Purpose: To develop a realistic view that integrates the idea that knowledge is a constructive process. Problem: In the controversy between realism and constructivism, both sides have often misunderstood each other. Many realists still consider constructivism as a kind of idealism. And constructivists often assume that realists believe they have direct access to things as they really are. It seems necessary to clarify the statements of either side, to rule out some misunderstandings, and then to discuss anew the (...) central epistemological problems. Solution: A version of realism is proposed that takes into account constructivist ideas and objections. Realism as presented here is not opposed to the idea that cognition is a constructive process. According to this view, reality is something we presuppose in any attempt to attain knowledge though we can never be certain how things really are. Having knowledge amounts to the preliminary judgment that some hypotheses seem to correspond to reality better than others. In addition, it is demonstrated that a constructivist position that reduces the claim to knowledge even further does not solve the problems better but creates new ones. Finally, Mitterer's non-dualizing view of descriptions is discussed. It is argued that description necessarily presupposes something different from language. (shrink)

It is characteristic of realists to separate ontology from epistemology and of idealists to mix the two things up. By ‘idealists’ here I am mainly referring to the British neo-Hegelians but the charge of mixing up ontology and epistemology can be made against at least one ‘subjective idealist’, namely Bishop Berkeley, as his wellknown dictum ‘esse ispercipi’ testifies. The objective idealists rejected the correspondence theory of truth and on the whole accepted a coherence theory. The qualification is needed here because (...) H. H. Joachim, in The Nature of Truth, found the coherence theory unable to deal with the problem of error. (shrink)

This paper investigates Hegel’s thesis that we are, in our practical relation to the world, inherently committed to certain aspects of idealistic metaphysics. For Hegel, our practical attitude is fundamentally at odds with a naïve realism that would take the world to consist ultimately of self-contained, self-sufficient individuals whose relations to one another are fundamentally external to their identities. Hegel contends that our practical attitude is premised upon an overcoming of this mutual externality, and especially the externality which is (...) supposed to hold between individual agent and world. It is shown that his argument hinges on conceiving of external things as inadequately individuated, as compared to living agents, and that it is precisely this ontological deficiency that conditions and motivates our action. Hegel’s discussions of morality and property ownership are appealed to in order to illustrate how we might better understand the nature and practical role of this purported deficiency. (shrink)

Unlike many books of its kind, this collection of essays is more than a mere aggregate of papers loosely ordered around a set of common themes. In fact, for a work sensitive to the values inherent in the analytical tradition, it is surprisingly systematic, and strikes a happy balance between the products of the system-builders and the deliverances of those who are content to give us merely isolated insights. It embodies a sound knowledge of the history of philosophy, a sensitivity (...) to the contributions of the British philosophers since Bradley, and a desire to take science seriously without succumbing to the reductionism which so often characterized the contributions of the positivists. Throughout the papers the influence of Carnap, Kant and Wittgenstein is especially evident; and perhaps most characteristic are the repeated attempts to tread carefully, with their help, the sometimes narrow lines dividing realist and phenomenalist, realist and idealist, and realist and nominalist. Sellars is at pains to incorporate in his system the partial truths which always characterize conflicting philosophical alternatives. This book is well worth careful, critical study by philosophers of all persuasions.--C. V. (shrink)

The publication of the Critique of Pure Reason by Immanuel Kant marked the beginning of an intellectual revolution not only in Philosophy, but also in other spheres of intellectual activity. Every year interest to this work is only growing up, especially in the context of the development of cognitive sciences and technologies related to the development and implementation of artificial intelligence systems. However, both Kant’s contemporaries and subsequent generations of researchers had questions about the basic concepts, outlined in the first (...) Critique. Nikolay Lossky became one of such outstanding experts in Kant’s philosophy, who carried out a metacritique of transcendental idealism. His analysis is interesting because it is characterized by consistency, depth and inclusiveness, despite the fact that he was not a supporter of Kant’s philosophy. The proposed article explicates the main points of the metacritique of pure reason carried out by Lossky. The aim is to systematize the advantages and disadvantages of transcendental idealism highlighted by him in order to assess the validity of objections and identify points that paradoxically escaped Lossky’s attention. In particular, it is shown that the highest evaluation of Lossky is awarded to Kant’s efforts to create an epistemology that does not rely as presuppositions on any other branches of human knowledge; the resolution of contradictions between Empiricism and Rationalism; the creation of the doctrine of synthetic rationality and transcendental logic; the idea of the need for the immanence of knowledge to consciousness. Lossky identified as the key shortcomings of transcendental idealism a range of contradictions grouped around such concepts as the things in themselves, affection, experience, inner sense, transcendental schema, and unity of apperception. At the same time, it is shown that such a key concept for Kant’s theoretical philosophy as transcendental reflection has disappeared from the Lossky’s field of consideration. The study is preceded by a brief description of Lossky’s characteristics, including personal ones, as a meta-critic of pure reason. (shrink)

