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Comment: Getting the War News Straight: The Actual Situation in the Philosophy of Science

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 August 2014

David Braybrooke  and
Alexander Rosenberg
David Braybrooke
Affiliation:
Dalhousie University
Alexander Rosenberg
Affiliation:
Dalhousie University
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American Political Science Review , Volume 66 , Issue 3 , September 1972 , pp. 818 - 826
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Copyright © American Political Science Association 1972

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References

1 One might distinguish between weak exchanges, in which a philosopher or philosophers in the one camp read and commented upon writings that appeared in the other camp, without being noticed there or commented upon in turn; and strong exchanges, in which the other camp replied. There have been very few exchanges even of the weak sort, though Jürgen Habermas's rather comprehensive readings in English-speaking philosophy, as reflected for example in his Für Logik der Sozialwissenschaften (Frankfurt, 1970Google Scholar; the principal essay was published first in 1967 as a beiheft of the Philosophische Rundschau), deserve to be counted. In France, some philosophers of the structuralist school have been turning to writings in English-speaking philosophy, but not in a hostile mood: they cite Carnap, for example, with some favor. (Cf. the reference to Carnap in Alain Badiou's review article on Althusser, in Critique, Paris, 23, No. 240 [Mai, 1967], 438–467, at p. 450.Google Scholar) Antipositivism is not the latest news from the continent.

2 Indeed, the products of some of these thinkers were cited by positivists as examples of literal nonsense. See, for instance, Carnap, Rudolf, “The Elimination of Metaphysics through Logical Analysis of Language,” in Logical Positivism, ed. Ayer, Alfred J., (Glencoe, Ill.: Free Press, 1959)Google Scholar (Carnap's essay was originally published in 1932) and Marhenke, , “The Criterion of Significance” in Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association, 1950Google Scholar.

3 See, for instance, Carnap, Rudolf, The Continuum of Inductive Methods (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1952)Google Scholar and The Logical Foundations of Probability (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962.Google Scholar) These works summarize and extend work given currency by Carnap in articles over several previous decades.

4 See, for instance, in Schilpp, P. A., ed., The Philosophy of Rudolf Carnap (LaSalle, Ill.: Open Court, 1963)Google Scholar, articles by Ernest Nagel, Hilary Putnam, John Kemeny, and Arthur Burks; SirPopper, Karl, The Logic of Scientific Discovery (London: Hutchinson, 1959)Google Scholar; Salmon, Wesley, The Foundations of Scientific Inference (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1968)Google Scholar, for a simple account and criticism. Achinstein's, Peter “Confirmation Theory, Order and Periodicity,” and “Variety and Analogy in Confirmation Theory” in Philosophy of Science, 30 (1963), 17–35 and 207–221CrossRefGoogle Scholar, respectively, present examples of very technical objections.

5 Hempel, Carl G., Journal of Symbolic Logic, 8 (1948), 122–43CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6 Mind, 54 (01 1945), 1–26, 97–121Google Scholar.

7 See, for instance, Feyerabend's, Paul K. “Problems of Microphysics” in Frontiers of Science and Philosophy, ed. Colodny, Robert (Pittsburgh: Pittsburgh University Press, 1962)Google Scholar; “Explanation, Reduction, and Empiricism” in Minnesota Studies (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1962), 3, 28–97Google Scholar; “Realism and Instrumentalism” in The Critical Approach to Science and Philosophy, ed. Bunge, Mario (Glencoe: Free Press, 1964)Google Scholar; “How to be a Good Empiricist” in Delaware Seminar in Philosophy of Science, 2 (1962)Google Scholar and “Problems of Empiricism,” Part I in Beyond The Edge of Certainty, ed. Colodny, Robert (New York: Prentice-Hall, 1965)Google Scholar, and Part II in The Nature and Function of Scientific Theories, ed. Colodny, Robert (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1970)Google Scholar.

8 See, Hanson, N. R., Patterns of Discovery (Cambridge: At the University Press, 1965)Google Scholar, and Concept of the Positron (Cambridge: At the University Press, 1963)Google Scholar.

9 See Hempel, and Oppenheim, , “Studies in the Logic of Explanation,” Philosophy of Science. 15 (1948), 135–175CrossRefGoogle Scholar. This conviction seems to underlie adequacy condition R3.

10 See, for example, Hempel, , “Geometry and Empirical Science,” and “On the Nature of Mathematical Truth,” American Mathematical Monthly, 52 (1945), respectively, 7–17, and 513–556CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

11 See Hempel's, Fundamentals of Concept Formation in Empirical Science (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1952)Google Scholar.

12 Hempel, , Revue Internationale de Philosophie 11 (01, 1950), 41–63Google Scholar.

13 Hempel, , Proceedings of The American Academy of Arts and Science, 80 (07, 1951), pp. 61–77CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

14 See “Two Dogmas of Empiricism” in Van Orman Quine, Willard, From a Logical Point of View (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1953), pp. 20–46Google Scholar.

