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Philosophical Writing (philosophical + writing)

Distribution by Scientific Domains
Humanities and Social Sciences50%

Selected Abstracts

Philosophy as falling: aiming for grace

NURSING PHILOSOPHY, Issue 2 2000
Sally Gadow RN
Abstract Post,dualist philosophies of nursing acknowledge embodiment as a condition of human existence. Philosophical writing, however, remains abstract and disembodied. A philosophical framework that embraces embodiment needs to recover the materiality of language; its text needs to include language that is not only rational and clear but sensuous and ambiguous. I describe three cultural narratives of women's embodiment and compare them with an imaginative narrative, a nurse's poem about women in labour. I propose, not that philosophers become poets, but that they abandon a dualist position in which language is either literal or metaphorical, adopting instead the poet's approach in which any word or object has unlimited meanings. I argue that, without fixed reference points, language embodies rather than escapes contingency. Finally, I discuss two forms of philosophical writing , irony and motet , that savour contingency, illustrating philosophy as endless redescription, aiming not for finality but for the grace of a dancer's deliberate fall. [source]

I,Varieties of Support and Confirmation of Climate Models

ARISTOTELIAN SOCIETY SUPPLEMENTARY VOLUME, Issue 1 2009
Elisabeth A. Lloyd
Today's climate models are supported in a couple of ways that receive little attention from philosophers or climate scientists. In addition to standard ,model fit', wherein a model's simulation is compared to observational data, there is an additional type of confirmation available through the variety of instances of model fit. When a model performs well at fitting first one variable and then another, the probability of the model under some standard confirmation function, say, likelihood, goes up more than under each individual case of fit alone. Thus, two instances of fit of distinct variables of a global climate model using distinct data sets considered collectively will provide stronger evidence for a model than either one of the instances considered individually. This has consequences for model robustness. Sets of models that produce robust results will, if their assumptions vary enough and they each are observationally sound, provide reasons to endorse common structures found in those models. Finally, independent empirical support for aspects and assumptions of the model provides an additional confirmational virtue for climate models, contrary to what is implied by some current philosophical writing on this topic. [source]

Gottlob Frege, One More Time

HYPATIA, Issue 4 2000
CLAUDE IMBERT
Frege's philosophical writings, including the "logistic project," acquire a new insight by being confronted with Kant's criticism and Wittgenstein's logical and grammatical investigations. Between these two points a non-formalist history of logic is just taking shape, a history emphasizing the Greek and Kantian inheritance and its aftermath. It allows us to understand the radical change in rationality introduced by Gottlob Frege's syntax. This syntax put an end to Greek categorization and opened the way to the multiplicity of expressions producing their own intelligibility. This article is based on more technical analyses of Frege which Claude Imbert has previously offered in other writings (see references). [source]