جستجوی مقالات مرتبط با کلیدواژه « Incommensurability » در نشریات گروه « فلسفه و کلام »

The later Wittgenstein presents all kinds of knowledge in the form of language games based on forms of life. One of the implications of his later views is that certain language games and forms of life are incommensurable. Since each person can know the world only through his/her own form of life and language game, those who subscribe to entirely different language games cannot have a proper understanding of the forms of life of others. They are not able to critique and evaluate their knowledge of reality unless they abandon their own customary forms of life and internalize other forms of life that they want to know about, that is, to become a member of a society based on those different forms of life. In contrast, Popper emphasizes the objective nature of knowledge by considering external reality as a major criterion of objectivity. Popper maintains that the growth of human knowledge takes place through a never-ending process of critical evaluation of previous knowledge claims and a continuous supply of new conjectures for capturing reality and their critical appraisal incessantly. In this article, following a brief description of the philosophical approaches of Wittgenstein and Popper (Sections 1 and 2), and a brief explanation of the anti-relativist attitude of critical rationalism (Section 3), we turn to a critical assessment of Wittgenstein's relativist approach through the prism of Critical Rationalism (Section 4). The last chapter of the article (Section 5) is dedicated to a brief recap of the topics discussed in the earlier sections.

Moral dilemmas have been philosophically interesting subjects for scrutiny. While some philosophers have claimed that genuine moral dilemmas are possible, others have argued to the opposite. McConnell takes the latter path and argues that in the presence of two following principles moral dilemmas would lead to contradiction: “Ought implies can” principle and the so-called agglomeration principle. McConnell claims, and Paske rejects, that (a) genuine moral dilemmas are impossible and (b) that moral dilemmas lead to logical incoherence. Paske argues that moral dilemmas are originated in conflict of incommensurable moral values. Paske believes that in this circumstance the “Ought implies can” principle does not hold. To block Paske’s objection, McConnell has proposed a disjunctive approach to moral dilemmas. In this paper, first I explain McConnell’s argument that moral dilemmas lead to contradiction. Then I explore Paske’s objection and McConnell’s reply. Finally, I raise a series of objections against McConnell’s counter-attack to Paske’s incommensurability argument.

One of the reasons of the Relativism about Science is the impossibility of justifying scientists' decisions about conflicting or alternative scientific theories. Relativism argues that there is a situation in which scientists can never judge between alternative theories. From the point of view of the article, an alternative theory can only challenge scientific rationality if the two conditions of “methodological shortcomings of scientists” and “the existence of alternative theories” are established at a given time of decision-making. A major trend against relativism is the attempt to complement and equip scientists' methodology when confronting alternative theories. However, this article focuses on the study and evaluation of the “possibility of alternative theory”. To this end, we try to point out the various definitions of this concept in order to justify “alternativeness” of a theory. The important condition of independence from the current theory must be met. For this purpose, there must be a “complete formulation” of competing theories. According to this article, achieving this complete formulation to enumerate all the explanatory capabilities and empirical implications of the theory is a matter of history and depends on the emergence of the next successful theory. Therefore, only “after making a decision” a theory can be justified as “alternative”. Thus, the relativist claim is inconsistent because it must first accept the validity of the scientists' decision in order to attribute the alternative to a theory.

Conceptual change and its effects of the history of science has always been one of the challenges issues in historical and philosophical discussions of science. In this paper, we will first introduce Paul Thagard, one of the advocates of Philosophy of Computational Science regarding the essence and circumstances of conceptual change; based on this, we will indicate his approach to the history of philosophy in respect to its being accumulative or revolutionary. According to Thagard, evidence and methods are the least common things which are common in scientific revolutions between an existing and replacement theory. In this article, we will show that this claim does not seem to be compatible with Thagard’s semantic holistic approach. Similarly, through historical case studies regarding Quantum Mechanics scientific revolutions in the history of physics, we will show that contrary to Thagard’s theory, gradualness and overlap of an existing and substituent theory is not proof of cohesion between the two because even though one cannot find a precise boundary between them; this, however, does not mean that there is none and principally, the existing theory has been set aside and the replacement theory has been established.

