Liberal naturalism and the scientific image of the world

Inquiry ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 62 (5) ◽  
pp. 565-585 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Macarthur
Keyword(s):  
Scientific Image ◽  
The World ◽  
Liberal Naturalism

Naturalism, Realism, and Normativity

2015 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 312-328 ◽  
Author(s):  
HILARY PUTNAM
Keyword(s):  
Detailed Analysis ◽  
Metaphysical Realism ◽  
Internal Realism ◽  
The World ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Liberal Naturalism ◽  
Normative Judgments

ABSTRACT:This essay describes three commitments that have become central to the author's philosophical outlook, namely, to liberal naturalism, to metaphysical realism, and to the epistemic and ontological objectivity of normative judgments.Liberal naturalismis contrasted with familiar scientistic versions of naturalism and their project of forcing explanations in every field into models derived from one or another particular science. The form ofmetaphysical realismthat the author endorses rejects every form of verificationism, including the author's one-time ‘internal realism’, and insists that our claims about the world are true or false and not just epistemically successful or unsuccessful and that the terms they contain typically refer to real entities. ‘Representationalism is no sin’. The central part of the essay is an account oftruthbased on a detailed analysis of Tarski's theory of truth and of the insights we can get from it as well as of the respects in which Tarski is misleading. (This part goes beyond what the author has previously published on the subject.) The account ofthe objectivity of the normativein this essay draws on insights from Dewey as well as Scanlon.

scholarly journals The Early Modern Origins of Pragmatism

Disputatio ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (59) ◽  
pp. 433-456
Author(s):  
Piotr K. Szalek
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Conceptual Framework ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Scientific Images ◽  
Scientific Image ◽  
The World ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Manifest Image

Abstract This paper considers the alleged pragmatism of Berkeley’s philosophy using the two Sellarsian categories of ‘manifest’ and ‘scientific’ images of the world and human beings. The ‘manifest’ image is regarded as a refinement of the ordinary way of conceiving things, and the scientific image is seen as a theoretical picture of the world provided by science. The paper argues that the so-called Berkeleian pragmatism was an effect of Berkeley’s work towards a synthesis of ‘manifest’ and ‘scientific’ images through the creation of one unified synoptic vision of the world and was a part of a new conceptual framework within which these two images could be combined.

Actualist versus Naturalist and Conceptual Realist Interpretations of Hegel's Metaphysics

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-20
Author(s):  
Paul Redding
Keyword(s):  
Actual World ◽  
Conceptual Structure ◽  
The Other ◽  
Science Of Logic ◽  
Conceptual Realism ◽  
The World ◽  
Liberal Naturalism ◽  
The One

Abstract The understanding of Hegel's metaphysics that is here argued for—that it is a metaphysics of the actual world—may sound trivial or empty. To counter this, in part one the actualist reading of Hegel's idealism is opposed to two other currently popular interpretations, those of the naturalist and the conceptual realist respectively. While actualism shares motivations with each of these positions, it is argued that it is better equipped to capture what both aim to bring out in Hegel's metaphysics, but also better able to resist criticisms of each of these opposed positions made from the viewpoint of the other. Like the conceptual realist, the actualist wants to affirm the objectivity of concepts in the world—an idea that can seem antithetical to the naturalist. While the position of “liberal naturalism” makes concessions to such a position, this feature is more easily accommodated by the actualist. However, like the liberal naturalist, the actualist is also suspicious of an implicit “supernaturalist” dimension of conceptual realism and, by weakening the scope of realism to the actual world, is better able to avoid it. The second and third parts of the paper attempt to show how the actualist position is reflected in Hegel's account of judgments and syllogisms in The Science of Logic. His account of judgments provides an irreducible place for judgments that are object-presupposing on the one hand and subject-locating on the other. Because such judgments are the components of syllogisms, these syllogisms have objectivity, but this is a type of objectivity within which we, as subjects, are by necessity located. The actual world has a conceptual structure because we conceptualizing beings belong to it.

