2024-12-24 Click(4)

Humanism - in the sense that humans alone have moral standing, or else a surpassing degree of it - has traditionally dominated all of ethical discourse. However, its past formulations have succumbed to the temptation merely to stipulate such a criterion,

2024-12-24 Click(5)

This article questions whether philosophical considerations play any substantial role in the actual process of scientific research. Using examples mostly from the nineteenth century, it suggests that scientists generally choose their basic theoretical ori

2024-12-24 Click(7)

In this paper I argue that any adequate evolutionary ethical theory needs to account for moral belief as well as for dispositions to behave altruistically. It also needs to be clear whether it is offering us an account of the motivating reasons behind hum

2024-12-23 Click(9)

A persistent boast of the historical approach to functions is that functional properties are normative. The claim is that a token trait retains its functional status even when it is defective, diseased, or damaged and consequently unable to perform the re

2024-12-23 Click(5)

In a previous study, using experimental metapopulations of the flour beetle, Tribolium castaneum, we investigated phase III of Wright's shifting balance process (Wade and Griesemer 1998). We experimentally modeled migration of varying amounts from demes

2024-12-23 Click(5)

As a physicist-theologian, John Polkinghorne has done a great service for the community of scholars engaged in the theology-and-science dialogue as well as for a broader audience of interested persons. We examine Polkinghorne's theological method to see

2024-12-23 Click(4)

The term naturalism arouses strong emotions; religious naturalism even more. In this essay, naturalism is explored in a variety of contexts, in contrast to supernaturalism (in metaphysics), normativism (in ethics and epistemology), and rationalism (in the

2024-12-18 Click(7)

The article explores common ground shat ed by Alexander Herzen's 'Dilettantism in Science' (1843) and Mikhail Bakhtin's 'Towards a Philosophy of the Act' (1919) in the context of the Russian intellectual tradition as a whole. The primary aim is to e

2024-12-18 Click(5)

The paper distinguishes Mark Bevir's logical approach to the theory of history from the historiography of Hayden White and the sociology of Michel Foucault. Rather than seeing these approaches as inherently contradictory, it suggests that historiography

2024-12-18 Click(5)

Mark Bevir's The Logic of the History of Ideas has a number of strong points. For example, Bevir is nonreductive in his approach to explanation, his procedural individualism rightly favours 'bottom up' explanations, based on the particular facts of a c

2024-12-18 Click(5)

This paper provides a short summary of Mark Bevir, The Logic of the History of Ideas. Logic stands here as a subset of Wittgenstein's notion of philosophy as a matter of the grammar of our concepts. It studies the forms of reasoning appropriate to a disc

2024-12-17 Click(8)

The new sociology of science makes the relativist claim that social factors influence the generation and evaluation even of valid scientific knowledge, and mainly for its relativism it is sharply criticized by philosophers. The central objections of the c