Jaap Van Brakel

In this essay, we explore the various aspects of hermeneutic relativity that have rarely been explicitly discussed. Our notion of “hermeneutic relativity” can be seen as an extension, with significant revisions, of Gadamer’s notion of Vorurteil. It refers to various choices and constraints of the interpreter, including beliefs concerning the best way of doing philosophy, what criteria are to be used to evaluate competing interpretations, and so on. The interpreter cannot completely eliminate the guidance and constraint originating from his/her “background.” However, in principle the interpreter can “choose” to be guided by other constraints. Hence, we speak of “choices” or “commitments.” Hermeneutic relativity is the major cause for the variation of competing interpretations.

We argue that all general concepts are family resemblance concepts. These include concepts introduced by ostension, such as colour(s). Concepts of colour and of each of the specific colours are family resemblance concepts because similarities concerning an open‐ended range of colour or of appearance features crop up and disappear. After discussing the notion of “same colour” and Wittgenstein's use of the phrase “our colours”, we suggest family resemblance concepts in one tradition can often be extended to family resemblance concepts in another tradition, illustrated by Wittgenstein's use of the words Spiel and “game”.

In a rarely quoted paper, published in 1958 in the American Journal of Physics, T. Ehrenfest-Afanassjewa introduced the idea that the concept of chance as employed in physics is subject to what she called a ‘Limited Belief in Chance’. In this paper I elaborate the latter concept and the distinction between absolute chance and relative randomness, where the latter, but not the former, is governed by the theory of probability. I argue that in the twentieth century virtually nobody believes seriously in the possiblity of absolute chance, whereas the concept of chance in the Scientific World Picture is only ‘chancy’ relative to a limited belief in chance grounded in the Manifest World Picture of an orderly world.

According to the state of the art in psychology and philosophy, colour sensations are located in a 'quality space'. This space has three dimensions: hue , saturation , and brightness. This space is structured further via a small number of primitive hues or landmark colours, usually four or six . It has also been suggested that there are eleven semantic universals — the six colours previously mentioned plus orange, pink, brown, purple, and grey. Against the standard view, we argue that colour might better be regarded as the outcome of a social-historical developmental trajectory in which there is mutual shaping of philosophical presuppositions, scientific theories, experimental practices, technological tools, rhetorical frameworks, and their intercalated and recursive interactions with the lifeworld. That is: the domain of colour is the outcome of interactive processes of scientific, instrumental, industrial, and everyday lifeworlds

In this article, we trace and elucidate Heidegger’s radical re-thinking on the relation between science and technology from about 1940 until 1976. A range of passages from the Gesamtausgabe seem to articulate a reversal of the primacy of science and technology in claiming that “Science is applied technology.” After delving into Heidegger’s reflection on the being of science and technology and their “coordination,” we show that such a claim is essentially grounded in Heidegger’s idea that “Science and technology are the Same [das Selbe].” In addition, we argue that, although different ontic epochs can be distinguished in the evolvement of science and/or technology, for Heidegger there is only one unique ontological Epoch of modernity that encompasses various ontic epochs. Therefore, the change from an “epoch of objectivity” to an “epoch of orderability [Bestellbarkeit]” cannot be considered to be an ontological shift. Furthermore, it is not right to ascribe to Heidegger the view that the development of quantum physics signals the beginning of a new ontological Epoch

Amidst the progress being made in the various (sub-)disciplines of the behavioural and brain sciences a somewhat neglected subject is the problem of how everything fits into one world and, derivatively, how the relation between different levels of discourse should be understood and to what extent different levels, domains, approaches, or disciplines are autonomous or dependent. In this paper I critically review the most recent proposals to specify the nature of interdiscourse relations, focusing on the concept of supervenience. Ideally supervenience is a relation between different discourses which has all the advantages of reduction, but without its disadvantages. I apply the more abstract considerations to two concrete cases: schizophrenia and colour. Usually an interlevel or interdiscourse relation is seen as asymmetrical: the overlaying discourse depends on the underlying discourse (and not vice versa), where the out- or un-spoken assumption is that the ultimate underlying discourse is physical. Instead I argue that scientific categories referred to in interdiscourse relations are, ultimately, dependent on common sense categories and common sense normative criteria. It is the manifest categories and common sense ideas about what is reasonable and what is right that determine the relevant categorisations at the deeper, underlying levels. I suggest that the implications of this are not merely methodological or epistemological

Using the notorious bridge law “water is H 2 O” and the relation between molecular structure and quantum mechanics as examples, I argue that it doesn’t make sense to aim for specific definition(s) of intertheoretical or interdiscourse relation(s) between chemistry and physics (reduction, supervenience, what have you). Proposed definitions of interdiscourse and part-whole relations are interesting only if they provide insight in the variegated interconnected patchwork of theories and beliefs. There is “automatically” some sort of interdiscourse relation if different discourses claim to have something to say about the same situation (event, system), which is the basis of (contingent) local supervenience relations, which, proper empirically support being provided, can be upgraded to ceteris paribus bridge laws. Because of the ceteris paribus feature, and the discourse dependence of event identification, there is at best only global supervenience of the “special sciences” on the physical (and of parts of physics on other parts of physics)

In this paper I evaluate the soundness of the prototype paradigm, in particular its basic assumption that there are pan-human psychological essences or core meanings that refer to basic-level natural kinds, explaining why, on the whole, human communication and learning are successful. Instead I argue that there are no particular pan-human basic elements for thought, meaning and cognition, neither prototypes, nor otherwise. To illuminate my view I draw on examples from anthropology. More generally I argue that the prototype paradigm exemplifies two assumptions that dominate cognitive science: (1) If human beings use words they mean something particular and what they mean can be discovered by scientific methods. (2) There is a fixed number of domains of categorization, each made up of a fixed number of basic categories. I suggest that these two assumptions lead to Brave New World

Modern technology (Technik, la technique) has constituted the gears on which the wheels of the modern world keep turning. The later Heidegger devotes sustained reflection to this unprecedented phenomenon in human history. It is notable that, compared with other figures from twentieth-century continental philosophy, Heidegger has served as the most frequent reference point in current philosophy of technology (Technikphilosophie). This field of philosophy came into being after the so-called empirical turn of “Science and Technology Studies.” While relevant scholars focus mainly on “Die Frage nach der Technik” of 1953, “Das Ge-stell” of 1949,1 and some other texts written in that period,2 the time span of Heidegger’s ..