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411Natural kind terms againEuropean Journal for Philosophy of Science 11 (1): 1-17. 2021.The new externalist picture of natural kind terms due to Kripke, Putnam, and others has become quite popular in philosophy. Many philosophers of science have remained sceptical. Häggqvist and Wikforss have recently criticised this view severely. They contend it depends essentially on a micro-essentialist view of natural kinds that is widely rejected among philosophers of science, and that a scientifically reasonable metaphysics entails the resurrection of some version of descriptivism. It is arg…Read more
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736The Semantic Realism/Anti-Realism Dispute and Knowledge of MeaningsThe Baltic International Yearbook of Cognition, Logic and Communication 5 1-13. 2009.Here the relationship between understanding and knowledge of meaning is discussed from two different perspectives: that of Dummettian semantic anti-realism and that of the semantic externalism of Putnam and others. The question addressed is whether or not the truth of semantic externalism would undermine a central premise in one of Dummetts key arguments for anti-realism, insofar as Dummetts premise involves an assumption about the transparency of meaning and semantic externalism is often taken …Read more
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579On Carnap sentencesAnalysis 71 (2): 245-246. 2011.The influential proposal that the analytical component of a theory is captured by its ‘Carnap sentence’ is critically scrutinized. A counterexample which makes the suggestion problematic is presented.
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1291What Was Analytic Philosophy?Journal for the History of Analytical Philosophy 2 (1): 11-27. 2013.
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295Putnam’s Last Papers: Hilary Putnam: Naturalism, Realism, and Normativity, edited by Mario De Caro. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2016, 248 pp, $51.50 HB (review)Metascience 28 (3): 487-489. 2019.
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232Teon teoria ja historiallinen selittäminenTiede and Edistys 2011 (4): 291-300. 2011.The essay examines the views expressed in von Wright's Explanation and Understanding (1971) on human action and historical events from the perspective of the recent philosophy of science. Connecting causal explanation tightly to covering laws, as von Wright does, is found to be problematic, and his Logical connection argument invalid. On the other hand, von Wright's sketched theory of causation which is based on the concept of manipulation proves to be on the right track in light of current …Read more
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1450YouTube-älykön tajunnanvirtaa ja elämänohjeita (review)Niin and Näin 2018 (4). 2018.Kirja-arvio teoksesta Jordan B. Peterson, 12 elämänohjetta. Käsikirja kaaosta vastaan (12 Rules for Life. An Antidote to Chaos, 2018). Suom. Tero Valkonen. WSOY, Helsinki 2018.
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407Chalmersin argumentti materialismia vastaanAjatus 75 (1): 401-444. 2018.Artikkelissa tarkastellaan perusteellisesti ja kriittisesti David Chalmersin vaikutusvaltaista fenomenaaliseen tietoisuuden liittyvää argumenttia materialismia vastaan. Argumentissa tunnistetaan useampikin kuin yksi heikko lenkki.
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2110Classical theory of conceptsIn Pashler Harold (ed.), Encyclopedia of the mind, Sage Publications. 2013.
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333The return of reductive physicalismIn Alexander Hieke Hannes Leitgeb (ed.), Reduction and elimination in philosophy and the sciences : papers of the 31th International Wittgenstein Symposium, Austrian Ludwig Wittgenstein Society. 2008.The importance of the exclusion argument for contemporary physicalism is emphasized. The recent attempts to vindicate reductive physicalism by invoking certain needed revisions to the Nagelian model of reduction are then discussed. It is argued that such revised views of reduction offer in fact much less help to reductive physicalism than is sometimes supposed, and that many of these views lead to trouble when combined with the exclusion argument.
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547Problems of DeflationismIn Tuomo Aho & Ahti-Veikko Pietarinen (eds.), Truth and Games in Logic and Language. (Acta Philosophica Fennica vol. 78), . pp. 175-185. 2006.
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420Mentaalinen kausaatioIn Syy, Gaudeamus. 2007.Ajatus mentaalisesta kausaatiosta – siitä että mentaaliset ominaisuudet, tilat tai tapahtumat aiheuttavat fysikaalisia vaikutuksia, esimerkiksi ruumiinliikkeitä ja käyttäytymistä – on keskeinen osa niin arkiajattelua kuin tieteellistä psykologiaakin. Itsessään se tuntuu lähes latteudelta. Tarkemmassa filosofisessa tarkastelussa se kuitenkin synnyttää huomattavia filosofisia ongelmia (ks. esim. Block 1990; Heal & Mele 1993; Crane 1995).
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282Exploring RandomnessNotices of the AMS 48 (9): 992-6. 2001.Review of "Exploring Randomness" (200) and "The Unknowable" (1999) by Gregory Chaitin.
