Feelings of Worthlessness From the Perspective of So-Called Cognitive Science

An Amateur Psychologist's Documented Chronologue of a Frustrating Conversation With 'The Society for Philosophy and Psychology' Regarding a Psychical Anomaly

Phil Roberts, Jr.
[email protected]

In addition to the more familiar (albeit somewhat outdated) critique associated with Kuhn, Feyerabend, Toulmin, etc., the "standard view" of science (the still dominating neo-positivist theory that succeeded the old positivism of the 30's and 40's) has been challenged from another direction:
Perhaps most fundamental, the new conception rejects the orthodox assumption that "the world is so constituted that there are descriptions such that for every event, the simple formula 'whenever this, then that' applies" (Bhaskar, 1975). This regulative ideal, Laplacean in origin, in turn supports the thesis, derived from Hume, that scientific laws are statements of constant conjunctions between events. But for the new view of science, there may be no description such that for some event the formula, "whenever this, then that" applies. On this view the world is radically open.... In the new heuristic, scientific knowledge is much closer to that knowledge which is more familiarly accessible, through common sense, literature, and other modes of experience. (Manicas and Secord)

For those who might be wondering what the fuss is all about, I have managed to document a confrontation in which the failure to come to grips with this second strand of the critique can be most clearly seen for what it is -- the last refuge for "an extrinsic philosophy of science which is [forty] years or more out of date" (Sigmund Koch).

Intro
Part I (First Year)
Part II (Second Year)
References and Uncirculated Papers

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