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19This paper discusses a pragmatic theory of scientific understanding with respect to theoretical unification.
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37This paper applies a pragmatic-retorical theory of explanation and interpretation to understand the methodological perspectivism of the social sciences.
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73When Time Gets Off TrackRoyal Institute of Philosophy Supplement 50 1-. 2002.Over the last forty years, philosophers have argued back and forth about backward causation. It requires a certain structure of time for something as backward causation to be not only possible but also to take place in the real world. In case temporal becoming is an objective feature of the world in the sense that the future is unreal, or at least ontologically indeterminate, it is impossible to see how backward causation can arise. Th e same difficulty does not hold with respect to forward caus…Read more
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19The Reality of the Future: An Essay on Time, Causation and Backward CausationOdense University Press. 1989.This book provides the reader with an analysis of backward causation. The notion of backward causation faces many different paradoxes that threaten to make the notion inconsistent or incoherent. The book denies that these pose a real threat. It developed a theory of causation according to which the orientation of causation is not dependent on the direction of time. In this process it takes issues with David Lewis' contrafactual analysis of causation, and denies that the direction of time is de…Read more
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16Abduting explanationIn L. Magnani, Nancy Nersessian & Paul Thagard (eds.), Model-Based Reasoning in Scientific Discovery, Kluwer/plenum. pp. 271--292. 1999.
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11Principles and Quantum Revolutions (review)Metascience 15 (3): 573-577. 2006.A review of Michela Massimi’s “Pauli’s Exclusion Principle. The Origin and Validation of a Scientific Principle.”
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10Victory and Vexation in Science: Einstein, Bohr, Heisenberg, and Others (review)Isis 98 660-661. 2007.
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51The pragmatic-rhetorical theory of explanationIn Johannes Persson & Petri Ylikoski (eds.), Rethinking Explanation, Springer. pp. 43--68. 2007.The pragmatic theory of explanation is an attempt to see explanation as a linguistic response to a cognitive problem where the content of the response depends on the context of the scientific inquiry. The present paper draws on the rhetorical situation, as it is defined by Loyld Bitzer, in order to understand how the context may influence the content as well as the acceptability of the response
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15What Can Philosophy of Science Learn from Hermeneutics: and What Can Hermeneutics Learn from Philosophy of Science? With an Excursus on BotticelliIn D. Ginev (ed.), The Multidimensionality of Hermeneutic Phenomenology, Springer. pp. 267--281. 2014.The aim of this paper is twofold. First, I want to show how hermeneutics can help philosophy of science to focus not only on explanation but also on understanding of meaning as an important part of science. Second, I want to argue that philosophy of science can improve the hermeneutic vision of understanding: a great part of what we call interpretations is in fact explanations of a pre-established meaning. Hence interpretation in the sense of explanation is ‘objective’ as long as the interpretat…Read more
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328The Role of Philosophy in a Naturalized WorldEuropean Journal of Analytic Philosophy 8 (1): 60-76. 2012.This paper discusses the late Michael Dummett’s characterization of the estrangement between physics and philosophy. It argues against those physicists who hold that modern physics, rather than philosophy, can answer traditional metaphysical questions such as why there is something rather than nothing. The claim is that physics cannot solve metaphysical problems since metaphysical issues are in principle empirically underdetermined. The paper closes with a critical discussion of the assumption o…Read more
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The Past RevisitedDanish Yearbook of Philosophy 24 7-18. 1987.This paper contains a discussion of backward causation.
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210Science and RealityIn H. B. Andersen, F. V. Christiansen, K. F. Jørgensen & Vincent Hendriccks (eds.), The Way Through Science and Philosophy: Essays in Honour of Stig Andur Pedersen, College Publications. pp. 137-170. 2006.Scientific realism is the view that the aim of science is to produce true or approximately true theories about nature. It is a view which not only is shared by many philosophers but also by scientists themselves. Regarding Kuhn’s rejection of scientific progress, Steven Weinberg once declared: “All this is wormwood to scientists like myself, who think the task of science is to bring us closer and closer to objective truth.” But such a realist view on scientific theories is not without problems. …Read more
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102Scientific understanding, representation, and explanationEpistemologia 2 183-196. 2012.This paper attempts to show that scientific explanation relies not only on theoretical representation but also on scientific understanding. It introduces a distinction between ‘embodied' and ‘reflective' understanding and argues that both forms of understanding have an important role to play in the constitution of any scientific practise. Other significant features of a scientific practice are the act of explanation and interpretation. Thus, the paper claims that scientists' ability to produce s…Read more
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236Interpretation in the natural sciencesIn M. Rédei M. Dorato M. Suàrez (ed.), Epsa Epistemology and Methodology of Science, Springer. pp. 107--117. 2010.Interpretation in science has gained little attention in the past because philosophers of science believed that interpretation belongs to the context of discovery or must be associated with meaning. But scientists often speak about interpretation when they report their findings. Elsewhere I have argue in favour of a pragmatic-rhetorical theory of explanation, and it is in light of this theory that I suggest we can understand interpretation in the natural sciences
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433The pragmatic-rhetorical theory of explanationIn Johannes Persson & Petri Ylikoski (eds.), Rethinking Explanation. Series: Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science Vol. 252., Springer Verlag. 2007.The pragmatic theory of explanation is an attempt to see explanation as a linguistic response to a cognitive problem where the content of the response depends on the context of the scientific inquiry. The present paper draws on the rhetorical situation, as it is defined by Loyld Bitzer, in order to understand how the context may influence the content as well as the acceptability of the response.
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4Rethinking Science: A Philosophical Introduction to the Unity of ScienceAshgate Publishing. 2002.Science and humanity are usually seen as very different: the sciences of nature aim at explanations whereas the sciences of man seek meaning and understanding. This book shows how these contrasting descriptions fail to fit into a modern philosophical account of the sciences and the arts. Presenting some of the major ideas within the philosophy of science on facts, explanation, interpretation, methods, laws, and theories, Jan Faye compares various approaches, including his own. Arguing that the s…Read more
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11The Bohr-Høffding relationship reconsideredStudies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 19 (3): 321-346. 1988.
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5Quantum Realism: The Interpretation of an Interpretation?Danish Yearbook of Philosophy 41 (1): 83-91. 2006.
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241The role of cognitive values in the shaping of scientific rationalityIn Evandro Agazzi (ed.), Science and Ethics. The Axiological Contexts of Science. (Series: Philosophy and Politics. Vol. 14, P.i.e. Peter Lang. pp. 125-140. 2008.It is not so long ago that philosophers and scientists thought of science as an objective and value-free enterprise. But since the heyday of positivism, it has become obvious that values, norms, and standards have an indispensable role to play in science. You may even say that these values are the real issues of the philosophy of science. Whatever they are, these values constrain science at an ontological, a cognitive, a methodological, and a semantic level for the purpose of making science a ra…Read more
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5Review of Sandro Petruccioli: Atoms, metaphors, and paradoxes: Niels Bohr and the construction of a new physics (review)British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 46 (2): 275-279. 1995.
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35Non-Locality or Non-Separability?In Jan Faye & Henry J. Folse (eds.), Niels Bohr and Contemporary Philosophy, Kluwer Academic Publishers. pp. 97--118. 1993.
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210Tenses, changes, and space-timeIn Time in the Different Scientific Approaches, Tilgher. pp. 89-104. 2008.Here I develop the idea, which I have presented elsewhere, that time instants are abstract entities existing tenselessly and therefore that events and changes likewise may be said to exist tenselessly in virtue of their place at a certain space-time point.