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661Voiko ihmistiede olla arvovapaata?In Etiikkaa ihmistieteilijöille, Sks. 2006.Kysymys siitä, onko tiede ja voiko se olla arvovapaata, on herättänyt vilkasta ja jopa kiivastakin keskustelua. Erityisen polttava tämä kysymys on ihmistieteissä. Yhdessä ääripäässä on kuva tieteellisestä tutkimuksesta kaikenlaisten eettisten ja yhteiskunnallisten kysymysten yläpuolella olevana intressittömänä toimintana. Toisessa päässä on väite, ettei tiede voi koskaan olla arvovapaata vaan että tieteellinen tutkimus ja sen tulokset ovat läpeensä arvojen värittämiä. Näiden välille mahtuu monen…Read more
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14Approaching truth: essays in honour of Ilkka Niiniluoto (edited book)College Publications. 2007.Ilkka Niiniluoto, a distinguished philosopher of science, has been a tirelesspokesman for scientific realism and reason more generally. Trained in the tradition of the Finnish school of inductive logic he has refined the notion of truthlikeness (verisimilitude) to make the realist idea scientific progress mathematically exact. Niiniluotos main technical works are included in his books Is Science Progressive? (1984) and Truthlikeness (1987), but his most recent general defense of scientific reali…Read more
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676Tilaustutkimus ja ulkopuolinen rahoitusIn Sakari Karjalainen, Veikko Launis, Risto Pelkonen & Juhani Pietarinen (eds.), Tutkijan eettiset valinnat, Gaudeamus. 2002.Suomessa kuten muissakin ”kehittyneissä” maissa suurin osa tutkimus- ja kehittämistoiminnasta tehdään nykyisin jo yksityisellä rahoituksella. Tämä on tuonut mukanaan myös aivan uudenlaisia yhteiskunnallisia ja eettisiä ongelmia ja haasteita. Tilaustutkimuksen osuus korkeakouluissa tehtävästä tutkimuksesta on jatkuvasti kasvanut. Tällaiseen suuntaavaan ulkopuoliseen tutkimusrahoitukseen liittyy monenlaisia ongelmia. Pyrin tässä kirjoituksessa käsittelemään niistä keskeisimpiä.
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899On rules of inference and the meanings of logical constantsAnalysis 68 (4): 282-287. 2008.In the theory of meaning, it is common to contrast truth-conditional theories of meaning with theories which identify the meaning of an expression with its use. One rather exact version of the somewhat vague use-theoretic picture is the view that the standard rules of inference determine the meanings of logical constants. Often this idea also functions as a paradigm for more general use-theoretic approaches to meaning. In particular, the idea plays a key role in the anti-realist program of Dumme…Read more
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389The problem of mental causation is discussed by taking into account some recent developments in the philosophy of science. The problem is viewed from the perspective of the new interventionist theory of causation developed by Woodward. The import of the idea that causal claims involve contrastive classes in mental causation is also discussed. It is argued that mental causation is much less a problem than it has appeared to be.
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507Deflationism and gödel’s theorem – a comment on GaukerAnalysis 62 (1). 2002.In his recent article Christopher Gauker (2001) has presented a thoughtprovoking argument against deflationist theories of truth. More exactly, he attacks what he calls ‘T-schema deflationism’, that is, the claim that a theory of truth can simply take the form of certain instances of the T-schema.
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1156The scope and limits of value-freedom in scienceIn Heikki J. Koskinen Sami Pihlstrom & Risto Vilkko (eds.), Science – A Challenge to Philosophy?, . 2006.The issue of whether science is, or can be, value-free has been debated for more than a century. The idea of value-free science is of course as old as science itself, and so are the arguments against this idea. Plato defended it..
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1117Ramsification and inductive inferenceSynthese 187 (2): 569-577. 2012.An argument, different from the Newman objection, against the view that the cognitive content of a theory is exhausted by its Ramsey sentence is reviewed. The crux of the argument is that Ramsification may ruin inductive systematization between theory and observation. The argument also has some implications concerning the issue of underdetermination.
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1136Is Quine a Verificationist?Southern Journal of Philosophy 41 (3): 399-409. 2003.For example, Cheryl Misak in her book-length examination of verificationism writes that ‘the holist [such as Quine] need not reject verificationism, if it is suitably formulated. Indeed, Quine often describes himself as a verificationist’.[iii] Misak concludes that Quine ‘can be described as a verificationist who thinks that the unit of meaning is large’;[iv] and when comparing Dummett and Quine, Misak states that ‘both can be, and in fact are, verificationists’.[v].
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260Olen laatinut tämän kirjoituksen vastineeksi J.P. Roosin poleemiseen kirjoitukseen, jonka hän on lehtien hylättyä sen julkaissut omalla kotisivullaan.
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983Algorithmic information theory and undecidabilitySynthese 123 (2): 217-225. 2000.Chaitin’s incompleteness result related to random reals and the halting probability has been advertised as the ultimate and the strongest possible version of the incompleteness and undecidability theorems. It is argued that such claims are exaggerations.
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Tampere UniversityAssociate Professor
University of Helsinki
Department of Philosophy (Theoretical Philosophy, Practical Philosophy, Philosophy in Swedish)
PhD, 1998
PhilPapers Editorships
Realism and Anti-Realism |