theory on metaphysics, for example, psychology on the philosophy of mind, and economics and statistics on theories of rationality. In these cases, there is a special interest in particular sciences because they may reform prior philosophical theories or recast philosophical issues or, conversely, because philosophy may inform these subjects in fundamental ways. That is not true, in any obvious way, of chemistry. So what good, then, what special value, does chemistry offer contemporary philosophy of science? Typically philosophical problems, even problems in philosophy of science, are not confined to a particular science. For general problems—problems about representation, inference, discovery, explanation, realism, intertheoretic and interdisciplinary relations, and so on—what is needed are scientific illustrations that go to the heart of the matter without requiring specialized technical knowledge of the reader. The science needed for most philosophy is familiar, not esoteric, right in the middle of things, mature and diverse enough to illustrate a variety of fundamental issues. Almost uniquely, chemistry fits the description. In philosophy of science, too often an effort gains in weight and seriousness merely because it requires mastery of an intricate and arcane subject, regardless of the philosophical interest of what it says. Yet, surely, there is something contrived, even phony, in illustrating a philosophical point with a discussion of the top quark if the point could be shown as well with a discussion of the ideal gas law.

Perceptual Learning beyond Philosophy of Mind

2019 ◽  
pp. 209-218
Author(s):  
Kevin Connolly
Keyword(s):  
Speech Perception ◽  
Philosophy Of Science ◽  
Perceptual Learning ◽  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
Natural Kind ◽  
Color Perception ◽  
Social Philosophy ◽  
Sensory Substitution ◽  
Multisensory Perception ◽  
Major Focus

The concluding chapter argues that perceptual learning has relevance for philosophy far beyond philosophy of mind—in epistemology, philosophy of science, and social philosophy, among other domains. The goal of this chapter is to extend one major focus of the book, which is to identify the scope of perceptual learning. Chapters 3 through 7 argued that perceptual learning occurs in all sorts of domains in the philosophy of mind, including natural kind recognition, sensory substitution, multisensory perception, speech perception, and color perception. This chapter extends that scope beyond philosophy of mind and offers some initial sketches of ways in which we can apply knowledge of perceptual learning to those domains.

scholarly journals The attitudes of psychiatrists to philosophy

1994 ◽  
Vol 18 (6) ◽  
pp. 343-345
Author(s):  
K.W.M. Fulford ◽  
G. Adshead
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Science ◽  
Royal College ◽  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
Conceptual Analysis ◽  
High Level

Questionnaires exploring the attitudes of psychiatrists to philosophy were distributed at two meetings of the Royal College of Psychiatrists. Out of a possible 240, 126 questionnaires were returned (53%). The results showed a surprisingly high level of interest in and support for philosophy. Over 50% of respondents indicated that they considered conceptual analysis, ethics, jurisprudence, the philosophy of science and the philosophy of mind to be practically important in psychiatry. Similarly, 89% believed that ethics, and 72% that other areas of philosophy, should be included in the MRCPsych syllabus. The significance of the study is reviewed briefly.

Understanding

Philosophy ◽  
2010 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Grimm ◽  
Michael Hannon
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Science ◽  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
Scientific Inquiry ◽  
Philosophy Of Language ◽  
Scientific Explanation ◽  
Central Issue ◽  
Scientific Theories ◽  
Central Concern ◽  
Science Understanding