Neo-scholasticism is supposed to be a "creative" development of the spirit of Thomism and its application to contemporary philosophical themes. Yet its partisans as well as its adversaries largely ignore the fact that many of the neo-scholastic thinkers are increasingly applying the transcendental method to reach the major ideas of Aquinas. The thesis of the present book is that the "transcendental method," viewed in a large sense as stretching from Kant to Heidegger, is an integral part of the thought of (...) several well-known neo-Thomists, and that it touches the work of many others. The author studies extensively the work of J. Maréchal, who was the first to attempt an integration of transcendental idealism into the realistic metaphysics of the school of Saint Thomas. Following a review of minor figures like Grégoire, Defever, and Isaye, short chapters investigate the critical approach of certain important contemporary Catholic thinkers to the transcendental method. A highly interesting part of the book treats the neo-scholastic "dialogue" with Heidegger, which is especially important in the work of the most powerful theological mind of contemporary Roman Catholicism, Karl Rahner. Finally, Muck shows, in the chapters on A. Marc, B. Lonergan, and E. Coreth, three examples of fully developed philosophical systems worked out by means of an extensive use of the transcendental method.—M. J. V. (shrink)

It is a curious paradox that most of the original philosophers who were inspired by Husserl were realists, whereas Husserl himself was, or became, an idealist; an idealist, moreover, of a particularly extreme kind, closer, it would seem, to Fichte than to Kant. Such philosophers were not just phenomenologists who happened also to be realists; they found inspiration for their realism in Husserl’s phenomenology. Their realism, it is true, is closely bound up with their rejection of psychologism, a (...) rejection inspired by Husserl’s critique of psychologistic accounts of logic in his Prolegomena to Pure Logic. But there is nothing particularly phenomenological about this critique. It consists mainly of arguments designed to show the absurdities and contradictions to which psychologism leads, arguments whose acceptance involves no particular commitment to phenomenology. The parts of Logical Investigations which are most significant in the development of a specifically phenomenological conception of philosophy are Investigations V and VI. These contain ideas which are likely to be congenial to a realist. These are the intentionality of consciousness; the rejection of representationalist accounts of perception; an account of the validity of the objective reference of modes of consciousness in terms of the notion of evidence. (shrink)

ABSTRACT In this wide-ranging interview Professor Douglas V. Porpora discusses a number of issues. First, how he became a Critical Realist through his early work on the concept of structure. Second, drawing on his Reconstructing Sociology, his take on the current state of American sociology. This leads to discussion of the broader range of his work as part of Margaret Archer’s various Centre for Social Ontology projects, and on moral-macro reasoning and the concept of truth in political discourse.

What makes pictures different from all of the other ways we have of representing things? Why do pictures seem so immediate? What makes a picture realistic or not? Against prevailing wisdom, Kulvicki claims that what makes pictures special is not how we perceive them, but how they relate to one another. This not only provides some new answers to old questions, but it shows that there are many more kinds of pictures out there than many have thought.

In order to make some headway on the debate about whether Kant was a constructivist, nonconstructivist, or instead defends a hybrid view that somehow entirely sidesteps these categories, I attempt to clarify the terms of the debate more carefully than is usually done. First, I discuss the overall relationship between realism and constructivism. Second, I identify four main features of Kantian constructivism in general. Third, I examine three rival versions of metanormative Kantian constructivism, what I’ll call axiological, constitutivist, and (...) rationalist constructivist. I argue that Kant is best seen as a rationalist constructivist. I conclude by arguing that although it’s a constructivist view, this reading avoids the main pitfalls of traditional Kantian constructivism. In doing so, it helps us to achieve a satisfying rapprochement between constructivist and non-constructivist readings of Kant. (shrink)

