Buddhini Karunathilaka

  Paul Feyerabend is an Austrian philosopher of science. He contributed to the field of the philosophy of science through the works that he has published; Against Method (1975), Science in a Free Society (1978) and Farewell to Reason (1987). His view of ‘high level theories’ which he referred instead of Kuhn’s concept of ‘paradigm’ covers the entire scientific context as it is holistic. For him, the underlying principle of science is the paradigm. Perception, experience and observation sentences are controlled by the particular paradigm and science is controlled by that paradigm. For instance, the paradigm shift of geocentric planetary system and heliocentric system can be mentioned. His work in the 1950s and 1960s (much of it collected in his Philosophical papers-1981), ‘contained studies in the development of the sciences’ (Brown, Collinson, & Wilkinson, 1998, p. 56).  In Against Method, he claims that science is an anarchic one. Here the term anarchy refers to the epist...

George Berkeley was an Irish philosopher who is related to the 18th century philosophy. He is considered as the father of modern idealism. Materialism is only accepting the external world. In contrast, he emphasized the theory of immaterialism as he does not accept the material world. Among his works, An Essay towards a New Theory of Vision, A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge, The Dialogues of Hylas and Philonous, De Motu are important. He was interested in metaphysics, Christianity, epistemology, perception etc. He was well-known for his subjective idealism. Berkeley’s Epistemology Berkeley gives the core level of his philosophy to the ‘Ideas’ which are emphasized as sensations and perceptions. According to him, only ideas are possible and they only perceive sensations. He has named mind as the creator of these ideas. Berkeley says that we cannot perceive external things but only our own perceptions and sensations. Therefore, ideas are independent. Locke has accep...

  Introduction to Sartre and Existentialist themes  Nausia which was written by Sartre translated into Sinhalese as ‘Jugupsāwa’ by Ranjan Premathilake Hapuārachchi and Being and Nothingness (1943) was Sartre’s major contributions to existentialism. According to Sartre, ‘existence proceeds essence. To illustrate, first human being exist and then he tend to define himself through the actions that they are perform. He denies the existence of God as he suggests the freedom of human beings. In summary, existentialism considers human being as the center of their philosophy and their actions and choices that they make gives a meaning to their lives. There should be at least one human character that is drived which indicates the existentialist themes through that character or by the other characters that is influenced the main character. Thus, human beings were disentitled their existence. For Sartre, religion, traditional culture, and the society cannot help with that as existence is...

  Ethics is one of the subsections of philosophy. The term ethics has been derived from the Greek term ‘ethos’ which can be referred to the conduct of the people. This is a normative approach which seeks the conduct of the people. Commonly accepted definition about the nature of the ethics is ‘ethics is the science that deals with conduct, in so far as this is considered as right or wrong, good and bad’ (Tufts, James H;Dewey, John;, 1914, p. 1). The term ‘science’ has used here in terms of systematic knowledge and not in terms of natural or descriptive science. Descriptive sciences and natural sciences cannot be taken into grant when understanding a normative subject since each subject, science is different from other sciences and the same approach cannot use in measuring different sciences. Simply, ‘ethics aims to give a systematic account of our judgments about conduct, in so far as these estimate it from the standpoint of right or wrong, good or bad’ (Tufts, James H;Dewey, John;...