School of Historical and Philosophical Studies - Theses
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ItemKnowledge and intentionality : an essay in philosophical anthropology( 1976)Although the central concern of the work which follows is the nature of knowledge, I became during my research increasingly fascinated by the processes of perception. This fascination has led me into areas and methods of research not typical in philosophy. Most notably, it has led me into pursuing the implications of discoveries and creating the web of their conceptual interdependence where others might have sought to establish them more thoroughly. Rather than seek to establish points in great detail in an already well mapped conceptual terrain, I have pushed into what I believe to be uncharted territory. I have outlined a program for research rather than completing a defined topic within such a program. The test of my success will be the interest generated rather than the problems solved. I owe much thanks to Dr. Mary McCloskey who, as supervisor of my work, gave me much encouragement while curbing the unacceptably bold leaps of speculation that I was prone to. Dr. Charles Langley of the Psychology Department at Melbourne University read an earlier draft of chapter six and offered many constructive comments which have been of help to me.
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ItemOn with the motley : the contingent assemblage of knowledge spaces( 1996)This thesis has utilised some previously published material. The introduction draws on Turnbull, D. 1991, Technoscience Worlds, Deakin University Press, Geelong; Turnbull, D. 1997 (forthcoming), Reframing Science and Other Local Knowledge Traditions, Futures,; Turnbull, D. 1996 (in press), Rationality, Objectivity, and Method' pp.16-21 in Helaine Selin ed, Encyclopedia of the History of Science, Technology and Medicine in Non-western Cultures, Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht. Chapter 1 is a modified version of Turnbull, D. 1993, Local Knowledge and Comparative Scientific Traditions, Knowledge and Policy, 6, (3/4), 29-54 with material from Turnbull, D. 1997 (forthcoming). Reframing Science and Other Local Knowledge Traditions, Futures; Turnbull, D. 1996 (in press), Maps and Mapmaking of the Australian Aboriginal People pp.37-39 in Helaine Selin ed, Encyclopedia of the History of Science, Technology and Medicine in Non-western Cultures, Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht, 1996. Chapter 2 is an updated version of Turnbull, D. 1993, The Ad Hoc Collective Work of Building Gothic Cathedrals with, Templates, String, and Geometry, Science Technology and Human Values, 18, 315-40. Chapter 3 takes material from two articles: Turnbull, D. 1996, Constructing Knowledge Spaces and Locating Sites of Resistance in the Early Modem Cartographic Transformation, inSocial Cartography: Mapping Ways of Seeing Social and Educational Change, R. Paulston, ed Garland Publishing Inc., New York, 53-79, and Turnbull, D. 1996, Cartography and Science in Early Modem Europe: Mapping the Construction of Knowledge Spaces, Imago Mundy, 48, 5-24, and a recent paper (En)countering Knowledge Traditions' presented at Science and Other Knowledge Traditions Conference, Calms, August 1996. Chapter 4 is a combination of material from Turnbull, D. 1991, Mapping The World in the Mind: An Investigation of the Unwritten Knowledge of the Micronesian Navigators, Deakin University Press, Geelong and Turnbull, D. 1994, Comparing Knowledge Systems: Pacific Navigation and Western Science, inScience of the Pacific Island Peoples: Vol.1, Ocean and Coastal Studies, J. Morrison, P. Geraghty and L. Crow!, eds Institute of Pacific Studies, Suva, 129-144. Chapter 5 is a revision of Turnbull, D. 1989, The Push For a Malaria Vaccine, Social Studies of Science, 19, 283-300. Chapter 6 is a revision of Turnbull, D. 1995, Rendering Turbulence Orderly, Social Studies of Science, 25, 9-33. The conclusion includes some revised material from Turnbull, D. 1984, Relativism, Reflexivity and the Sociology of Scientific Knowledge, Metascience: Annual Review of the Australasian Association for the History, Philosophy and Social Studies of Science, 1/2, 47-61.
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ItemAn account of subjectivity, as a groundwork of an empiricist account of our knowledge of the external world( 1996)The foundations of an empiricist proof of the existence of the external world are laid out in two papers by G E Moore: "Some Judgements of Perception", and "Proof of an External World". The proof is peculiarly empiricist because of its insistence on the conceptual relations between the concepts used to describe sense experience and those used to describe external things, such that the proof of the external world is itself an empirical matter. A detailed empiricist account of our knowledge of the external world is given by A J Ayer in his The Foundations of Empirical Knowledge, The Origins of Pragmatism , and The Central Questions of Philosophy. While the treatment in the Foundations is quite phenomenalistic, adopting the view that belief in the external world just is belief in the occurrence of certain patterns of sense experience, the account given in the two later works is realist in flavour. This thesis elaborates an empiricist account of subjectivity as a basis for semantics and epistemology. I advocate a direct realist account of perception, but leave the nature of the external entities we perceive an open question. My intention is to provide a framework in which Moore's and Ayers exhibitions of the warrants of our belief in the external world can be clearly and convincingly stated. After introducing the context of my empiricism, in Chapter One I sketch an empiricist semantics. A key feature of this is its assumption that it is possible to compare a belief to an experience, both in associating empirical meanings with concepts, and in warranting judgments. Resting as it does on this experiential foundation, anti-skeptical empiricism is opposed to all coherentist accounts of the warranting of belief. In Chapter Two I consider the reasons offered by Donald Davidson and John McDowell for rejecting the possibility of comparison of beliefs to experiences, and argue that they offer no convincing reasons for their rejection of experience as a source of evidence and a basis for meaning. I also argue that McDowell does not succeed in distinguishing his anti-foundationalism from Davidson's coherentism. In Chapter Three I indicate what I consider to be the difficulties that Davidson's coherentism faces. These difficulties with coherentism constitute evidence for the merits of the empiricist alternative, and lead naturally into Chapter Four's brief defence of a version of the cogito. In Chapter Five I develop the empiricist conception of subjectivity in detail, constructing the concepts needed to give an account of our knowledge of the external world on a purely subjective basis. Using these concepts, Chapter Six explains how it is possible to compare beliefs and experiences, thus answering the question put to empiricism by coherentism.
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ItemThe concept of mistake( 1962)
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