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55Kepler, Newton, Einstein and the string theory: Reply to David AtkinsonPoznan Studies in the Philosophy of the Sciences and the Humanities 84 (1): 103-105. 2005.
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52The periodic table - its formalization, status, and relation to atomic theoryErkenntnis 28 (3): 387-408. 1988.
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52Epistemological Positions in the Light of Truth ApproximationThe Proceedings of the Twentieth World Congress of Philosophy 10 79-88. 2001.I sketch the most important epistemological positions in the instrumentalism-realism debate, viz., instrumentalism, constructive empiricism, referential realism, and theory realism. I order them according to their answers to a number of successive leading questions, where every next question presupposes an affirmative answer to the foregoing one. I include the answer to questions concerning truth, as well as the most plausible answer to questions concerning truth approximation. Restricting my su…Read more
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51Models, postulates, and generalized nomic truth approximationSynthese 193 (10). 2016.The qualitative theory of nomic truth approximation, presented in Kuipers in his, in which ‘the truth’ concerns the distinction between nomic, e.g. physical, possibilities and impossibilities, rests on a very restrictive assumption, viz. that theories always claim to characterize the boundary between nomic possibilities and impossibilities. Fully recognizing two different functions of theories, viz. excluding and representing, this paper drops this assumption by conceiving theories in developmen…Read more
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50Stratification of general equilibrium theory: A synthesis of reconstructions (review)Erkenntnis 30 (1-2). 1989.
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49Design research programs and the logic of their developmentErkenntnis 37 (1). 1992.Design research programs attempt to bring together the properties of available materials and the demands derived from intended applications. The logic of problem states and state transitions in such programs, including assessment criteria and heuristic principles, is described in settheoretic terms, starting with a naive model comprising an intended profile and the operational profile of a prototype. In a first concretization the useful distinction between structural and functional properties is…Read more
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48A brand new type of inductive logic: Reply to Diderik BatensPoznan Studies in the Philosophy of the Sciences and the Humanities 83 (1): 248-252. 2005.In section I the notions of logical and inductive probability will be discussed as well as two explicanda, viz. degree of confirmation, the base for inductive probability, and degree of evidential support, Popper's favourite explicandum. In section II it will be argued that Popper's paradox of ideal evidence is no paradox at all; however, it will also be shown that Popper's way out has its own merits
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45Truth approximation by concretization in capital structure theoryIn Bert Hamminga & Neil De Marchi (eds.), Idealization Vi: Idealization in Economics, Rodopi. pp. 205--228. 1994.This paper supplies a structuralist reconstruction of the Modigliani-Miller theory and shows that the economic literature following their results reports on research with an implicit strategy to come "closer-to-the-truth" in the modern technical sense in philosophy of science
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43Inference to the best theory, rather than inference to the best explanation. Kinds of abduction and inductionIn Friedrich Stadler (ed.), Vienna Circle Institute Yearbook, Springer. pp. 25-51. 2004.An interesting consequence of the structuralist theory of truth approximation, as developed in my From Instrumentalism to Constructive Realism , henceforth ICR, concerns so-called ‘inference to the best explanation’ . It will be argued that this popular rule among scientific realists can better be replaced by, various kinds of, ‘inference to the best theory’
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40Causal composition and structured wholes: Reply to Robert CauseyPoznan Studies in the Philosophy of the Sciences and the Humanities 84 (1): 463-465. 2005.
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40General philosophy of science (edited book)North Holland. 2007.While the special volumes of the series of Handbooks of the Philosophy of Science address topics relative to a specific discipline, this general volume deals ...
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39Comparing properties and profiles: Reply to Maarten FranssenPoznan Studies in the Philosophy of the Sciences and the Humanities 84 (1): 154-156. 2005.
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37
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37The reduction of phenomenological to kinetic thermostaticsPhilosophy of Science 49 (1): 107-119. 1982.Standard accounts of the micro-reduction of phenomenological to kinetic thermostatics, based on the postulate relating empirical absolute temperature to mean kinetic energy ū=(3/2)kT, face two problems. The standard postulate also allows 'reduction' in the other direction and it can be criticized from the point of view that reduction postulates need to be ontological identities. This paper presents a detailed account of the reduction, based on the postulate that thermal equilibrium is ontologic…Read more
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37The Courage of Doing Philosophy: Essays Dedicated to Leszek Nowak (edited book)Rodopi. 2007.Table of ContentsAndrzej KLAWITER, Krzystof #ASTOWSKI: Introduction: Originality, Courage and Responsibility List of Books by Leszek NowakSelected Bibliography of Leszek Nowak's WritingsScience and Idealization Theo A.F. KUIPERS: On Two ...
