What is Real?: Reality as a Social Construction
Realists agree with anti-realists that much of reality is a social construction--money, marriage, government, language. But realists also believe there has to be a world that's independent of our representation of how things are. In contrast, anti-r...
Changes in Our Conception of Human Nature (Part One)
Philosopher Ian Hacking talks about changes in the way human nature has been viewed over time. From the time of Aristotle through the Enlightenment, human nature was seen as being an essential characteristic of what it is to be human, in which the v...
Changes in Our Conception of Human Nature (Part Two)
Philosopher Ian Hacking continues his exploration of changes in the way human nature has been looked at over time. He notes that as cities began to grow so, too, did crime and poverty. As a result, resources which might have at one time been used to...
Does Science Give Us Truth?: Conceptual Relativism
Conceptual relativism in many ways parallels the coherence theory of truth. The idea is that any representation of reality will always be influenced by the information available. There undoubtedly will be opposing points of view that do not reconcil...
Does the Mind Shape the World?: Does the Mind Shape the World?
Immanuel Kant, born in 1724 sought to resolve a controversy that had been brewing for over a century. Rationalists argued that knowledge is based on reasoning inside our minds. Empirists disagreed saying that all knowledge must come from the senses....
Theoreticians and Experimenters
Philosopher Ian Hacking talks about the differences in approach and skill sets between those who practice science primarily as theoreticians, and others who are primarily experimenters. Professor Hacking points out that theoreticians get most of the...
Thomas Kuhn
Philosopher Ian Hacking talks about Thomas Kuhn's notion that science is very much a historical process--one in which breakthroughs often come at unexpected or unpredictable times, rather than at regular intervals. He also discusses Kuhn's notion of...
Thomas Kuhn: His Core Ideas
Philosopher Ian Hacking talks about Thomas Kuhn's core ideas, including the notion that scientists generally practice what Kuhn terms "normal science," but that at times there are tremendous breakthroughs that usually come about after a period of fr...
Experience and Innate Ideas
Philosopher Ian Hacking talks about the notion of innate ideas, making reference to such historical figures as Descartes, Leibniz, Locke and Michelangelo. He notes that while experience produces different ideas in people, those ideas are formed on w...
Encountering External Reality
Philosopher Ian Hacking calls himself a materialist, explaining that we learn partly through "a lot of innate equipment...but certainly from earliest experience how to adapt ourselves to the material environment in which we find ourselves."