Epistemology & Philosophy of Science

Due to some recent researches the problem of the reciprocity of logic and psychology got back into the philosophy of logic. Logicians and psychologists reconsider the relations between the logical laws and the human reasoning and deny the idea expressed by antipsychologists that exploration of the human reasoning is non-informative for logical theory. In the course of the controversy over psychologism at the turn of the XXth century some thinkers claimed that these disciplines were strongly connected. Some current researchers united under the name “Neopsychologism”. The article covers the problem of the reciprocity between logic and psychology in terms of Wilhelm Wundt’s theory and the Keith Stenning and Michiel van Lambalgen’s case research of reasoning peculiar to children with autism. Wundt was not a typical psychologist. He argued that the laws of logic and the laws of thought should be strongly separated. His idea of the correlation between the thought process and the other cognitive functions is “heuretic” as well. Despite that – or thanks to that – his theory is prolific. Its analysis and comparison with the recent logical researches show the difference between the classical psychologism and the neopsychologism. The article also reveals which of Wundt’s ideas are still important for philosophy of logic and psychology today.

The paper discusses Norman Malcolm’s interpretation of Anselm’s ontological argument. Since Malcolm had shown no interest in religious or theological issues prior to publishing his article on that subject in 1960, the analysis takes clue from Malcolm’s earlier writings. By doing so, I revisit the assessment of the ontological argument as fallacious and the tendency to assess Anselm from the traditional framework initiated by Kant. As I demonstrate, Malcolm interpreted Anselm based on the method elaborated during the 1950s. That method involved a synthesis between ordinary language philosophy and common sense philosophy, associated with the late Wittgenstein and Moore respectively. As I further argue, the usual objections to Malcolm’s approach ignore the main line of his reasoning: that Anselm’s ontological argument does not violate ordinary language. Indeed, the two concepts of God as “the greatest of all beings” and of the necessity of God’s existence both perfectly fit in how language works. The “God-talk” is therefore logical only in accordance with Malcoms definition of logical: an explication of the rules of ordinary language, whereas each and every argument against Anselm’s ontological proof violates ordinary language drastically. In his late works on the subject, Malcolm suggested that multiple proofs of God’s existence should be viewed as expressions of a specific philosophic pathology whose underlying drive is a justification of various forms of life. Instead of regarding this idea as “fideistic” (e.g., in K. Nielsen’s work), I propose that the very concept of ordinary language, as Malcolm developed it, makes a treatment of language games along the lines of dependence or independence obsolete. Rather, a crucial issue that Malcolm pushes to investigate is how religious statements correlate with ordinary language.

The article interprets the position of the human being in a new technical space – electronic culture; provides an understanding of its social, psychological and existential risks and possibilities. The author traces versatility in the process of personal adaptation to the new forms of communication, sociality and the life space. The positive impact of electronic mode of culture follows from the expansion of the cognitive horizon, access to information, to various kinds of communication, creativity, self-presentation, recreation, the education choice and flexibility of employment. The negative influence is due to the absorbing the personality by technology, the crisis of traditional cultural values, which are threatened by the rhythm of social life and information noise of modern society. The author interprets these challenges through the problem of self-identification and the phenomenon of Internet addiction. The human issues in the context of electronic culture becomes the subject matter in the various areas of philosophical and scientific research, such as analysis and search forms of human adaptation to digital reality, humanizing the process of digitalization, cognitive ecology of the Internet, the creation of artificial intelligence, the humanitarian expertise of digital technologies.

