Philosophy of biology is often said to have emerged in the last third of the twentieth century. Prior to this time, it has been alleged that the only authors who engaged philosophically with the life ...sciences were either logical empiricists who sought to impose the explanatory ideals of the physical sciences onto biology, or vitalists who invoked mystical agencies in an attempt to ward off the threat of physicochemical reduction. These schools paid little attention to actual biological science, and as a result philosophy of biology languished in a state of futility for much of the twentieth century. The situation, we are told, only began to change in the late 1960s and early 1970s, when a new generation of researchers began to focus on problems internal to biology, leading to the consolidation of the discipline. In this paper we challenge this widely accepted narrative of the history of philosophy of biology. We do so by arguing that the most important tradition within early twentieth-century philosophy of biology was neither logical empiricism nor vitalism, but the organicist movement that flourished between the First and Second World Wars. We show that the organicist corpus is thematically and methodologically continuous with the contemporary literature in order to discredit the view that early work in the philosophy of biology was unproductive, and we emphasize the desirability of integrating the historical and contemporary conversations into a single, unified discourse.
This intriguing and ground-breaking book is the first in-depth study of the development of philosophy of science in the United States during the Cold War. It documents the political vitality of ...logical empiricism and Otto Neurath's Unity of Science Movement when these projects emigrated to the US in the 1930s and follows their de-politicization by a convergence of intellectual, cultural and political forces in the 1950s. Students of logical empiricism and the Vienna Circle treat these as strictly intellectual non-political projects. In fact, the refugee philosophers of science were highly active politically and debated questions about values inside and outside science, as a result of which their philosophy of science was scrutinized politically both from within and without the profession, by such institutions as J. Edgar Hoover's FBI. It will prove absorbing reading to philosophers and historians of science, intellectual historians, and scholars of Cold War studies.
Is it Different? Ronsdal, Kaia S
Diaconia,
09/2021, Letnik:
12, Številka:
1
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Is diaconia research different from other research? Does it have implications that the research takes place within the field of diaconia? What are the methodological reflections of the concept of ...diaconia regarding research? The practice of diaconia claims to be something particular, and, furthermore, diaconal action claims to need to be nurtured by the confession of God. The discussion in this article has as its starting point that these claims can have implications for how researchers of diaconia approach the fields of these practices and actions. This article explores the topic using the motion picture Kitchen Stories (2003) as both starting point and case for discussion. It discusses and reflects on various approaches to the narrative. Whether the title question concerning difference is answerable or not, and possibly what the answers may be, is not for his article to conclude. The aim is not to find distinctive marks of diaconia in methodology and research ethics, but rather to explore ways of centering everyday life in this research. This is illustrated and emphasized in the last part of the article, which points out transgressive moments in the narrative of the movie that may be of theological significance. If diaconia research is indeed different, this approach is one means of exploring what this may mean. Keywords: empirical diaconia research, epistemology, methodology, embodiedness, transgressive human encounter, everyday life
The Ninth Triannual International Congress of the German Gesellschaft für Analytische Philosophie (Society for Analytic Philosophy, GAP) was held at Osnabrück University at September 14–17, 2015. The ...title of the GAP.9 congress— »Philosophy between Armchair and Lab«—reflects our conviction that any kind of »pure« philosophy, so detached from the empirical sciences that it cannot give its conceptual analyses a fundamentum in re, would be no more desirable than the opposite extreme, the attempt to do science in a »philosophy-free« way, without reflecting on its conceptual foundations. Rather, philosophers and empirical scientists alike should strive for a fruitful combination of both aspects.
Radical empiricists at the turn of the twentieth century described organisms as experiencing the relations they maintain with their surroundings prior to any analytic separation from their ...environment. They notably avoided separating perception of the material environment from social life. This perspective on perceptual experience was to prove the inspiration for Gibson’s ecological approach to perceptual psychology. Gibson provided a theory of how the direct perception of the organism-environment relation is possible. Central to his account was the notion of a medium for direct perception. However Gibson provided two mutually inconsistent accounts of the medium leading to problems for his radical empiricism. We develop an account of the medium that does justice to ecological psychology’s radical empiricist roots. To complement this account of the medium we detail a usage-based account of information. Together they allow us to propose a novel radical empiricist view of direct perception. We then return to the notion of medium and expand it to include sociomaterial practices. We show how direct perception happens in the midst of social life, and is made possible by an active achieving and maintaining of a pragmatic relation with the environment.
