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10The World we Speak Of, and the Language We Live InPhilosophie Et Culture: Actes du XVIIe Congrès Mondial de Philosophie 1 213-221. 1986.
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125Bas C. van Fraassen                          Princeton University       My topics today are the relation between science and myth, and the possibility of empiricism as an approach to life as well as to science. But philosophy is a thoroughly historical enterprise, a dialogue that continues in the present but is always almost entirely shaped by our past. So I will devote the first half of this talk to setting the historical stage.
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140The perils of Perrin, in the hands of philosophersPhilosophical Studies 143 (1). 2009.The story of how Perrin’s experimental work established the reality of atoms and molecules has been a staple in (realist) philosophy of science writings (Wesley Salmon, Clark Glymour, Peter Achinstein, Penelope Maddy, …). I’ll argue that how this story is told distorts both what the work was and its significance, and draw morals for the understanding of how theories can be or fail to be empirically grounded.
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1The world we speak of, and the language we live inPhilosophy and Culture: Proceedings of the Xviith World Congress of Philosophy. forthcoming.
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49The peculiar effects of love and desireIn Brian P. McLaughlin & Amélie Oksenberg Rorty (eds.), Perspectives on Self-Deception, University of California Press. pp. 123-156. 1988.
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49The pragmatic theory of explanationIn Joseph C. Pitt (ed.), Theories of explanation, Oxford University Press. 1988.
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4The problem of indistinguishable particlesIn James T. Cushing, C. F. Delany & Gary M. Gutting (eds.), Science and Reality: Recent Work in the Philosophy of Science, University of Notre Dame Press. 1984.
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94Transcendence of the ego (the nonexistent knight)Ratio 17 (4): 453-77. 2004.I exist, but I am not a thing among things; X exists if and only if there is something such that it=X. This is consistent, and it is a view that can be supported. Calvino’s novel The Non‐Existent Knight can be read so as to illustrate this view. But what is my relation to the things there are if I am not identical with any of them – things such as my arms, my garden, the city I live in? I name this the Gurduloo problem, after the Knight’s page. This relation must be one that admits of degrees; I…Read more
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36The Geometry of Opinion: Jeffrey Shifts and Linear OperatorsPhilosophy of Science 59 (2): 163-175. 1992.Richard Jeffrey and Michael Goldstein have both introduced systematic approaches to the structure of opinion changes. For both approaches there are theorems which indicate great generality and width of scope. The main questions addressed here will be to what extent the basic forms of representation are intertranslatable, and how we can conceive of such programs in general.
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116The Empirical StanceYale University Press. 2002.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 metaphysic…Read more
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40The Empirical StanceYale University Press. 2004.What is empiricism and what could it be? Bas . 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 metaphysi…Read more
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383The False Hopes of Traditional EpistemologyPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 60 (2). 2000.After Hume, attempts to forge an empiricist epistemology have taken three forms, which I shall call the First, Middle, and Third Way. The First still attempts an a priori demonstration that our cognitive methods satisfy some criterion of adequacy. The Middle Way is pursued under the banners of naturalism and scientific realism, and aims at the same conclusion on non-apriori grounds. After arguing that both fail, I shall describe the general characteristics of the Third Way, an alternative episte…Read more
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46The day of the dolphins: Puzzling over epistemic partnershipIn Kent A. Peacock & Andrew D. Irvine (eds.), Mistakes of reason: essays in honour of John Woods, University of Toronto Press. pp. 111-133. 2005.
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1Truth and paradoxical consequenceIn Robert L. Martin (ed.), Paradox of the Liar, Ridgeview. 1970.
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146Scientific realism and the empiricist challenge: An introduction to Ernan McMullin's Aquinas lectureZygon 48 (1): 131-142. 2013.In The Inference That Makes Science, Ernan McMullin recounts the clear historical progress he saw toward a vision of the sciences as conclusions reached rationally on the basis of empirical evidence. Distinctive of this vision was his view of science as driven by a specific form of inference, retroduction. To understand this properly, we need to disentangle the description of retroductive inference from the claims made on its behalf. To end I will suggest that the real rival to McMullin's vision…Read more
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121I grew up with a cat and so I know that cats are the most intelligent, graceful, and insightful beings in the Universe. (This is already an example of how we humans can achieve a small measure of wisdom if we live with cats.) My whole family has always been into cats, and since I don't have a cat of my own now, I will tell you about some of theirs. My sister Gina's cat Tuti was remarkable by any measure.
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125Scientific Representation: Paradoxes of PerspectiveOxford University Press UK. 2008.Bas C. van Fraassen presents an original exploration of how we represent the world.
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28Theory Construction and Experiment: An Empiricist ViewPSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association 1980 663-678. 1980.This paper focuses on the empiricism/realism debate. The initial portion of the paper is a short sketch of the nature of the enterprise of philosophy of science. What are taken as empiricist views on theory construction and experiment are described. The paper concludes with a simple recasting of the main points at issue in the empiricism/realism debate
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36The Charybdis of Realism: Epistemological Implications of Bell’s InequalitySynthese 52 (1): 25-38. 1982.
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52Scientific Realism and the Plasticity of Mind (review)Canadian Journal of Philosophy 11 (3): 555-567. 1981.
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Areas of Specialization
Science, Logic, and Mathematics |
Metaphysics and Epistemology |