Constructive Empiricism

Constructive Empiricism PDF Author: P. Dicken
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 0230281826
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 237

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Book Description
Constructive empiricism is not just a view regarding the aim of science; it is also a view regarding the epistemological framework in which one should debate the aim of science. This is the focus of this book – not with scientific truth, but with how one should argue about scientific truth.

Constructive Empiricism

Constructive Empiricism PDF Author: P. Dicken
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 0230281826
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 237

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Book Description
Constructive empiricism is not just a view regarding the aim of science; it is also a view regarding the epistemological framework in which one should debate the aim of science. This is the focus of this book – not with scientific truth, but with how one should argue about scientific truth.

Images of Empiricism

Images of Empiricism PDF Author: Bradley Monton
Publisher: Oxford University Press on Demand
ISBN: 0199218846
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 401

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Book Description
Thirteen specially written essays discuss topics from the work of the leading philosopher of science Bas van Fraassen. The unifying theme is empiricism. Included is an extensive and intriguing reply by van Fraassen, in which he develops his views further, and offers new insights into the nature of science, empiricism, and philosophy itself.

Images of Empiricism

Images of Empiricism PDF Author: Bradley Monton
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191607665
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 400

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Book Description
Thirteen specially written essays discuss topics from the work of Bas C. van Fraassen, one of the most important contemporary philosophers of science. The central and unifying theme of the volume is empiricism, an approach which van Fraassen developed most fully in The Scientific Image and The Empirical Stance. Thirteen of the world's leading experts in the field examine van Fraassen's defence of scientific anti-realism (which he sees as a core tenet of empiricism), as well as his claim that adopting a philosophical position like empiricism does not consist in holding a particular set of beliefs, but is rather a matter of taking a stance. Images of Empiricism concludes with an extensive and intriguing reply by van Fraassen, in which he develops and corrects his old views, and offers new insights into the nature of science, empiricism, and philosophy itself.

Modal Empiricism

Modal Empiricism PDF Author: Quentin Ruyant
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030723496
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 230

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Book Description
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.

Bas van Fraassen

Bas van Fraassen PDF Author: Andreas Berg-Hildebrand
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
ISBN: 3110326221
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 171

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Book Description
"Participation in the Münstersche Vorlesungen zur Philosophie 2005 was an honor and a genuine intellectual pleasure for me. The symposium, with all its contributions by the Münster faculty and students, was a wonderfully valuable experience. I can hardly do justice to its spirit of free discussion, or adequately express my thanks, by these short replies. But I think that they will testify clearly to the stimulation the symposium provided and to how much I learned from this exchange." Bas van Fraassen

From Instrumentalism to Constructive Realism

From Instrumentalism to Constructive Realism PDF Author: Theo A.F. Kuipers
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9401716188
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 374

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Book Description
Surprisingly, modified versions of the confirmation theory (Carnap and Hempel) and truth approximation theory (Popper) turn out to be smoothly sythesizable. The glue between the two appears to be the instrumentalist methodology, rather than that of the falsificationalist. The instrumentalist methodology, used in the separate, comparative evaluation of theories in terms of their successes and problems (hence, even if already falsified), provides in theory and practice the straight road to short-term empirical progress in science ( à la Laudan). It is also argued that such progress is also functional for all kinds of truth approximation: observational, referential, and theoretical. This sheds new light on the long-term dynamics of science and hence on the relation between the main epistemological positions, viz., instrumentalism (Toulmin, Laudan), constructive empiricism (Van Fraassen), referential realism (Hacking, Cartwright), and theory realism of a non-essentialist nature (constructive realism à la Popper). Readership: Open minded philosophers and scientists. The book explains and justifies the scientist's intuition that the debate among philosophers about instrumentalism and realism has almost no practical consequences.

Embracing Scientific Realism

Embracing Scientific Realism PDF Author: Seungbae Park
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030878139
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 249

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Book Description
This book provides philosophers of science with new theoretical resources for making their own contributions to the scientific realism debate. Readers will encounter old and new arguments for and against scientific realism. They will also be given useful tips for how to provide influential formulations of scientific realism and antirealism. Finally, they will see how scientific realism relates to scientific progress, scientific understanding, mathematical realism, and scientific practice.

Scientific Theories and Philosophical Stances

Scientific Theories and Philosophical Stances PDF Author: Claus Beisbart
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3111020258
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 212

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Book Description
Since the publication of his seminal monograph "The scientific image", Bas van Fraassen is a key figure in philosophy of science. In this book, other philosophers with various outlooks critically discuss his work on theories, empiricism and philosophical stances. The book starts with a new article by van Fraassen on his preferred account of theories, the so-called semantic view. This account is now 50 years old, and van Fraassen takes this anniversary as an opportunity to review the account, its history and the philosophical discussion about it. In the main part of the book, Nancy Cartwright, Finnur Dellsén, Matthias Egg, Steven French, Michael Friedman, Milena Ivanova and Michela Massimi discuss van Fraassen's contributions to philosophy. Three chapters focus on his engagement with realism (French, Friedman, Ivanova). Others study his voluntarism (Cartwright) and his view on representation (Massimi). Finally, there are contributions about his elaboration of empiricism (Dellsén) and his proposal to consider philosophical positions as stances (Egg). The volume includes a laudatio written by Steven French and finishes with a reply by van Fraassen to his critics.

Beyond Rhetoric and Realism in Economics

Beyond Rhetoric and Realism in Economics PDF Author: Thomas A. Boylan
Publisher: Psychology Press
ISBN: 9780415125130
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 268

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Book Description
Boylan and O'Gorman inject a fresh empiricist voice into the debate on economic methodology. They strike a reasonable middle ground between the extremes of scientific realism and the rhetoric of economics.

The Empirical Stance

The Empirical Stance PDF Author: Bas C. van Fraassen
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300127960
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 302

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Book Description
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.