J. M. B. Moss

Bio: J. M. B. Moss is an academic researcher. The author has contributed to research in topics: Logical atomism. The author has an hindex of 1, co-authored 1 publications receiving 43 citations.

Planning science: Otto Neurath and the International Encyclopedia of Unified Science

Abstract: In the spring of 1937, the University of Chicago Press mailed hundreds of subscription forms for its latest enterprise – a projected series of twenty short monographs by various philosophers and scientists. Together the monographs were to form the first section of the International Encyclopedia of Unified Science. Included in each mailing was an introductory prospectus which began:Recent years have witnessed a striking growth of interest in the scientific enterprise as a whole and especially in the unity of science. The concern throughout the world for the logic of science, the history of science, and the sociology of science reveals a comprehensive international movement interested in considering science as a whole in terms of the scientific temper itself. A science of science is appearing. The extreme specialization within science demands as its corrective an interest in the scientific edifice in its entirety. This is especially necessary if science is to satisfy its inherent urge for the systematization of its results and methods and if science is to perform adequately its educational role in the modern world. Science is gradually rousing itself for the performance of its total task.

Rethinking the Culture-Economy Dialectic

Abstract: The culture - economy dialectic (CED), the opposition of the concepts and phenomena of culture and economy, is one of the most important notions in the modern history of ideas. Both the disciplinary boundaries and much theoretical thought in social science are strongly influenced or even determined by the CED. Hence, a thorough analysis and evaluation of the CED might be useful to better understand the history of ideas in social science and the currently fashionable research on the cultural influences on economic differences between countries and regions. This book, my PhD thesis, attempts to do just that. The concepts of "culture" and "economy" (and related concepts) and the (assumed) relationships therebetween are compared and analysed. Empirical results from earlier studies are summarised and some new test are presented. These new tests are partly based on a measurement of Dutch regional culture. However, it appeared that most theories of the CED are (nearly) impossible to (empirically) verify. There seems to be some influence of wealth on specific cultural phenomena (such individualism and post-materialism), but the often assumed influence of culture on entrepreneurship and economic growth remains unconfirmed. Moreover, from an analysis of the theories themselves, it appears that most of these cannot be falsified and are, therefore, hardly 'scientific'. Many of the theories of the CED and, in fact, many theories of social science in general are of a conceptual rather than a causal nature. These theories cannot easily be falsified by empirical means alone, but must be studied by means of conceptual analysis. In the final conclusions, this book, therefore, argues for conceptual analysis in, and a more anarchist approach to, social science.

Rafts, Boats, and Cruise Ships

Abstract: ion, not in the metaphysical or epistemological status of the truths it seeks, from the natural sciences.

Gödel and Husserl

Abstract: It is not widely known that there is a connection between Husserl and Godel. Husserl never referred to Godel — he was more than 70 when Godel obtained his first great results, and he died a few years later, in 1938, without seeming to have taken notice of Godel’s work. And Godel never referred to Husserl in his published works. However, Godel’s Nachlass, part of which is now coming out in volume III of Solomon Feferman et al., Collected Works of Kurt Godel (Feferman 1994), shows that Godel knew Husserl’s work well and appreciated it greatly. Thus Godel writes in a manuscript from late 1961 or shortly thereafter: … just because of the lack of clarity and the literal incorrectness of many of Kant’s formulations, quite divergent directions have developed out of Kant’s thought — none of which, however, really did justice to the core of Kant’s thought. This requirement seems to me to be met for the first time by phenomenology, which, entirely as intended by Kant, avoids both the death-defying leaps of idealism into a new metaphysics as well as the positivistic rejection of all metaphysics. But now, if the misunderstood Kant has already led to so much that is interesting in philosophy, and also indirectly in science, how much more can we expect it from Kant understood correctly?2

Deliberation welcomes prediction

Abstract: According to the so-called ‘deliberation crowds out prediction’ thesis, while deliberating about what you'll do, you cannot rationally have credences for what you'll do – you cannot rationally have option-credences. Versions of the thesis have been defended by authors such as Spohn, Levi, Gilboa, Price, Louise, and others. After registering a number of concerns about the thesis, I rehearse and rebut many of the main arguments for it, grouped according to their main themes: agency, vacuity, betting, and decision-theoretical considerations. I go on to suggest many possible theoretical roles for option-credences. I locate the debate about the thesis in a broader discussion: Are there rational credence gaps – propositions to which one cannot rationally assign credences? If there are, they spell trouble for various foundations of Bayesian epistemology, including the usual ratio formula for conditional probability, conditionalization, decision theory, and independence. According to the thesis, credence gaps are completely mundane; they arise every time someone rationally deliberates. But these foundations are safe from any threat here, I contend, since the thesis is false. Deliberation welcomes prediction.