Mario Bunge
Mario Augusto Bunge ( born September 21, 1919 in Buenos Aires ) is an Argentine philosopher and physicist.
Life
Mario Bunge studied physics and received his doctorate in 1952 at the Universidad Nacional de La Plata. In 1956 he became professor of theoretical physics, first in La Plata, then from 1957 to 1966 in Buenos Aires. Since 1966 he was Professor of Logic and Metaphysics at McGill University in Montreal. In 2009 he retired from teaching.
Bunge is a member of numerous scientific societies and has received 19 honorary doctorates.
Work
Originally based on the physics Bunge has in his numerous publications (more than 50 books, over 500 articles) with almost all philosophical questions and pro developed a comprehensive philosophical worldview. His main work is the eight-volume Treatise on Basic Philosophy ( 1974-1989 ). Were translated into German yet the volumes of the main work, but six other books that deal with epistemological and ontological issues. A summary of his thought contains ( together with M. Mahner authored ) book On the Nature of Things ( 2004).
Mario Bunge is part of the radius of critical rationalism. In a critical link with Karl Popper in the philosophy of science he defends realism and rationalism, but in contrast to Popper's pluralistic ontology, he represents a materialism. His thinking is supported by an enlightened impulse, which always leads him to harsh reviews and polemics in other philosophical concepts. Politically, he has declared himself a " left liberal", in the tradition of Argentine positivists movement of José Ingenieros and John Stuart Mill
Philosophy Concept
Bunge's conception of philosophy in the tradition of the Vienna Circle and its commitment to a scientific world view. Like Popper, he estimates the logical empiricism as an important contribution to the scientific nature of philosophy and its fight closes against metaphysical speculation and philosophical wishful thinking. But at the same time he criticized, in turn, as Popper, the bias of the Vienna Circle in the empiricist tradition, which he blames for his misguided understanding of scientific knowledge. By understanding classical empiricism and positivism knowledge as mere " synthesis " of sensory data, they fail to recognize by Bunge the constructive- creative aspect of scientific theories and waive, contrary to the self- understanding of the sciences on the epistemological realism.
The linguistic turn of philosophy that has taken place subsequent to Ludwig Wittgenstein, the logical empiricism, Bunge criticized in similarly strong terms as Popper as an aberration, because it is linked with a move away from scientific issues and a shift to relatively unimportant problems of language use. As a result, the concentration of the philosophy to the analysis of language Bunge sees an increasing alienation of the philosophy of the modern sciences. As science and unrealistic he criticizes about the run in analytical philosophy debates about " possible worlds " and " counterfactual statements." The quest for a logical analysis of concepts, notably of scientific terms, Bunge shares contrast with Rudolf Carnap, and Willard van Orman Quine, yes he makes extensive use of modern logical-mathematical instruments to clarify problems by logical formalization and clarify - a tendency that does not always benefit the readability and comprehensibility of his writings.
Philosophy according to Bunge everywhere because their place, when it comes to the basic issues and requirements of Sciences. As semantics and philosophy of science ( epistemology ), it deals with issues of recognition of the reality and as ontology it focuses on the principles of reality itself the object of the ontology, it is first in the Aristotelian spirit, to inquire into the general characteristics of a real object, then analyzed them. conditions the individual sciences such as physics, biology and psychology, in order to clarify what matter, life and mind are at all A fundamental philosophical issue are ultimately the standards of human action. Among the philosophical disciplines that are treated in Bunge's Treatise, therefore, belongs next to semantics, philosophy of science and ontology and ethics.
Philosophy of Science
The classical epistemology of empiricism has not properly recorded by Bunge, the nature of scientific method. Progresses Francis Bacon's conception of induction as a research method, where science begins with observations and then ( by means of inductive rules ) to generalizations misinterpreted by Bunge the actual scientific method, as it is practiced with the formulation of hypotheses and their subsequent experimental verification since Galileo. The fact that scientific hypotheses and theories are tested by observation and experiment, is of course for Bunge, but he stresses under the influence of the objections of Thomas Kuhn and Paul Feyerabend, that the empirical data is not as simple and straightforward as Carnap and Popper have provided.
Bunge is also opposed to earlier attempts at a sharp distinction between philosophy and science. He points with Popper advocated by Wittgenstein and the Vienna Circle 's thesis of the meaninglessness of metaphysics back, but at the same time he also rejects Popper's demarcation between science and metaphysics, by the criterion of falsifiability. Bunge follows here rather Quine when he sees itself as philosophy and science two complementary but interdependent rational knowledge efforts. Only through cooperation between science and philosophy can achieve progress in knowledge is, in his view.
