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© 2004, K P Mohanan
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Philosophy Oriented Articles

I hope you understand I am not a professional philosopher.  But many of my interests overlap with those of philosophers, and I have imbibed a little bit of philosophy by shaking hands with philosophers. Here are a few samples:

Paradigms, theories, frameworks and incommensurability.

This is a critique of Kuhn, arguing that he uses the term "paradigm" to refer to research program, criteria of evaluation, theory, theoretical framework, and observational framework. Incommensurability between two theories arises only when there are differences in either the criteria of evaluation or the observational framework.

Epistemology of science and postmodernism:

This article argues that the postmodernist critique of the epistemology of science is actually a critique of the "text book" version of science as offering infallible truth. It is not a crtitique of the the actual epistemology of science as practiced by twentieth century scientists which explicitly acknowledgeds the uncertainty of human knowledge, and the role of the human mind and society in the construction of this knowledge.

Classical epistemology and modes of inquiry

This article argues that epistemology should become descriptive and comparative to be useful to researchers and teachers in academic disciplines in general.

Social Constructivism and the Epistemology of Science

This article suggests that even though scientists like Einstein and Feynman are "constructivists" in one sense, the extreme version of "social constructism" is detrimental to rational inquiry.