The eliminative materialism does not accept behavior explanation based on mental states and puts emphasis that human behavior should be explained just based nervous events. The supporter of this view, for the rejection of belief in mental states, call folk view which is against neuroscience. The following article, through the analysis of the epistemological basics of eliminative materialism, shown that this view is somehow an unreasonable monopoly of ontology. It will also be arguing that with defying the existence of mental state, not only there will be no space for psychology as a scientific and practical section, there is also no place for the key concepts of social sciences. Scientific psychology goes forward with assuming the existence of individuals in the social world of life and assumption which is the formation of psychology is scientific cannot interpreted in a physicalist way.Theaffirmative claim of this article is the fact that human nature can be understood deeply just through the interaction of psychology and neuroscience. Belief in immaterial mental states is not against neuroscience or other experiments sciences and definition based onimmaterial soul is an unmatchedand coherent ontological basis to defend scientific psychology.

The controversial idea of incommensurability in Kuhn’s works was gradually replaced by the translatability thesis, for which two distinct arguments could be formulated. The first is extracted from his theoretical contextual approach to meaning, and the second form his taxonomic conception of natural kind terms. According to each one, it could be given an untranslatability condition, in terms of which we can talk about untranslatability of theories with different vocabularies. I will formulate these untranslatability conditions in this essay, confessing that accepting these conditions will terribly limit the possibility of translation. On the other hand, the maxims critics of Kuhn suggested for translation involves a potential tension and fail to play the role a reliable maxim plays in a translation. In fact, within various versions of these maxims, there is a potential tension between maximizing rationality and maximizing truth in the original text that makes us suspect to follow them systematically.
Keywords: Incommensurability, Untranslatability, Classification of natural kinds, Principle of charity, Principle of humanity


Incommensurability, the most frequent term in debates on Kuhn, was not originally a homogenous term. In The Structure of Scientific Revolutions different meanings were meant by incommensurability, which can be distinguished in three types; epistemological, semantic and perceptual. In next writings, however, he restricted it in semantic type. But even this type was not a stable idea. While incommensurability was originally related to communication failure, it was connected then to untranslatability. In addition while he initially seemed to claim a total incommensurability between two theories with different vocabularies, in 1990s he restricted his claim to local incommensurability.
The terms he employed to explain incommensurability was not uniform too; in some cases it is formulated in terms of linguistic stuff like words, meaning and reference, and in other cases in terms of cognitive means like concept and classification. This difference leads to two different account of semantic incommensurability as untranslatability. What I’m concerned in this essay is the conditions for translatability which can be extracted from these two accounts. The first account is resulted from his contextual approach to meaning; a theory according to which meaning of a term is determined by its mode of application in that theory. Using conceptual role semantic the first condition for untranslatability can be articulated:First condition: two theories are untranslatable if and only if scientific laws and possible inferences in two theories do not correspond.
I employ this condition to show that why P. Kitcher’s response (1978) to Kuhn on theories in different sides of chemistry revolution in 19th century does not work. This condition, however, is too strong, respecting which not only revolutionary theories, but also most different theories are impossible to be translated.
The second account concentrates on concepts arranged in scientific classifications. This account seeks to exhaust content of a theory by classification, which includes an arrangement of specific categories with interconnected relations. Now the second condition can be introduced:Second condition: two theories are untranslatable if and only if there are cross-classifications between natural kinds in their domain.
As Career (2001) indicated this condition is neither necessary nor sufficient. It is not necessary because two conceptual systems may be untranslatable without violating principle of non-overlap in their lexical structure. It is also not sufficient, because the overlap between two taxonomies might be such that it can be amended and turn out to be consistent. This condition is weaker that what Kuhn needs to claim incommensurability between theories.
Then I attempt to show that while translation conditions are articulated, Kuhn's account of incommensurability requires more articulation, maxims for translation introduced by Kuhn’s critics, like Putnam (1980) and Davidson (1991) suffer from an essential tension which frustrates their projects. According to Davidson a translation must care a principle called principle of charity. This principle includes two distinct principles; according to first one, i.e. principle of coherence, the translator must maximize logical consistency in speaker’s thought. According to second principle, i.e. principle of correspondence, he must understand the speaker such that he is responding to the very features of the world to which the translator would respond in similar circumstances. By first principle the speaker seems to be almost rational, and by the second the translator attributes to the speaker some of what he considers to be true about the world. The principle of charity is result of two concerns; inferential concern and representational concern. Now the question is what should we do when these two maxims diverge; i.e. the inferential concern is in different direction from representational concern? Especially when there is no doubt, regarding pervious theories, that they are partially true. As was said, Kitcher’s question was to give instructions to determine how much Prestley says really. In fact, there is a way to separate items with a reference to the use of a phrase from non-reference items. In his current statement, his focus was on principle, with the aim of separating sentences which are based on the theory of the next. But I think that pursuing this concern will amount to a violation of the principle of solidarity. The principle of Putnam's Guide, by giving priority to the transfer and preservation of our concept of one thing in relation to our perception of it, inevitably makes the scientist's rationale sacrificed for the concept of its vocabulary. Davidson has also deliberately articulated two principles in his formulation of the principle of good faith.
- Carrier, M. (2001) 'Changing Laws and Shifting Concepts: On the Nature and Impact of Incommensurability' in Boyd, R. Hoyningen-Huene, P. Sankey, H. (2001) Incommensuraibility and related matters, Springer.
- Davidson,D. (1991)'Three Varieties of Knowledge', Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement, 30, pp 153-166.
- Kitcher, P. (1978) 'Theories, theorists, and Theoretical Change', The Philosophical Review, Vol. 87, No. 4 (Oct. 1978), pp. 519-547
- Kuhn, T. S. (1970) The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2nd ed.
- Putnam, H. (1981) 'Two conceptions of rationality' in Reason, Truth and History, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press

