Author : Bas C. Van Fraassen
Publisher : Yale University Press
Page : 310 pages
File Size : 23,58 MB
Release : 2002-01-01
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9780300103069
What is empiricism and what could it be? The author, contributor to philosophical logic and the philosophy of science, undertakes a fresh consideration of these questions and offers a programme for renewal of the empiricist tradition.
Author : Bas C. van Fraassen
Publisher : Yale University Press
Page : 302 pages
File Size : 12,50 MB
Release : 2008-10-01
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 0300127960
What is empiricism and what could it be? Bas C. van Fraassen, one of the world’s foremost contributors to philosophical logic and the philosophy of science, here undertakes a fresh consideration of these questions and offers a program for renewal of the empiricist tradition. The empiricist tradition is not and could not be defined by common doctrines, but embodies a certain stance in philosophy, van Fraassen says. This stance is displayed first of all in a searing, recurrent critique of metaphysics, and second in a focus on experience that requires a voluntarist view of belief and opinion. Van Fraassen focuses on the philosophical problems of scientific and conceptual revolutions and on the not unrelated ruptures between religious and secular ways of seeing or conceiving of ourselves. He explores what it is to be or not be secular and points the way toward a new relationship between secularism and science within philosophy.
Author : James Nguyen
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 154 pages
File Size : 43,3 MB
Release : 2022-09-01
Category : Science
ISBN : 1009007343
This Element presents a philosophical exploration of the notion of scientific representation. It does so by focussing on an important class of scientific representations, namely scientific models. Models are important in the scientific process because scientists can study a model to discover features of reality. But what does it mean for something to represent something else? This is the question discussed in this Element. The authors begin by disentangling different aspects of the problem of representation and then discuss the dominant accounts in the philosophical literature: the resemblance view and inferentialism. They find them both wanting and submit that their own preferred option, the so-called DEKI account, not only eschews the problems that beset these conceptions, but further provides a comprehensive answer to the question of how scientific representation works. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.
Author : Ya Zuo
Publisher : BRILL
Page : 352 pages
File Size : 35,76 MB
Release : 2020-10-20
Category : Science
ISBN : 1684170974
"Shen Gua (1031–1095) is a household name in China, known as a distinguished renaissance man and the author of Brush Talks from Dream Brook, an old text whose remarkable “scientific” discoveries make it appear curiously ahead of its time. In this first book-length study of Shen in English, Ya Zuo reveals the connection between Shen’s life as an active statesman and his ideas, specifically the empirical stance manifested through his wide-ranging inquiries. She places Shen on the broad horizon of premodern Chinese thought, and presents his empiricism within an extensive narrative of Chinese epistemology.Relying on Shen as a searchlight, Zuo focuses in on how an individual thinker summoned conditions and concepts from the vast Chinese intellectual tradition to build a singular way of knowing. Moreover, her study of Shen provides insights into the complex dynamics in play at the dawn of the age of Neo-Confucianism and compels readers to achieve a deeper appreciation of the diversity in Chinese thinking."
Author : Paul Horwich
Publisher : Oxford University Press (UK)
Page : 243 pages
File Size : 35,8 MB
Release : 2012-12-13
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 019966112X
Paul Horwich presents a bold new interpretation of Wittgenstein's later work. He argues that it is Wittgenstein's radically anti-theoretical metaphilosophy - and not his identification of the meaning of a word with its use - that underpins his discussions of specific issues concerning language, the mind, mathematics, knowledge, art, and religion.
Author : Anjan Chakravartty
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 297 pages
File Size : 17,78 MB
Release : 2017
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 0190651458
Though science and philosophy take different approaches to ontology, metaphysical inferences are relevant to interpreting scientific work, and empirical investigations are relevant to philosophy. This book argues that there is no uniquely rational way to determine which domains of ontology are appropriate for belief, making room for choice in a transformative account of scientific ontology.
Author : Bas C. Van Fraassen
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 260 pages
File Size : 30,33 MB
Release : 1980-12-11
Category : Science
ISBN : 9780198244271
In this book van Fraassen develops an alternative to scientific realism by constructing and evaluating three mutually reinforcing theories.
Author : Bas C. van Fraassen
Publisher : Clarendon Press
Page : 410 pages
File Size : 45,71 MB
Release : 1989-11-02
Category : Science
ISBN : 0191519995
Metaphysicians speak of laws of nature in terms of necessity and universality; scientists do so in terms of symmetry and invariance. This book argues that no metaphysical account of laws can succeed. The author analyses and rejects the arguments that there are laws of nature, or that we must believe that there are. He argues that we should discard the idea of law as an inadequate clue to science. After exploring what this means for general epistemology, the book develops the empiricist view of science as a construction of models to represent the phenomena. Concepts of symmetry, transformation, and invariance illuminate the structure of such models. A central role is played in science by symmetry arguments, and it is shown how these function also in the philosophical analysis of probability. The advocated approach presupposes no realism about laws or necessities in nature.
Author : Quentin Ruyant
Publisher : Springer Nature
Page : 230 pages
File Size : 16,7 MB
Release : 2021-05-07
Category : Science
ISBN : 3030723496
This book proposes a novel position in the debate on scientific realism: Modal Empiricism. Modal empiricism is the view that the aim of science is to provide theories that correctly delimit, in a unified way, the range of experiences that are naturally possible given our position in the world. The view is associated with a pragmatic account of scientific representation and an original notion of situated modalities, together with an inductive epistemology for modalities. It purports to provide a faithful account of scientific practice and of its impressive achievements, and defuses the main motivations for scientific realism. More generally, Modal Empiricism purports to be the precise articulation of a pragmatist stance towards science. This book is of interest to any philosopher involved in the debate on scientific realism, or interested in how to properly understand the content, aim and achievements of science.
Author : Anjan Chakravartty
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 235 pages
File Size : 18,46 MB
Release : 2007-10-18
Category : Science
ISBN : 1139468391
Scientific realism is the view that our best scientific theories give approximately true descriptions of both observable and unobservable aspects of a mind-independent world. Debates between realists and their critics are at the very heart of the philosophy of science. Anjan Chakravartty traces the contemporary evolution of realism by examining the most promising strategies adopted by its proponents in response to the forceful challenges of antirealist sceptics, resulting in a positive proposal for scientific realism today. He examines the core principles of the realist position, and sheds light on topics including the varieties of metaphysical commitment required, and the nature of the conflict between realism and its empiricist rivals. By illuminating the connections between realist interpretations of scientific knowledge and the metaphysical foundations supporting them, his book offers a compelling vision of how realism can provide an internally consistent and coherent account of scientific knowledge.
