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31On the Ethics of Medical Care under Resource ConstraintsSpontaneous Generations 1 (1): 4. 2007.The aim of this discussion is practical; otherwise it largely repeats some very general observations, chiefly historical and philosophical. I boast no expertise in anything specifically medical, to do with either medical care or medical administration. My concern is with the system of medicine and with the ethical and social issues that it involves. Applied philosophy is a still uncharted territory. Philosophers traditionally focus more on justifying accepted solutions than on seeking new soluti…Read more
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4On the Reliability of ScienceMayoDeborah G.SpanosAris, eds. Error and Inference: Recent Exchanges on Experimental reasoning, Reliability, and the Objectivity and Rationality of Science. New York, Cambridge University Press, 2010. xvii + 409 pp. $65.00 , $36.99 (review)Philosophy of the Social Sciences 43 (1): 100-115. 2013.Error and Inference discusses Deborah Mayo’s theory that connects the reliability of science to scientific evidence. She sees it as an essential supplement to the negative principles of critical rationalism. She and Aris Spanos, her co-editor, declare that the discussions in the book amount to tremendous progress. Yet most contributors to the book misconstrue the Socratic character of critical rationalism because they ignore a principal tenet: criticism in and of itself comprises progress, and e…Read more
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59On Hugo Bergman's contribution to epistemologyIn Abraham Zvie Bar-On (ed.), Grazer Philosophische Studien, Distributed in the U.s.a. By Humanities Press. pp. 47-58. 1986.Approximationism — science approximates the truth as an ideal — is the view of science implicit in all of Einstein's major works, heralded by Hugo Bergman in Hebrew in 1940 and expressed by Karl Popper in 1954 and 1956. Yet Bergman was not sufficiently clear about it, and even Popper is not - as shown by their not giving up certain remnants of the older views which approximationism replaces, even when these remnants are inconsistent with approximationism. Norare the approximationist theories of …Read more
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145On the Reliability of Science: The Critical Rationalist VersionPhilosophy of the Social Sciences 43 (1): 100-115. 2013.Error and Inference discusses Deborah Mayo’s theory that connects the reliability of science to scientific evidence. She sees it as an essential supplement to the negative principles of critical rationalism. She and Aris Spanos, her co-editor, declare that the discussions in the book amount to tremendous progress. Yet most contributors to the book misconstrue the Socratic character of critical rationalism because they ignore a principal tenet: criticism in and of itself comprises progress, and e…Read more
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26Even of that, I cannot elaborate. He joined the Irgun National Military Organization as a youth, joined its headquarters as a teenager, and went abroad on a mission at the age of 22, from which he returned a decade later, after his chief political activity was over. I cannot describe all that now. I will sum it up briefly. His life work had two great achievements and two heartbreaking failures. The struggle to rescue the Jews of Europe during the Holocaust and the Declaration of Israel’s Indepen…Read more
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24On Hugo Bergman's Contribution to EpistemologyGrazer Philosophische Studien 24 (1): 47-58. 1985.Approximationism — science approximates the truth as an ideal — is the view of science implicit in all of Einstein's major works, heralded by Hugo Bergman in Hebrew in 1940 and expressed by Karl Popper in 1954 and 1956. Yet Bergman was not sufficiently clear about it, and even Popper is not - as shown by their not giving up certain remnants of the older views which approximationism replaces, even when these remnants are inconsistent with approximationism. Norare the approximationist theories of …Read more
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49Privileged accessInquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 12 (1-4). 1969.That everyone has some privileged access to some information is trivially true. The doctrine of privileged access is that I am the authority on all of my own experiences. Possibly this thesis was attacked by Wittgenstein (the thesis on the non?existence of private languages). The thesis was refuted by Freud (I know your dreams better than you), Duhem (I know your methods of scientific discovery better than you), Malinowski (I know your customs and habits better than you), and perception theorist…Read more
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51On the Limits of Scientific Explanation: Hempel and Evans-PritchardPhilosophical Forum 1 (2): 171. 1968.In recent years, Hempel has questioned the universal applicability of the deductive model of causal explanation, and suggested supplementing it with a probability model.' When we explain the fact that one child got the measles by the suggestion that he caught it from another child, we are not using the deductive model, he says, since catching measles is a matter of mere probability and not of strict causality: playing with an infected child is not a sufficient condition for infection.
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17The main concern of these notes is objectivity. The demand of traditional rationalism for absolute objectivity is excessive; the license of hermeneuticists and post-modernists to replace objectivity by frank ethnocentrism by endorsing local prejudices is unfortunate. Most social observers still attempt to overcome ethnocentrism, by the use of statistics and of the field method of participant observation and of other means, knowing that no guarantee is possible. As the volume at hand concerns the…Read more
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19Max Planck’s RemorseBrownBrandon R.Planck: Driven by Vision, Broken by War. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015. xxix + 248 pp. ISBN. 978-0-19-021947-5 (review)Philosophy of the Social Sciences 47 (4-5): 351-358. 2017.
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62Movies seen many timesPhilosophy of the Social Sciences 8 (4): 398-405. 1978.Consider such light musical pieces as Schumann's and Debussy's Arabesques, Schumann's Traumerie, Debussy's Petite Suite, Tschaikowsky's Andante Cantabile, and so on. They all strike their new listener very forcefully; indeed, if you can find music lovers who have not heard one of these you can easily move them to tears by a good performance. Yet they wear out, some with the first hearing, some with the tenth. To be really both immediately very impressive and very durable, like Debussy's Fetes an…Read more
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156To save verisimilitudeMind 90 (360): 576-579. 1981.JOSEPH AGASSI 1. Sir Karl Popper has offered two different theories of scientific progress, his theory of conjectures and refutations and corroboration, as well as his theory of verisimilitude increase. The former was attacked by some old-fashioned inductivists, yet is triumphant; the latter has been refuted by Tichy and by Miller to Popper’s own satisfaction. Oddly, however, the theory of verisimilitude was developed because of some deficiency in the theory of corroboration, and though in its p…Read more
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13Nicholas Maxwell, Is Science Neurotic? London: Imperial College Press , 228 pp., $60.00 (review)Philosophy of Science 75 (4): 477-479. 2008.
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2Methodological Individualism: Background, History and MeaningPhilosophy of the Social Sciences 34 (2): 316. 2004.
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35Newell's listBehavioral and Brain Sciences 26 (5): 601-602. 2003.Newell wanted a theory of cognition to abide by some explicit criteria, here called the Newell Test. The test differs from the Turing Test because it is explicit. The Newell Test will include the Turing Test if its characterization of cognition is complete. It is not. Its use here is open-ended: A system that does not pass it well invites improvement.
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21This book collects 13 papers that explore Wittgenstein's philosophy throughout the different stages of his career. The author writes from the viewpoint of critical rationalism. The tone of his analysis is friendly and appreciative yet critical. Of these papers, seven are on the background to the philosophy of Wittgenstein. Five papers examine different aspects of it: one on the philosophy of young Wittgenstein, one on his transitional period, and the final three on the philosophy of mature Wittg…Read more
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15Magic as PsychotherapyPhilosophy of the Social Sciences 49 (6): 528-533. 2019.Philosophy of the Social Sciences, Ahead of Print.
Joseph Agassi
York University
D'Annunzio University of Chieti–Pescara
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D'Annunzio University of Chieti–PescaraOther
Areas of Specialization
Science, Logic, and Mathematics |
Metaphysics and Epistemology |
History of Western Philosophy |
Philosophy, Misc |