The Rationality of Scientific Discovery

In order to understand the rationality of scientific creation, we must first clarify the following: (1) the historical structure of scientific creation from starting point to breakthrough, and then to establishment; (2) the process from the primary through the productive aspects of the scientific problem, the idea of creation, the primary conjecture, the scientific hypothesis, and finally the emergence of the genetic structure establishing the theory; and (3) the problem threshold of rationality in scientific creation. Given that the theory of scientific creation adopts the descriptive viewpoint of rationality, it therefore establishes rational principles such as the following: (1) a superlogical mode of thinking; (2) an analysable genetic structure which consists of the primary and productive aspects (including experiential facts, background theory, operational means, higher irrational factors, etc.); (3) a means of recourse to the effect of incubation of a higher idea; (4) a movement in thinking from generality to particularity; and (5) the replacement of irrational by rational factors.

Blindsight and the Role of the Phenomenal Qualities of Visual Perceptions

The aim of this paper is to defend a broad concept of visual perception, according to which it is a sufficient condition for visual perception that subjects receive visual information in a way which enables them to give reliably correct answers about the objects presented to them. According to this view, blindsight, non-epistemic seeing, and conscious visual experience count as proper types of visual perception. This leads to two consequences concerning the role of the phenomenal qualities of visual experiences. First, phenomenal qualities are not necessary in order to see something, because in the case of blindsight, subjects can see objects without experiences phenomenal qualities. Second, they cannot be intentional properties, since they are not essential properties of visual experiences, and because the content of visual experiences cannot be constituted by contingent properties.

Kant’s Categories Reconsidered

Adopting a Quinean criterion of ontological commitment, I consider the question of the ontological commitment of Kant's theory of our a priori knowledge of objects. Its direct concern is the customary view that the ontology of Kant's theory of knowledge in general, whether a priori or empirical, must be thought in terms of the a priori conditions or representations of space, time, and the categories. Accordingly, this view is accompanied by the customary interpretation of ontology as consisting of Kantian "appearances" or "empirical objects." I argue against this view and interpretation. My argument turns on the opposition between the necessity and universality of the a priori and the particularity and contingency of the existent. Its main point is that the a priori can remain necessary and universal only if the existence of objects is kept distinct from it.

The Feeling of Pain

The metaphysical concepts of act and potency that are central to the Thomistic tradition can help us solve the problem of understanding pain, sorrow and grief. Human beings, as natural creatures, are composed of act and potency. If rightly understood, these concepts can give a rational explanation to the reality of pain-without having recourse to religious beliefs-by accepting it as a natural derivation of our natural limits.

The Win of the Sign Over the Signed

Virtual reality is more than only high tech. We encounter this phenomenon in everyday media worlds and economy. The sign dominates the signed. Philosophy can describe this phenomenon by means of a different ontological analysis following Poppers theory of the three worlds and can prepare new ontological categories for knowledge of acting.

Semantic Realism

I argue that if we distinguish between ontological realism and semantic realism, then we no longer have to choose between platonism and formalism. If we take category theory as the language of mathematics, then a linguistic analysis of the content and structure of what we say in and about mathematical theories allows us to justify the inclusion of mathematical concepts and theories as legitimate objects of philosophical study. Insofar as this analysis relies on a distinction between ontological and semantic realism, it relies also on an implicit distinction between mathematics as a descriptive science and mathematics as a descriptive discourse. It is this latter distinction which gives rise to the tension between the mathematician qua philosopher. In conclusion, I argue that the tensions between formalism and platonism, indeed between mathematician and philosopher, arise because of an assumption that there is an analogy between mathematical talk and talk in the physical sciences.

Algebra As Thought Experiment

This paper addresses the problem of understanding what mathematics contributes to the exceptional success of modern mathematical physics. I urge that we give up the Kantian construal of the division between mathematics (synthetic a priori) and physics (experimental), and that we ask instead how algebra helps synthetic a posteriori mathematics improve our ability to study the world. The theses suggested are: 1) Mathematical theories are about the empirical world, and are true or false just like other theories of empirical science. 2) The air of artificiality in mathematics lies exclusively in the use of algebraic method. 3) This method is constructive much like all fiction is, but this construction is for the purpose of experimental investigation of the physical world to the extent that anything in the world has objects like those in the fictional world of a particular algebra. 4) This is why algebraic techniques are successful even when the assumptions of the system are false: they may still be applicable to some things considered from some perspective. 5) The success of mathematical physics is also due to Descartes' discovery of a remarkable truth: we live in space and time which can be described as a whole. 6) Therefore, what distinguishes modern science from earlier and later philosophy is not a general method of science, but the fact that it happened to find a truth, and a particular way of studying reality which bore fruit.

La fonctionnalité de l’idée de “champ” dans les sciences

Cette étude part de l'observation que l'idée de 'champ,' tout comme celle de 'fonction' représente une nouveauté de la pensée moderne. Employée surtout en physique, l'idée de 'champ' est fréquemment utilisée ces derniers temps dans les sciences sociales. El term de 'champ' reste tout de même un terme polymorphe. Cette étude se propose de tirer au clair les cadres conceptuels de ce terme et sa fonctionnalité pour le domaine du social. A cette fin, on considère qu'il faut fructifier la tradition de Tönnies en sociologie, où l'accent tombe sur la conception du social en tant que 'relation,' que 'réseau de significations.' Dans cette direction, il s'impose que la notion de 'champ' soit délimitée de celles de 'système,' de 'contexte' ou bien de 'pattern.' C'est pour cela que cette étude fait appel à la classification de Kant concernant la nature des connexions: 1) la composition (agrégation ou coalition); 2) la connexion (physique ou métaphysique). Il s'avère que les notions de 'pattern' et de 'contexte' sont des espèces de la composition-coalition, la notion de 'système' semble correspondre à la connexion physique de la classification kantienne et la notion de 'champ' a son équivalent dans la connexion de type métaphysique. Tout en considérant comme situations de 'champ' social ou culturel ces cas ou les parties constituantes ne peuvent ni être réduites les uns aux autres, ni rigoureusement séparés, l'analyse continue par révéler deux fonctions essentielles de l'idée de 'champ': la fonction générative et la fonction intégrative.

Narrative Cultural Interweavings

This essay investigates the new meaning of human capabilities that can be drawn out of the feminist model. Drawing on a further elaboration of narratives and the dynamics established between the public sphere and the new emergent publics, I explain how such moral narratives constitute the symbolic order in three stages of 'mimetic representation' (Ricoeur). This model articulates the feedbacks between specific historical moments when 'lay narratives' are invented in response to a particular challenge; the subsequent creative process of the initial construction of the literary narrative; and the return to the experiential dimension of the readers, where narratives gain influence and transform previous ways of seeing things, the process that can occur both contemporaneously and decades or centuries earlier.

Ethics and Reality

One of the most pervasive problems in theoretical ethics has been the attempt to reconcile the good for the individual with the good for all. It is a problem which appears in contemporary discussions (like those initiated by Alasdair MacIntyre in After Virtue) as a debate between emotivism and rationalism, and in more traditional debates between relativism and absolutism. I believe that a vital cause of this difficulty arises from a failure to ground ethics in metaphysics. It is crucial, it seems to me, to begin with "the way the world is" before we begin to speculate about the way it ought to be. And, the most significant "way the world is" for ethics is that it is individuals in community. This paper attempts to develop an ethical theory based solidly on Whitehead’s metaphysics, and to address precisely the problem of the relation between the good for the individual and the common good, in such a way as to be sympathetic to both.