In this overview article, we explore a number of trends in the rational philosophy of science that have been developed in reaction to the development of the relativist program of social constructivism. These trends are also known as isolationism, reconciliationism, and integrationism. According to the isolationist view, the core of science is immune to the influence of social factors and the scientific enterprise retains its autonomy. The proponents of this view point out the shortcomings and internal inconsistencies inside the constructivist argumentation and dismiss their arguments on those grounds. Reconciliationists agree that social factors can influence the process of decision making in individuals and they accept the idea that decisions in science are not bused exclusively on rational arguments. The core of science, however, still remains intact, from the reconsiliationist perspective. Integrationists tend to redefine science by including the “extra-scientific” agenda into discussions of science. Still, they do not reduce science to “non-scientific” phenomena. Having built this perspective, we then move on to the discussion the practical issues that arise in the process of bringing the scientific agenda closer to the needs of society. This process has been treated as crucial in helping societies to get the most out of science, given the significant gap that exists today between the rationalistic ideal of pure science and the complicated and socially dependent nature of scientific institutions. The latter very often suffer from the impact of extra-scientific values. Yet, we also present work suggesting that such values can be beneficial. We end our discussion with concrete suggestions of democratization of science that have recently been proposed in the literature on philosophy of science.

This paper attempts to look at the contemporary mathematical practice through the lenses of the distributed cognition approach. The ubiquitous use of personal computers and the internet as a key attribute of the digital society is interpreted here as a means to achieve a more effective distribution of the human cognitive activity. The major challenge that determines the transformation of mathematical practice is identified as ‘the problem of complexity’. The computer-assisted complete formalization of mathematical proofs as a current tendency is viewed as one of the strands along which the mathematical community responds to the challenge. It is shown that this tendency gives live to the project calling to revisit and rebuild the very foundations of mathematics to secure more effective communication and thus guarantee the reliability of contemporary mathematics.

The article is devoted to social problems of modern science (as it were interpreted Max Weber) considered in the context of the system-communicative approach by N. Luhmann. In contrast to the modern work of art, the modern science, as M. Weber believes, is associated with the fundamental unattainability of “true being”, and, as a result, with the transitory character of any scientific achievement. The specialty of modern science, as Weber noted, is determinated, on the one hand by its self-understanding, due to the “peculiarity of the current moment”, and, on the other, by its transformation into a kind of blind spot of scientific observation. As a result, Weber formulated the main problem of the meaning of modern science: he wondered why any scientist needs a science under (1) external alienation and (2) inaccessibility of a scientific object? Moreover, the category of truth not just acquires its special value, but also sets a special meaning to the purpose of scientific communication, that becomes an object but not a property of scientific search. The main content of the article is the study of the Weberian concepts of the external (science as a profession) and internal (science as vocation) social factors of modern science as they were interpreted by E. von Kahler, G. Rickert, M. Scheller, K. Loewit. The authors discuss their attempts to modernize the fundamental Weberian distinction of truth/value as a principle of inclusion in the scientific community, that was formulated as a response to the “Weber’s challenge”. The authors argue that von Kahler criticized the Weberian concept for the incompatibility of the spatial and temporal discreteness of science within the “organic understanding” of the unity of the world. At the same time Scheler and Rickert payed special attention to the problem of subject specification of science. K. Levit discussed the possibility of Weber’s substitution of objectivity as a key distinction of modern knowledge with some opposite attribute. In the final part, the authors summarize the inconsistency of predictions about the further internal differentiation of scientific disciplines and the rejection of research motive for “genuine being”.

The article formulates some aspects concerning the nature and structure of scientific revolutions. As a reference example, the scientific (more precisely, natural-philosophical) revolution of the 16th-17th centuries (SR1) was taken, which in turn became part of the intellectual revolution of the Early Modern period. It is shown that SR1 is not at all monodirectional and not predetermined in its milestones process, when the break with the Aristotelian tradition automatically cleared the way to the new science and philosophy. In reality, there was an intellectual war, the outcome of which was by no means known to any of the opposing sides in advance. In the article eight factors are noted that contributed to the SR1: 1) weakening ideological control on the part of the Church; 2) chaotization and fragmentation of intellectual space; 3) the redundancy of the intellectual resource for the emergence of innovative theories and practices; 4) the presence of intellectual reserve (the legacy of classical Antiquity and the Hellenistic era, as well as the scholastic method); 5) the flow of new information not embedded in traditional world picture and practices; 6) weakening the requirements for the validity of the hypotheses put forward and the rigor of reasoning, declining (delution) the rationality of cognitive activity and behavior; 7) local breakthrough (as seed impulse) in one of the areas of knowledge (heliocentric theory); 8) the possibility of developments a nd tendencies of the proper natural-philosophical revolution to develop in the tideway (in a shell) of innovative concepts, methodologies and practices that have arisen in unscientific spheres (culture, politics, economics, theology, etc.).

