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  1. Making It Explicit: Reasoning, Representing, and Discursive Commitment.Robert Brandom - 1994 - Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
    What would something unlike us--a chimpanzee, say, or a computer--have to be able to do to qualify as a possible knower, like us? To answer this question at the very heart of our sense of ourselves, philosophers have long focused on intentionality and have looked to language as a key to this condition. Making It Explicit is an investigation into the nature of language--the social practices that distinguish us as rational, logical creatures--that revises the very terms of this inquiry. Where (...)
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  • Reason, Truth and History.Hilary Putnam - 1981 - New York: Cambridge University Press.
    Hilary Putnam deals in this book with some of the most fundamental persistent problems in philosophy: the nature of truth, knowledge and rationality. His aim is to break down the fixed categories of thought which have always appeared to define and constrain the permissible solutions to these problems.
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  • Scientific Realism: How Science Tracks Truth.Stathis Psillos - 1999 - New York: Routledge.
    Scientific realism is the optimistic view that modern science is on the right track: that the world really is the way our best scientific theories describe it. In his book, Stathis Psillos gives us a detailed and comprehensive study which restores the intuitive plausibility of scientific realism. We see that throughout the twentieth century, scientific realism has been challenged by philosophical positions from all angles: from reductive empiricism, to instrumentalism and to modern sceptical empiricism. _Scientific Realism_ explains that the history (...)
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  • (1 other version)Truth.Paul Horwich - 1990 - Oxford, GB: Clarendon Press. Edited by Frank Jackson & Michael Smith.
    Paul Horwich gives the definitive exposition of a prominent philosophical theory about truth, `minimalism'. His theory has attracted much attention since the first edition of Truth in 1990; he has now developed, refined, and updated his treatment of the subject, while preserving the distinctive format of the book. This revised edition appears simultaneously with a new companion volume, Meaning; the two books demystify central philosophical issues, and will be essential reading for all who work on the philosophy of language.
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  • (1 other version)A confutation of convergent realism.Larry Laudan - 1981 - Philosophy of Science 48 (1):19-49.
    This essay contains a partial exploration of some key concepts associated with the epistemology of realist philosophies of science. It shows that neither reference nor approximate truth will do the explanatory jobs that realists expect of them. Equally, several widely-held realist theses about the nature of inter-theoretic relations and scientific progress are scrutinized and found wanting. Finally, it is argued that the history of science, far from confirming scientific realism, decisively confutes several extant versions of avowedly 'naturalistic' forms of scientific (...)
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  • Is Water H2O? Evidence, Realism and Pluralism.Hasok Chang - 2012 - Boston Studies in the Philosophy and History of Science.
    This book exhibits deep philosophical quandaries and intricacies of the historical development of science lying behind a simple and fundamental item of common sense in modern science, namely the composition of water as H2O. Three main phases of development are critically re-examined, covering the historical period from the 1760s to the 1860s: the Chemical Revolution, early electrochemistry, and early atomic chemistry. In each case, the author concludes that the empirical evidence available at the time was not decisive in settling the (...)
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  • Making it Explicit.Isaac Levi & Robert B. Brandom - 1994 - Journal of Philosophy 93 (3):145.
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  • Structural realism: The best of both worlds?John Worrall - 1989 - Dialectica 43 (1-2):99-124.
    The no-miracles argument for realism and the pessimistic meta-induction for anti-realism pull in opposite directions. Structural Realism---the position that the mathematical structure of mature science reflects reality---relieves this tension.
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  • Exceeding our grasp: science, history, and the problem of unconceived alternatives.P. Kyle Stanford - 2006 - New York: Oxford University Press.
    The incredible achievements of modern scientific theories lead most of us to embrace scientific realism: the view that our best theories offer us at least roughly accurate descriptions of otherwise inaccessible parts of the world like genes, atoms, and the big bang. In Exceeding Our Grasp, Stanford argues that careful attention to the history of scientific investigation invites a challenge to this view that is not well represented in contemporary debates about the nature of the scientific enterprise. The historical record (...)
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  • (1 other version)A Confutation of Convergent Realism.Larry Laudan - 2001 - In Yuri Balashov & Alexander Rosenberg (eds.), Philosophy of Science: Contemporary Readings. New York: Routledge. pp. 211.
