This classic remains one of Karl Popper's most wide-ranging and popular works, notable not only for its acute insight into the way scientific knowledge grows, but also for applying those insights to politics and to history.

Pure causal theories of reference cannot account for cases of theoretical term reference failure and do not capture the scientific point of introducing new theoretical terminology. In order to account for paradigm cases of reference failure and the point of new theoretical terminology, a descriptive element must play a role in fixing the reference of theoretical terms. Richard Boyd's concept of theory constituitive metaphors provides the necessary descriptive element in reference fixing. In addition to providing a plausible account of reference (...) failure and success, a metaphor approach to reference fixing provides the basis for a plausible realist account of the progress of science. Indeed, the metaphor approach undermines the sceptical force of the meta-induction and Laudan's objections to scientific realism. (shrink)

The present essay is addressed simultaneously to two distinct audiences.

The doctrine that the character of our perceptual knowledge is plastic, and can vary substantially with the theories embraced by the perceiver, has been criticized in a recent paper by Fodor. His arguments are based on certain experimental facts and theoretical approaches in cognitive psychology. My aim in this paper is threefold: to show that Fodor's views on the impenetrability of perceptual processing do not secure a theory-neutral foundation for knowledge; to show that his views on impenetrability are almost certainly (...) false; and to provide some additional arguments for, and illustrations of, the theoretical character of all observation judgments. (shrink)

In this sequence of philosophical essays about natural science, the author argues that fundamental explanatory laws, the deepest and most admired successes of modern physics, do not in fact describe regularities that exist in nature. Cartwright draws from many real-life examples to propound a novel distinction: that theoretical entities, and the complex and localized laws that describe them, can be interpreted realistically, but the simple unifying laws of basic theory cannot.

Standard philosophical discussions of theory-ladeness assume that observational evidence consists of perceptual outputs (or reports of such outputs) that are sentential or propositional in structure. Theory-ladeness is conceptualized as having to do with logical or semantical relationships between such outputs or reports and background theories held by observers. Using the recent debate between Fodor and Churchland as a point of departure, we propose an alternative picture in which much of what serves as evidence in science is not perceptual outputs or (...) reports of such outputs and is not sentential in structure. (shrink)

In this bold work, of broad scope and rich erudition, Richard Miller sets out to reorient the philosophy of science. By questioning both positivism and its leading critics, he develops new solutions to the most urgent problems about justification, explanation, and truth. Using a wealth of examples from both the natural and the social sciences, Fact and Method applies the new account of scientific reason to specific questions of method in virtually every field of inquiry, including biology, physics, history, sociology, (...) anthropology, economics, psychology, and literary theory. Explicit and up-to-date analysis of leading alternative views and a wealth of examples make it an ideal introduction to the philosophy of science, as well as a powerful attempt to change the field. Like the works of Hempel, Reichenbach, and Nagel in an earlier generation, it will challenge, instruct, and help anyone with an interest in science and its limits. For the past quarter-century, the philosophy of science has been in a crisis brought on by the failure of the positivist project of resolving all basic methodological questions by applying absolutely general rules, valid for all fields at all times. Professor Miller presents a new view in which what counts as an explanation, a cause, a confirming test, or a compelling case for the existence of an unobservable is determined by frameworks of specific substantive principles, rationally adopted in the light of the actual history of inquiry. While the history of science has usually been the material for relativism, Professor Miller uses arguments of Darwin, Newton, Einstein, Galileo, and others both to undermine positivist conceptions of rationality and to support the positivists' optimism that important theoretical findings are often justifiable from all reasonable perspectives. (shrink)

For 30 years, Quine, a dominant figure in logical theory and philosophy of logic, has combined insights in methodology, language, epistemology, and ontology, to blur the boundaries of speculative metaphysics and natural sciences. This revised text contains two new essays with replies from Quine.

_Conjectures and Refutations_ is one of Karl Popper's most wide-ranging and popular works, notable not only for its acute insight into the way scientific knowledge grows, but also for applying those insights to politics and to history. It provides one of the clearest and most accessible statements of the fundamental idea that guided his work: not only our knowledge, but our aims and our standards, grow through an unending process of trial and error.