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35The non-standard approach to confirmation and the ravens paradoxes: Reply to Patrick MaherPoznan Studies in the Philosophy of the Sciences and the Humanities 83 (1): 109-128. 2005.
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34The structuralist theory of truth approximation essen-tially deals with truth approximation by theory revision for a fixed domain. However, variable domains can also be taken into account, where the main changes concern domain extensions and restrictions. In this paper I will present a coherent set of definitions of “more truth-likeness”, “empirical progress” and “truth approximation” due to a revision of the domain of intended applications. This set of definitions seems to be the natural counte…Read more
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33Beauty, A Road To The TruthSynthese 131 (3): 291-328. 2002.In this article I give a naturalistic-cum-formal analysis of therelation between beauty, empirical success, and truth. The analysis is based on the onehand on a hypothetical variant of the so-called `mere-exposure effect' which has been more orless established in experimental psychology regarding exposure-affect relationshipsin general and aesthetic appreciation in particular (Zajonc 1968; Temme 1983; Bornstein 1989;Ye 2000). On the other hand it is based on the formal theory of truthlikeness an…Read more
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32Nomic Truth Approximation RevisitedSpringer Verlag. 2019.This monograph presents new ideas in nomic truth approximation. It features original and revised papers from a philosopher of science who has studied the concept for more than 35 years. Over the course of time, the author's initial ideas evolved. He discovered a way to generalize his first theory of nomic truth approximation, viz. by dropping an unnecessarily strong assumption. In particular, he first believed to have to assume that theories were maximally specific in the sense that they did not…Read more
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31Overdetermination and reference: Reply to Emma RuttkampPoznan Studies in the Philosophy of the Sciences and the Humanities 84 (1): 437-439. 2005.
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31Approaching probabilistic truths: introduction to the Topical CollectionSynthese 200 (2): 1-8. 2022.After Karl Popper’s original work, several approaches were developed to provide a sound explication of the notion of verisimilitude. With few exceptions, these contributions have assumed that the truth to be approximated is deterministic. This collection of ten papers addresses the more general problem of approaching probabilistic truths. They include attempts to find appropriate measures for the closeness to probabilistic truth and to evaluate claims about such distances on the basis of empiric…Read more
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30Empirical progress and nomic truth approximation revisitedStudies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 46 64-72. 2012.
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29Logics of scientific cognition: Reply to Johan Van BenthemPoznan Studies in the Philosophy of the Sciences and the Humanities 83 (1): 420-427. 2005.
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28Empirical progress and nomic truth approximation revisitedStudies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 46 64-72. 2014.In my From Instrumentalism to Constructive Realism I have shown how an instrumentalist account of empirical progress can be related to nomic truth approximation. However, it was assumed that a strong notion of nomic theories was needed for that analysis. In this paper it is shown, in terms of truth and falsity content, that the analysis already applies when, in line with scientific common sense, nomic theories are merely assumed to exclude certain conceptual possibilities as nomic possibilities
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28Truth approximation by empirical and aesthetic criteria: Reply to David MillerPoznan Studies in the Philosophy of the Sciences and the Humanities 83 (1): 356-360. 2005.Polish version, see Kuipers (2002) "O dwóch rodzajach idealizcji I konkretyzacki. Przypadek aproksymacji prawdy"
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27Comparatief realisme: het beste antwoord op anti-realismeAlgemeen Nederlands Tijdschrift voor Wijsbegeerte 100 (3): 173-200. 2008.
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27Empirical Progress and Truth Approximation by the ‘Hypothetico-Probabilistic Method’Erkenntnis 70 (3): 313-330. 2009.Three related intuitions are explicated in this paper. The first is the idea that there must be some kind of probabilistic version of the HD-method, a 'Hypothetico-Probabilistic method', in terms of something like probabilistic consequences, instead of deductive consequences. According to the second intuition, the comparative application of this method should also be functional for some probabilistic kind of empirical progress, and according to the third intuition this should be functional for s…Read more
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26Toward a geometrical theory of truth approximation: Reply to Thomas MormannPoznan Studies in the Philosophy of the Sciences and the Humanities 83 (1): 455-457. 2005.This paper primarily deals with the conceptual prospects for generalizing the aim of abduction from the standard one of explaining surprising or anomalous observations to that of empirical progress or even truth approximation. It turns out that the main abduction task then becomes the instrumentalist task of theory revision aiming at an empirically more successful theory, relative to the available data, but not necessarily compatible with them. The rest, that is, genuine empirical progress as we…Read more