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Reconstructed Empiricism

Dellsén, Finnur (2017) Reconstructed Empiricism. [Preprint]

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Abstract

According to Bas van Fraassen, scientific realists and anti-realists disagree about whether accepting a scientific theory involves believing that the theory is true. On van Fraassen’s own anti-realist empiricist position, accepting a theory involves believing only that the theory is correct in its claims about observable aspects of the world. However, a number of philosophers have argued that acceptance and belief cannot be distinguished and thus that the debate is either confused or trivially settled in favor of the realist. In addition, another set of philosophers have argued that van Fraassen’s empiricist position appeals to an unmotivated distinction between observable and unobservable aspects of the world. This paper aims to reconstruct a van Fraassen-style empiricism about scientific acceptance that avoids these two objections – reconstructed empiricism.


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Item Type: Preprint
Creators:
CreatorsEmailORCID
Dellsén, Finnurfinnurd@gmail.com0000-0003-4989-4204
Additional Information: Published in Acta Analytica.
Keywords: constructive empiricism; scientific realism; acceptance and belief; epistemic attitudes; manifestationalism; empirical adequacy
Subjects: General Issues > Realism/Anti-realism
General Issues > Theory/Observation
Depositing User: Dr. Finnur Dellsén
Date Deposited: 02 Jan 2019 00:23
Last Modified: 02 Jan 2019 00:23
Item ID: 15539
Official URL: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12136-0...
DOI or Unique Handle: 10.1007/s12136-016-0289-9
Subjects: General Issues > Realism/Anti-realism
General Issues > Theory/Observation
Date: 2017
URI: https://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/id/eprint/15539

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