1,720,993 research outputs found
How many Sciences for One World? Contingency and the Success of Science
No full textContingentism is the claim that the history of a particular field of science could have taken a different
route from the actual one, and that the resulting imaginary science could have been both as successful
as the real one and, in a non-trivial way, incompatible with it. Inevitabilism consists in the denial of this
claim. In this paper, I try both to give a clear content to contingentism, especially in the field of physics,
and to argue for its plausibility, while acknowledging that it is extremely hard to give an argument that
establishes its validity in a compelling way. By contrasting the history of science with that of geographic
discoveries and the difficulties faced by any inevitabilist account of the former, I consider three different
characterizations of the success of science, truth, adequacy to the phenomena, and robust fit, and analyze
their consequences for the meaning and plausibility of contingentism. I retain the third characterization
of scientific success and argue that the role played by creativity in scientific activities and the fact that
there is a multiplicity of paths that researchers can legitimately follow in order to obtain a robust fit
jointly support a qualified version of contingentis
Built-spaces for world-making
No full textThe aim of this article is to contribute to the understanding of the relations existing between, on the one hand, some specific
types of built-spaces and, on the other, the manner in which man belonging to a given culture defines a particular way of conceiving and
inhabiting the world. The interdependence between the forms of the
construction of the human environment and the intellectual and practical articulation of social life has been the object of numerous researches.
The focus of this analysis will be, more specifically, on built-spaces that
play a decisive role in the shaping of both the forms or orientation of collective life and the underlying worldviews, built-spaces that, in virtue of
this two-fold function, deserve to be called world-making. The approach
will be diachronical and comparative. I will first reconstruct, on the basis
of phenomenology-inspired reading of Mircea Eliade’s works, the representative as well as orientative function of sacred built-space within certain religious traditions and its relations with a specific conception of the
world in general and of the earth-sky relation in particular. Subsequently,
I will show that the overthrow of these cosmological and metaphysical
beliefs during the scientific revolution, has deprived sacred space of its
original meaning, while rendering at once possible and necessary a completely new type of built-space, the laboratory, which exerts, in an utterly
different way, a world-making function. In this way, this article develops
yet another comparison between the religious conception of the relation
between man and the world, and the conception issued by the modern
scientific and technological development
Husserl and the mind-body problem
No full textThe aim of this article is to situate positively Husserl’s philosophy with
respect to current discussions concerning the mind–body problem and, more specifically, the so-called “hard problem” of consciousness. It will be first argued that
the view according to which phenomenology can contribute to the solution of
the hard problem by being naturalized and incorporated into cognitive sciences
is based on a misunderstanding of the nature and aim of Husserl’s philosophy.
Subsequently, it will be shown that phenomenology deals with the issue of the relation between mind and body in the framework of the transcendental foundation
of the ontology of animal nature, and provides thereby a non-reductionist solution
to the hard problem. This discussion will at the same time stress the sharp differences existing between phenomenology and philosophy of mind, and highlight
the relation between phenomenology and ontology
Phenomenology, teleology, and theology
No full textThe aim of this article is to discuss how theology fits within Husserl’s conception of
the task and method of philosophy, i.e., how it relates to his project of developing philosophy
as a universal science of being that is grounded in phenomenology and able to overcome the
objectivism of traditional metaphysics. In particular, in the first section, I will show that God
constitutes a necessary theme of phenomenological philosophy. The second section will situate
theology within the system of disciplines that phenomenological philosophy comprises, and in
the final section, I will outline Husserl’s program of a non-objectivist theology and its specificity
within the metaphysical tradition
Il significato metafisico della teoria della conoscenza fenomenologica
Full text linkRecently, a number of publications (e.g. Tengelyi 2014, Zahavi 2017) have renewed the interest for the relation between phenomenology and metaphysics. This issue appears crucial both for understanding Husserl’s thought per se, and for a systematic appraisal of its relations with post-Husserlian phenomenology as well as with contemporary analytic debates about metaphysics. In this paper, I will argue that, contrary to what Zahavi and other have claimed, metaphysical interests played an essential role even before the Logical Investigations and that, by acknowledging it, we can better appreciate the metaphysical implications of Husserl’s later transcendental idealism. This conclusion will rest on 1) a careful investigation of Husserl’s own different notions of metaphysics and 2) an analysis of his views about the relations betweenmetaphysics and the theory of knowledge
What is the crisis of Western sciences?
Full text link© 2016, Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht. This article is an attempt to formulate a clear definition of the concept of crisis of Western sciences introduced by Husserl in his last work. The attempt will be based on a reading of the Krisis, which will stress its underlying continuity with Husserl’s life-long concerns about the theoretical insufficiency of positive sciences, and downplay the novelty of the idea of crisis itself within Husserl’s work. After insisting on the fact that, according to Husserl, only an account of the shortcomings of the scientificity of Western sciences can justify the claim that they are undergoing a crisis, it will be argued that the common definition of the crisis of the sciences as the loss of their significance for life rests on a misunderstanding. The crisis of Western sciences will be characterized, instead, as the repercussion of the crisis of the scientificity of philosophy (and, specifically, of metaphysics) on the scientificity of positive sciences. The loss of significance of scientific knowledge for our existence will in turn appear as a further, inevitable consequence of the uprooting of the sciences from the soil of a universal philosophy culminating in metaphysics, and thus, as a phenomenon deeply intertwined with the crisis of Western sciences, but not identical to it
Husserl’s Timaeus: Plato’s creation myth and the phenomenological concept of metaphysics as the teleological science of the world
Full text linkAccording to Husserl, Plato played a fundamental role in the development of the notion of teleology, so much so that Husserl viewed the myth narrated in the Timaeus as a fundamental stage in the long history that he hoped would eventually lead to a teleological science of the world grounded in transcendental phenomenology. This article explores this interpretation of Plato’s legacy in light of Husserl’s thesis that Plato was the initiator of the ideal of genuine science. It also outlines how Husserl sought conceptual resources within transcendental phenomenology to turn the key elements of Plato’s creation myth into rigorous scientific ideas
Husserl’s early concept of metaphysics as the ultimate science of reality
No full textThis article reconstructs the development of Husserl’s definition of metaphysics as the ultimate science of reality in the courses and lectures written up to
the year 1905. The analysis of these texts casts light on Husserl’s philosophical
self-understanding in the wider context of late nineteenth-century German philosophy as well as on the fundamental role that metaphysical interests played in the
development of his thought from its earliest stage. A particular attention is devoted
to Husserl’s early views about the relation between the theory of knowledge and
metaphysics, whose analysis is a necessary preliminary step to address the theoretical issue of the relation between transcendental phenomenology and metaphysics
Husserl's early concept of metaphysics as the ultimate science of reality
Full text linkThis article reconstructs the development of Husserl’s definition of metaphysics as the ultimate science of reality in the courses and lectures written up the year 1905. The analysis of these texts casts light on Husserl’s philosophical self-understanding in the wider context of late Nineteenth Century German philosophy as well as on the fundamental role that metaphysical interests played in the development of his thought from its earliest stage. A particular attention is devoted to Husserl’s early views of the relations between theory of knowledge and metaphysics, whose analysis is a necessary preliminary step to address the theoretical issue of the relation between transcendental phenomenology and metaphysics
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