Psychological Problems Of Dialogue In Light Of The Ideas Of M. M. Bakhtin And A. A. Ukhtomskii

Comparative examination of the scientific and philosophical ideas of Mikhail Mikhailovich Bakhtin and Aleksei Alekseevich Ukhtomskii is of interest from the standpoint of both the psychological theory of communication and the practice of psychological counseling, psychotherapy, and upbringing. Development of the applied areas of psychology poses the tasks of understanding the particular person and his individual problems and offering psychological assistance in the process of communication. To deal with these questions it is not sufficient to have scientific psychological training, i.e., knowledge of the general laws of personality development and communication; a capacity for personal communication as an aid to resolving human life problems is also necessary.     

Critical Notice: Cycles of Contingency – Developmental Systems and Evolution

The themes, problems and challenges of developmental systems theory as described in Cycles of Contingency are discussed. We argue in favor of a robust approach to philosophical and scientific problems of extended heredity and the integration of behavior, development, inheritance, and evolution. Problems with Sterelny's proposal to evaluate inheritance systems using his `Hoyle criteria' are discussed and critically evaluated. Additional support for a developmental systems perspective is sought in evolutionary studies of performance and behavior modulation of fitness.     

The future of philosophy

There is no sharp dividing line between science and philosophy, but philosophical problems tend to have three special features. First, they tend to concern large frameworks rather than specific questions within the framework. Second, they are questions for which there is no generally accepted method of solution. And third they tend to involve conceptual issues. For these reasons a philosophical problem such as the nature of life can become a scientific problem if it is put into a shape where it admits of scientific resolution. Philosophy in the 20th century was characterized by a concern with logic and language, which is markedly different from the concerns of earlier centuries of philosophy. However, it shared with the European philosophical tradition since the 17th century an excessive concern with issues in the theory of knowledge and with scepticism. As the century ends, we can see that scepticism no longer occupies centre stage, and this enables us to have a more constructive approach to philosophical problems than was possible for earlier generations. This situation is somewhat analogous to the shift from the sceptical concerns of Socrates and Plato to the constructive philosophical enterprise of Aristotle. With that in mind, we can discuss the prospects for the following six philosophical areas: (1) the traditional mind-body problem; (ii) the philosophy of mind and cognitive science; (iii) the philosophy of language; (iv) the philosophy of society; (v) ethics and practical reasons; (vi) the philosophy of science. The general theme of these investigations, I believe, is that the appraisal of the true significance of issues in the philosophy of knowledge enables us to have a more constructive account of various other philosophical problems than has typically been possible for the past three centuries.     

Editor's Introduction

On May 8-11 of this year [1962] an Ail-Union Conference was held in Moscow on philosophical problems of psychology and of the physiology of higher nervous activity. The conference was participated in by approximately 1,000 persons from 40 Soviet cities, including some 200 heads of scientific institutions and department, sector, laboratory and university department heads.     

Genomics and ethics: the case of cloned and/or transgenic animals

The point of the present study is to illustrate and, if possible, promote the existing link between genomics and ethics, taking the example of cloned and transgenic animals. These 'new animals' raise theoretical and practical problems that concern applied ethics. We will explore more particularly an original strategy showing that it is possible, starting from philosophical questioning about the nature of identity, to use a genomic approach, based on amplification fragment length polymorphism (AFLP) and methylation-sensitive amplification polymorphism (MSAP) detection, to provide useful tools to define more rigorously what cloned animals are, by testing their genetic and epigenetic identity. We expect from the future results of this combined approach to stimulate the creativity of the philosophical and ethical reflection about the impact of biotechnology on animals, and to increase scientific involvement in such issues.     

Resolution of the All-Union Conference on Philosophical Problems of the Physiology of Higher Nervous Activity and Psychology

The period of transition from socialism to communism is characterized by great successes in scientific development. The fields of physiology of higher nervous activity and psychology are developing successfully as well. The phenomena studied by these sciences are directly related to the dialectical-materialist solution of basic philosophical problems and to the Marxist-Leninist theory of cognition. The entire complex of the biological disciplines of physiology and psychology presents a united front of science proceeding from the position that "the conditions of life are decisive in the development of the organic world" (Program of the CPSU).     

