Ioannis G. Ntagkas

The present paper argues that there is an affinity between Kuhn's "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" and Wittgenstein's philosophy. It is maintained, in particular, that Kuhn's notion of paradigm draws on such Wittgensteinian concepts as language games, family resemblance, rules, forms of life. It is also claimed that Kuhn's incommensurability thesis is a sequel of the theory of meaning supplied by Wittgenstein's later philosophy. As such its assessment is not fallacious, since it is not an empirical hypothesis and it does not have the relativistic implications Kuhn's critics repeatedly indicated. Although concepts are indeed relative to a language game or paradigm, interparadigmatic intelligibility is preserved through the standard techniques of translation or praxis. The impossibility of radical translation which is captured by the claim of incommensurability lies with that which cannot be said but only shown

Up to the introduction of the term and concept of incommensurability by T. S. Kuhn and P. K. Feyerabend in the early 1960s, scientific texts were supposed to pose no problem as regards their translation, unlike literature, which was thought very difficult to translate. After the introduction of the term, translation of scientific language became equally problematic because, due to conceptual and perceptual incommensurability, there was no common observation basis to ground linguistic equivalences between languages of incommensurable paradigms. This article highlights the presuppositions that link incommensurability to dramatic consequences (impossibility of communication, translation, and comparative evaluation of paradigms) and tries to sketch an alternative way of understanding incommensurability and translation drawing on Kuhn’s work. From this perspective, translation is not an all-or-nothing affair for either science or literature and becomes a problem to be solved for each particular set of circumstances.

The Quest for Physical Theory (QPT) comprises the eight Lowell lectures that Kuhn gave on Tuesdays and Fridays in March 1951 in the Lecture Hall of the Boston Library. He was 28 years old at the time, a member of the Harvard Society of Fellows, a recent Harvard PhD in Physics (1949), and an instructor in the general-education course on science set up by James Conant, Harvard’s President. Kuhn seized the opportunity of the Lowell Lectures to present his new, and ground-breaking at the time, take on science which was shaped by Kuhn’s forays in psychology, philosophy, history, and logic. It is obvious from reading the lectures that Kuhn was very confident of his views and was aiming to jolt the public with his revisionary account. To a complacent audience, accustomed to the standard, textbook picture of science, he hurled the provocative claims that there are no pure facts, that prejudice plays a decisive role in scientific practice, that the then-current history of science fabricated mythologies about past science, that perception is not passive, and that the overthrow of a theory does not add to previous knowledge. All these claims more than foreshadow the basic elements of Kuhn’s model in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (SSR). It is not just that the lectures speak to the emergence of Kuhn’s ideas that were later refined, as George Reisch, the editor of QPT, says in his introductory essay. The lectures show that Kuhn had conceived his model, almost in its entirety, very early on, which means that the much-debated influence exercised on him by later works, such as Toulmin’s, Hanson’s, or Polanyi’s in the 1950s, was secondary to the exploratory readings of his youth. These later influences must have solidified his early conception.

A Physicalist Manifesto is a full treatment of the comprehensive physicalist view that, in some important sense, everything is physical. Andrew Melnyk argues that the view is best formulated by appeal to a carefully worked-out notion of realization, rather than supervenience; that, so formulated, physicalism must be importantly reductionist; that it need not repudiate causal and explanatory claims framed in non-physical language; and that it has the a posteriori epistemic status of a broad-scope scientific hypothesis. Two concluding chapters argue in detail that contemporary science provides no significant empirical evidence against physicalism and some considerable evidence for it. Written in a brisk, candid and exceptionally clear style, this 2003 book should appeal to professionals and students in philosophy of mind, metaphysics and philosophy of science.

The traditional view of science holds that science is essentially nomothetic—that is, the defining characteristic of science is that it seeks to discover and formulate laws for the phenomena in its domain, and that laws are required for explanation and prediction. This paper advances the thesis that there are no laws in the special sciences, sciences other than fundamental physics, and that this does not impugn their status as sciences. Toward this end, two arguments are presented. The first begins with Donald Davidson’s argument against psychophysical laws and develops a more perspicacious general argument against special science laws. The second is a generalized and more explicitly motivated argument based on J. J. C. Smart’s claim that biology, unlike physics, has no laws.