Despite a large array of work broadly concerned with the cultures of news production, studies rarely attempt to tackle journalism culture and its dimensional structure at the conceptual level. The ...purpose of this paper is, therefore, to propose a theoretical foundation on the basis of which systematic and comparative research of journalism cultures is feasible and meaningful. By using a deductive and etic approach, the concept of journalism culture is deconstructed in terms of its constituents and principal dimensions. Based on a review of the relevant literature, the article proposes a conceptualization of journalism culture that consists of 3 essential constituents (institutional roles, epistemologies, and ethical ideologies), further divided into 7 principal dimensions: interventionism, power distance, market orientation, objectivism, empiricism, relativism, and idealism.
Résumé
Déconstruire la culture journalistique : Vers une théorie universelle
Malgré une grande quantité de travaux s’intéressant sommairement aux cultures de production de nouvelles, les études essaient rarement de traiter sur le plan conceptuel la culture journalistique et sa structure dimensionnelle. Le but de cet article est donc de proposer un fondement théorique sur la base duquel une recherche systématique et comparative des cultures journalistiques soit possible et significative. Au moyen d’une approche déductive et étique, le concept de culture journalistique est déconstruit quant à ses éléments constitutifs et ses principales dimensions. S’appuyant sur une revue de la littérature pertinente, l’article propose une conceptualisation de la culture journalistique consistant en trois éléments constitutifs essentiels (rôles institutionnels, épistémologies et idéologiques éthiques), eux‐mêmes divisés plus avant en sept dimensions principales : interventionnisme, distance hiérarchique, orientation vers le marché, objectivisme, empirisme, relativisme et idéalisme.
Die Dekonstruktion der Journalismuskultur: eine Universaltheorie
Trotz umfangreicher Arbeiten zu Kulturen der Nachrichtenproduktion setzen sich nur wenige mit der Kultur des Journalismus und dessen dimensionaler Struktur auf einer konzeptuellen Ebene auseinander. Der Zweck dieses Artikels besteht deshalb darin, eine theoretische Grundlage zu erarbeiten, auf deren Basis systematische und vergleichende Forschung zu Journalismuskulturen plausibel und sinnvoll ist. Indem ein deduktiver und ethischer Ansatz gewählt wird, wird das Konzept der Journalismuskultur bezüglich seiner Bestandteile und Hauptdimensionen dekonstruiert. Auf Basis einer Analyse der relevanten Literatur, schlägt der Artikel eine Konzeptualisierung von Journalismuskultur vor, die auf drei grundlegenden Bestandteilen (institutionelle Rollen, Erkenntnistheorie und ethische Ideologien) beruht und darüber hinaus in 7 Hauptdimensionen unterteilt wird: Interventionismus, Machtdistanz, Marktorientierung, Objektivismus, Empirizismus, Relativismus und Idealismus.
Resumen
Deconstruyendo la Cultura Periodística: Hacia una Teoría Universal
A pesar de la existencia de una extensa colección de trabajos focalizados en general en las culturas de la producción de noticias, raras veces los estudios intentan abordan la cultura periodística y su dimensión estructural a nivel conceptual. El propósito de este manuscrito es, entonces, proponer una fundación a nivel teórico sobre la base de que la investigación sistemática y comparativa de la cultura periodística es factible y significativa. Usando un enfoque deductivo y objetivo, el concepto de la cultura periodística es deconstruido en términos de sus componentes y dimensiones principales. Basado en una revisión de literatura relevante, este artículo propone una conceptualización de la cultura periodística que consiste en 3 componentes esenciales (roles institucionales, epistemologías, e ideologías éticas), divididos en 7 dimensiones principales: intervencionismo, distancia de poder, orientación de mercado, objetividad, empirismo, relativismo, e idealismo.
ZhaiYao
Yo yak
Abstract
Accounts of scientific explanation disagree about what’s required for a cause, law, or other fact to be a reason why an event occurs. In short, they disagree about the conditions for ...explanatory relevance. Nonetheless, most accounts presuppose that claims about explanatory relevance play a descriptive role in tracking reality. By rejecting the need for this descriptivist assumption, I develop an expressivist account of explanatory relevance and explanation: to judge that an answer is explanatory is to express an attitude of
being for being satisfied by that answer
. I show how expressivism vindicates ordinary scientific discourse about explanation, including claims about the objectivity and mind-independence of explanations. By avoiding commitment to ontic relevance relations, I rehabilitate an irrealist conception of explanation.
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