The central current of ideas in modern philosophy - through Hume, Kant and Hegel, to the present - can be understood as a reaction to the percieved threat of disorder. Against this background, the author argues for acceptance of a "metaphysics of disorder", and outlines a number of important philosophical consequences of such an acceptance. When appropriately constrained by empiricist concern, such a metaphysics allows us to make sense of ourselves as as knowers who must "make do" in a world of complexity and uncertainty. We make do by learning to export knowledge, gained where we can get it, to the many situations where knowledge eludes us. An account of causal and idealizational reasoning in science, which has much in common with the recent work of Nancy Cartwright, is developed to exemplify the main argument. The author's philosophical position is contrasted with that of recent post modernists, notably Richard Rorty.
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Für höhere Schule und Studium
Für Beruf und Forschung
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Höhe: 157 mm
Breite: 222 mm
ISBN-13
978-1-85972-538-2 (9781859725382)
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Schweitzer Klassifikation
Part 1 Epistemology, scepticism and postmodernity: a wrong turn to Konigsberg; the death of epistemology; flaws in the glass; epistemology in postmodernity; the continuing importance of epistemology. Part 2 Fundamentalism, laws causes and lies: laws and causes; she fought the laws; the lies remain the same; anti-humanism; fundamentalism; fundamentalism and realism; after God's death. Part 3 Pluralism: pluralism and anti-fundamentalism; explanation and understanding; post-empiricism; comparing research programmes; the disorder of thing. Part 4 Causes and capacities: the spirit of Hume; talking causes and capacities; manipulation, enduringness, stability and autonomy; capacities and causal counterfactual claims; experimental science and irregular capacities. Idealization: an idealizational approach to science; the two dialogues; idealization and concentration objections to idealizational methodologies; experimentation and idealization; idealization and scientific progress. Part 6 The end of the world as we know it: the unity of science; an aim for science; orderliness and the metaphysics of disunity; positivism and postmodernism.