In this paper, I consider V. S. Ramachandran's in-principle agnosticism concerning whether neurological studies of religious experience can be taken as support for the claim that God really does communicate with people during religious experiences. Contra Ramachandran, I argue that it is by no means obvious that agnosticism is the proper scientific attitude to adopt in relation to this claim. I go on to show how the questions of whether it is (1) a scientifically testable claim and (2) a plausible hypothesis, serve to open up some important philosophical issues concerning interpretive backgrounds that are presupposed in the assessment of scientific hypotheses. More specifically, I argue that naturalism or scientific objectivism in its various forms is not simply a neutral or default methodological backdrop for empirical inquiry but involves acceptance of a specific ontology, which functions as an implicit and unargued constitutive commitment. Hence, these neurological studies can be employed as a lever with which to disclose something of the ways in which different frameworks of interpretation, both theistic and atheistic, serve differently to structure and give meaning to empirical findings.

In this article, I investigate the possibility of reconciling a radically disenchanted scientific naturalism in ontology with the unconditional and non-instrumental character of the moral point of view. My point of departure will be Sellars’s philosophy, which attempts to satisfy both those, seemingly unreconcilable, demands at once. I shall argue that there is a tension between those two demands that finds expression both at the theoretical and practical level, and which is not adequately resolved from a strictly Sellarsian perspective. I will then develop a neo-Sellarsian framework, close to the spirit—if not the letter—of Sellars’s philosophy, which, as I will suggest, can live up to this task. This solution depends (1) on insisting on both the semantic irreducibility and explanatory reducibility of moral normativity to non-normative facts, while simultaneously acknowledging that those two dimensions mutually presuppose and support on another, and (2) on recognizing that the instrumental facets of theoretical-scientific rationality need not imply a coercive attitude toward nature, ourselves, and others.

This article summarizes Ockham's interpretation of Aristotle's categories, showing how his account of connotative concepts introduced a revision in the Aristotelian doctrine about the relation between mathematics and physics. The article shows that Ockham's account influenced William of Heytesbury, John Dumbleton, and Nicholas Oresme to re-interpret disciplinary relations and disciplinary boundaries. They did so, however, in ways compatible with other basic principles of Aristotelian philosophy of nature; nevertheless, their modifications of the Aristotelian account of mathematics stimulated later philosophers to construct robust theories of mathematics compatible with modern mathematical physics

My aim in this paper is to consider the question ‘Why is belief in God not a delusion?’. In the first half of the paper, I distinguish two kinds of religious belief: institutional and personal religious belief. I then review how cognitive science accounts for cultural processes in the acquisition and transmission of institutional religious beliefs. In the second half of the paper, I present the clinical definition of delusion and underline the fact that it exempts cultural beliefs from clinical diagnosis. Finally, I review cognitive models of the intuitive attribution of mental disorders and how they support cultural exemption. Through the comparison of the models of cultural acquisition of religious beliefs and of cultural exemption in the attribution of delusion I intend to make it clear that we can provide an answer to our motivating question: even though some institutional religious beliefs may seem as strange as the most florid delusions, humans can readily recognize that they are not the product of mental dysfunction due to the fact that their acquisition and transmission is embedded within a cultural context.

This paper argues that the main global critiques of scientism lose their punch because they rely on an uncharitable definition of their target. It focuses on epistemological scientism and divides it into four categories in terms of how strong (science is the only source of knowledge) or weak (science is the best source of knowledge) and how narrow (only natural sciences) or broad (all sciences or at least not only the natural sciences) they are. Two central arguments against scientism, the (false) dilemma and self‐referential incoherence, are analysed. Of the four types of epistemological scientism, three can deal with these counterarguments by utilizing two methodological principles: epistemic evaluability of reliability and epistemic opportunism. One hopes that these considerations will steer the discussion on scientism to more fruitful pastures in the future. For example, there are interesting methodological considerations concerning what evaluability or reliability and epistemic opportunism entail.

Sets of contingent objects, perhaps, are as contingent as their members; but properties, propositions, numbers and states of affairs, it seems, are objects whose non-existence is quite impossible. If so, however, how are they related to God? Suppose God has a nature: a property he has essentially that includes each property essential to him. Does God have a nature? And if he does, is there a conflict between God's sovereignty and his having a nature? How is God related to such abstract objects as properties and propositions? These are the questions I want to explore. - Introduction.

