The work of Nelson Goodman has significantly impacted the philosophical landscape of the latter half of the twentieth century. In this thesis I critically assess Goodman’s later metaphysics, particularly his ontological relativism and multiple worlds hypothesis. I argue that, while Goodman’s view is interesting and important to philosophic thought, it critically fails as a tenable metaphysical position. This failure is twofold: first, Goodman’s argument for ontological relativism rests on the representational fallacy and is therefore unsound; and second his position, when considered as a self-standing metaphysical doctrine, is incoherent. My conclusion is that Goodman must admit some mind-independent structure of reality, otherwise his view should be rejected. However, while I do not argue for any specific form of realism, once some mind-independent structure is admitted, a general realist position becomes preferable to Goodman’s anti-realist, relativist, and constructivist view. / Thesis (Master, Philosophy) -- Queen's University, 2013-09-11 13:59:52.292

In this essay the author argues against what is defined as radical social constructionism and its place in the relatively new sociology of philosophy in Sweden. A realistic approach is presented as a more plausible and desirable alternative.

This thesis defends the potential of the ‘realist’ form of narrative for contesting, as well as reproducing, ideology. The common form of ‘realism’ consists of a loose ensemble of conventions. The key components are omniscient, evaluative narration; an empiricist objectivism; the construction of individuals as agents of action and bearers of natural attributes; cause and effect sequencing; conflict leading to resolution; mystery leading to disclosure; and the effacement of these techniques in the interests of illusion. In one critique of realism – ‘post-Althusserian anti-realism’ - these practices constitute ideology both in a general sense - as manipulation - and a specific sense - as transmitters of capitalist presuppositions. A 'social realism' or ‘critical realism’, which attempts to invalidate ideology by the presentation of countervailing data, is said to be undercut by its encoding within this alleged inherently ideological form. This critique of realism is based on an unsustainable, ‘formalist’, reduction of ‘content’ to ‘form’. The role of observation in knowledge production and the significance of inductively generated propositions are replaced by a sophisticated, but ultimately reductive, ‘discursive determinism’. From its conventionalist epistemological premises, post-Althusserian anti-realism ignores the capacity of empiricism to break with preconceptions. By dismissing the convention of accountability to evidence, the critique is forced back onto criteria of internal consistency - a position even more vulnerable to prejudice than empiricism. The thesis then argues that the concomitant view of the subject of narrative realism as a construct of liberal-individualism ignores how realist texts have questioned ideas of autonomy and a fixed human nature. Anti-realist methods have usefully exposed some of the means by which constructions of freedom and self-determination mask the subordination of labour in ‘free’ -market economies. However, this frequently entails undervaluing gains made under a rubric of human rights. The replacement of human subjectivity with discursive or economic determinism tends to expel dialogue, volition and human needs as factors in the ideational and practical repudiation of ideology. A narrow approach to realism is therefore inadequate for determining the relation of realism to ideology. The alternative position defended here is that realism’s relation to capitalism - like that of liberalism and empiricism - is tangential, not homologous. The variability of ‘content’ in realism makes realist techniques - as abstract form - politically neutral (but claimed by anti-realists to be intrinsically authoritarian). Realist conventions which construct a point of view are open options for making judgements that will vary in empirical rigour and opposition to different ideologies. The thesis sets the authoritarian aspects of realism’s attempted manipulation of the reader against the potential in realism for a dialogic plurality of perspectives, the possible defensibility of a point of view, the need for coherence and judgement in political dialogue and action, and the frequency of ‘content’-based reader resistance. The realist form is not an absolute of representation, but nor is it a mere reflex of capitalism. By the same token, the anti-realist concept of the anti-ideological function of ‘anti-realist’ texts imposes a reverse, homogeneous, inherently oppositional role onto politically heterogenous cultural forms. The thesis argues, furthermore, that by rejecting empiricist modes of substantiation and adopting a mechanistic view of ideology, the post-Althusserian critique of realism fails to engage adequately with the theoretical defence of capitalism. The harmony thesis of free enterprise can only be given a pejorative label ‘ideology’ on the basis of comparative and historical considerations of the performance of capitalism. In practice, the natural tendency of the market to cyclical instability with attendant unemployment, impoverishment and the compounding of class-based inequalities has only been mitigated by extensive government intervention. The thesis concludes then with a case study of Dickens’s Hard Times as an example of the above, more effective, approach to capitalist legitimation. Hard Times employs empiricist, semi-‘fictional’, ‘realist’ techniques to demonstrate the ideological nature of theories of free enterprise. The critical edge of this novel is blunted by a liberal-romanticism that is ambivalent about legal-institutional solutions to social problems. Despite this fault, Hard Times shows some of the possibilities offered by the realist form for viable social critique.

