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Perspectival Instruments

Crețu, Ana-Maria (2021) Perspectival Instruments. [Preprint]

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Abstract

Despite its potential implications for the objectivity of scientific knowledge, the claim that ‘scientific instruments are perspectival’ has received little critical attention. I show that this claim is best understood as highlighting the dependence of instruments on different perspectives. When closely analysed, instead of constituting a novel epistemic challenge, this dependence can be exploited to mount novel strategies for resolving two old epistemic problems: conceptual relativism and theory ladeness. The novel content of this paper consists in articulating and developing these strategies by introducing two fine-grained notions of perspectives as the key units of analysis: ‘broad perspectives’ and ‘narrow perspectives’


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Item Type: Preprint
Creators:
CreatorsEmailORCID
Crețu, Ana-Mariad.cretuanamaria@gmail.com
Keywords: scientific instruments, objectivity, perspectivism,theory-ladeness, conceptual relativism
Subjects: General Issues > Experimentation
General Issues > History of Philosophy of Science
Depositing User: Dr. Ana-Maria Cretu
Date Deposited: 25 Apr 2021 03:58
Last Modified: 25 Apr 2021 03:59
Item ID: 18949
Subjects: General Issues > Experimentation
General Issues > History of Philosophy of Science
Date: April 2021
URI: https://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/id/eprint/18949

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