There is perhaps no more succinct a way of describing the controversy between scientific realists and antirealists than to say that it turns on the reality of the unobservable. Less concisely, it turns on whether we have reason to think that scientific theories tell us the truth (or something close to it) about some of the underlying, unobservable bits of a mind-independent, external reality, among other things. Claims to knowledge of such a reality have traditionally been a bone of contention between realists and empiricists. Two decades ago, this ongoing debate was inflamed by the introduction of Bas van Fraassen’s particular brand of empiricism. Wholesale idealists and phenomenalists have been increasingly marginalized. The reality of the observable is now generally taken for granted by most parties to the debate. The epistemic status of the unobservable, however, remains controversial.

Multiple authors in cognitive science of religion (CSR) argue that there is something about the human mind that disposes it to form religious beliefs. The dispositions would result from the internal architecture of the mind. In this article, I will argue that this disposition can be explained by various forms of (cultural) learning and not by the internal architecture of the mind. For my argument, I draw on new developments in predictive processing. I argue that CSR theories argue for the naturalness of religious belief in at least three ways; religious beliefs are adaptive; religious beliefs are the product of cognitive biases; and religious beliefs are the product of content biases. I argue that all three ideas can be integrated in a predictive coding framework where religious belief is learned and hence not caused by the internal architecture of the mind. I argue that the framework makes it doubtful that there are modular cognitive mechanisms for religious beliefs and that the human mind has a fixed proneness for religious belief. I also argue that a predictive coding framework can incorporate a larger role for cultural processes and allows for more flexibility.

My paper characterizes religious beliefs in terms of vagueness. I introduce my topic by providing a general overview of my main claims. In the subsequent section, I develop basic distinctions and terminology for handling the notion of religious tradition and capturing vagueness. In the following sections, I make the case for my claim that religious beliefs are vague by developing a general argument from the interconnection between the referential opacity of religious belief content and the long-term communitarian history of the precisification of what such content means. I start from describing an empirical example in the third section, and then I move to settle the matter in a conceptually argumentative frame in the fourth one. My conclusions in the final section address a few of consequences relevant to debates about religious epistemology and religious diversity.

If believing P will result in epistemically good outcomes, does this generate an epistemic reason to believe P, or just a pragmatic reason? Conceiving of such reasons as epistemic reasons seems to lead to absurdity, e.g. by allowing that someone can rationally hold beliefs that conflict with her assessment of her evidence’s probative force. We explain how this and other intuitively unwelcome results can be avoided. We also suggest a positive case for conceiving of such reasons as epistemic reasons, namely, that they exhibit a form of interpersonal normative parity that’s typical of epistemic reasons but not pragmatic reasons. We then link this discussion to religious belief, suggesting that there are sometimes indirect epistemic reasons for religious belief, and that certain characterisations of religious belief are instructive in thinking about how to take account of indirect epistemic reasons.

I supplement Frankish's defence of illusionism by pressing a point I've made elsewhere regarding how actual computational proposals in psychology for conscious processes could be run on desktop computers that most people wouldn't regard as conscious. I distinguish the w-consciousness of such a desktop from the s-consciousness people think humans but no such machines enjoy, which gives rise to an explanatory gap, invites first scepticism, unwanted analgesia, and is not supported by Cartesian introspections or any other non-tendentious evidence. Rather, along lines suggested by Wittgenstein and Chomsky, it seems to be an illusory projection of our innate, involuntary responses to things that look and act like our conspecifics, one encouraged by a decontexualized philosophical over-reading of ordinary talk, akin to an over-reading of a term like 'the sky'. However, it also seems to be an illusory projection we can't entirely dispel.

This volume is an introduction to contemporary debates in the philosophy of mind. In particular, the author focuses on the controversial "eliminativist" and "instrumentalist" attacks - from philosophers such as of Quine, Dennett, and the Churchlands - on our ordinary concept of mind. In so doing, Rey offers an explication and defense of "mental realism", and shows how Fodor's representational theory of mind affords a compelling account of much of our ordinary mental talk of beliefs, hopes, and desires.

