一般原型——模型论的理论体系（Ⅰ）

通过一般原理－模型论的同型公理（及模型公理）对该理论的内容体系作了大致的概括和描述，从而可以显示出一般原型－模型论的广阔研究范围与普适范围。     

Rethinking the “strong programme” in the sociology of knowledge

It is widely believed that the “strong programme” in the sociology of knowledge comes into serious conflict with mainstream epistemology. I argue that the programme has two aspects—one modest, and the other less so. The programme’s modest aspect—best represented by the “symmetry thesis”—does not contain anything to threaten much of the epistemological mainstream, but does come into conflict with a certain kind of epistemological “externalism”. The immodest aspect, however—in the form of “finitism”—pushes the programme towards a radical form of relativism about truth. Accepting these points will allow us to put an end to much unnecessary debate surrounding the strong programme, and allow a more fruitful discussion to begin.     

Realism without tears II: The structuralist legacy of sensory physiology

This paper examines the implications of the Doctrine of Specific Nerve Energies for contemporary philosophy and psychology. Part I analyzed Johannes Peter Müller’s canonical formulation of the Doctrine, arguing that it follows from empirical results combined with methodological principles. Here, I argue that these methodological principles remain valid in psychology today, consequently, any naturalistic philosophy of perception must accept the Doctrine’s skeptical conclusion, that the qualities of our perceptual experience are not determined by, and thus do not reveal the nature of, their causes in the world. Nevertheless, this does not mean that we must be global skeptics; rather, I argue that contemporary epistemology of perception should embrace Müller’s own response to the Doctrine: epistemic structural realism. As articulated by Müller’s student, Helmholtz, structural realism follows from the Doctrine once we recognize that active exploration constitutes part of the mechanism that determines perceptual experience, a view congenial to contemporary theories of embodied perception in cognitive science. Structural realists in philosophy of science should likewise heed the lessons of the Doctrine, as it played a critical part in the early history of their view, and may still serve a constructive role as exemplar today.     

Nagel on reduction

This paper attempts a critical reappraisal of Nagel's (1961, 1970) model of reduction taking into account both traditional criticisms and recent defenses. This model treats reduction as a type of explanation in which a reduced theory is explained by a reducing theory after their relevant representational items have been suitably connected. In accordance with the deductive-nomological model, the explanation is supposed to consist of a logical deduction. Nagel was a pluralist about both the logical form of the connections between the reduced and reducing theories (which could be conditionals or biconditionals) and their epistemological status (as analytic connections, conventions, or synthetic claims). This paper defends Nagel's pluralism on both counts and, in the process, argues that the multiple realizability objection to reductionism is misplaced. It also argues that the Nagel model correctly characterizes reduction as a type of explanation. However, it notes that logical deduction must be replaced by a broader class of inferential techniques that allow for different types of approximation. Whereas Nagel (1970), in contrast to his earlier position (1961), recognized the relevance of approximation, he did not realize its full import for the model. Throughout the paper two case studies are used to illustrate the arguments: the putative reduction of classical thermodynamics to the kinetic theory of matter and that of classical genetics to molecular biology.     

复杂性研究与简单性原则

复杂性研究兴起后,简单性原则能否具有普适性,成为一个有争议的主题。进一步分析简单性原则的四个层面内涵——方法论、世界观、美学和认识论,阐明复杂性研究兴起前后,简单性原则的前三层含义发生了改变,第四层——认识论简单性原则始终具有普适性,它始终是引导科学家走向真理的灯塔。     

系统科学是复杂系统的多张透视图

系统哲学的认识论是透视论,它是研究复杂系统的方法论。人类的认知能力不足以建立包罗万象的复杂系统模型,不得已求其次,只抽象出复杂系统某些属性——关系而构建某些种类的系统模型及其相应的系统科学诸学科。系统科学现有的十几门学科是复杂系统的十几张透视图。系统科学有待综合。医学可以提供启发,而完整的综合可能有待计算机模拟技术不断进步在将来完成。     

