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276Logical form and the order of nature: Comments on Beátrice Longuenesse's Kant and the capacity to judgeArchiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 82 (2): 202-215. 2000.
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74Kantian Themes in Contemporary PhilosophyAristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 72 (1): 111-129. 1998.[Michael Friedman] This paper considers the extent to which Kant's vision of a distinctively 'transcendental' task for philosophy is essentially tied to his views on the foundations of the mathematical and physical sciences. Contemporary philosophers with broadly Kantian sympathies have attempted to reinterpret his project so as to isolate a more general philosophical core not so closely tied to the details of now outmoded mathematical-physical theories (Euclidean geometry and Newtonian physics)…Read more
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50On the sociology of scientific knowledge and its philosophical agendaStudies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 29 (2): 239-271. 1998.
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66Reconsidering the dynamics of reason: Response to Ferrari, Mormann, Nordmann, and UebelStudies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 43 (1): 47-53. 2012.
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255Perceiving and responding to embarrassing predicaments across languages: Cultural influences on the mental lexiconMental Lexicon 3 (1): 121-147. 2008.The experience of embarrassment was explored in two experiments comparing monolingual and bilingual speakers from cultures varying in the degree of elabo- ration of the embarrassment lexicon. In Experiment 1, narratives in English or Korean depicting three types of embarrassing predicaments were to be rated on their embarrassability and humorousness by Korean-English bilinguals, Korean monolinguals, and Euro-American monolinguals. All groups judged certain predicaments (involving social gaffes) …Read more
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8ContentsIn Wolfgang Schäffner & Michael Friedman (eds.), On Folding: Towards a New Field of Interdisciplinary Research, Transcript Verlag. pp. 5-6. 2016.
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Introduction: Carnap’s Revolution in PhilosophyIn James Justus (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Carnap, Jstor. pp. 1--18. 2009.
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1Coordination, Constitution, and Convention: The Evolution of the A Priori in Logical EmpiricismIn Alan Richardson & Thomas Uebel (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Logical Empiricism, Cambridge University Press. pp. 91--116. 2007.
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35Scientific Philosophy from Helmholtz to Carnap and QuineIn Richard Creath (ed.), Rudolf Carnap and the Legacy of Logical Empiricism, Springer Verlag. pp. 1--11. 2012.The concept of a “scientific philosophy” first developed in the mid nineteenth century, as a reaction against what was viewed as the excessively speculative and metaphysical character of post-Kantian German idealism. One of the primary intellectual models of this movement was a celebrated address by Hermann von Helmholtz, “Über das Sehen des Menschen,” delivered at the dedication of a monument to Kant at Königsberg in 1855. Helmholtz begins by asking, on behalf of the audience, why a natural sci…Read more
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62Realism, and Modern PhysicsIn Don Ross, James Ladyman & Harold Kincaid (eds.), Scientific metaphysics, Oxford University Press. pp. 182. 2013.
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11Kant, Kuhn e a racionalidade da ciênciaPhilósophos - Revista de Filosofia 14 (1): 175-209. 2009.This paper considers the evolution of the problem of scientific rationality from Kant through Carnap to Kuhn. I argue for a relativized and historicized version of the original Kantian conception of scientific a priori principles and examine the way in which these principles change and develop across revolutionary paradigm shifts. The distinctively philosophical enterprise of reflecting upon and contextualizing such principles is then seen to play a key role in making possible rational intersubj…Read more
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75Book Review:Philosophical Papers Moritz Schlick, H. L. Mulder, B. F. B. van de Velde-Schlick (review)Philosophy of Science 50 (3): 498-. 1983.
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Form and contentIn Palle Yourgrau (ed.), Demonstratives, Oxford University Press. pp. 215-231. 1990.
