|
Transcendental Realism (Evola)
Initially developed by Roy Bhaskar in his book ''A Realist Theory of Science'' (1975), transcendental realism is a philosophy of science that was initially developed as an argument against epistemic realism of positivism and hermeneutics. The position is based on Bhaskar's transcendental arguments for certain ontological and epistemological positions based on what reality must be like in order for scientific knowledge to be possible. The overview of transcendental realism that follows is largely based on Andrew Sayer's ''Realism and Social Science''. Transitive and intransitive domains A ''Realist Theory of Science'' starts with a proposed paradox: how it is that people create knowledge as a product of social activities and at the same time knowledge is 'of' things that are not produced by people at all. The former is inspired by Kuhnian arguments of how scientific communities develop knowledge and asserts all observation is theory-laden based on previously acquired concepts. A ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Transcendental Realism (Schelling)
"''Naturphilosophie''" (German for "nature-philosophy") is a term used in English-language philosophy to identify a current in the philosophy, philosophical tradition of German idealism, as applied to the study of nature in the earlier 19th century. German speakers use the clearer term "''Romantische Naturphilosophie''", the philosophy of nature developed at the time of the founding of German Romanticism. It is particularly associated with the philosophical work of Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph SchellingFrederick C. Beiser(2002), ''German Idealism: The Struggle Against Subjectivism 1781–1801'', Harvard university Press, p. 506. and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel—though it has some clear precursors also. More particularly it is identified with some of the initial works of Schelling during the period 1797–9, in reaction to the views of Johann Gottlieb Fichte, and subsequent developments from Schelling's position. Always controversial, some of Schelling's ideas in this direction are ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Epistemology
Epistemology is the branch of philosophy that examines the nature, origin, and limits of knowledge. Also called "the theory of knowledge", it explores different types of knowledge, such as propositional knowledge about facts, practical knowledge in the form of skills, and knowledge by acquaintance as a familiarity through experience. Epistemologists study the concepts of belief, truth, and justification to understand the nature of knowledge. To discover how knowledge arises, they investigate sources of justification, such as perception, introspection, memory, reason, and testimony. The school of skepticism questions the human ability to attain knowledge while fallibilism says that knowledge is never certain. Empiricists hold that all knowledge comes from sense experience, whereas rationalists believe that some knowledge does not depend on it. Coherentists argue that a belief is justified if it coheres with other beliefs. Foundationalists, by contrast, maintain th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Critical Naturalism
Ram Roy Bhaskar (; 15 May 1944 – 19 November 2014) was an English philosopher of science who is best known as the initiator of the philosophical movement of critical realism (CR). Bhaskar argued that the task of science is "the production of the knowledge of those enduring and continually active mechanisms of nature that produce the phenomena of the world", rather than the discovery of quantitative laws, and that experimental science makes sense only if such mechanisms exist and operate outside the lab as well as inside it. Roy Bhaskar is certainly the most prominent advocate for "critical realism," but he did not initiate either the term or the concept. The term was used earlier by Donald Campbell (1974/1988, p. 432), and the concept of combining ontological realism and epistemological constructivism goes back at least to Herbert Blumer (1969). Bhaskar went on to apply that realism about mechanisms and causal powers to the philosophy of social science, and he also elabo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Humeanism
Humeanism refers to the philosophy of David Hume and to the tradition of thought inspired by him. Hume was an influential eighteenth century Scottish philosopher well known for his empirical approach, which he applied to various fields in philosophy. In the philosophy of science, he is notable for developing the ''regularity theory of causation'', which in its strongest form states that causation is nothing but constant conjunction of certain types of events without any underlying forces responsible for this regularity of conjunction. This is closely connected to his metaphysical thesis that there are ''no necessary connections between distinct entities''. The Humean theory of action defines actions as ''bodily behavior caused by mental states and processes'' without the need to refer to an agent responsible for this. The slogan of Hume's theory of practical reason is that "reason is...the slave of the passions". It restricts the sphere of practical reason to ''instrumental rational ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Reductionism
Reductionism is any of several related philosophical ideas regarding the associations between phenomena which can be described in terms of simpler or more fundamental phenomena. It is also described as an intellectual and philosophical position that interprets a complex system as the sum of its parts. Reductionism tends to focus on the small, predictable details of a system and is often associated with various philosophies like emergence, materialism, and determinism. Definitions ''The Oxford Companion to Philosophy'' suggests that reductionism is "one of the most used and abused terms in the philosophical lexicon" and suggests a three-part division: # Ontological reductionism: a belief that the whole of reality consists of a minimal number of parts. # Methodological reductionism: the scientific attempt to provide an explanation in terms of ever-smaller entities. # Theory reductionism: the suggestion that a newer theory does not replace or absorb an older one, but reduces it ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Philosophical Realism
