Department of Philosophy

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Browsing Department of Philosophy by Subject "Epistemology"

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    Corroboration and the Popper debate in phylogenetic systematics
    (2012-08-27) Bzovy, Justin; Matheson, Carl (Philosophy) Marcus, Jeffrey (Biological Sciences); Martens, Rhonda (Philosophy)
    I evaluate the methods of cladistic parsimony and maximum likelihood in phylogenetic systematics by their affinity to Popper‘s degree of corroboration. My work analyzes an important recent exchange between the proponents of the two methods. Until this exchange, only advocates of cladistic parsimony have claimed a basis for their method on epistemological grounds through corroboration. Advocates of maximum likelihood, on the other hand, have based the rational justification for their method largely on statistical grounds. In Part One I outline corroboration in terms of content, severity of test and explanatory power. In Part Two I introduce the two methods. In Part Three I analyze three important debates. The first involves the appropriate probability interpretation for phylogenetics. The second is about severity of test. The third concerns explanatory power. In Part Four I conclude that corroboration can decide none of these debates, and therefore cannot decide the debate between cladistic parsimony and maximum likelihood.
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    Kepler's theory of the soul: a study on epistemology
    (2006-06-05T14:15:55Z) Escobar-Ortiz, Jorge Manuel; Stack, Michael (Philosophy) Heller, Henry (History); Martens, Rhonda (Philosophy)
    Kepler is mainly known among historians of science due to his astronomical theories and his approaches to problems having to do with philosophy of science and ontology. This thesis attempts to contribute to Kepler studies by providing a comprehensive discussion of a topic hitherto not really considered, namely Kepler’s theory of the soul, a general theory of knowledge or epistemology whose central problem is what makes knowledge possible—rather than what makes knowledge true, as happens in the case of Descartes’s and Bacon’s epistemologies. Kepler’s theory consists of four issues: the theory of the different sorts of soul—i.e. the human soul, the animal soul, the vegetable soul, and the Earth soul—concerning their faculties, the differences and the resemblances that emerge among them, the relation they maintain with their own bodies and the world, and the distinction soul-world. The thesis discusses these issues from a historical perspective, that is, it reconstructs the way they appear in three periods of Kepler’s career: the period prior to the publication of the Mysterium Cosmographicum, the period going from 1596 to 1611, and the harmonic period. Finally, Kepler’s epistemology is briefly contrasted with Descartes’s and Bacon’s in order to suggest why Kepler’s is philosophically interesting and valuable.