In this paper I discuss Taylor's criticism of contemporary moral philosophy and the role which this plays in his wider account of the development of Western moral consciousness, an account which I compare with Hans Blumenberg's The Legitimacy of the Modern Age. While I endorse Taylor's rejection of "naturalism", I deny that this entails the rejection of non-realism and I maintain that, indeed, ...

The simple question—What is empirical success?—turns out to have a surprisingly complicated answer. We need to distinguish between meritorious fit and “fudged fit”, which is akin to the distinction between prediction and accommodation. The final proposal is that empirical success emerges in a theory-dependent way from the agreement of independent measurements of theoretically postulated quantit...

Objects Within contemporary philosophy there is an ongoing debate relating to the subjects of realism, materialism and physicalism and there is no agreement on a standard account of how to distinguish between abstract and concrete objects (Rosen, 2014). Philosophers who commit to abstract objects are often termed platonists whilst philosophers who deny their existence are termed nominalists (Ro...

This article contains a survey of recent debates in the philosophy of photography, focusing on aesthetic and epistemic issues in particular. Starting from widespread notions about automatism, causality and realism in the theory of photography, the authors ask whether the prima facie tension between the epistemic and aesthetic embodied in oppositions such as automaticism and agency, causality an...

In dark days of Europe, which was a barren science, you saw the world through superstitions alchemy and methods based on ignorance speculation. A current science emerged in medieval that provided new definition science. modern it is knowledge fixed truths nature, man society, have acquired with tools empirical intellect by observation induction, been useful for ensuring welfare security human b...

This article explains for a general philosophical audience the central issues and strategies in the contemporary moral realism debate. It critically surveys the contribution of some recent scholarship, representing expressivist and pragmatist nondescriptivism (Mark Timmons, Hilary Putnam), subjectivist and nonsubjectivist naturalism (Michael Smith, Paul Bloomfield, Philippa Foot), nonnaturalism...

The present paper considers the activity of tele-care within the broad framework of the information age, of how modern society is organised and of the structuring role of the health sector. The importance of key concepts such as social structures, human agency and the instance of being-in-the-world, are highlighted and explored. The inputs of computer ethics, critical realism and philosophy of ...

The increasing use of computational modeling and simulation methods offers interesting epistemic and theoretical challenges for the philosophy of science. One of the main questions discussed in the philosophical literature relates to the explanatory role of false, unrealistic and sometimes even fictional models. In this paper we argue that (i) some fictional models can offer explanations known ...