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Author: Bas C. Van Fraassen
Publisher: Yale University Press
Published: 2002-01-01
Total Pages: 310
ISBN-13: 9780300103069
DOWNLOAD EBOOKWhat 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
Published: 2008-10-01
Total Pages: 302
ISBN-13: 0300127960
DOWNLOAD EBOOKWhat 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
Published: 2022-09-01
Total Pages: 154
ISBN-13: 1009007343
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThis 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
Published: 2020-10-20
Total Pages: 352
ISBN-13: 1684170974
DOWNLOAD EBOOK"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)
Published: 2012-12-13
Total Pages: 243
ISBN-13: 019966112X
DOWNLOAD EBOOKPaul 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
Published: 2017
Total Pages: 297
ISBN-13: 0190651458
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThough 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
Published: 1980-12-11
Total Pages: 260
ISBN-13: 9780198244271
DOWNLOAD EBOOKIn this book van Fraassen develops an alternative to scientific realism by constructing and evaluating three mutually reinforcing theories.
Author: Anjan Chakravartty
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 2007-10-18
Total Pages: 235
ISBN-13: 1139468391
DOWNLOAD EBOOKScientific 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.
Author: Quentin Ruyant
Publisher: Springer Nature
Published: 2021-05-07
Total Pages: 230
ISBN-13: 3030723496
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThis 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: Karl Raimund Popper
Publisher: Psychology Press
Published: 2002
Total Pages: 614
ISBN-13: 9780415285940
DOWNLOAD EBOOKConjectures and Refutations is one of Karl Popper's most wide-ranging and popular works, notable not only for its acute insight into the way scientific knowledge grows, but also for applying those insights to politics and to history. It provides one of the clearest and most accessible statements of the fundamental idea that guided his work: not only our knowledge, but our aims and our standards, grow through an unending process of trial and error.