Some remarks on the concept and intellectual history of human dignity

Human Affairs ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 26 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Marián Palenčár
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual History ◽  
Human Dignity ◽  
Cognitive Content ◽  
Classification Analysis ◽  
Holy Trinity ◽  
Scientific Image ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of

AbstractThe article looks at general problems associated with the explication of the concept of human dignity, then looks specifically at this in relation to bioethics and suggests possible solutions. The author explores the intellectual history of the concept (Cicero) and responds to the radical criticism that the concept of human dignity is useless and redundant in bioethical discourse (it is ambiguous, lacks cognitive content, is of religious provenance and is incompatible with the modern (Darwinist) scientific image of the world). He argues 1) that the ambiguity and relativity of the concept can be solved by precisely identifying the content and performing a classification analysis and shows that the concept does have cognitive content that is irreducible to other concepts; 2) that the need to elaborate the concept of human dignity is pre-Christian in origin (Cicero) and that the idea of a personal God and the Holy Trinity are not prerequisite to the concept; and 3) that the idea of

The Clash of the Images - Why the Manifest Image and the Scientific Image Are Incompatible

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adem Mulamustafić
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
The Other ◽  
Causal Relationships ◽  
Ordinary Objects ◽  
Scientific Image ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
The World ◽  
Scientific Results ◽  
Manifest Image ◽  
The Way

In everyday life, we take there to be ordinary objects such as persons, tables, and stones bearing certain properties such as color and shape and standing in various causal relationships to each other. Basic convictions such as these form our everyday picture of the world: the manifest image. The scientific image, on the other hand, is a system of beliefs that is only based on scientific results. It contains many beliefs that are not contained in the manifest image. At first glance, this may not seem to be a problem. But Mulamustafić shows convincingly that this is a mistake: The world as it is in itself cannot be both the way the manifest image depicts it and the way the scientific image describes it to be.

Philosophy, Science, and Common Sense

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hilary Kornblith
Keyword(s):  
Common Sense ◽  
Wilfrid Sellars ◽  
Personal View ◽  
Scientific Image ◽  
The World ◽  
Deliberative Processes ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Manifest Image ◽  
Apparent Conflict

Wilfrid Sellars recognized a conflict between what he called “the scientific image” of our place in the world, and “the manifest image.” Sellars sought, somehow, to join these views together in spite of their apparent conflict. This chapter argues that we should endorse features of the manifest image only to the extent that they are part of the scientific image. It presents a case study in epistemology, showing how these issues play out in discussion of doxastic deliberation. The manifest image of such deliberation is flatly in conflict with the best current scientific theorizing about the nature of deliberative processes. The only reasonable response to such conflict, the chapter argues, is to embrace the scientific account and reject our first-personal view of deliberation as illusory. This case study is suggestive of a broader conclusion about the relationship between the scientific and the manifest image.

The indispensability of the manifest image

2019 ◽  
Vol 46 (2) ◽  
pp. 162-172
Author(s):  
Mario De Caro
Keyword(s):  
Free Will ◽  
Natural Science ◽  
Natural Sciences ◽  
Placement Problem ◽  
Philosophical View ◽  
Scientific Image ◽  
Scientific Naturalism ◽  
The World ◽  
Manifest Image

It is very contentious whether the features of the manifest image have a place in the world as it is described by natural science. For the advocates of strict (or scientific) naturalism, this is a serious problem, which has been labelled ‘placement problem’. In this light, some of them try to show that those features are reducible to scientifically acceptable ones. Others, instead, argue that the features of the manifest image are mere illusions and, consequently, have to be eliminated from our ontology. In brief, the two options that are open to strict naturalists for solving the placement problem are ontological reductionism and eliminativism. Other advocates of naturalist philosophy, however, claim that both these strategies fail and, consequently, opt for ‘mysterianism’, the view according to which we cannot give up the recalcitrant features of the manifest image even if we are not able to understand the ways (which certainly exist) in which they could be reduced to the scientific features. Mysterianism has the merit of facing the difficulties that whoever wants to explain reductively, or explain away, the features of the manifest image encounters. It is also a defeatist philosophical view, though, since it considers the most important philosophical problems as unsolvable mysteries. For this reason, I argue that mysterianism can also be taken as a reductio of strict naturalism, given its presumption that all phenomena are either explainable by the natural sciences or to be rejected as illusory. In this article, it is argued that the failures of reductionism, eliminativism and mysterianism should teach us that both the scientific image and the manifest image of the world are essential and mutually irreducible but not incompatible with each other. To support this claim, in the second part of the article, the case of free will is discussed.

