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174From Vicious Circle to Infinite Regress, and Back AgainPSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association 1992 6-29. 1992.The attempt to formulate a viable empiricist and non-foundationalist epistemology of science faces four problems here confronted. The first is an apparent loss of objectivity in science, in the conditions of use of models in applied science. The second derives from the theory-infection of scientific language, with an apparent loss of objective conditions of truth and reference. The third, often cited as objection to The Scientific Image, is the apparent theory-dependence of the distinction betwe…Read more
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1Indifference : the symmetries of probabilityIn Antony Eagle (ed.), Philosophy of Probability: Contemporary Readings, Routledge. 2010.
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Gentle Polemics 1In C. Van Fraassen Bas (ed.), The scientific image, Oxford University Press. 1980.This chapter parodies Aquinas’ Five Ways to prove the existence of God by displaying similar arguments reminiscent of those often given in support of scientific realism. This is followed by a parody of scientific realists’ attempts to defend themselves against objections to such arguments.
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Interpretation in Science and in the ArtsIn George Levine (ed.), Realism and Representation, University of Wisconsin Press. 1993.
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Empiricism and Scientific MethodologyIn C. Van Fraassen Bas (ed.), The scientific image, Oxford University Press. 1980.Scientific theories do much more than answer empirical questions. This can be understood along empiricist lines only if those other aspects are instrumental for the pursuit of empirical strength and adequacy, or serving other aims subordinate to these. This chapter accordingly addresses four main questions: Does the rejection of realism lead to a self‐defeating scepticism? Are scientific methodology and experimental design intelligible on any but a realist interpretation of science? Is the ideal…Read more
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From a view of science to a new empiricismIn Bradley John Monton (ed.), Images of empiricism: essays on science and stances, with a reply from Bas C. van Fraassen, Oxford University Press. 2007.
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122Fine-grained opinion, probability, and the logic of full beliefJournal of Philosophical Logic 24 (4): 349-377. 1995.
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2Figures in a Probability LandscapeIn J. Dunn & A. Gupta (eds.), Truth or Consequences: Essays in Honor of Nuel Belnap, Kluwer Academic Publishers. pp. 345-356. 1990.
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74Aristotle's Physics presents us with a clear view of the structure of nature and natural processes, and also, in conjunction with the Posterior Analytics , of the structure of the science that deals with nature. Similarly, his Poetics describes the structure of the human condition and human events as depicted in tragedies, as well as the structure of those tragedies that dramatize this aspect of human existence.
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25Earman on the Causal Theory of TimeSynthese 24 (1): 87-95. 1972.There is an important point behind Earman's criticisms of the causal theory of time and space-time. This point has been made perspicuously in a recent paper by Glymour. It concerns the novel problems raised for a theory of space-time by the general theory of relativity, and I shall explain it briefly in Section II below. Section I briefly states my own view of the status of the causal theory, and Sections III and IV deal with Earman's specific criticisms.
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2Extension, intension, and comprehensionIn Milton Karl Munitz (ed.), Logic and ontology, New York University Press. 1973.
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475Explanation through representation, and its limitsEpistemologia 1 30-46. 2012.Why-questions and how-possibly-questions are two common forms of explanation request. Answers to the former ones require factual assertions, but the latter ones can be answered by displaying a representation of the targeted phenomenon. However, in an extreme case, a representation could come accompanied by the assertion that it displays the only possible way a phenomenon could develop. Using several historical controversies concerning statistical modeling, it is argued that such cases must inevi…Read more
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Después del fundacionismo: entre el círculo vicioso y el regreso al infinitoDianoia 38 (38): 217. 1992.
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87Elgin on Lewis’s Putnam’s ParadoxJournal of Philosophy 94 (2): 85-93. 1997.In "Unnatural Science"(1) Catherine Elgin examines the dilemma which David Lewis sees posed by Putnam's model-theoretic argument against realism. One horn of the dilemma commits us to seeing truth as something all too easily come by, a virtue to be attributed to any theory meeting relatively minimal conditions of adequacy. The other horn commits us to "anti-nominalism", some version of the ancient doctrine that language must "carve nature at the joints": that there are natural kinds or classes w…Read more
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33Conventionality in the axiomatic foundations of the special theory of relativityPhilosophy of Science 36 (1): 64-73. 1969.In this paper we examine Ellis and Bowman's argument, that simultaneity in inertial frames of reference is not conventional, from the axiomatic point of view. In Part I we examine the role of conventions in an axiomatic physical theory, and in Part II the relation of simultaneity in Reichenbach's axiomatization of the space-time theory of special relativity
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20Comments on Peter Roeper's “The Link Between Probability Functions and Logical Consequence”Dialogue 36 (1): 27-. 1997.Professor Roeper adresses a large question, whether probabilistic semantics is a kind of semantics at all. Happily, he does this via an exploration of a specific issue on which he and Professor Leblanc have done important work. That is the issue of how the relationship of logical consequence can be characterized as a relation denned in terms of probability. Let us follow him in calling a relevant relationship of the latter sort the degree of implication, and follow Professor Roeper on his quest …Read more
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