In earlier ages reliable information was rather hard to get, and in general people could be excused for taking the founding myths of their religions on faith. These were the "facts" that "everyone knew," and anybody who had a skeptical itch could check it out with the local priest or rabbi or imam, or other religious authority. Today, there is really no excuse for such ignorance. It may not be your fault if you don't know the facts about the history and tenets of your own religion, but it is somebody's fault. Or more charitably, perhaps we have all been victimized by an accumulation of tradition that.

Here I reply to the main points raised by the commentators on the arguments put forward in my Delusions and Other Irrational Beliefs (OUP, 2009). My response is aimed at defending a modest doxastic account of clinical delusions, and is articulated in three sections. First, I consider the view that delusions are inbetween perceptual and doxastic states, defended by Jacob Hohwy and Vivek Rajan, and the view that delusions are failed attempts at believing or not-quitebeliefs, proposed by Eric Schwitzgebel and Maura Tumulty. Then, I address the relationship between the doxastic account of delusions and the role, nature, and prospects of folk psychology, which is discussed by Dominic Murphy, Keith Frankish, and Maura Tumulty in their contributions. In the final remarks, I turn to the continuity thesis and suggest that, although there are important differences between clinical delusions and non-pathological beliefs, these differences cannot be characterised satisfactorily in epistemic terms.

Clinicians and cognitive scientists typically conceive of delusions as doxastic—they view delusions as beliefs. But some philosophers have countered with anti-doxastic objections: delusions cannot be beliefs because they fail the necessary conditions of belief. A common response involves meeting these objections on their own terms by accepting necessary conditions on belief but trying to blunt their force. I take a different approach by invoking a cognitive-phenomenal view of belief and jettisoning the rational/behavioural conditions. On this view, the anti-doxastic claims can be rejected outright, and doxasticism can be defended. I call this the cognitive phenomenological defence of doxasticism.

When someone says she believes that God exists, is she expressing the same kind of mental state as when she says she thinks that a lake bigger than Lake Michigan exists⎯i.e., does she refer to the same kind of cognitive attitude in both cases? Using evidence from linguistic corpora (Study 1) and behavioral experiments (Studies 2-4), the current work provides evidence that individuals typically use the word “believe” more in conjunction with statements about religious credences and “think” more in conjunction with factual statements, pointing to two different understandings of claims made with these two terms. These patterns do not appear to reflect low-level differences based on the amount of consensus surrounding a particular claim, the extent to which the truth of a particular claim is known to the participant, or linguistic differences between religious and factual statements. We discuss implications of these findings for religious cognition (e.g., as supporting the theory that religious credences are qualitatively distinct from factual beliefs) as well as cognitive processes more broadly. Finally, we relate the present findings to prior theoretical work on differences between factual belief and religious credence.

Religious people seem to believe things that range from the somewhat peculiar to the utterly bizarre. Or do they? According to a new paper by Neil Van Leeuwen, religious “credence” is nothing like mundane factual belief. It has, he claims, more in common with fictional imaginings. Religious folk do not really “believe”—in the ordinary sense of the word—what they profess to believe. Like fictional imaginings, but unlike factual beliefs, religious credences are activated only within specific settings. We argue that Van Leeuwen’s thesis contradicts a wealth of data on religiously motivated behavior. By and large, the faithful genuinely believe what they profess to believe. Although many religions openly embrace a sense of mystery, in general this does not prevent the attribution of beliefs to religious people. Many of the features of religious belief that Van Leeuwen alludes to, like invulnerability to refutation and incoherence, are characteristic of irrational beliefs in general and actually betray...

According to the antirealist argument known as the pessimistic induction, the history of science is a graveyard of dead scientific theories and abandoned theoretical posits. Support for this pessimistic picture of the history of science usually comes from a few case histories, such as the demise of the phlogiston theory and the abandonment of caloric as the substance of heat. In this article, I wish to take a new approach to examining the ‘history of science as a graveyard of theories’ picture. Using JSTOR Data for Research and Springer Exemplar, I present new lines of evidence that are at odds with this pessimistic picture of the history of science. When rigorously tested against the historical record of science, I submit, the pessimistic picture of the history of science as a graveyard of dead theories and abandoned posits may turn out to be no more than a philosophers’ myth.