Understanding is a kind of cognitive accomplishment, and the objects of understanding—from people, to languages, to scientific theories, to logical proofs—are strikingly varied. As this variety suggests, debates about the nature and value of understanding occur across philosophy. In the philosophy of science, understanding is typically taken to be one of the main goods at which scientific inquiry aims; it is therefore intimately related to issues concerning scientific explanation and to debates about what it is that makes scientific inquiry distinctive. In epistemology, the interest lies in characterizing what kind of cognitive accomplishment understanding is, exactly, and how (if at all) it differs from other cognitive accomplishments such as knowledge and wisdom. In the philosophy of language, a central concern is characterizing what is involved in understanding (or grasping) linguistic items like words, sentences, or languages as a whole; similar questions about what is involved in our understanding or grasp of concepts are crucial to the philosophy of mind. Debates in additional areas will be discussed in this article, but one overarching question is whether the sort of understanding we have of scientific theories, languages, people, and the like are similar in name alone or whether they share certain essential traits. For example, one common thought is that across all of these areas understanding involves the discernment of structure of some kind. It is also commonly thought that to achieve understanding this structure must not be discerned in just any old way, but that it must be “seen” or “grasped.” Just how to understand the metaphors of “seeing” and “grasping” has been a central issue in work on understanding across disciplines.

Philosophical Analysis; Referents of Names

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ruth Garrett Millikan
Keyword(s):  
Theory Of Mind ◽  
Philosophy Of Science ◽  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
Theory Change ◽  
Philosophical Analysis ◽  
Philosophical Methodology ◽  
Theoretical Concepts ◽  
Public Language ◽  
Arbitrary Collection

Replacing empirical concepts with unicepts has implications both for philosophical methodology and for some central matters in philosophy of science, plilosophy of language, and philosophy of mind. This chapter gives illustrations that concern the fixing of referents of naming words in a public language, the method of philosophical analysis, referential constancy of names for theoretical objects over theory change, the distinction between so-called “observational concepts” and “theoretical concepts,” and last, so-called “theory of mind.” This is a somewhat arbitrary collection of apparent implications of embracing unicepts, but the discussions of the “observation-theory” distinction and of “theory of mind” will be needed when discussing both perception and the semantics-pragmatics distinction.

Lewis, David Kellogg (1941–2001)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter van Inwagen
Keyword(s):  
Decision Theory ◽  
Philosophy Of Science ◽  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
Philosophy Of Language ◽  
David Lewis ◽  
Social Philosophy ◽  
Philosophical Logic ◽  
Rational Decision

David Lewis has made extremely important and influential contributions to many topics in metaphysics, philosophical logic, the philosophy of science, the philosophy of mind, the philosophy of language, the philosophy of probability, rational decision theory, and ethics and social philosophy. His work on counterfactuals and the philosophy of modality has been especially influential.

A pragmatic critique of three kinds of religious naturalism

2005 ◽  
Vol 17 (3) ◽  
pp. 177-218 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sami Pihlström
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Science ◽  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
Philosophy Of Religion ◽  
Chicago School ◽  
Science And Religion ◽  
Religious Experiences ◽  
Ontological Commitments ◽  
Liberal Theology ◽  
The Past ◽  
Ways Of Thinking

AbstractThis paper takes a critical look at a number of recent attempts to reconcile religious and scientifi c ways of thinking. Three basic programs of what I call "religious naturalism" are discussed: (1) attempts to synthesize science and religion by defending a combination of (Christian) theism and naturalism by means of the concept of emergence; (2) "demythologized" interpretations of religious statements, allegedly rendering them compatible with science (for example, in John Dewey's pragmatic naturalism or in the religious naturalism inherited from the Chicago School of liberal theology); and (3) a form of naturalism analogous to Arthur Fine's "natural ontological attitude" (NOA), debated in the philosophy of science over the past two decades. I suggest that (1) amounts to a nonreductively naturalist metaphysics, whereas (2) is a nonmetaphysical and (3) a postmetaphysical program in the philosophy of religion. It is argued, among other things, that while the concept of emergence has become increasingly relevant in the philosophy of mind and science, its place in the philosophy of religion remains obscure. Similarly, nonmetaphysical discussions of religious experiences or "the religious" à la Dewey and his followers are difficult to combine with genuinely religious views. Further, it is hard to see how postmetaphysical naturalism (NOA) could be part of a philosophically responsible program at all, because of its diffi culties in accounting for the normativity of ontological commitments. It is proposed that, instead of elaborating on these pseudo-solutions, the problem of the relation between science and religion should be subordinated to a pragmatist re-evaluation.

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