Counter Poppers demarcation between science and metaphysics emphasizes Bunge that science can not simply be equated with verifiability. Obviously incorrect theories such as astrology are indeed verifiable, but when refuted theories they can not claim the status of science. Hypotheses and theories can be regarded as scientifically rather only when they are not only verifiable, but are overall consistent with our knowledge of the world. Verifiability is not simply identical with empirical control through observation and experimentation. In addition to a direct empirical control, there is also an indirect empirical checking, by examination of the compatibility of a theory with well- confirmed other scientific theories.
The recognition of science as a philosophical guiding principle is also the basis of Bunge's criticism of misguided scientific and philosophical concepts. The pseudo-sciences, which he attacked in similar sharp shape as Popper, part psychoanalysis, the lack of verifiable predictions of human behavior delivers to his view, but is compatible with every possible behavior. In sharp form Bunge also criticized the new relativism, as he is about to find in postmodernism, but also in Feyerabend.
A central role in Bunge's philosophy of science plays his defense of realism. Realism is ontologically and epistemologically an indispensable condition of real science. As an ontological position maintains the realism that reality has an independent structure of our thinking, as an epistemological position, he states that this real structure partially ( by perception and science ) is at least recognizable. This " scientific realism " defends Bunge against going back to Niels Bohr " Copenhagen interpretation " of quantum physics, according to which depends the subatomic events of interventions of the observer. Bunge tries to show that no reference appears in the equations of quantum mechanics to measuring apparatus or observer, but that it is misguided philosophical interpretations of quantum physics in this reference, however.
Ontology
Substance ontology
The basic category to grasp the reality Bunge in the concept of a material object ( or concrete thing ). To material objects include ordinary perceptible objects such as trees and houses, but also items that are withdrawn from direct perception, the effects of which can be, however, noticed or found on other things. Material objects can be identified with the atoms or material particles of classical physics by Bunge also not easy. Rather Bunge tries the development of modern physics, who knows, among other massless photons and not clearly localized electrons to be righteous, he does not count anymore mass and localization of the essential properties of material objects. One of the essential characteristics of material objects, however, include variability and effectiveness. These features make "things" of abstract concepts and constructs that do not have their own, independent of the thinking subject mode of being according to Bunge, but " fictions " in the sense of Hans Vaihinger differ.
The category of a material object is a precise, basically materialistic version of the traditional concept of substance at Bunge. This becomes clear when he turns "thing" and " property " as correlative concepts and stresses that both can be separated only in the abstract. This means that there is neither featureless things (substrates or " carrier ") nor free-floating properties ( without material substrates ). From this assumption is that things and properties always occur together, there are important metaphysical consequences. First, it follows the untenability of metaphysical positions, such as the process - metaphysics take Alfred Whitehead's " process " or "event" as a fundamental metaphysical categories. "Process" and " event ", however, are by no Bunge basic categories, because they already presuppose each the concept of a material object. Processes and events can therefore be ontologically adequate intended only as changes in the conditions of material objects. But also keep cropping up in modern physics and natural philosophy since Wilhelm Ostwald idea that " energy " a (or the ) ontological base category is, Bunge has as missed back because energy is indeed a universal property of material objects, but it is a property and no ( independent ) substance. With the version of a concrete material object as a metaphysical category based Bunge represents explicitly a substance - metaphysics. Although, the sciences leaves the question, what are the last material objects of reality, but he holds fast to the old materialistic principle that matter is not created from nothing and does not pass for nothing. An absolute emergence of things, as it is believed in certain versions of the cosmological big bang theory, he rejects it.
Emergentist materialism
The world is made by Bunge from material objects, but has the world nevertheless a qualitative diversity, which may be interpreted in the appropriate recourse to systems theory. Systems are assemblages of elements into new units with its own structure, this structure results from the interplay of the elements. It is thus the self-organization of the things that makes the creation of new, higher qualities in the world and not a guiding, higher power. Systems in this ontological sense, ranging from atoms, molecules and cells to the planetary systems and the cosmos as a whole.