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  • The Shaky Game: Einstein, Realism, and the Quantum Theory.Arthur Fine - 1986 - Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
    In this new edition, Arthur Fine looks at Einstein's philosophy of science and develops his own views on realism. A new Afterword discusses the reaction to Fine's own theory. "What really led Einstein . . . to renounce the new quantum order? For those interested in this question, this book is compulsory reading."--Harvey R. Brown, American Journal of Physics "Fine has successfully combined a historical account of Einstein's philosophical views on quantum mechanics and a discussion of some of the philosophical (...)
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  • Truth.Paul Horwich - 2005 - In Frank Jackson & Michael Smith (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Contemporary Philosophy. New York: Oxford University Press UK. pp. 261-272.
    What is truth. Paul Horwich advocates the controversial theory of minimalism, that is that the nature of truth is entirely captured in the trivial fact that each proposition specifies its own condition for being true, and that truth is therefore an entirely mundane and unpuzzling concept. The first edition of Truth, published in 1980, established itself as the best account of minimalism and as an excellent introduction to the debate for students. For this new edition, Horwich has refined and developed (...)
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  • Probability and Evidence.Paul Horwich - 1982 - Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
    In this influential study of central issues in the philosophy of science, Paul Horwich elaborates on an important conception of probability, diagnosing the failure of previous attempts to resolve these issues as stemming from a too-rigid conception of belief. Adopting a Bayesian strategy, he argues for a probabilistic approach, yielding a more complete understanding of the characteristics of scientific reasoning and methodology. Presented in a fresh twenty-first-century series livery, and including a specially commissioned preface written by Colin Howson, illuminating its (...)
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  • Truthlikeness.I. Niiniluoto - 2005 - In Sahotra Sarkar & Jessica Pfeifer (eds.), The Philosophy of Science: An Encyclopedia. New York: Routledge. pp. 854--857.
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  • What is the problem of coherence and truth?Erik J. Olsson - 2002 - Journal of Philosophy 99 (5):246-272.
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  • (1 other version)A material dissolution of the problem of induction.John D. Norton - 2014 - Synthese 191 (4):1-20.
    In a formal theory of induction, inductive inferences are licensed by universal schemas. In a material theory of induction, inductive inferences are licensed by facts. With this change in the conception of the nature of induction, I argue that the celebrated “problem of induction” can no longer be set up and is thereby dissolved. Attempts to recreate the problem in the material theory of induction fail. They require relations of inductive support to conform to an unsustainable, hierarchical empiricism.
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  • The No‐Miracles Argument for Realism: Inference to an Unacceptable Explanation.Greg Frost-Arnold - 2010 - Philosophy of Science 77 (1):35-58.
    I argue that a certain type of naturalist should not accept a prominent version of the no-miracles argument (NMA). First, scientists (usually) do not accept explanations whose explanans-statements neither generate novel predictions nor unify apparently disparate established claims. Second, scientific realism (as it appears in the NMA) is an explanans that makes no new predictions and fails to unify disparate established claims. Third, many proponents of the NMA explicitly adopt a naturalism that forbids philosophy of science from using any methods (...)
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  • State of the Field: Why novel prediction matters.Heather Douglas & P. D. Magnus - 2013 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 44 (4):580-589.
    There is considerable disagreement about the epistemic value of novel predictive success, i.e. when a scientist predicts an unexpected phenomenon, experiments are conducted, and the prediction proves to be accurate. We survey the field on this question, noting both fully articulated views such as weak and strong predictivism, and more nascent views, such as pluralist reasons for the instrumental value of prediction. By examining the various reasons offered for the value of prediction across a range of inferential contexts , we (...)
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  • (4 other versions)Probability and Evidence.Paul Horwich - 1983 - Philosophy of Science 50 (4):659-660.
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  • Miracles and Models: Why reports of the death of Structural Realism may be exaggerated.John Worrall - 2007 - Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement 61:125-154.
    What is it reasonable to believe about our most successful scientific theories such as the general theory of relativity or quantum mechanics? That they are true, or at any rate approximately true? Or only that they successfully ‘save the phenomena’, by being ‘empirically adequate’? In earlier work I explored the attractions of a view called Structural Scientific Realism (hereafter: SSR). This holds that it is reasonable to believe that our successful theories are (approximately) structurally correct (and also that this is (...)
