Debates about scientific (though rarely about otherforms of) knowledge, research policies or academic trainingoften involve a controversy about whether scientificknowledge possesses just “instrumental” value or also “intrinsic” value. Questioning this common simpleopposition, I scrutinize the issues involved in terms of agreater variety of structural types of values attributableto (scientific) knowledge. (Intermittently, I address thepuzzling habit of attributing “intrinsic” value to quitedifferent things, e.g. also to nature, in environmentalethics.) After some remarks on relevant broader philosophicaldebates about scientific knowledge, I pave a (...) path throughthe (terminological) thicket of structural types of values. Our initial simple opposition is shown to conflate thedistinctions intrinsic/extrinsic and instrumental (or justuseful)/final. Next, I consider the value(s) of knowledgeand knowing in general and their possible value components(like the values of truth and justifiedness). After havingdiscussed the types of value of everyday knowledge,especially its functional and constitutive value (notionsintroduced earlier), I argue that these can or should alsobe attributed to scientific knowledge, thus departing fromboth objectivist and sociological views of science. One could say that I offer a certain defense of theintrinsic value of scientific knowing (and the inherentvalue of scientific knowledge) and some importantdifferentiations of its “instrumental values”. I alsocaution (in relation with my puzzle) against drawing hastymoral conclusions. (shrink)

Many have argued for a new, environmental or ecolegical ethics. Can nature, or natural science, provide the basic principles for such an ethics? Or, can the issues involved be adequately analysed in terms of rights, interests, and duties to future generations? The papor explores the idea of an intrinsic value of what exists in nature with respect to these questions, especially those of Conservation and preservation. The idea can provide a supplementary basis for an ethics of preservation, leading to certain (...) prima facie duties. (shrink)

The paper is a discussion of the idealizational interpretation of the dialectical Marxist methodology of science which has been worked out and applied in a diversity of ways by L. Nowak and the other members of the so-called Pozna school. I examine the sense in which, and the extent to which, this methodology is or can be said to be dialectical. Subsequently, I discuss and criticize Nowak's claim that this methodology can function at the same time as a meta-methodology; I (...) do this in connection with a corresponding and equally questionable claim put forward by I. Lakatos, and with one of Nowak's concrete examples, which is meant to show that certain developments in neopositivist methodology of science followed his (meta-)methodology. Lastly, I comment on the normative-descriptive character of Nowak's methodology, examine its adequacy as a comprehensive account of science, compare it with alternative accounts of the place and role of idealizations in science, and raise the question of whether Nowak's idealizational theory of socio-economic formation is a refutation or a dialectical negation of Marx's historical materialism. (shrink)

The paper is a discussion of the idealizational interpretation of the dialectical Marxist methodology of science which has been worked out and applied in a diversity of ways by L. Nowak and the other members of the so-called Poznań school. I examine the sense in which, and the extent to which, this methodology is or can be said to be dialectical. Subsequently, I discuss and criticize Nowak's claim that this methodology can function at the same time as a meta-methodology; I (...) do this in connection with a corresponding and equally questionable claim put forward by I. Lakatos, and with one of Nowak's concrete examples, which is meant to show that certain developments in neopositivist methodology of science followed his methodology. Lastly, I comment on the normative-descriptive character of Nowak's methodology, examine its adequacy as a comprehensive account of science, compare it with alternative accounts of the place and role of idealizations in science, and raise the question of whether Nowak's idealizational theory of socio-economic formation is a refutation or a dialectical negation of Marx's historical materialism. (shrink)

Mario BUNGE: Ontology I. The Furniture of the World, Dordrecht: Reidel 1977 (Treatise on Basic Philosophy, Vol. 3); Ontology II. A World of Systems, Dordrecht: Reidel 1979.

Mario BUNGE: Ontology I. The Furniture of the World, Dordrecht: Reidel 1977 (Treatise on Basic Philosophy, Vol. 3); Ontology II. A World of Systems, Dordrecht: Reidel 1979.

Summary The recent turn to the ‘context of discovery’ and other ‘postmodernist’ developments in the philosophy of science have undermined the idea of a universal rationality of science. This parallels the fate of the classical dream of a logic of discovery. Still, justificational questions have remained as a distinct perspective, though comprising both consequential and generative justification — an insight delayed by certain confusions about the (original) context distinction. An examination of one particular heuristic strategy shows its local rationality; even (...) as an efficient procedure of hypothesis generation, it carries probative weight. It will be explored in which respects such a strategy can be normative or contain normative elements. (shrink)