Systems according to Bunge integrated wholes. As such, they sometimes have properties that already have their elements and they inherit equally from this; but in addition to these " resulting " properties, they also have new features that have not yet their elements, and the only result from the interaction of the elements ( " emerge "). For example, water has new features not yet have the hydrogen and oxygen may be used individually, and that living beings are also physical things, but they have in addition to physical or " supra- physical properties". On these emergent properties of systems based Bunge by the variety and the stage or layer character of reality.
The main levels ( or levels of integration ) reality Bunge distinguishes four ( sometimes more) stages, namely Physikosysteme, chemo systems, biosystems and Socio systems. The emergence of new, higher levels of the system in the evolution of the cosmos and of life is according to Bunge a fact, no matter how far they agree and predict leaves. Ontologically crucial is that the deeper levels of the system, as materialists have argued against spiritualism and dualism has always been that form being the foundations of the higher level, but have the higher levels, as critics of the reductive and physicalist materialism have repeatedly emphasized, also new, emergent properties and laws. This concept of " emergentist materialism " has a certain similarity with Nicolai Hartmann layers doctrine which Bunge has certainly seen and recognized. The emergentist materialism also includes Bunge's opinion on the philosophy of mind. On the one hand, the traditional mind-body dualism is untenable because it fails to recognize the systemic nature of the higher layers and substantializes the emergent property of consciousness falsely. Moreover, dualism is incompatible with modern science, because the assumption of an immaterial mind, which acts on the body, does not fit into the concept of evolution of the material world and beyond with the physical principle of conservation of energy is incompatible. That mind is an emergent property of the brain, according to Bunge does not mean, however, that mental can be reduced to physical properties. Physical and mental processes are experienced not only as different, but also represent ontologically different properties - although they still are properties of the physical body brain as mental properties and remain. This fact can be interpreted according to Bunge so that mental processes are the internal aspects of physiological processes. Processes of consciousness are so certain brain processes "identical". Bunge's emergentist materialism, therefore, combines a " psychoneural " substance - monism with a pluralism of properties.
Causality, determinism, freedom
A concern that has followed in the early years as a physicist and philosopher of science Bunge, was the rehabilitation of causality as an ontological category. It therefore goes against epistemological and methodological reductions of the causal concept, as they are found in Hume and Kant, but also in logical empiricism. " Causation " is by Bunge neither on the "apparitions " restricted category, nor can the content of this concept to mere predictability reduce. The concept of cause rather contains the ontological assertion that an event is caused when there is spawned by another event in a lawful manner.
In addition, there is according to the causality Bunge, other forms of determination. So there are expressing about laws such as Einstein's equation E = mc2, describing any sequence of events, but a legitimate link between several sizes. Then, there are operations such as the non-causal atomic decay, which is described by probability or probabilistic laws. Bunge emphasizes finding that although the principle of causality, but not the Determinismusprinzip is violated by quantum physics. The term of determination can, in his view next to causal laws and laws of probability hold, since the latter take place by no means completely arbitrary and lawless. Bunge thus sums up the concept of determinism in a broader sense, so that it includes, in addition to strict causal probabilistic determination. The Determinismusprinzip in this alternative version is sufficient according to Bunge, however, to exclude magic and wonder as unscientific.
In its opinion on the problem of free will Bunge joins the going back to Hume conception of freedom as a sufficient basis of morality. Free then is human action, if it is done intentionally and without ( external ) constraint, if the person so can do what he wants. However, such action is thus not acausal, but follows from the nature of man and the motives of the given situation and is, in principle, so even predictable. The concept of free will, however, according to Bunge contains the misguided idea that man could rise as it were in his decisions about his character. Therefore, the concept of free will runs for him out on the inconsistent idea of a personality independent will. The concept of freedom of action is in contrast not only ontological sense, but morally sufficient because an impressionable by education and policy action also leaves room for moral standardization and evaluation. Popper's attempt to ensure freedom of the will on the basis of indeterminism of quantum physics, Bunge rejects decided.
Effect
Bunge's writings have a rather marginal role in the discussions of the analytical philosophy of the present. More obvious is his influence, however, in philosophizing scientists and scientifically -oriented philosophers. In Germany there are about Gerhard Vollmer and Bernulf Kanitscheider who have experienced Bunge important suggestions.
A special feature: One of Bunge's first American doctoral students was the future author Chaim Potok; in Potok's first novel - The Chosen - occurs in Chapter 13, in short, a university professor named Abraham Flesser on whose ideas have a strong resemblance to those of Professor Bunge.