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  • Scientific inference and the pursuit of fame: A contractarian approach.Jesús P. Zamora Bonilla - 2002 - Philosophy of Science 69 (2):300-323.
    Methodological norms are seen as rules defining a competitive game, and it is argued that rational recognition-seeking scientists can reach a collective agreement about which specific norms serve better their individual interests, especially if the choice is made `under a veil of ignorance', i.e. , before knowing what theory will be proposed by each scientist. Norms for theory assessment are distinguished from norms for theory choice (or inference rules), and it is argued that pursuit of recognition only affects this second (...)
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  • Structural Realism, Scientific Change, and Partial Structures.Otávio Bueno - 2008 - Studia Logica 89 (2):213-235.
    Scientific change has two important dimensions: conceptual change and structural change. In this paper, I argue that the existence of conceptual change brings serious difficulties for scientific realism, and the existence of structural change makes structural realism look quite implausible. I then sketch an alternative account of scientific change, in terms of partial structures, that accommodates both conceptual and structural changes. The proposal, however, is not realist, and supports a structuralist version of van Fraassen’s constructive empiricism (structural empiricism).
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  • Verisimilitude, Structuralism and Scientific Progress.Jesùs P. Zamora Bonilla - 1996 - Erkenntnis 44 (1):25 - 47.
    An epistemic notion of verisimilitude (as the 'degree in which a theory seems closer to the full truth to a scientific community') is defined in several ways. Application to the structuralist description of theories is carried out by introducing a notion of 'empirical regularity' in structuralist terms. It is argued that these definitions of verisimilitude can be used to give formal reconstructions of scientific methodologies such as falsificationism, conventionalism and normal science.
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  • Rhetoric, Induction, and the Free Speech Dilemma.Jesus P. Zamora Bonilla - 2006 - Philosophy of Science 73 (2):175-193.
    Scientists can choose different claims as interpretations of the results of their research. Scientific rhetoric is understood as the attempt to make those claims most beneficial for the scientists' interests. A rational choice, game-theoretic model is developed to analyze how this choice can be made and to assess it from a normative point of view. The main conclusion is that `social' interests (pursuit of recognition) may conflict with `cognitive' ones when no constraints are put on the choices of the authors (...)
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  • Verisimilitude and the dynamics of scientific research programmes.Jesús P. Bonilla - 2002 - Journal for General Philosophy of Science / Zeitschrift für Allgemeine Wissenschaftstheorie 33 (2):349-368.
    Some peculiarities of the evaluation of theories within scientific research programmes and of the assessing of rival SRPs are described assuming that scientists try to maximise an ‘epistemic utility function’ under economic and institutional constraints. Special attention is given to Lakatos' concepts of ‘empirical progress’ and ‘theoretical progress’. A notion of ‘empirical verisimilitude’ is defended as an appropriate utility function. The neologism ‘methodonomics’ is applied to this kind of studies.
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  • Why are good theories good? reflections on epistemic values, confirmation, and formal epistemology.Jesús Zamora-Bonilla - 2013 - Synthese 190 (9):1533-1553.
    Franz Huber’s (2008a) attempt to unify inductivist and hypothetico-deductivist intuitions on confirmation by means of a single measure are examined and compared with previous work on the theory of verisimilitude or truthlikeness. The idea of connecting ‘the logic of confirmation’ with ‘the logic of acceptability’ is also critically discussed, and it is argued that ‘acceptability’ takes necessarily into account some pragmatic criteria, and that at least two normative senses of ‘acceptability’ must be distinguished: ‘acceptable’ in the sense of ‘being allowed (...)
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  • Explaining Referential Stability of Physics Concepts: The Semantic Embedding Approach. [REVIEW]Andreas Bartels - 2010 - Journal for General Philosophy of Science / Zeitschrift für Allgemeine Wissenschaftstheorie 41 (2):267 - 281.
    The paper discusses three different ways of explaining the referential stability of concepts of physics. In order to be successful, an approach to referential stability has to provide resources to understand what constitutes the difference between the birth of a new concept with a history of its own, and an innovative step occurring within the lifetime of a persisting concept with stable reference. According to Theodore Arabatzis' 'biographical' approach (Representing Electrons 2006), the historical continuity of representations of the electron manifests (...)
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