Contemporary experimental philosophers sometimes use versions of an argument from the history of philosophy to defend the claim that what they do is philosophy. Although experimental philosophers conduct surveys and carry out what appear to be experiments in psychology, making them methodologically different from most analytic philosophers working today, techniques like theirs were not out of the ordinary in the philosophy of the past, early modern philosophy in particular. Or so some of them argue. This paper disputes the argument, citing (...) important differences between early modern philosopher-scientists – Descartes, Hobbes and Boyle – and their supposed modern counterparts. Although there is some continuity between early modern philosopher-scientists and the contemporary experimentalists, it is mostly a continuity of interest in empirically informed philosophy, not a distinctively experimental philosophy. (shrink)

What does it mean to assert that Wikipedia has a relation to truth? That there is, despite regular claims to the contrary, an entire apparatus of truth in Wikipedia? In this article, I show that Wikipedia has in fact two distinct relations to truth: one which is well known and forms the basis of existing popular and scholarly commentaries, and another which refers to equally well-known aspects of Wikipedia, but has not been understood in terms of truth. I demonstrate Wikipedia’s (...) dual relation to truth through a close analysis of the Neutral Point of View core content policy. I conclude by indicating what is at stake in the assertion that Wikipedia has a regime of truth and what bearing this has on existing commentaries. (shrink)

Hay's Political Analysis raises foundational issues for all social scientists, not least in its outline for a via media, or middle way, between positivist and interpretivist social science. In this view, social science should be firmly grounded in empirical study but take seriously the notion that there is no privileged vantage point from which to generate dispassionate knowledge claims about the social world. This article asks whether this apparent via media is coherent and meaningfully captures what it means to be (...) doing positivist and interpretivist social science without, so to speak, conceding too much ground to the other approach. (shrink)

This thesis is primarily concerned with the relationship between realism in philosophy and in social science. I attempt to expound and defend two principal arguments; first, that a realist approach in philosophy is a precondition of understanding science as a rational activity; secondly, that only a realist approach to the understanding of social phenomena seems to offer hope for developing an account of social inquiry based on scientific principles. However, these two arguments are developed by way of a critical analysis (...) of the realist view in relationship to some of its major rivals. Consequently, as well as my realist exposition of Marx's methodology of science outlined in chapters five and six, where I argue that only a dialectico-causal interpretation of historical materialism seems to meet the requirements of an historical science, there is a chapter on Weber's methodology and a section on other approaches to social science stating my case against the attempt to found social inquiry on alternative cognitive foundations. In addition, the argument against non-realist views of social science is extended to the critique of Marxism itself especially in the context of the theories of Colletti and Althusser contained in chapter 4. (shrink)