Evidential statistics as a statistical modern synthesis to support 21st century science

During the 20th century, population ecology and science in general relied on two very different statistical paradigms to solve its inferential problems: error statistics (also referred to as classical statistics and frequentist statistics) and Bayesian statistics. A great deal of good science was done using these tools, but both schools suffer from technical and philosophical difficulties. At the turning of the 21st century (Royall in Statistical evidence: a likelihood paradigm. Chapman & Hall, London, 1997 ; Lele in The nature of scientific evidence: statistical, philosophical and empirical considerations. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, pp 191–216, 2004a ), evidential statistics emerged as a seriously contending paradigm. Drawing on and refining elements from error statistics, likelihoodism, Bayesian statistics, information criteria, and robust methods, evidential statistics is a statistical modern synthesis that smoothly incorporates model identification, model uncertainty, model comparison, parameter estimation, parameter uncertainty, pre-data control of error, and post-data strength of evidence into a single coherent framework. We argue that evidential statistics is currently the most effective statistical paradigm to support 21st century science. Despite the power of the evidential paradigm, we think that there is no substitute for learning how to clarify scientific arguments with statistical arguments. In this paper we sketch and relate the conceptual bases of error statistics, Bayesian statistics and evidential statistics. We also discuss a number of misconceptions about the paradigms that have hindered practitioners, as well as some real problems with the error and Bayesian statistical paradigms solved by evidential statistics.     

Introduction: Experimenting with Animals in the Early Modern Era

The aim of this special issue is to address issues surrounding the use of live animals in experimental procedures in the pre-modern era, with a special emphasis on the technical, anatomical, and philosophical sides. Such use raises philosophical, scientific, and ethical questions about the nature of life, the reliability of the knowledge acquired, and animal suffering.     

Koffka, Köhler, and the "crisis" in psychology

This paper examines the claims of the Gestalt psychologists that there was a crisis in experimental psychology ca. 1900, which arose because the prevailing sensory atomism excluded meaning from among psychological phenomena. The Gestaltists claim that a primary motivation of their movement was to show, against the speculative psychologists and philosophers and Verstehen historians, that natural scientific psychology can handle meaning. Purportedly, they revealed this motivation in their initial German-language presentations but in English emphasized their scientific accomplishments for an American audience. The paper finds that: there was a recognized crisis in the new experimental psychology ca. 1900 pertaining especially to sensory atomism; that the Gestaltists responded to the crisis with new experimental findings and theoretical concepts (Gestalten) that challenged atomism; in both languages, they raised problems of meaning and discussed the contest with speculative psychology and philosophy only after presenting their scientific case; that they introduced phenomenological observations on meaning and perceptual organization into their psychology but did not develop a theory of meaning or solve philosophical problems; that they argued "philosophically," that is, using abstract, conceptual arguments; and that this aspect of their cognitive style was not received well by some prominent members of their American audience.     

Persistent propensities: Portrait of a familiar controversy

Susan Mills and John Beatty's propensity interpretation of fitness encountered very different philosophical criticisms by Alexander Rosenberg and Kenneth Waters. These criticisms and the rejoinders to them are both predictable and important. They are predictable as raisingkinds of issues typically associated with disposition concepts (this is established through a systematic review of the problems generated by Carnap's dispositional interpretation of all scientific terms). They are important as referring the resolution of these issues to the development of evolutionary biology. This historical approach to the propensity interpretation of fitness draws attention to the precarious relation between philosophical clarification of scientific concepts and any given state of the empirical arts.     

Two faces of representation: on the neuroscience of folk psychology

Much work in contemporary philosophy of mind and neurophilosophy hinges on the concept of ‘representation,’ but that concept inherits a problematic ambiguity from neuroscience, where scientists may distinguish between cognitive and physiological levels of representation only tacitly. First, I explicate two potentially distinct senses of representation corresponding to these levels. I then argue that ambiguity about the nature of representation in philosophy of mind is problematic for at least one prominent philosophical project that aims to use neuroscientific work on representation to defend the existence or explanatory relevance of intentional mental states, namely Schroeder’s (2004) scientific explication of desire in terms of the neurobiology of reward. I argue that philosophical treatments of the relationship between cognitive and neural architecture must attend more carefully to the ambiguity in the concept of representation. I conclude by outlining a strategy for addressing the gap between levels of representation, one that privileges a local or narrow philosophical approach to interpreting scientific concepts and data over a global or general approach.     

The role of scientists in the beginning-of-life debate: a 25-year retrospective

This article examines scientific testimony given during the past 25 years surrounding the issue of when life begins. Although the biological facts were presented clearly, the moral and philosophical issues proved to be problematic. Often those in government tried to use science to substantiate their own philosophical beliefs. Scientists need to present facts to society and to political leaders as clearly and as dispassionately as possible in order to continue to help the public understand complicated biological processes. Scientists also need to help ensure that science is not misused or misinterpreted to justify moral, theological, or philosophical beliefs.     

