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Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities
On The Indispensable Premises Of The Indispensability Argument, Andrea Sereni, Marco Panza
On The Indispensable Premises Of The Indispensability Argument, Andrea Sereni, Marco Panza
MPP Published Research
We identify four different minimal versions of the indispensability argument, falling under four different varieties: an epistemic argument for semantic realism, an epistemic argument for platonism and a non-epistemic version of both. We argue that most current formulations of the argument can be reconstructed by building upon the suggested minimal versions. Part of our discussion relies on a clarification of the notion of (in)dispensability as relational in character. We then present some substantive consequences of our inquiry for the philosophical significance of the indispensability argument, the most relevant of which being that both naturalism and confirmational holism can be dispensed …
Epistemic Categories And Causal Kinds, P.D. Magnus
Epistemic Categories And Causal Kinds, P.D. Magnus
Philosophy Faculty Scholarship
Within philosophy of science, debates about realism often turn on whether posited entities exist or whether scientific claims are true. Natural kinds tend to be investigated by philosophers of language or metaphysicians, for whom semantic or ontological considerations can overshadow scientific ones. Since science crucially involves dividing the world up into categories of things, however, issues concerning classification ought to be central for philosophy of science. Muhammad Ali Khalidi's book fills that gap, and I commend it to readers with an interest in scientific taxonomy and natural kinds. He works through general issues to craft a useful philosophical conception and …
Scientism, Satire, And Sacrificial Ceremony In Dostoevsky's "Notes From Underground" And C.S. Lewis's "That Hideous Strength", Jonathan Smalt
Scientism, Satire, And Sacrificial Ceremony In Dostoevsky's "Notes From Underground" And C.S. Lewis's "That Hideous Strength", Jonathan Smalt
Masters Theses
Though the nineteenth-century Victorian belief that science alone could provide utopia for man weakened in the epistemological uncertainty of the postmodern era, this belief still continues today. In order to understand our current scientific milieu--and the dangers of propagating scientism--we must first trace the rise of scientism in the nineteenth-century. Though removed, Fyodor Dostoevsky, in Notes From Underground (1864), and C.S. Lewis, in That Hideous Strength (1965), are united in their critiques of scientism as a conceptual framework for human residency. For Dostoevsky, the Crystal Palace of London's Great Exhibition (1862) embodied the nineteenth-century goal to found utopia through the …