消除主义、读心术与实验哲学：访斯蒂芬·斯蒂奇教授

斯蒂芬·斯蒂奇(Stephen Stich)教授是美国人文与艺术科学学院院士、美国罗格斯大学哲学与认知科学讲席教授,是美国科学哲学研究的重要代表人物。2018年12月份,斯蒂奇教授受邀访问了北京大学、华东师范大学等高校,通过相关学术活动,他与中国哲学家们交流了彼此的哲学理念与研究成果。受中国现代外国哲学学会知识论专业委员会的委托,我们在厦门大学对其进行了专访,希望借此让读者进一步理解其富有影响的心灵哲学、知识论与实验哲学的研究成果。     

The scales of experience: Introduction to the special issue Experiencing the global environment

The Scales of Experience introduces the special issue Experiencing the Global Environment by focusing on three dimensions of the theme that are reflected to various degrees in the constitutive essays. First, the introduction highlights the links between the epistemological and political contexts of the historical constitution and development of the global environment (or global environments) in the earth and environmental sciences from the late nineteenth century to today. Second, it argues for a historical approach to the complex concept of scientific experience, whose mutable and contingent qualities are demonstrated by the contributions to the special volume. Lastly, the introduction presents one of the central issues to be tackled by the essays to follow: the development – and, at times, the failure – of strategies and technologies to bridge the seemingly incommensurate gulf between individual, localized experience and the all-encompassing scale of the global environment.     

Relations between Karl Popper and Michael Polanyi

Karl Popper and Michael Polanyi grew up in central Europe and, having escaped from Nazism, went on to pursue academic careers in Britain where they wrote prolifically on science and politics. Popper and Polanyi corresponded with each other, and met for discussions in the late 1940s and early 50s, but they seldom referred to each other in their publications. This article examines their correspondence so as to produce a picture of their intellectual relations. The most important of the letters was one that Popper wrote in 1952, which we reproduce in its entirety, indicating his dissatisfaction with ideas that Polanyi had expressed in a paper of that year, ‘The Stability of Beliefs’. In this paper, Polanyi used the example of the framework of Zande witchcraft to shed analogical light on science and other systems of belief, arguing that ‘frameworks of belief’ equip their adherents with intellectual powers whose use reinforces commitment to the framework, inoculating adherents against criticism. Polanyi’s 1952 paper and his 1951 and 1952 Gifford Lectures (to which that paper is intimately tied) are the first articulation of Polanyi’s sharp rejection of the modern critical philosophical tradition that by implication included Popper’s philosophical ideas. The 1952 paper is also part of Polanyi’s constructive philosophical effort to set forth a fiduciary philosophy emphasizing commitment. Popper regarded Polanyi’s position as implying cognitive relativism and irrationalism, and from the time of Polanyi’s 1952 paper their personal relationship became strained. Discord between them became publicly manifest when Polanyi subtitled his book Personal Knowledge (1958), Towards a post-critical philosophy, and Popper lambasted the idea of a ‘post-critical’ philosophy in his Preface in The Logic of Scientific Discovery (1959).     

A consideration of Babylonian astronomy within the historiography of science

This paper traces the reception of Babylonian astronomy into the history of science, beginning in early to mid twentieth century when cuneiform astronomical sources became available to the scholarly public. The dominant positivism in philosophy of science of this time influenced criteria employed in defining and demarcating science by historians, resulting in a persistently negative assessment of the nature of knowledge evidenced in cuneiform sources. Ancient Near Eastern astronomy (and astrology) was deemed pre- or non-scientific, and even taken to reflect a stage in the evolution of thought before the emergence of science (in ancient Greece). Two principal objections are examined: first, that the Near East produced merely practical as opposed to theoretical knowledge and, second, that astronomy was in the service of astrology and religion. As the notion of a universal scientific method has been dismantled by post-positivists and constructivists of the second half of the twentieth century, an interest in varieties of intellectual and cultural contexts for science has provided a new ground for the re-consideration of Babylonian astronomical texts as science developed here.