Search results for "empiricism"
showing 10 items of 20 documents
Is homoploid hybrid speciation that rare? An empiricist’s view
2017
Is homoploid hybrid speciation that rare? An empiricist’s view
Empiricism and Relationism Intertwined: Hume and Einstein’s Special Theory of Relativity
2016
Einstein acknowledged that his reading of Hume influenced the development of his special theory of relativity. In this article, I juxtapose Hume’s philosophy with Einstein’s philosophical analysis related to his special relativity. I argue that there are two common points to be found in their writings, namely an empiricist theory of ideas and concepts, and a relationist ontology regarding space and time. The main thesis of this article is that these two points are intertwined in Hume and Einstein.
Zwecksetzungen und Zielvorstellungen in den Wirtschafts- und Soziallehren des 18. und 19. Jahrhunderts
1982
The essay examines the natural law economics of the eighteenth century and the evolutionist economics of the nineteenth century by focusing on their methods for achieving a common, nebulously articulated goal: individual fulfillment and the happiness and welfare of mankind in a free, harmoniously ordered society. Illustrating the theoretical and, in practice, effective theories derived from natural law are cammeralism, the economic philosophy of the Physiocrats, and economic liberalism. It is emphasized that these theories do not represent a linear sequence of ideas in which one set of ideas „triumphed” over a preceding one. They show instead three different consequences reflecting the inte…
On “Action Language” in Psychoanalysis
1980
The main tenets of action language are summarized in an attempt to discern the direction in which psychoanalysis might go if action language becomes the "new metapsychology." The principal roots of action language are traced to the different linguistic/language and personality-and-culture models of anthropology and to the neobehaviorist currents of academic psychology. The authors' findings support the hypothesis that action language is a form os psychoanalytic behaviorism having idealism, logical positivism, and radical empiricism as its philosophical underpinnings. Its adoption would confound the entire motivational aspect of psychoanalysis. Specifically, the authors suggest that action l…
Models and Phenomena: Bas van Fraassen’s Empiricist Structuralism
2013
Bas van Fraassen’s recent endorsement of empiricist structuralism is based on a particular approach to representation. He sharply distinguishes between what makes a scientific model M a successful representation of its target T from what makes M a representation of T and not of some other different target T’. van Fraassen maintains that embedment (i.e.: a particular sort of isomorphism which relates structures) gives the answer to the first question while the user’s decision to employ model M to represent T accounts for the representational link. After discussing the rationale for this approach, I defend that indexical constraints like those favoured by van Fraassen cannot be the last word …
Realism as a Foundation for Social Work Knowledge
2005
Could a philosophical position called ‘realism’ act as a foundation for social work knowledge? Social work is a phenomenon consisting of three parts: research, education and professional practise. The aim of social work is to alleviate social problems – and this task can be fulfilled through all the three parts of social work. Research must help not only the professional practise, but also the teaching of social work methods. When speaking of research methodology, social work research should overcome the pitfalls of empiricism, inductivism and relativism, and take into consideration of the powers of societal structures, history and nature. The ideas of realism can help in the realization of…
Avicenna’s Outsourced Rationalism
2020
This paper refutes the claim that Avicenna's theory of science is empiricist in the robust, Lockean sense. I argue that his denial of innatism notwithstanding, the theory of formal identity, together with the metaphysical idea that the ontological structure of the sublunary world is grounded in the active intellect, commits Avicenna to a peculiar kind of rationalism in which the ultimate source of knowledge is an intellect, albeit one extraneous to the human mind. I then introduce two hitherto insufficiently discussed texts to challenge this conclusion. In the end, I claim that although this new material may provide some evidence for a robust empiricism in Avicenna, its consequences remaine…
The Phenomenology of Space and Time: Husserl, Sartre, Derrida
2016
The notions of space and time have been a subject of philosophical discussion since antiquity. In modern philosophy, Newton’s concepts of absolute space and absolute time was subject to criticism by empiricists like Berkeley and Hume, who prepared the ground for Einstein and the ideas behind his theories of relativity. In this article, I will consider the concept of space-time from a phenomenological point of view, with particular reference to Jean-Paul Sartre and Jacques Derrida. Sartre presents a phenomenological notion of space as nothingness, and I argue that this notion corresponds closely to Einstein's view, and can be extended to include the notion of time, and hence of space-time. I…
The Problem of Mind and Other Minds in William James’s Pragmatism
2008
The chapter explicates William James’s pragmatist conception of the human mind and his way of approaching the problem of other minds. James’s pragmatism is usually classified among empiricist and associationist philosophies of mind, but as is shown, it can also be understood according to its Kantian features. In James’s view, the mind is really an active and a purpose-oriented organizing principle which structures our lifeworld. The main difference between James’s pragmatism and Kant’s transcendental philosophy is that James does not make any explicit distinction between psychological and philosophical inquiries into the mind; he based his philosophy of mind on the same introspective method…
The Self-Presentation of a Discipline: History of Psychology in the United States between Pedagogy and Scholarship
1983
Criticism of scholarship in the history of psychology from historians and philosophers of science is certainly not new. In 1966, for example, Robert M. Young characterized the field as “an avocation with very uneven standards”, limited primarily to biographies of great psychologists, extended reviews of the literature and the uncritical chronicling of the rise of scientific psychology, based on a narrowly preconceived model of scientific development (1). Recent criticism has renewed all of these charges, particularly the last. Walter Weimer, a psychologist interested in the philosophy of science, accuses the writers of historical textbooks of ‘crypto-justificationism’, of describing the ‘ev…