scholarly journals Music in Western Renaissance and Modern Culture

2014 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 7
Author(s):  
Paolo Gozza
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Musical Instrument ◽  
Scientific Paradigm ◽  
Modern Culture ◽  
Scientific Image ◽  
European Culture ◽  
The World ◽  
The Subject

This article focuses the contribution of music to the construction of the scientific image of the world and of man in the European culture. It is divided into three main sections: the first one discusses the ancient and Renaissance concept of Harmony. Renaissance Harmony includes Number and Proportion. In the second section, whose title is Sound, the Renaissance harmonious ideal is faced and somewhat disarranged by the modern scientific paradigm. The argument of the last section, Affection, is centred on the metaphor of man as a musical instrument. In my short conclusion I shall finally discuss the birth of the Eighteenth-century aesthetic paradigm of music as an art centred on man’s pleasure, that took the place of the earlier classical and modern tradition centred on music as a science, which is the subject of my paper.

The Nature of Chemical Substances

2000 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jaap Van Brakel
Keyword(s):  
Natural Kinds ◽  
Presidential Address ◽  
Physical Property ◽  
Common View ◽  
Sense Data ◽  
Scientific Image ◽  
The World ◽  
The Difference ◽  
To Come ◽  
Manifest Image

Professor Hare, delivering the presidential address to the Aristotelian Society in Oxford in 1984, said: “It is commonly said that the property of being water supervenes on the chemical (or ultimately on the physical) property of being H2O. As it stands this view seems to me to be obviously false.” In terminology, that will become clearer as we proceed, Hare defended the manifest image—in this case, ordinary liquid water against elimination by the scientific image (which reduces “being water” to “being H2O”). Hare used the verb to supervene instead of to be reducible, but the difference between the two is slight (as we shall see in a later section). A more common view among philosophers and scientists is expressed in the following citation from Kim (1990, p. 14): “Chemical kinds and their microphysical compositions (at least, at one level of description) seem to strongly covary with each other, and yet it is true, presumably, that natural kinds are asymmetrically dependent on microphysical structures.” Kim takes the view that manifest objects are “appearances” of a reality constituted by systems of imperceptible particles. Such a view takes for granted that the macroscopic, manifest world is dependent on the microstructure of the world in such a way that it is underlying things that are more real and determine appearances. In crude jargon: science uncovers the Dinge-an-sich that explain the phenomena we see. I chose the quotations of Hare and Kim because both point to, though fail to address, the philosophical issue I discuss in this chapter, viz. the tension between manifest and scientific image, focusing on chemistry. “Manifest” versus “scientific” imagery talk stems from Sellars. The manifest image refers to things like water, milk-lapping cats, injustice-angry people, as well as sophisticated interpretations of “people in the world.” The scientific image is concerned with things like neurons, DNA, quarks, and the Schrödinger equation, again including sophisticated reflection and a promise of more to come. I use “manifest image” with a different inflection from Sellars, avoiding associations with sense data (which was an important part of his concern), associating it rather with forms of life.

Overcoming Positivism: Husserl and Wittgenstein

2014 ◽  
Vol 2014 (1) ◽  
pp. 13-58 ◽  
Author(s):  
Òscar L. González-Castán
Keyword(s):  
Natural Science ◽  
Scientific Image ◽  
Dead End ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The World ◽  
Cultural Role

In this paper I shall briefly analyze Husserl’s and Wittgenstein’s divergent reactions against the positivist stance on natural science and on the new cultural role that philosophy should play in relation to science. To a great extent, their philosophies can be considered as a departure from positivism, although for quite different reasons. I shall argue that Wittgenstein, in the Tractatus, took positivism as a starting point that he tried to overcome from within. This endeavor led him to defend some theses of a pragmatist flavour as well as a peculiar type of radical agnosticism on ontological and epistemological issues. Husserl, however, considered that positivism was a dead-end for philosophy. Positivism has beheaded philosophy as a consequence of advancing a reductive view of science. Phenomenology is the attempt to understand the genetic and subjective processes that have ended up in an objective and scientific image of the world.

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