Herman Tönnessen

Bio: Herman Tönnessen is an academic researcher. The author has contributed to research in topics: Object (philosophy). The author has an hindex of 1, co-authored 1 publications receiving 4 citations.

The fight against revelation in semantical studies

Abstract: It is a well known phrase to say that the difference between religion and belief on the one hand and knowledge and science on the other, may be described as follows: the former depends on revelation, as we say in Dutch and Norwegian on "openbaring", the latter not. As a matter of fact, however, I very often have the impression of struggling revelation, even in semantical and sociological studies. I suddenly find myself on the point of presenting something as a result of my brain work without being able to give a somewhat detailed description of my assumptions and the auxiliary hypothesis which reasonably must have led me from the observations of any kind to this "result". In the following I will mainly deal with certain means of resistance against this temptation of revelation. This is to say that I will try to give a hint of a kind of investigations which will be involved in all philosophical or logical analysis and semantical or signifie studies of our Oslo-group, and which we at the time regard as being the most important part of such studies. Arne Naess has suggested the name of "elementary analysis" for those kind of investigations. As an illustration of elementary analysis I will use my own study on "private enterprise". The most usual procedure so far applied, when analyzing a linguistic expression would be one of the following. The analyst or investigator makes a single subject, namely himself object of an investigation and records the ideas immediately. The analysis might also includea criticism (unfavourable) of the accessible or potential, but frequently less successful attempts in the same direc tion of other authors. Or the analyst may back up his hypotheses of usage by quotations which may be interpreted in such a way that they directly or indirectly are supporting his ideas. Or fellow human beings might be asked what they mean by or maintain to mean by the

Diversity in Proof Appraisal

Abstract: We investigated whether mathematicians typically agree about the qualities of mathematical proofs. Between-mathematician consensus in proof appraisals is an implicit assumption of many arguments made by philosophers of mathematics, but to our knowledge the issue has not previously been empirically investigated. We asked a group of mathematicians to assess a specific proof on four dimensions, using the framework identified by Inglis and Aberdein (2015). We found widespread disagreement between our participants about the aesthetics, intricacy, precision and utility of the proof, suggesting that a priori assumptions about the consistency of mathematical proof appraisals are unreasonable.

Verification: The Hysteron Proteron Argument

Abstract: Analytical Philosophy Volume 6, Number 6 Editor in Chief Kevin C. Klement, University of Massachusetts Editorial Board Annalisa Coliva, UC Irvine Greg Frost-Arnold, Hobart and William Smith Colleges Henry Jackman, York University Sandra Lapointe, McMaster University Consuelo Preti, The College of New Jersey Marcus Rossberg, University of Connecticut Anthony Skelton, Western University Mark Textor, King’s College London Audrey Yap, University of Victoria Richard Zach, University of Calgary Review Editors Sean Morris, Metropolitan State University of Denver Sanford Shieh, Wesleyan University Design Daniel Harris, Hunter College

What should we say

Abstract: Preliminary summaries of a few empirio‐semantical investigations1 concerning such sentences as: can we say x, should we ever (ordinarily) say x, x is self‐evident (tautological, contradictory, nonsensical), P does not know what be is talking about, x is voluntary (involuntary) and: that is no excuse

Science, History, Philosophy, and World Views

Abstract: In one of my contributions to the XVth World Congress of Philosophy (17-22 September 1973, Varna, Bulgaria) I take my point of departure in the following rather trite observation: There is something peculiarly redundant in the very idea of humanistic psychology. Whenever a psychologist, qua psychologist, involves himself in whichever conceivable psychological enterprise, that enterprise is not only, needless to say, bound to be a human enterprise but, in point of fact, an enterprise more or less precisely and definitely conceptualized as a direct or indirect contribution to man’s understanding of man, viz., the all-human endeavor to figure out how things within man and around man operate—and what, after all, man’s Jot within the widest conceptual scheme may be. By the same token, “nonhumanistic psychology” is bound to designate nothing but a contiadictio in adjecto. Its nonexistence is a notational necessity. How anyone could ever come to believe that it might make sense to argue as though there actually were such a thing, has only psycho-patho-semantic interest. And the beguiling key concepts at work here, I shall suggest, are: “Science,” “scientific,” plus possibly “objectivity,” “theoryindependent observations” or “percepts,” “refutation,” “autonomy,” “autarchi,” and related notions implicitly suggesting, inter alia, an image, a model of a theory/observation asymmetry, alleged to inexorably permeate all science—and metascience—theoretical activity.1