Since the publication of Thomas Kuhn’s influential book, The Structure of the Scientific Revolutions, historical and sociological approaches to science have led to a kind of relativism towards the evaluation of theories as well as the belief in the break in the history of science. The main idea put by Kuhn's historiography is incommensurability. From Kuhn's point of view, the scientific concepts refers to completely different entities in different theories. On the other hand, each paradigm changes the perceptual domain before the conceptual process and formal articulation. Finally, unlike the conventional philosophy of science (Positivism and Falsifiability), he mentions there is no explicit rule for justification of theories. In contrast, Cassirer emphasis on elements in theory as the invariant regulative forms through which scientific thought progress continuously. In this paper, Cassirer's responses to Kuhn have been formulated. At the end, we attempt to show how diverse types of historiography made their difference.

One of the criticisms of comparative philosophy is the incommensurability of different traditions. That is, various systems or disciplines, conceptually and methodologically different, are grown in the context of different traditions and thus making them incommensurable. Xianglong Zhang holds that incommensurability is because of the lack of grounds for comparison. To accomplish fruitful comparisons, one ought to fully discern the points of comparison. The originality of the current paper is its attempt to draw attention to the point that comparative philosophy should be approached through an inter-paradigmatic stand. It can be attained when the researcher transcends the limits of paradigms. Inter-paradigmatic perspective along with grounds for comparison when maintained leads to effective comparison of philosophical traditions.

Berlin, by emphasizing on Incommensurability and Incomparability of ethical values defends a kind of value pluralism. He believes that there are no general categories and common criterions to judge with in morality and therefore there is no way to determine and evaluate the right actions from the wrong ones.
On the other hand it seems that relativism also, by refusing any objectivity in ethics, and by emphasizing the lack of general standards for judgment rejects moral monism, and by relaying on differences between cultures, attains to common borders with pluralism. But Berlin tries to separate his own valve pluralism from relativism. In first half of this article we will SURVEY Berlin's value pluralism and in the second half it will be shown that Berlin's efforts for distancing from relativism is not so successful.

The viewpoints of Kuhn and Feyerabend، as two philosophers of science، are similar in many aspects، even the same in certain problems. They do not believe in any objective and universal rationality، hence، their views are regarded relativistic by many other philosophers. These two philosophers، belong to the second half of the twentieth century and are considered as a response to positivism and negativism. Despite the extensive correspondences، there are some significant differences between them. In this paper، we have tried to derive and analyze the criticisms of Feyerabend to Kuhn''s viewpoint on science، such as critisizing the Kuhn''s ideological approach to history، the domain of his incommensurability، the ambiguity in normativeness and descriptiveness of his ideas، unjustifiable transition from tenacity to proliferation، failure in discriminating between science and non-science via theoretical entities such as paradigm and normal science، and finally restricting the scientists’ freedom throughout the normal science.