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35Dynamics of reason: the 1999 Kant lectures at Stanford UniversityCSLI Publications. 2001.This book introduces a new approach to the issue of radical scientific revolutions, or "paradigm-shifts," given prominence in the work of Thomas Kuhn. The book articulates a dynamical and historicized version of the conception of scientific a priori principles first developed by the philosopher Immanuel Kant. This approach defends the Enlightenment ideal of scientific objectivity and universality while simultaneously doing justice to the revolutionary changes within the sciences that have since …Read more
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328Poincaré's conventionalism and the logical positivistsFoundations of Science 1 (2): 299-314. 1995.The logical positivists adopted Poincare's doctrine of the conventionality of geometry and made it a key part of their philosophical interpretation of relativity theory. I argue, however, that the positivists deeply misunderstood Poincare's doctrine. For Poincare's own conception was based on the group-theoretical picture of geometry expressed in the Helmholtz-Lie solution of the space problem, and also on a hierarchical picture of the sciences according to which geometry must be presupposed be …Read more
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303Bertrand Russell's the analysis of matter: Its historical context and contemporary interestPhilosophy of Science 52 (4): 621-639. 1985.The Analysis of Matter is perhaps best known for marking Russell's rejection of phenomenalism and his development of a variety of Lockean representationalism–-Russell's causal theory of perception. This occupies Part 2 of the work. Part 1, which is certainly less well known, contains many observations on twentieth-century physics. Unfortunately, Russell's discussion of relativity and the foundations of physical geometry is carried out in apparent ignorance of Reichenbach's and Carnap's investiga…Read more
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1The concept of structure in Russell's The Analysis of MatterIn C. Wade Savage & C. Anthony Anderson (eds.), Rereading Russell: Essays in Bertrand Russell's Metaphysics and Epistemology, University of Minnesota Press. 1989.
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1711 Physicalism and the Indeterminacy of TranslationIn Paul K. Moser & J. D. Trout (eds.), Contemporary Materialism: A Reader, Routledge. pp. 209. 1995.
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68Wissenschaftslogik: The role of logic in the philosophy of scienceSynthese 164 (3): 385-400. 2008.Carl Hempel introduced what he called "Craig's theorem" into the philosophy of science in a famous discussion of the "problem of theoretical terms." Beginning with Hempel's use of 'Craig's theorem," I shall bring out some of the key differences between Hempel's treatment of the "problem of theoretical terms" and Carnap's in order to illuminate the peculiar function of Wissenschaftslogik in Carnap's mature philosophy. Carnap's treatment, in particular, is fundamentally antimetaphysical—he aims to…Read more
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3Transcendental philosophy and a priori knowledge: A neo-Kantian perspectiveIn Paul Artin Boghossian & Christopher Peacocke (eds.), New Essays on the A Priori, Oxford University Press. 2000.
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22The Cambridge Companion to Carnap (edited book)Cambridge University Press. 2007.Rudolf Carnap is increasingly regarded as one of the most important philosophers of the twentieth century. He was one of the leading figures of the logical empiricist movement associated with the Vienna Circle and a central figure in the analytic tradition more generally. He made major contributions to philosophy of science and philosophy of logic, and, perhaps most importantly, to our understanding of the nature of philosophy as a discipline. In this volume a team of contributors explores the m…Read more
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143Reconsidering Logical PositivismCambridge University Press. 1999.In this collection of essays one of the preeminent philosophers of science writing offers a reinterpretation of the enduring significance of logical positivism, the revolutionary philosophical movement centered around the Vienna Circle in the 1920s and 30s. Michael Friedman argues that the logical positivists were radicals not by presenting a new version of empiricism but rather by offering a new conception of a priori knowledge and its role in empirical knowledge. This collection will be mandat…Read more
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217Kant, skepticism, and idealismInquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 49 (1). 2006.Skeptical problems arising for Kant's version of transcendental idealism have been raised from Kant's own time to the present day. By focussing on how such problems originally arose in the wake of Kant's work, and on the first formulations of absolute idealism by Schelling, I argue that the skeptical problems in question ultimately depend on fundamental features of Kant's philosophy of natural science. As a result, Naturphilosophie and the organic conception of nature cannot easily be separated …Read more
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432Kant, Kuhn, and the rationality of sciencePhilosophy of Science 69 (2): 171-90. 2002.This paper considers the evolution of the problem of scientific rationality from Kant through Carnap to Kuhn. I argue for a relativized and historicized version of the original Kantian conception of scientific a priori principles and examine the way in which these principles change and develop across revolutionary paradigm shifts. The distinctively philosophical enterprise of reflecting upon and contextualizing such principles is then seen to play a key role in making possible rational intersubj…Read more
Areas of Specialization
Metaphysics and Epistemology |
Areas of Interest
Metaphysics and Epistemology |