Purpose: Ernst von Glasersfeld has dedicated a lot of effort to trying to define just where his views and those of his friend Humberto Maturana part company, epistemologically speaking (Glasersfeld 1991, 2001). As a contribution to unravelling this puzzle I propose in this article to delineate just where they seem to differ most and why these differences arise. Approach: Part of my contribution is to propose drawing a distinction between von Glasersfeld's Radical Constructivism as the last viable outpost of constructivism (...) before entering into the domain of solipsism, in contrast to Maturana's position which is saved from being located within the solipsistic domain by virtue of his ideas on "structure determined systems" and his theory of how language arises in human experience. Findings: Von Glasersfeld's puzzle arises due to what Kant called "transcendental illusion," that is, the error of trying to encompass two mutually untranslatable phenomenal domains within the same language framework. Conclusion: After an examination of some of the crucial differences between von Glasersfeld and Maturana I typify Maturana's positioning as that of "radical realism" in contrast to von Glasersfeld's "radical constructivism.". (shrink)

The paper discusses the utility of the notion of consciousness for the behavioural and brain sciences. It describes four distinctively different senses of 'conscious', and argues that to cope with the heterogeneous phenomena loosely indicated thereby, these sciences not only do not but should not discuss them in terms of 'consciousness'. It is thus suggested that 'the problem' allegedly posed to scientists by consciousness is unreal; one need neither adopt a realist stance with respect to it, nor include the term (...) and its cognates in the sciences' conceptual apparatus. The paper briefly examines Nagel's [1974] article, since this presents the strongest counter to the thesis proposed. (shrink)

In his critique of empiriocriticism, V. I. Lenin also considered it necessary to characterize its relationship to religion in order to show more fully the social significance of this school, which was fashionable in its time. In contrast to those who took at face value the pretensions of Machism to present the scientific thought of the nineteenth century and who hastened to put it in place of "obsolete" materialist dialectics, V. I. Lenin unmasked the "completely reactionary character" of this essentially (...) subjective-idealistic current, which played into the hands of fideism despite the fact that E. Mach considered himself an atheist. (shrink)

Problem: The paper investigates some reasons why RC has not become a mainstream endeavor. Method: The central assumptions of RC are summarized. Analysis is made of how each of these assumptions corresponds to other views, especially to intuitive beliefs that are widely accepted. Is RC consistent with these beliefs, supported by them, or incompatible with them? Results: The construction hypothesis is supported by the results of cognitive science and neurophysiology. However, the closed-system hypothesis and antirealism are in conflict with deeply (...) rooted convictions of most people. Some ethical and educational aspects claimed by RC are generally accepted but they are not specifically implications of RC. Implications: In the near future, RC will probably not become the leading paradigm or a mainstream endeavor in the sciences or in philosophy. (shrink)

Millions of people in various parts of the world and within each country are presently surviving in categories described as “mere”, “miserable”, “idealistic”, “irresponsible”, and “acceptable”. The term “acceptable survival” is proposed as a bioethical goal of global survival, looking beyond the 21st century to the year 3000 and beyond. The frequently used alternative term is “sustainable development”, but in most contexts this is an economic concept and does not imply any moral or ethical constraints, except where these are spelled (...) out. Acceptable survival, broadly defined, means acceptable to a universal sense of what is morally right and good and what will continue in the long term. The expanding dominant, but irresponsible, world culture is not an acceptable type of development because it cannot survive in the long term. [M&GS 1995:185–191]. (shrink)

The problem of the development of a Marxist-Leninist theory of value, and the need for a precise and rigorously scientific definition of the subject matter to be investigated, its conceptual apparatus and individual categories, and the determination of the place of these categories in the system of scientific knowledge, are matters which present themselves in connection with a number of pressing problems now engaging the attention of many Marxist philosophers. By no means of least importance in this regard is the (...) fact that these questions occupy a very prominent place in contemporary bourgeois philosophical and sociological literature. The various bourgeois axiological theories that now exist, which include not only "value concepts" but "value approaches" , deal with a large range of social problems - political, economic, socio-psychological, ethical, esthetic, religious, and others. These problems are distorted by bourgeois ideologists in idealist fashion, while their interpretation increasingly acquires an anticommunist tone, and continues to exert a stultifying influence on millions of philosophically unsophisticated persons in capitalist countries. (shrink)