15 Hempel, , Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science, 2 (1958), pp. 37–98Google Scholar, iv., sec. 7.

16 Hempel, , Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science, 4 (1969), pp. 142–163Google Scholar.

17 Miller, , “Positivism, Historicism and Political Inquiry,” American Political Science Review, this volume, this number, p. 800Google Scholar. Such a claim may play some part in arguments which lead to conclusions like the ones Hempel now espouses. But Miller fails to catalogue the precise roles it might play. And, in Hempel's case such a claim was not the product of any “historicist” thinking. Furthermore there is no essential connection between denials of the existence of sense-data and any of the views mentioned above; and positivists generally considered problems of the existence of sense-data immaterial to their program, practically from the outset of the movement.

18 Miller, p. 800.

19 Miller, p. 800.

20 See references above, note 7.

21 See Wittgenstein, Ludwig, Philosophical Investigations, trans. Anscombe, G. E. M. (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1953), for example. Sect. 18, p. 8Google Scholar, and Sect. 23, pp. 11–12.

22 From Shapere, Dudley, “Meaning and Scientific Change,” Mind and Cosmos, ed. Colodny, Robert (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1966), pp. 41–85Google Scholar.

23 See, for instance, Scheffler, Israel, Science and Subjectivity (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1967)Google Scholar.

24 We owe this point to Walton, Kendall, Conceptual Schemes: A Study of Linguistic Relativity, a Cornell doctoral thesis in 1967, available from University MicrofilmsGoogle Scholar. Walton's, thesis and a slim volume on Categorial Frameworks by Körner, Stephan (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1970)Google Scholar are the two most notable recent treatments of the basic, but curiously neglected question, “In just what ways can conceptual schemes differ?”

25 Van Orman Quine, Willard, “Two Dogmas of Empiricism,” in his From a Logical Point of View (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1953; 2d ed., 1961), pp. 20–46Google Scholar, esp. p. 42ff. Austin, J. L., “A Plea for Excuses,” in his Philosophical Papers, ed. Urmson, J. O. and Warnock, G. J. (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1961), pp. 123–152Google Scholar, esp. p. 133.

26 Cf. Achinstein, , Concepts of Science (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1968)Google Scholar; Shapere, “Meaning and Scientific Change,” and others.

27 Miller, p. 805.

28 Kuhn, Thomas, “Logic of Discovery or Psychology of Research?” in Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge, ed. Lakatos, Imre and Musgrave, Alan (Cambridge: University Press, 1970), p. 6Google Scholar.

29 Kuhn, , “Reflections on My Critics,” in Lakatos, and Musgrave, , p. 232Google Scholar.

30 See, for example, Bohr, Niels, Atomic Theory and the Description of Nature (New York: Macmillan, 1934)Google Scholar, and “Causality and Complementarity,” Philosophy of Science, 4 (07, 1937), pp. 289–298CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Born, Max, The Natural Philosophy of Cause and Chance (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1949)Google Scholar; Heisenberg, Werner, The Principles of the Quantum Theory, trans. Eckhart, Carl and Hoyt, Frank C. (Chicago: University Press, 1930)Google Scholar, The Physicist's Conception of Nature, trans. Pomerans, Arnold J. (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1958)Google Scholar, and Philosophical Problems of Nuclear Science, trans. Hayes, F. C. (New York: Pantheon, 1952)Google Scholar; Landé, Alfred, “From Dualism to Unity in Quantum Mechanics,” British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 10 (05, 1959), 16–24CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Margenau, Henry, “Reality in Quantum Mechanics,” Philosophy of Science, 16 (1949), 287–302CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and “Conceptual Foundations of Quantum Theory,” Science (01 26, 1951), 95–100Google Scholar, Schrödinger, Erwin, “Die Gegenwärtige Situation in der Quantenmechanik,” Natürwissenschaften, 1935Google Scholar.

31 Now published as Foundations of Science (New York: Dover, 1957)Google Scholar.

32 See Simon, Herbert A., Models of Man (New York: Wiley, 1957)Google Scholar; Organizations (with March, James G.) (New York: Wiley, 1958)Google Scholar; and (as a further example) Simon's, article, “Some Strategic Considerations in the Construction of Social Science Models,” in Mathematical Thinking in the Social Sciences, ed. Lazarsfeld, Paul F. (Glencoe, Ill.: Free Press, 1954), pp. 388–415Google Scholar.

33 It is fair to say that the contributors to the Storing collection (Storing, Herbert J., ed., Essays on the Scientific Study of Politics [New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1962]Google Scholar) did associate their criticism with particular studies, though with particular studies by Simon and other behavioralists rather than with contrasting particular studies of their own.

34 See Simon's article in the Lazarsfeld collection, cited in footnote 32 above; and Francis, Wayne L., Legislative Issues in the Fifty States: A Comparative Analysis (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1967), p. 34ff.Google Scholar

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