The article presents the philosophical and linguistic conception of Friedrich Waismann – the theory of many-level-structure of language. The key point of this theory is that each language stratum has its own logic: different concepts of truth, the methods of verifiability and the completeness of description are used in different strata. All this has an influence on the structure of logic itself. This approach suggests that all homogeneous statements (identical in a logical sense) are grouped in one stratum. The relations between the different strata are of a most complicated, peculiar and elusive nature and that does not allow to reduce statement of one stratum to another. According to Waismann, these considerations lead to a new picture of the language, naturally divided into strata.

The author attempts to sketch a new picture of language: language is stratified into layers, each layer having a logic of its own and being separated from the others by gaps over which one may jump but which cannot be bridged by logical processes. Philosophers try to bridge the gaps and become entangled in pseudo-problems. Law statements exemplify one stratum, thing statements another, sense-datum statements another, ethical statements another, and so on. The different subject-matters are to be characterized by reference to the different strata, rather than conversely; a sense impression is something that is describable in a language of such-and-such structure; a material object is something which can be described in such-and-such language; and so on. A consequence of the theory is said to be that logic loses its universal validity: logic can only be applied to statements that are homogeneous. However, relations between the layers do claim the attention of the logician.

This paper submits the state-of-the-art review of the collection of remote articles of Hans Poser, the largest expert on philosophy Leibniz who has devoted to studying of his philosophy more half a century. Specifics of his position, as interpreter of philosophy of Leibniz, the author of this review sees in Poser’s justification of the fundamental character of Leibniz’s doctrine about modalities, signs and language. Underlining of reflexive and system forming character of modal concepts in the Leibniz’s philosophy and also relevance of his doctrine about modal concepts both for modern modal logic, and for the modern theory of the proof and metamathematics is the central point of interpretation of Leibniz’s philosophy by H. Poser. Concerning a question of the relation of science and metaphysics, H. Poser speaks out in defense of metaphysics, pointing to impossibility of the solution of many problems without the appeal to metaphysics.24 articles presented in this collection give a complete look about all parties of many-sided thinking of Leibniz. The collection presents some kind of encyclopedia of Leibniz’s philosophy in which all last achievements of the modern Leibniz Research are accumulated and are presented in such systematic order that the collection by right can be considered as the monography and to serve as the reference book for everyone who wants to gain a complete and competent view about Leibniz’s philosophy.

200 years have passed since the birth of Karl Marx, a century and a half since the publication of the first volume of “Capital”. The theory of Marx had a great impact on the development of socio-political thought and the course of history, his legacy remains rel­evant today for philosophy and a whole range of specific sciences. Marx’s ideas were repeatedly reviewed, subjected to reassess­ment, criticized and refuted, but they resisted all attempts to send them to the intellectual past. The central place in Marx’s works is occupied by a critical analysis of capitalist society, its history and prospects for development. However, Marx made a significant contribution to the theory of knowledge, to the analysis of the social nature of consciousness and knowledge. In this regard, his ideas attracted and continue to attract many researchers today. The article considers the assessments of Marx as a thinker and sci­entist, his social analysis of science and technology, the influence of his ideas on the development of Russian psychology.