Kuhn’s world change claim has some problems; whether this change is an objective change (change in the world itself) or a subjective one (change in the mind)? Does objective ‘world change’ conform to the stability of sense stimulus? Whether subjective change is compatible with the incommensurability of perceptions of rival paradigms? Kuhn through his Darwinian- Kantian framework argues for the priori conditions of world perceiving and changing. As we will see، these conditions are the taxonomic structure of paradigms. We will argue that Kuhn can speak of the change of world itself in a commonsensical manner.

One of the most controversial topics in Thomas Kuhn’s philosophy of science is the concept of incommensurability; the concept he applied for comparison among successive theories. When he developed this concept، many critics challenged his view، so he decided to improve his theory. There fore، from the time of expressing this concept to the final version، we can find two positions in his view separated from one another by a transitional position. In his early position، the concept of incommensurability is related to the concept of paradigm and revolutionary transitions between them. As each paradigm has different methods and problem patterns، we cannot have compare or judge about them. Critics found such view irrational، because if there is no meta-paradigmatic criterion، how we can know that a theory is rational. By reforming his view in his transitional position، Kuhnseeks to relate incommensurability with indeterminacy of translation. However، but in spite of some problems he gives up on this position and presents the later version of his theory

In this paper, we are going to compare the thesis of holism embedded in Kuhn’s philosophy of science and Quine’s epistemology. Both of these philosophers have emphasized philosophers after them a great deal. One of most crucial concepts in Kuhn’s philosophy is incommensurability which is widespread nowadays in philosophy of science. He defines it in three levels including observational, methodological and semantic. To do such a thing, Kuhn appeals to a kind of partial holism, i.e. at the level of paradigm. On the other hand, Quine holds a kind of epistemic and semantic holism which seems to have much affinity with Kuhn’s partial epistemic and semantic holism used in his incommensurability thesis. This paper aims, while introducing Quine’s holism in his “Two Dogmas of Empricism” and Kuhn’s incommensurability in his “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions”, to express such affinities.

Kuhn argues that while revival scientific paradigms are incommensurable claims they are incompatible as well. This brings about a problem: how two incommensurable theories could be incompatible? Incommensurability entails that two rival theories should have different cognitive domain and taxonomic structure، this expression then blocks the emergence of contradiction among statements. In this essay we intend to propose a semantic theory and distinct two kinds of incompatibility، sentential incompatibility and taxonomic structural incompatibility، and thereby attempt to defend incompatibility and incommensurability of paradigms.

The present paper briefly introduces the approach of the academy of Islamic sciences to "religious science". One of its most basic foundations, which is called "voluntarism" in the literature of epistemology and philosophy of science, has been investigated and the doubts raised about them have been resolved. Finally, some of its ambiguous points and wrong logical requirements, weakness in providing arguments against realism, its lack of giving a precise description of anti-realism approach and inattention to its requirements have been discussed and analyzed. Also, the incompatibility of this theory with respect to realistic tendency has been explained.

In the present article, through a case study, the author aims to criticize the thesis of complete incommensurability of theories through study of the influence of Aristotle's ideas concerning motion on modern science and evaluation of its capabilities in the light of achievements of the modern science. In this regard, innovative views of Ibn Sina and Mulla Sadra concerning the above issue, as compared to those of Aristotle, have been mentioned as well.

Incommensurability challenges popular idea of the scientists who claim that their theories may be compared with each other to choose the best from among them. Descriptively speaking, this thesis is supposed to explain that, during transitional periods, scientists are not able to deduce superiority of their own theories from a collection of observations and propositions of the main core of paradigm. Having assumed that, in general, descriptive attitude may be maintained, the author will show that the presence of incommensurability does not, necessarily, present its important and consequential role at a macro-level. As long as individual and mental processes during a transitional period are concerned, a description of paradigm shifts should be regarded as being correct. But, a long-term and macroscopic trend may be found in which theories are actually compared. Criteria according to which theories may be compared are their abilities to reproduce phenomena, or as they are called here "ability to reconstruction"