Philosophical realismusually not treated as a position of its own but as a stance towards other subject mattersis the view that a certain kind of thing (ranging widely from abstract objects like numbers to moral statements to the physical world itself) has ''mind-independent existence'', i.e. that it exists even in the absence of any mind perceiving it or that its existence is not just a mere appearance in the eye of the beholder. This includes a number of positions within epistemology and metaphysics which express that a given thing instead exists independently of knowledge, thought, or understanding. This can apply to items such as the physical world, the past and future, other minds, and the self, though may also apply less directly to things such as universals, mathematical truths, moral truths, and thought itself. However, realism may also include various positions which instead reject metaphysical treatments of reality altogether. Realism can also be a view about the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Thomas Kuhn
Thomas Samuel Kuhn (; July 18, 1922 – June 17, 1996) was an American History and philosophy of science, historian and philosopher of science whose 1962 book ''The Structure of Scientific Revolutions'' was influential in both academic and popular circles, introducing the term ''paradigm shift'', which has since become an English-language idiom. Kuhn made several claims concerning the progress of science, scientific knowledge: that scientific fields undergo periodic "paradigm shifts" rather than solely progressing in a linear and continuous way, and that these paradigm shifts open up new approaches to understanding what scientists would never have considered valid before; and that the notion of scientific truth, at any given moment, cannot be established solely by Objectivity (philosophy), objective criteria but is defined by a consensus of a scientific community. Competing paradigms are frequently Commensurability (philosophy of science), incommensurable; that is, there is ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Andrew Sayer
(R.) Andrew Sayer (born 1949) is Emeritus Professor of Social Theory and Political Economy at Lancaster University, UK. He is known for significant contributions to methodology and theory in the social sciences. Education Andrew Sayer studied a BA (University of London, external) in Geography at Cambridgeshire College of Arts and Technology (now Anglia Ruskin University) in the late 1960s, and then did an MA and D.Phil. in Urban and Regional Studies at Sussex University in the early 1970s. He was lecturer in the School of Social Sciences at Sussex until he moved to a lectureship at Lancaster University in 1993. Although affiliated with sociology, he has affinities with other disciplines, particularly philosophy, human geography, urban and regional studies and political economy, and defines himself as 'post-disciplinary'.Pratt, A. 2004. Andrew Sayer. In Hubbard P, Kichin R and G Valentine. (eds.) Key thinkers on space and place. London: Sage. Scholarship Sayer's early work was on ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ontology (philosophy)
Ontology is the philosophical study of being. It is traditionally understood as the subdiscipline of metaphysics focused on the most general features of reality. As one of the most fundamental concepts, being encompasses all of reality and every entity within it. To articulate the basic structure of being, ontology examines the commonalities among all things and investigates their classification into basic types, such as the categories of particulars and universals. Particulars are unique, non-repeatable entities, such as the person Socrates, whereas universals are general, repeatable entities, like the color ''green''. Another distinction exists between concrete objects existing in space and time, such as a tree, and abstract objects existing outside space and time, like the number 7. Systems of categories aim to provide a comprehensive inventory of reality by employing categories such as substance, property, relation, state of affairs, and event. Ontologists disagree re ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Transcendental Realism (Schopenhauer)
Philosophical pessimism is a philosophical school that is critical of existence, emphasizing the inherent suffering and futility of life. This perspective can be traced back to various religious traditions and philosophical writings throughout history. Pessimism, in this context, is not merely a negative psychological outlook, but a philosophical stance that questions the fundamental value or worth of existence. Notable early expressions of pessimistic thought can be found in the works of ancient philosophers such as Hegesias of Cyrene, who lived in Greece during the 3rd century BCE and was known for his teachings on the benefits of suicide. In the Eastern philosophical tradition, the Indian texts of Buddhism, particularly the Four Noble Truths, which acknowledge the existence of suffering ( ''duḥkha'') as a fundamental aspect of life, also reflect a pessimistic worldview. These early expressions laid the groundwork for more systematic and articulated forms of pessimism that woul ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Transcendental Arguments
A transcendental argument is a kind of deductive argument that appeals to the necessary conditions that make experience and knowledge possible.Transcendental-arguments and Scepticism; Answering the Question of Justification (Clarendon Press: Oxford, 2000), pp 3-6.Strawson, P., Skepticism and Naturalism: Some Varieties, (New York: Columbia University Press, 1985) Premise-10. Transcendental arguments may have additional standards of justification which are more demanding than those of traditional deductive arguments. The philosopher Immanuel Kant gave transcendental arguments both their name and their notoriety. The arguments Typically, a transcendental argument starts from some proposition, and then makes the case that its truth or falsehood contradicts the necessary conditions for it to be possible to know, think or argue about it. So-called ''progressive'' transcendental arguments begin with an apparently indubitable and universally accepted statement about people's experien ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hermeneutics
Hermeneutics () is the theory and methodology of interpretation, especially the interpretation of biblical texts, wisdom literature, and philosophical texts. As necessary, hermeneutics may include the art of understanding and communication. Modern hermeneutics includes both verbal and non-verbal communication,''The Routledge Companion to Philosophy in Organization Studies'', Routledge, 2015p. 113Joann McNamara, ''From Dance to Text and Back to Dance: A Hermeneutics of Dance Interpretive Discourse'', PhD thesis, Texas Woman's University, 1994. as well as semiotics, presuppositions, and pre-understandings. Hermeneutics has been broadly applied in the humanities, especially in law, history and theology. Hermeneutics was initially applied to the interpretation, or exegesis, of scripture, and has been later broadened to questions of general interpretation. p. 2 The terms ''hermeneutics'' and ''exegesis'' are sometimes used interchangeably. Hermeneutics is a wider discipline wh ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