Recent work on Imre Lakatos’s missing Hungarian dissertation on the historical sociology of science sheds new light on his mature philosophy of science. Remembered primarily as an “internalist” defender of the autonomy of science, and a Cold Warrior in poli­tics, commentators have mistaken his contribution as primarily a rearguard action against the followers of Thomas Kuhn and the “externalists” influenced by Boris Hessen. It comes as a surprise, then, to find that he developed and retained a fully general soci­ology of scientific knowledge, with Marxist roots that articulated Lenin’s “inexhaustible atom.” He carried forward this emphasis on the fallible, changing, and incomplete nature of our engagement with the natural world by a dialectical account of how research programs advance and recede historically. In his effort to develop a synthesis of Popper and Kuhn, and via his engagement with Paul Feyerabend, he continued to develop a distinctly dialectical ap­proach to science.

The article shows that Marxist dialectics and the social philosophy of science, whose influence was obvious in Imre Lakatos’s early philosophical experiments, underwent substantial reinterpretation during the mature period of his creative activity. Being implicit heuristic sources of his “sophisticated falsificationism” or methodology of scientific research programs, they take on a conceptual form in which they lose the “excess” of authentic contents. Therefore, the philosophical views of “mature Lakatos” may be called close to the Marxist philosophy of science only with many important reservations and specifications.

The proposed comment to the paper by W. Lynch provides another indirect argument in favor of the thesis about Lakatos’s hidden Marxist roots. The methodology of research programmes and the sociology of scientific knowledge (social epistemology) share a common object of criticism, and a constant opponent. Lakatos calls him the naïve falsificationist while a social epistemologist dubs him a metaphysical realist, or fact-objectivist. Both criticized the non-critical trust in scientific theories and facts as well as their reification though using different means: the internal dialectic of science’s development and the socio-communicative interpretation of scientific knowledge. Still, the differences between them like the differences between Lakatos’s and Feyerabend’s approaches are two ways of expressing the similar position based on acceptance of some non-dogmatic Marxist ideas.

This article describes the two possible consequences of referring to the Marxist roots of modern research in science to which V. Lynch puts attention. First, referring to various Marxist viewpoints, whether they put an emphasis on reflecting reality or on its social construction process, can contribute to current discussions concerning the status of representation in science. Second, the Marxist legitimization of scientific theory competition protects from judgmental relativism in science that may arise in case of the recognition of their proliferation. Moreover, the appeal to the roots reveals the intersections between various scientific studies, and therefore serves as a condition for their possible constructive interaction.

This paper comments on some problems accentuated in William T. Lynch’s work on the Marxist roots of Imre Lakatos’ history and philosophy of science. This is quite a significant and still debatable issue relating to the adequate interpretations of Imre Lakatos’ complete intellectual growth. Accordingly, any further exploration of the “deep structures” of his conceptual background may help gain a better understanding of his legacy. In this comment, I make a brief review of the studies on the pre-English roots of Lakatos’ theoretical schemes.

Responding to comments on “Imre Lakatos and the Inexhaustible Atom: The Hidden Marxist Roots of History and Philosophy of Science,” an argument is made for reviving a missed opportunity for integrating sociological and normative approaches to science. Lakatos’ mature philosophy of science, though jettisoning a political commitment to Marxism, retains a dialectical approach developed during his Hungarian career. Through his carefully crafted debate with Feyerabend, Lakatos continued to promote a dialectical approach that offers a useful model for integrating the history of science and normative assessments focused on the viability of approaches that challenge dominant perspectives.

This paper examines the distinction between materialism (or realism) and idealism, which to the best of my knowledge all forms of Marxism regard as central to Marx as well as to Marxism. Materialism comes into ancient philosophy as a philosophical approach to philosophy of nature, which later becomes a philosophical alternative to idealism, and still later becomes a Marxist view of an extra-philosophical, scientific approach supposedly illustrated by Marx. The paper will review Marxist approaches to materialism in Marxism-Leninism and then in classical Marxism before turning to Marx, with special attention to the Paris Manuscripts. I will suggest that if “materialism” is understood in a standard manner as referring to the priority of matter as the main or even the sole explanatory element, then Marx’s alleged materialism is no more than a Marxist myth. I will further suggest that Marx is a materialist in another, non-standard sense of the term as concerns the focus on concrete, social problems.