Against reduction

In Molecular Models: Philosophical Papers on Molecular Biology, Sahotra Sarkar presents a historical and philosophical analysis of four important themes in philosophy of science that have been influenced by discoveries in molecular biology. These are: reduction, function, information and directed mutation. I argue that there is an important difference between the cases of function and information and the more complex case of scientific reduction. In the former cases it makes sense to taxonomise important variations in scientific and philosophical usage of the terms “function” and “information”. However, the variety of usage of “reduction” across scientific disciplines (and across philosophy of science) makes such taxonomy inappropriate. Sarkar presents reduction as a set of facts about the world that science has discovered, but the facts in question are remarkably disparate; variously semantic, epistemic and ontological. I argue that the more natural conclusion of Sarkar’s analysis is eliminativism about reduction as a scientific concept.     

Basic problems of diversely reported biological effects of radio frequency fields

The large differences in RF safety standards are due to different philosophical approaches to public health standards development, different scientific approaches and interpretations of the scientific data, and different jurisdictions in various countries. In this paper, the origin of these differences is explored. The emphases are on the basic problems of why reported biological effects of RF fields are controversial, and how the general public can be misinformed. While there are differences in approaches and methods, science should converge and not diverge in finding the threshold level for exposure to EMF that is not adverse to human health. As the progress in technology continues and human beings are enjoying an increased quality of life, it is essential for scientists to ensure that safety is not compromised. More importantly, it is the responsibility and moral obligation of scientists and the media to bring "verified" information to the public. Scientists must conduct well-designed studies and to report the results in a clear and detailed manner, so other independent investigators can repeat the study or explore further. Mistakes must be minimized and stopped at the first level of scientific research.     

Asian traditions of knowledge: the disputed questions of science,nature and ecology

The search for ‘ecological insights’ in venerable Asian traditions of thought prompts questions about how such traditions understood humans in relation to nature. Answers which focus on philosophical and religious ideas may overlook culturally important understandings of people and places articulated within scientific and medical thinking. The paper tentatively explores the prospects for gleaning a form of ethics of place from the study of traditional Hindu and Chinese medical sources. Although there are serious problems with the idea that any unadulterated assimilation from other traditions can take place, these sources can be thought of as incorporating a place-centred (topocentric) ethic. By looking closely at Francis Zimmerman’s study of Hindu medicine, it is argued that a poetics of place can be ascribed to Ayurvedic discourses on health and disease. It may be possible to associate a similar poetics with classical Chinese medical worldviews, these being reconcilable with—though not the same as—contemporary ecological understandings of humans in relation to the world. Although no pristine reconstruction of Asian traditions of medical thought can be made, the conclusion of the present paper is that it would be wrong to dismiss these traditions as ‘antienvironmental’, based purely on the study of philosophical and religious texts.     

A brief history of the hypothesis

Two terms used as frameworks for scientific experimentation--the "hypothesis" and the "model"--carry distinct philosophical assumptions, with important consequences for the practicing scientist.     

Looking for rules in a world of exceptions: reflections on evidence-based practice

After more than a decade, evidence-based medicine (EBM) is well established as an important influence in health care. EBM has engendered a wide range of responses from near-evangelical fervor to angered rejection, with supporters convinced of its scientific superiority and detractors of its needless reductionism. EBM is not a philosophical doctrine, and its originators and proponents have, for the most part, ignored critics and foresworn theorizing. However, EBM claims to be a normative guide to being a better physician. The theoretical, practical, and philosophical dimensions of EBM are intimately intertwined. This essay is a sustained reflection on the issues raised by EBM as experienced by a clinician/teacher who has tried to apply the tenets of EBM in clinical care and teaching over the past decade, and who has sought to expand the borders of EBM from a philosophical point of view.     

Definition of the real domain of the history of sciences and exploring the relationship with the philosophy of science

The specific field of the history of science is the study and explanation of the origin and transformation of the structures of scientific knowledge. The historian of science should render understandable the reality of scientific research. The relationships between the history of science and the philosophy of science are examined stating that (1) the philosophical theories on the development of science have a scientific content only as much as they may be compared with the results of the history of science, and (2) the philosophy of science does not refer to an immediate historical reality but to an intellectual reconstruction of the past.     

Reuniting philosophy and science to advance cancer research

Cancers rely on multiple, heterogeneous processes at different scales, pertaining to many biomedical fields. Therefore, understanding cancer is necessarily an interdisciplinary task that requires placing specialised experimental and clinical research into a broader conceptual, theoretical, and methodological framework. Without such a framework, oncology will collect piecemeal results, with scant dialogue between the different scientific communities studying cancer. We argue that one important way forward in service of a more successful dialogue is through greater integration of applied sciences (experimental and clinical) with conceptual and theoretical approaches, informed by philosophical methods. By way of illustration, we explore six central themes: (i) the role of mutations in cancer; (ii) the clonal evolution of cancer cells; (iii) the relationship between cancer and multicellularity; (iv) the tumour microenvironment; (v) the immune system; and (vi) stem cells. In each case, we examine open questions in the scientific literature through a philosophical methodology and show the benefit of such a synergy for the scientific and medical understanding of cancer.