The purpose of this essay is to examine how God-talk can be used to say something reality depicting and potentially true, and at the same time contribute to a feminist aim where women and men are equally qualified in their talk about God. A pure shift from male to female metaphors and properties applied to God is rejected. Religious language that is used from a radical semantic realistic or radical semantic anti-realistic point of view is also rejected since those positions are not in line with the feminist aims. Metaphors are of value when examining how to speak about God. It is examined if, and in that case how, metaphors can express truths and say something reality depicting. It is argued that a theory of metaphors based on semantic modest anti-realism contributes with something more distinct than a theory of metaphors based on realism does. This distinction highlights the different uses in language between an analogical way and a modest anti-realistic use of metaphors. The three classical “ways” in religious language – univocal, analogical, and equivocal language – are possible to use from a feminist perspective of religious language. It is argued, however, that religious language that is supposed to be in line both with a feminist agenda and be able to contribute to our understanding of God, ourselves, and express truths must be based on a semantic modest realism or semantic modest anti-realism. Analogical language is the one and only religious “way” that is compatible with both semantic modest realism and semantic modest anti-realism. For that reason, it is argued, the analogical language has an advantage over univocal and equivocal language. Finally, four criteria are set up that a good feministic metaphor must achieve, and some remarks about the research of feminism and religious language still to examine is made. / Syftet med denna uppsats är att undersöka hur vi kan tala om Gud på ett sätt som kan vara verklighetsbeskrivande samtidigt som det gynnar feminismen och kvinnors och mäns lika rätt att tala om Gud. Ett rent skifte från manliga till kvinnliga metaforer om Gud avvisas. Religiöst språk som används ur en radikalt semantiskt realistiskt eller ett radikalt semantiskt anti-realistiskt utgångspunkt avvisas då dessa inte går i linje med en feministisk agenda. Metaforer är viktiga i undersökningen av hur vi kan tala om Gud. Det undersöks om, och i så fall hur, metaforer kan uttrycka något sant och verklighetsbeskrivande. Det argumenteras för att en metaforteori som utgår från semantisk modest anti-realism kan bidra med något mer distinkt och kreativt än en metaforteori som utgår från semantisk kritisk realism. Denna distinktion tyddliggör skillnaden mellan ett analogt religiöst språk och en semantisk modest anti-realistisk användning av metaforer. Både univokt, analogt och ekvivokt språkbruk kan användas ur ett feministiskt perspektiv. Analysen visar emellertid att ett religiöst språkbruk som ska gynna feminismen och samtidigt kunna uttrycka någonting sant och verklighetsbeskrivande måste utgå från semantisk kritisk realism eller semantisk modest anti-realism. Det analoga språkbruket är det enda religiöst språkbruk som är kompatibelt med både semantisk kritisk realism och semantisk modest anti-realism, varpå det analoga språkbruket har en fördel över univokt och ekvivokt språk. Tillsist ställs fyra kriterier upp som en bra religiös feministisk metafor måste möta. Uppsatsen avslutas sedan med några kommentarer om hur vidare forskning av religiöst språk med feministiskt språkperspektiv kan se ut.

This thesis investigates the distinction, or distinctions, between response-dependent and response-independent concepts or subject matters. I present and discuss the three most influential versions of the distinction: Crispin Wright’s, Mark Johnston’s, and Philip Pettit’s. I argue that the versions do not compete for a single job, but that they can supplement each other, and that a system of different distinctions is more useful than a single distinction. I distinguish two main paradigms of response-dependence: response-dependence of subject matter (Johnston and Wright), and response-dependence of concepts only (Pettit). I develop Pettit’s ‘ethocentric’ story of concept acquisition into an account of concept evolution that suggests answers to a range of hard questions about language, reality, and the relation between them. I argue that while response-dependence theses of subject matter can be motivated in very different ways, the resulting theses are less different than they might seem. I suggest that the traditional ways of distinguishing response-dependent subject matters from response-independent ones – in terms of a priori biconditionals connecting facts of the disputed class with responses in subjects in favourable conditions, and fulfilling some further conditions such as non-triviality and sometimes necessity – may not be the best approach. I also discuss two general problems for response-dependence theses: the problem of ‘finkish’ counterexamples, and the problem of specifying the ‘favourable conditions’ a priori, yet in a non-trivial way. The discussion of response-dependence is informed by a framework based on the idea that some realism disputes can be viewed as location disputes: disputes over the correct location of the disputed properties among several levels of candidate properties. The approach taken in this work is a charitable one: I try to make sense of response-dependence. The conclusion is the correspondingly optimistic one that the idea(s) of response-dependence makes sense.

