Epistemic operations and formalized epistemology

contribution to the study of the role of epistemic operations in scientific theories

Michel Paty

pp. 37-71

in: Mioara Mugur Schchter (ed), Quantum mechanics, mathematics, cognition and action, Berlin, Springer, 2002

Abstract

We ponder the kind of problems and perspectives of a "formalized epistemology", by considering the advantages than one get from a concern with the "formal", with its structural orientation, that would favour comprehensive, unifying and synthetic, intelligibility. We confront this perspective with that of the changes in knowledge, considering the relation between form and meaning for knowledge contents, and examine the notion of "epistemic operation" as instrumental for creating new forms, at the theoretical and meta-theoretical levels. Actually, the notions of form, of formal and of object are not independent of the problem of a subject that decides on conventions and choices. "Epistemic operations' might suggest a link with "algorithmic functions' for knowledge statements, that themselves entail the risk of reductionism in a naturalistic conception of representation.