Papers by Emiliano TRIZIO
HAL (Le Centre pour la Communication Scientifique Directe), 2013
Routledge eBooks, Aug 31, 2020
Routledge eBooks, 2018
Introduction to an edited volume about the relation between Husserl's philosophy and Plato... more Introduction to an edited volume about the relation between Husserl's philosophy and Plato's and Aristotle's legacy
Routledge eBooks, 2018
Edited volume on the relations between Husserl's philosophy and Plato's and Aristotle'... more Edited volume on the relations between Husserl's philosophy and Plato's and Aristotle's legacy.
Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, 2012
This article explores the role of 'robustness-notions' in an account of the engineering sciences.... more This article explores the role of 'robustness-notions' in an account of the engineering sciences. The engineering sciences aim at technological production of, and intervention with phenomena relevant to the (dis-)functioning of materials and technological devices, by means of scientific understanding thereof. It is proposed that different kinds of robustness-notions enable and guide scientific research: (1) Robustness is as a metaphysical belief that we have about the physical world-i.e., we believe that the world is robust in the sense that the same physical conditions will always produce the same effects. (2) 'Same conditions-same effects' functions as a regulative principle that enables and guides scientific research because it points to, and justifies methodological notions. (3) Repetition, variance and multiple-determination function as methodological criteria for scientific methods that justify the acceptance of epistemological and ontological results. (4) Reproducibility and stability function as ontological criteria for the acceptance of phenomena described by A→B. (5) Reliability functions as an epistemological criterion for the acceptance of epistemological results, in particular lawlike knowledge of a conditional form: "A→B, provided C device , and unless other known and/or unknown causally relevant conditions." The crucial question is how different kinds of robustnessnotions are related and how they play their part in the production and acceptance of scientific results. Focus is on production and acceptance of physical phenomena and the rule-like knowledge thereof. Based on an analysis of how philosoophy of science tradtionally justified scientific knowledge, I propose a general schema that specifies how inferences to the claim that a scientific result has a certain epistemological property (such as truth) are justified by scientific methods that meet specific methodological criteria. It is proposed that 'same conditionssame effects' as a regulative criterion justifies 'repetition, variation and multipledetermination' as methodological criteria for the production and acceptance of (ontological and epistemological) scientific results.
The temptation to imagine alternative historical developments of political, social, and cultural ... more The temptation to imagine alternative historical developments of political, social, and cultural phenomena has always been a strong one. It is thus not surprising that one might try to include the history of science in this exercise and wonder whether it could have ended up differently than it actually did. Yet this attempt becomes problematic as soon as we impose epistemological conditions on the alternatives whose possibility (and plausibility) we are trying to evaluate, because, in order for the imagined scenarios to be interesting from an epistemological point of view, 1) we need to refer to an at least roughly defined specific subject-matter such as optics or high energy physics, 2) the imagined alternative histories of science must arrive to a different and yet equally successful stabilized stage, 3) they must imply some fundamental disagreement on the subject-matter in question. We are, therefore, putting heavy constraints on the alternatives we whish to consider, for most of the possible histories of science differ from our own in ways that are epistemologically uninteresting due to one or more of the following reasons: they are about the investigation of subjects other than the actual ones; they are histories of failure, not of achievement; they lead to results that are not incompatible with ours and therefore can be combined with them. The epistemological relevance of these three conditions should not be missed. Indeed, there is little epistemological interest in comparing what our science says about planets with what one might have ended up thinking about plants, or with what a bunch of fools unable to conduct any scientific research could have dreamed about planets, or, finally, with a planetology differing from ours as to the nomenclature only. Keeping this in mind, we can now turn to the relevant definitions. Contingentism, as it has been defined by Ian Hacking, 1 is the claim that the history of a particular field of science could have turned out otherwise than it actually did, and that it could have resulted in a science as successful as the actual one but, in a non-trivial way, incompatible with it. Inevitabilism consists in the denial of this claim. All crucial terms involved in this definition are affected by a certain degree of vagueness and can be defined in multiple ways, 2 but probably the trickiest of them is the term "successful". There are of course different definitions of scientific success, depending on the aim that one assigns to science. 3 Following Hacking, it is reasonable to include in the idea of scientific success a certain degree of progressiveness. However, the idea of progressiveness already implies a number of positive features that admit of improvement (such as predictive power, technical achievements, etc.). We shall see that the notion of success, along with the even thornier idea of evaluating "degrees of success" can be better analyzed while examining specific contingentist scenarios. If we believe that the history of the scientific investigation of a subject matter could have led to a stabilized stage as successful as our own, but incompatible with it, we also believe that different mutually incompatible and equally successful scientific accounts of the subject matter in question are possible. I call the latter claim the Soler, Léna (2008c) 'The Incommensurability of Experimental Practices : the Incommensurability of what ? An Incommensurability of the third-type?', In Rethinking Scientific Change and Theory Comparison.