In this dissertation on Hilary Putnam's philosophy, I investigate his development regarding meaning and necessity, in particular mathematical necessity. Putnam has been a leading American philosopher since the end of the 1950s, becoming famous in the 1960s within the school of analytic philosophy, associated in particular with the philosophy of science and the philosophy of language. Under the influence of W.V. Quine, Putnam challenged the logical positivism/empiricism that had become strong in America after World War II, with influential exponents such as Rudolf Carnap and Hans Reichenbach. Putnam agreed with Quine that there are no absolute a priori truths. In particular, he was critical of the notion of truth by convention. Instead he developed a notion of relative a priori truth, that is, a notion of necessary truth with respect to a body of knowledge, or a conceptual scheme. Putnam's position on necessity has developed over the years and has always been connected to his important contributions to the philosophy of meaning. I study Hilary Putnam's development through an early phase of scientific realism, a middle phase of internal realism, and his later position of a natural or commonsense realism. I challenge some of Putnam’s ideas on mathematical necessity, although I have largely defended his views against some other contemporary major philosophers; for instance, I defend his conceptual relativism, his conceptual pluralism, as well as his analysis of the realism/anti-realism debate.

No description available.

The main purpose of this dissertation is to answer the question of how one can understand the fact that we mean very different things when we say that God exists and when we say that chairs, mountains and trees exist, and that it is still a matter of existence. On the one hand it seems that we talk about the same thing when we say that something exists, irrespective of what it is, on the other hand it seems to be a question of very different things depending on what it is we are talking about as existing. This dissertation seeks to give an understanding of the relation between the concept of truth and the concept of reality. The conclusion is not only that we presuppose these concepts in everything we do, say, believe and think, but that we presuppose a specific understanding of these concepts, namely a concept of objective truth and a concept of an external and mind independent reality. In this dissertation it is also argued that our use of these concepts and that we use them in everything we do – that they are as basic as they are – says something about how it is, about reality. The use of these concepts does not only say something of what we conceptually presuppose but it also says something about what we assume in relation to reality. The conceptual aspect, in this way, has consequences ontologi.

Mémoire numérisé par la Division de la gestion de documents et des archives de l'Université de Montréal.

O objetivo deste trabalho é pesquisar e classificar as diversas concepções filosóficas sobre o mundo físico e a ciência em um grupo específico de físicos: professores do Instituto de Física da Universidade de São Paulo. O trabalho começou com a criação de um questionário envolvendo julgamentos ou opiniões sobre alguns assuntos da física, sempre procurando abordar conceitos fundamentais da filosofia da ciência, como verdade, realismo, reducionismo, determinismo, natureza do tempo físico, objetivos da ciência e visões religiosas. De posse desse questionário realizamos entrevistas com dez professores do Instituto de Física da USP e então partimos para as análises dessas respostas. A metodologia utilizada seguiu os princípios da pesquisa qualitativa associada à análise de conteúdo. Isso que nos permitiu o estabelecimento de critérios de classificação para as diversas concepções filosóficas encontradas nas respostas dos entrevistados e a criação de categorias que foram ilustradas com representações diagramáticas. Com esta pesquisa, pretende-se deixar abertos caminhos para que, no futuro, possam ser investigadas conexões com o ensino na sala de aula, os livros didáticos, práticas pedagógicas, estratégias de ensino, novas sequências didáticas, etc. Além disso, espera-se que essa pesquisa possa tornar-se um forte aliado no processo de ensino-aprendizagem de determinados fenômenos, influenciando também a maneira como a natureza da ciência é apresentada e como a Física é ensinada. / The aim of this study is to investigate and classify the various philosophical conceptions about the physical world and science in a specific group of physicists: teachers of the Institute of Physics at the University of São Paulo (USP). The work began with the creation of a questionnaire involving judgments or opinions on some subjects of physics, addressing fundamental concepts of philosophy of science, such as truth, realism, reductionism, determinism, nature of physical time, aims of science, and religious views. With this questionnaire, interviews were conducted with ten professors from the Institute of Physics of USP, and then an analysis of the answers was made. The methodology used followed the principles of qualitative research associated with content analysis. This enabled us to establish criteria for classification for the various philosophical concepts found in the answers of the respondents, and to create categories that were illustrated with diagrammatic representations. We hope that in the future this research can be connected to issues in classroom teaching, textbooks, teaching practices, teaching strategies, new didactic sequences, etc. In addition, we hope that this research can become a strong ally in the teaching-learning process of certain phenomena, influencing the way the nature of science is presented and how physics is taught.