In the twentieth century pluralism became a common ideology of originally different idealistic philosophical schools, which logically led them to unite in the philosophy of postmodernism. At the end of the twentieth century pluralism become identified with political democracy. In Russia, the doctrine of recognition of equality of many independent ideologies as a basis of democracy has become the most popular in interpretation of K. Jaspers, K. Popper, and P. Feyerabend. The article demonstrates the ideological and methodological inconsistency of pluralism; (...) it shows that only the monism based on the concept of dialectical determinism may reveal objective grounds of democracy. Application of dialectical materialist conception of determinism to the disclosure of system of determinacy of society development reveals the unity of reason and no causal types of determination of this development. Therefore, the objective basis of democracy is not ‘a plurality of factors‘, but subordinated and coordinated system of determinants that define the objective tendency of society to non-State form of government. (shrink)

In order to consistently and effectively overcome attempts at revisionist vulgarization of revolutionary theory, which now pursue an active parasitic existence on the process of cognition of the essence and consequences of the revolution in science and technology, great importance should be attached to a correct understanding of the objective logic of the origin and development of contemporary revisionist conceptions. Analysis of the right-wing and "left-wing" revisionist deviations that the communist movement encounters shows that revisionist thought goes through a number (...) of stages in its development. However, whether the issue is one of economic, political, ethical, or any other revisionist conception, each of these necessarily involves replacement of the dialectical materialist method of cognition of a given sphere of phenomena by metaphysics and idealism, i.e., it always includes philosophical revisionism. Therefore, the problem of criticism of any revisionist conception is at the same time a problem of demonstrating the untenability of the methodology of revisionist analysis. (shrink)

ABSTRACTDrawing on my own work and experience, this paper brings together the various connections between critical realism and ethics. It argues that, against both determinism and physicalist...

Kant, Immanual was a German philosopher, the founder of German classical idealism, born in the city of Koenigsberg . Upon graduation from the university there , he became a private tutor. In 1755 he became privatdozent and in 1770 professor at Koenigsberg University. His development as a philosopher may be divided into two periods — the precritical , and the critical, when he undertook the criticism of reason, set forth in Kritik der reinen Vernunft , Kritik der praktischen Vernunft (...) , and Kritik der Urteilskraft. (shrink)

The philosophy of religion as presented by Hermann Cohen and Paul Natorp, the founders and main representatives of the Marburg School of Neo-Kantianism, is an important and at the same time controversial part of their philosophical systems. The discussion around the problems of religion began within the Marburg School and still continues among those who study that School. The reason for this is that “fitting” philosophical thinking about the phenomenon of religion into the classical triad of any system of philosophy, (...) i. e. effectively formulating that phenomenon in logical concepts, ethical postulates and aesthetic principles touched the very foundations of that system. Drawing mainly on the rough notes and correspondence of Cohen and Natorp I argue that, in spite of internal and quite important differences over the problems of religion and its place in philosophical constructions, Cohen and Natorp, first, retained their commitment to critical idealism and remained loyal to their philosophical school to the end and, second, followed the principle of mutual respect, preserving their professional and human sympathy for each other. Besides, I substantiate my assertion that Marburg Neo-Kantians had different concepts of the special place of religion in the system of philosophy. The specific nature of this difference warrants the discussion not only of the boundary of reason and rationality but adds new dimensions to that boundary, filling it with content and thus broadening the very sphere of critical idealism. In the course of the discussion of the problems of religion, Paul Natorp and Hermann Cohen stake a claim to projects for the serious transformation of philosophy which they tried to implement in their later works. (shrink)

