Nicholas Ray | University of Waterloo (original) (raw)
Papers by Nicholas Ray
The present essay examines the relationship between ordinary empirical judgments and our scientif... more The present essay examines the relationship between ordinary empirical judgments and our scientific worldviews. It is concerned with how ordinary judgments (and the primitive frameworks in which they are formulated) might be usefully integrated into an account of epistemological progress, both of our personal views and scientific theories, so that the sciences (especially modern theories of space and time) can reasonably be thought as being informed by, and evolving out of, at least some of the various pre-scientific views they have replaced. We examine our normal perceptual judgments of magnitude, position, orientation, and displacement in the hope of uncovering the logical, conceptual, and empirical relations that exist between such judgments (as well as the views of the world they presuppose) and our sophisticated understandings of space, time, and motion in physical theory. This research contends that experience and a rich type of conceptual analysis-one that examines the presuppositions that make possible the application of concepts in empirical contexts-together provide the framework within which a rational account of such relations can be proposed. The project thus defends a form of empiricism, but one distinct from classical forms (be they British empiricism, Russellian empiricism, or logical empiricism)-rather a slightly modified version of Anil Gupta's "Reformed Empiricism". This empiricism is capable of avoiding the logical excesses and errors of earlier forms, whilst providing an account of how a set of basic empiricist principles might be extended from their context in general epistemology to recalcitrant problems in the philosophy of science, such as the problem of our formal knowledge, the problem of the communicability of observation, and the rationality of theoretical progress. Such an extension offers a comprehensive account both of our ordinary and scientific knowledge.
Dialogue, 2013
On Denoting" is central to the analytic tradition, yet one of its key arguments (the Gray's Elegy... more On Denoting" is central to the analytic tradition, yet one of its key arguments (the Gray's Elegy Argument) lacks a canonical reading. Some interpret the passage as rejecting denoting concepts as inconsistent, or the theory that posits them as incoherent. Such readings are too strong, and at odds with the passage. We interpret the argument as a set of considerations that leave the old view as a logically viable (though uneconomical and cumbersome) competitor to Russell's new semantic theory. RÉSUMÉ : «De la Dénotation» est l'un des articles les plus importants de la tradition analytique, pourtant il n'existe pas d'interprétation canonique pour l'un de ses argument-clés (l'argument de l 'Élégie de Gray). Certains croient que le passage en question démontre que les concepts dénotants en eux-mêmes sont contradictoires; d'autres que la théorie qui les sous-tend est incohérente. Les deux interprétations sont trop fortes et sont contredites par le texte du passage. Nous l'interprétons plutôt comme un ensemble de considérations qui conservent à l'ancienne théorie, bien qu'elle
Baltic International Yearbook of Cognition, Logic and Communication, 2014
This paper is a defense of Reformed Empiricism, especially against those critics who take Reforme... more This paper is a defense of Reformed Empiricism, especially against those critics who take Reformed Empiricism to be a viable account of empirical rationality only if it avails itself of certain rationalist assumptions that are inconsistent with empiricism. I argue against three broad types of criticism that are found in the current literature, and propose a way of characterising Gupta's constraints for any model of experience as analytic of empiricism itself, avoiding the charge by some (e.g. McDowell, Berker, and Schafer) who think that the constraints are substantive.
The present essay examines the relationship between ordinary empirical judgments and our scientif... more The present essay examines the relationship between ordinary empirical judgments and our scientific worldviews. It is concerned with how ordinary judgments (and the primitive frameworks in which they are formulated) might be usefully integrated into an account of epistemological progress, both of our personal views and scientific theories, so that the sciences (especially modern theories of space and time) can reasonably be thought as being informed by, and evolving out of, at least some of the various pre-scientific views they have replaced. We examine our normal perceptual judgments of magnitude, position, orientation, and displacement in the hope of uncovering the logical, conceptual, and empirical relations that exist between such judgments (as well as the views of the world they presuppose) and our sophisticated understandings of space, time, and motion in physical theory. This research contends that experience and a rich type of conceptual analysis-one that examines the presuppositions that make possible the application of concepts in empirical contexts-together provide the framework within which a rational account of such relations can be proposed. The project thus defends a form of empiricism, but one distinct from classical forms (be they British empiricism, Russellian empiricism, or logical empiricism)-rather a slightly modified version of Anil Gupta's "Reformed Empiricism". This empiricism is capable of avoiding the logical excesses and errors of earlier forms, whilst providing an account of how a set of basic empiricist principles might be extended from their context in general epistemology to recalcitrant problems in the philosophy of science, such as the problem of our formal knowledge, the problem of the communicability of observation, and the rationality of theoretical progress. Such an extension offers a comprehensive account both of our ordinary and scientific knowledge.
Dialogue, 2013
On Denoting" is central to the analytic tradition, yet one of its key arguments (the Gray's Elegy... more On Denoting" is central to the analytic tradition, yet one of its key arguments (the Gray's Elegy Argument) lacks a canonical reading. Some interpret the passage as rejecting denoting concepts as inconsistent, or the theory that posits them as incoherent. Such readings are too strong, and at odds with the passage. We interpret the argument as a set of considerations that leave the old view as a logically viable (though uneconomical and cumbersome) competitor to Russell's new semantic theory. RÉSUMÉ : «De la Dénotation» est l'un des articles les plus importants de la tradition analytique, pourtant il n'existe pas d'interprétation canonique pour l'un de ses argument-clés (l'argument de l 'Élégie de Gray). Certains croient que le passage en question démontre que les concepts dénotants en eux-mêmes sont contradictoires; d'autres que la théorie qui les sous-tend est incohérente. Les deux interprétations sont trop fortes et sont contredites par le texte du passage. Nous l'interprétons plutôt comme un ensemble de considérations qui conservent à l'ancienne théorie, bien qu'elle
Baltic International Yearbook of Cognition, Logic and Communication, 2014
This paper is a defense of Reformed Empiricism, especially against those critics who take Reforme... more This paper is a defense of Reformed Empiricism, especially against those critics who take Reformed Empiricism to be a viable account of empirical rationality only if it avails itself of certain rationalist assumptions that are inconsistent with empiricism. I argue against three broad types of criticism that are found in the current literature, and propose a way of characterising Gupta's constraints for any model of experience as analytic of empiricism itself, avoiding the charge by some (e.g. McDowell, Berker, and Schafer) who think that the constraints are substantive.