Idealization I: General Problems

Idealization I: General Problems PDF Author:
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004457151
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description

Idealization I: General Problems

Idealization I: General Problems PDF Author:
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004457151
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 288

Get Book Here

Book Description


Idealization and the Aims of Science

Idealization and the Aims of Science PDF Author: Angela Potochnik
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022675944X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 263

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Book Description
Science is the study of our world, as it is in its messy reality. Nonetheless, science requires idealization to function—if we are to attempt to understand the world, we have to find ways to reduce its complexity. Idealization and the Aims of Science shows just how crucial idealization is to science and why it matters. Beginning with the acknowledgment of our status as limited human agents trying to make sense of an exceedingly complex world, Angela Potochnik moves on to explain how science aims to depict and make use of causal patterns—a project that makes essential use of idealization. She offers case studies from a number of branches of science to demonstrate the ubiquity of idealization, shows how causal patterns are used to develop scientific explanations, and describes how the necessarily imperfect connection between science and truth leads to researchers’ values influencing their findings. The resulting book is a tour de force, a synthesis of the study of idealization that also offers countless new insights and avenues for future exploration.

As If

As If PDF Author: Kwame Anthony Appiah
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674982193
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 237

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Book Description
“Appiah is a writer and thinker of remarkable range... [He] has packed into this short book an impressive amount of original reflection... A rich and illuminating book.” —Thomas Nagel, New York Review of Books Idealization is a fundamental feature of human thought. We build simplified models to make sense of the world, and life is a constant adjustment between the models we make and the realities we encounter. Our beliefs, desires, and sense of justice are bound up with these ideals, and we proceed “as if” our representations were true, while knowing they are not. In this elegant and original meditation, Kwame Anthony Appiah suggests that this instinct to idealize is not dangerous or distracting so much as it is necessary. As If explores how strategic untruth plays a critical role in far-flung areas of inquiry: decision theory, psychology, natural science, and political philosophy. A polymath who writes with mainstream clarity, Appiah defends the centrality of the imagination not just in the arts but in science, morality, and everyday life. “Appiah is the rare public intellectual who is also a first-rate analytic philosopher, and the characteristic virtues associated with each of these identities are very much in evidence throughout the book.” —Thomas Kelly, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews

Idealization XI: Historical Studies on Abstraction and Idealization

Idealization XI: Historical Studies on Abstraction and Idealization PDF Author:
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004333215
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 292

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Book Description
Discussions about abstraction are so important and so profound that this topic can hardly be neglected. It has inevitably cropped up again in various periods of philosophical enquiry. Despite these ancient roots and after the great debate that characterised the empirical and rationalistic tradition, interest in the problem has unfortunately been absent in large measure from the mainstream of mathematical logic and analytic philosophy. It seems that there is a gap between the epistemological theorization, in which it is difficult to find new insights on the problem of abstraction, and the historical studies concerning the development of philosophical thought. Such studies, however, present a more fertile ground for such insights. Here the reader will find presented for the first time a collection of papers about the topic, considered from an historical point of view together with an awareness of the need for building a bridge between historical research and theoretical speculation. Accordingly the volume consists of both general overviews which sketch the signifcance and the fortunes of abstraction in science, philosophy and logic (the first part) and historical case studies which focus on abstraction in particular thinkers (the second part). This volume is of interest for both general philosophers and historians of philosophy.

Idealization V: The Dynamics of Idealizations

Idealization V: The Dynamics of Idealizations PDF Author:
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 900445733X
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 141

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Idealization IV: Intelligibility in Science

Idealization IV: Intelligibility in Science PDF Author: Craig Dilworth
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004457259
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 416

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The Structure of Idealization

The Structure of Idealization PDF Author: Lesz Nowak
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9401576513
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 364

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Book Description
Much is said in Marxist literature about Marxist methodology which is supposed to be entirely original - differing a great deal from all other trends in the modern philosophy of science. On the other hand, however, it is unfallacious to state that there are no people outside Marxism who would like to deny this statement. This has to put those who really believe that Marxism has something important to say in philosophy of science on guard: if someone says something important others usually are inclined to protest. But who is inclined to protest when it is stated that Marx em ployed both induction and deduction, a historical method and a logical one as well, synthesis, but also analysis, etc? Who is inclined to protest when it is not known what within this framework 'induction', 'deduction' 'history' or 'logic' mean? Who is inclined to protest when 'Marxist meth odology' is presented not with the aid of precise definitions and clear hypotheses but with the aid of a jungle of quotations? I think that the main malfeasance of the current 'Marxist methodology', is that of ecclecticism. The methodology of Marx is presented as a col lection of trivial and/or obscure ideas but not as a system of statements subordinated to any clear, definite viewpoint presenting a new grasp ofthe nature of scientific cognition. Search for reconstruction of Marxian meth odology as a system of the kind is the main aim of this book.

Euphony and Logos

Euphony and Logos PDF Author: Roman Murawski
Publisher: Rodopi
ISBN: 9789042003828
Category : Computational linguistics
Languages : en
Pages : 588

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The Heritage of Kazimierz Ajdukiewicz

The Heritage of Kazimierz Ajdukiewicz PDF Author:
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004457399
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 400

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Book Description
This book presents Kazimierz Ajdukiewicz's philosophy. Ajdukiewicz was one of the most distinguished and important philosophers of the contemporary Poland. He produced important ideas in logic, epistemology, philosophy of language, and ontology. He influenced Polish analytic philosophy very much. The collection gives a general account of Ajdukiewicz philosophy and it is the only full presentation of his ideas available in Western languages. The volume is of interest for everybody working in analytic philosophy.

In Itinere

In Itinere PDF Author: Roberto Poli
Publisher: Rodopi
ISBN: 9789042002012
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 262

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Book Description
The volume describes a virtual tour of the cities in which Franz Brentano and his pupils worked and lived, with a reconstruction of the intellectual climate of their time. After the Introduction, the intellectual life of Wurzburg, Munich, Vienna, Prag, Lvov, Warsaw, Cambridge, Florence and Milan is presented and analyzed. The papers collected in this volume propose several answers to the following question: to what do we refer when we speak of Central European philosophy?. Interpretations of Central European philosophy have developed in at least two broad directions. An interpretation fashionable during the 1970s lumps specific philosophical achievements, especially those of Mach and Wittgenstein, characterized by research into and development of new languages, of new philosophical, scientific and artistic grammars. In this situation, literature was seen as the exploration of meanings moving towards frontiers in which reality and possibility, science and metaphor, meet and merge. On the other hands, the theme of a Central European philosophy, connected with but independent of literature, has recently been given more thorough development. The two outstanding figures to have emerged from this inquiry are those of Bernard Bolzano and Franz Brentano. With reference to Brentano in particular, it is almost as if the collapse of the Empire also erased awareness of the common origin of many diverse components of Central European philosophical and scientific thought. The Polish logical school, logical neopositivism, phenomenology, the Prague school of linguistics, analytic philosophy, Gestalt psychology, the Vienna economics school - as well as a number of individual thinkers - are all movements and groups connected in some manner with Brentano's work and teaching. Although in some respects these are movements still at the centre of interest, the overall effect, the pattern of their common and unifying aspects have been neglected if they have not entirely disappeared. It seems that the unity of this philosophical tradition was lost with the end of the geographical and political unity of the Danubian empire and with the events that accompanied its downfall. After 1918 the centres of that tradition - Vienna, Prague, Lvov, Graz - belonged to different states, and its rich network of exchanges, contacts and relationships was dismantled forever. However, there still remained something of its philosophical style in each individual school; traits which enable us to speak, as the Authors have done in this volume, of Central European philosophy."