Notwithstanding diverse opinions and debates about mixing methods, mixed methods research (MMR) is increasingly being used in sport and exercise psychology. In this paper, we describe MMR trends within leading sport and exercise psychology journals and explore critical realism as a possible underpinning framework for conducting MMR. Our meta-study of recent empirical mixed methods studies published in 2017–2019 indicates that eight (36%) of the 22 MMR studies explicitly stated a paradigmatic position (five drew on pragmatism, two switched paradigms between (...) qualitative and quantitative elements of the study, and one was situated in relativist-interpretivism). The remaining 14 (64%) studies did not report their underpinning research philosophical assumptions. Evaluating the merits and limitations of these positions against critical realist assumptions suggests that several paradigmatic disagreements are potentially reconcilable. These include (a) maintaining that ontological and epistemological concerns are important for methodological integrity of a mixed methods study; (b) switching between paradigms in the same study is problematic; and (c) refuting the qualitative-quantitative incommensurability thesis, therefore allowing mixed methods research without compromising philosophical coherence. From a critical realist position, we suggest that both quantitative and qualitative designs are justifiable in a mixed methods study because (1) they help corroborate, refine, or refute plausible explanations of phenomena (epistemological), but (2) with different methodologies utilised to perform different tasks in the same research design related to different psycho-social system features (ontological). We call for a collaborative engagement by researchers across paradigmatic positions to work towards the advancement of methodological pluralism in our research community. (shrink)

Open peer commentary on the article “What Can the Global Observer Know?” by Diana Gasparyan. Upshot: Starting from the problem of having to write in a language heavily saturated by realism, this commentary limits itself to restating some key notions of radical constructivism, which, by paying attention to the strict limits of what we can claim to know, can more readily eliminate notions such as the “omniscient interpreter.”.

Article is devoted to the social legitimation of knowledge. We study the contexts of implantation of knowledge products into the body of culture. The author proceeds from the need to study the process of objectification symbolic of object by applying the category of ‘facies‘, the introduction and justification of which on content and formal level were realized by the author in previous works. Such issues as the following are discussed in the article: the main stages of objectification, cognitions, different worlds (...) in science in the trend of unfolding cognitions, the basic principles of object-symbolic interpretation of the nature of knowledge. The author explores these questions by analyzing the basic epistemological trends that can be seen in the works of the greatest philosophers of both modern and recent times, globalizing the principle of a system approach on the basis of its synthesis with the elements of synergetics and semiotics. The author devotes a great place to criticism of Kant’s transcendental apriorism, revealing, however, its positive potential and determining its promising vector beating literally in the essence of contemporary cognitive science. Author takes on orbit of its original methodology conclusions of not only natural sciences and mathematics, but also poetic insights that allows creating of pulsating and at the same time quite certain interdisciplinary context. The main conclusions regarding the content of prerequisites of cognitive synthesis included in the final paragraph of article and are accompanied by convincing examples of modern physics. (shrink)

In this paper, I propose a new framework for the general internalism/externalism debate about reasons. My aim is to defend a novel account of internalism that at least allows for the possibility of a more "realist" conception of reasons- thus avoiding simply begging the question (as Williams himself seems to do) against many recent externalist thinkers like Hampton, Scanlon, McDowell, and Parfit - while still somehow retaining a deep connection between reasons to act and an agent's motivations. What is crucial (...) to observe here is that Williams' intemalism relies upon two logically independent premises: on the one hand, a negative "skeptical" thesis denying we have any reason to believe that values - and the reasons associated with them - exist in any realist way independent of individual agents; and on the other hand, a positive "subjectivist" thesis controversially maintaining that all reasons for action are instead in some sense necessarily related to each particular agent's subjective motivations. I think we should reject Williams' widely-disputed "subjectivist" thesis. Rather, by endorsing only Williams' former premise, we are able to formulate a more modest "skeptical" version of intemalism – or what I call ‘skeptical internalism’ – which, unlike Williams' explicitly "subjectivist intemalism", at least allows for the externalist view that values exist in a realist way totally independent of us. We suspend judgment, however, about whether any such values do exist - where significantly, an individual agent's motivations somehow play a constitutive role in terms of assessing what values she even has reason to affirm. Such so-called "skeptical internalism" has several advantages over Williams' own view. As we will see, it not only helps usto bypass the current terminological deadlock, but also allows us to better focus upon what may be the most crucial difference between internalism and extemalism, which rests not so much in how each camp chooses to define what a reason is, but rather in how they understand the nature of rational disagreement itself. This specific worry constitutes perhaps the main crux of the entire intemalist/extemalist debate, and I argue that, in the end, skeptical internalism provides a much more satisfying analysis of the underlying ethical import of such rational disagreement than either of its two main rivals, extemalism or Williams' own subjectivist accountof internalism. (shrink)