Abstract Metasemantic inferentialism has gained popularity in the last few decades. Traditionally, is combined with a deflationary attitude towards semantic terms such as truth and reference, i.e., many inferentialists hold that when we use these do not purport to refer substantive properties. This combination makes attractive for philosophers who see themselves antirealists. Although attractio...

Pluralism without updating is not science. . . . It would be a warping of the scientifi c frame if we built into the charter of any department of political science that there had to be an expert in “realism,” or in “South Asia,” or in “democracy,” or in “qualitative methods.” . . . [ I ]nstitutionalizing slots for particular specialties is a threat to scientifi c progress. . . . A pluralism tha...

Drawing on surveys of religion and values in Great Britain, this paper suggests that Peter Berger's paradigm of two pluralisms can be usefully supplemented by taking account of a third kind of intensified pluralism. This involves the breakdown of the boundaries between religions, and between the religious and the secular, and is therefore a pluralism of de-differentiation. It helps explain many...

If the most perplexing thing in the world is a lack of theory, the second most perplexing must be an abundance of it. This contribution clarifies the notion of pluralism by introducing an often neglected but crucial distinction between different levels at which pluralism can be situated. It intends to provide a framework for scholars dealing with the question how to manage the divergence of vie...

Pluralism, according to Michael P. Lynch, is the thesis that there are or can be more than one true story of the world; there can be incompatible but equally acceptable accounts of some subject matter.’ The opposite view, absolutism, states that there can be only one true story about how the world is. In our ordinary lives both theses have intuitive pull. Most of us are ready to say that there ...

The review by Waxman and Gavrilets illustrates the collision of different mindsets in evolutionary theory. These differences originate from the awe-inspiring complexity of the evolutionary process itself: evolutionary understanding critically depends on processes at many biological levels. Starting out with base pairs and their sequences, scholars of evolution have to consider – in the order of...

Exploration of issues associated with the introduction and the application of various systems thinking methods and techniques in the analysis and design of complex work systems in a large public sector organisation. Action research approach to introducing and skilling people in the use of systems thinking techniques and in exploring the concept of methodological pluralism. Highlights significan...

Pluralism is the coexistence of equivalent theoretical frameworks, either because they are historically entrenched or because they achieve separate insights by viewing the same process in different ways. A recent article by West et al. [Journal of Evolutionary Biology (2007) vol. 20, 415-432] attempts to classify the many equivalent frameworks that have been developed to study the evolution of ...

I argue for sensory pluralism. This is the view that there are many forms of sensory interaction and unity, and no single category that classifies them all. In other words, sensory interactions do not form a single natural kind. This view suggests that how we classify sensory systems (and the experiences they generate) partly depends on our explanatory purposes. I begin with a detailed discussi...