Choice Reviews Online, 2016
HAL (Le Centre pour la Communication Scientifique Directe), 2013
Introduction to an edited volume about the relation between Husserl's philosophy and Plato... more Introduction to an edited volume about the relation between Husserl's philosophy and Plato's and Aristotle's legacy
Husserl Studies
Despite the significant number of critical analyses devoted to the subject, the precise definitio... more Despite the significant number of critical analyses devoted to the subject, the precise definition of the famed crisis-notion that lies at the heart of Husserl's last work remains controversial. The aim of this article is to defend and expand the account of Husserl's notion of the crisis of philosophy and of the resulting crisis of the European sciences that I have developed in a number of publications. This will be done by further exploring the notion of the meaningfulness of the sciences for life as well as its relation to their scientificity. Based on this result, I will then respond to some objections advanced against my proposal, and I will present further arguments to the effect that the crisis of philosophy consists in the collapse of its pretension to be scientific, and the consequent crisis of the European sciences consists in the resulting enigmatic character of their scientificity. Keywords Crisis • Scientificity • Existential significance of the sciences Recent years have seen several attempts to interpret the key-concepts of Husserl's last unfinished work The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology (Husserl, 1976/1970). 1 Unfortunately, instead of establishing a common framework, these attempts have prompted new controversies, which point to the enduring enigmatic character of one of the most complex theoretical works of the past century (for a discussion of four such controversies, see: Staiti, 2020). Regretfully, there is considerable disagreement even about the very definition of Husserl's famed "crisis-concept". In 2016, I advanced a definition aiming to provide both a unitary account of Husserl's so called multiple "crises" and to situate it within his 1 Henceforth, Krisis followed by the page numbers of the English translation.
The Husserlian Mind, 2021
This chapter will investigate Husserl’s conception of God in relation to his project of a metaphy... more This chapter will investigate Husserl’s conception of God in relation to his project of a metaphysics of the “higher and ultimate questions”, which follows and presupposes the metaphysics of worldy facticity resulting from the elucidation of empirical sciences. In conformity with Husserl’s own claim that his reflections on the matter have only accomplished the preliminary task of framing the problem of God and do not amount to the formulation of a systematic, rational theology, I will explore the resources that are available to phenomenology to address this issue. Three themes will appear to be of paramount significance: 1) the distinction between apriori and factual disciplines, 2) the teleological reconsideration of factual reality, which points to God as the ultimate teleological source, and 3) the necessity to understand the notion of God in non-objectivistic terms, and, thus, within the framework provided by the phenomenological monadology. This analysis will stress that in matters in theology too, Husserl intended to replace the objectivistic metaphysical style of modernity, which relied on illegitimate metaphysical substructions, with a new non-objectivistic form of elucidation of being. It will thus appear that Husserl’s theological considerations contribute to illuminate his entire project to reform rationalism and to lay new foundations for philosophy as the universal science of being.
The Routledge Handbook of Phenomenology and Phenomenological Philosophy, 2020
Philosophy’s Nature: Husserl’s Phenomenology, Natural Science, and Metaphysics, 2020
Philosophy’s Nature: Husserl’s Phenomenology, Natural Science, and Metaphysics, 2020
Philosophy’s Nature: Husserl’s Phenomenology, Natural Science, and Metaphysics, 2020
The Routledge Handbook of Phenomenology and Phenomenological Philosophy, 2020
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Papers by Emiliano TRIZIO