The famous thesis of the underdetermination of our theories about the world through the available observational data is the basis of Quine's skepsis which forces him to commit himself to the theses of the inscrutability of reference and the indetermination of translation. On the basis of an examination of Quine's distinction between observational and theoretical sentences, I intend to show the impossibility of translating observational sentences without their being affected by the indeterminacy of translation. They too, cannot be translated without (...) the aid of analytical hypotheses only by equating them with observational reports of the language into which they are to be translated. The consequence of this is that the basis of this assumption, the empirical equivalence of logically incompatible systems of the world, loses its point. (shrink)

In this book van Fraassen develops an alternative to scientific realism by constructing and evaluating three mutually reinforcing theories.

Through a study of a sophisticated contemporary scientific experiment, it is shown how and why use of the term 'observation' in reference to that experiment departs from ordinary and philosophical usages which associate observation epistemically with perception. The role of "background information" is examined, and general conclusions are arrived at regarding the use of descriptive language in and in talking about science. These conclusions bring out the reasoning by which science builds on what it has learned, and, further, how that (...) process of building consists not only in adding to our substantive knowledge, but also in increasing our ability to learn about nature, by extending our ability to observe it in new ways. The argument of this paper is thus a step toward understanding how it is that all our knowledge of nature rests on observation. (shrink)

In especially the Sneed-Stegmüller structuralist theory a so-called problem of theoretical terms emerges. But this problem bases on a questionable presupposition . And the structuralist solution of this problem, the so-called Ramsey-Sneed-solution, is also problematic , , ). Beyond this the structuralist assertion is problematic, that the problem of theoretical terms and his Ramsey-Sneed-solution is empirically relevant . On the basis of the discussed systematic and empirical defects of the problem of theoretical terms and its solution, the so-called non-statement view₂, (...) i. e. this solution, will be refused. (shrink)

This volume consists of the first of the John Dewey Lectures delivered under the auspices of Columbia University's Philosophy Department as well as other essays by the author. Intended to clarify the meaning of the philosophical doctrines propounded by Professor Quine in 'Word and Objects', the essays included herein both support and expand those doctrines.

Summary In several places Popper describes a little experiment in which an audience is given the non-specific command ‚Observe!‘ He draws a number of conclusions from this experiment, in particular that observation takes place in the presence of theoretical problems, questions, hypotheses or points of view. The paper argues that while Popper's experiment is instructive, it hardly supports the strong conclusions he draws about the theory-dominance of observation in science. In particular, it is argued that talk of principles of selection (...) which guide us to relevant observations, rather than the host of irrelevant observations of the naive inductivist, is misleading. Rather, it is the goals, aims, motives or interests of an observer that guide observation and these need not always involve a theoretical component. (shrink)

The central terms of certain theories which were valued highly in the past, such as the phlogiston theory, are now believed by realists not to refer. Laudan and others have claimed that, in the light of the existence of such theories, scientific realism is untenable. This paper argues in response that realism is consistent with — and indeed is able to explain — such theories' having been highly valued and yet not being close to the truth. It follows that the (...) set of highly-valued past theories cited by Laudan, presumed to militate against realism, is in fact innocuous to the doctrine. The argument hinges largely on identifying the grounds on which theory-adoption is actually performed. (shrink)

In this three-part paper, my concern is to expound and defend a conception of science, close to Einstein's, which I call aim-oriented empiricism. I argue that aim-oriented empiricsim has the following virtues. (i) It solve the problem of induction; (ii) it provides decisive reasons for rejecting van Fraassen's brilliantly defended but intuitively implausible constructive empiricism; (iii) it solves the problem of verisimilitude, the problem of explicating what it can mean to speak of scientific progress given that science advances from one (...) false theory to another; (iv) it enables us to hold that appropriate scientific theories, even though false, can nevertheless legitimately be interpreted realistically, as providing us with genuine , even if only approximate, knowledge of unobservable physical entities; (v) it provies science with a rational, even though fallible and non-mechanical, method for the discovery of fundamental new theories in physics. In the third part of the paper I show that Einstein made essential use of aim-oriented empiricism in scientific practice in developing special and general relativity. I conclude by considering to what extent Einstein came explicitly to advocate aim-oriented empiricism in his later years. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that aim-oriented empiricism provides decisive grounds for accepting scientific realism and rejecting instrumentalism. But it goes further than this. Aim-oriented empiricism implies that physicalism is a central part of current (conjectural) scientific knowledge. Furthermore, we can and need, I argue, to interpret fundamental physical theories as attributing necessitating physical properties to fundamental physical entities.

In his article "The Concept of Observation in Science and Philosophy" (1982), Dudley Shapere argues for an analysis of what it is for an object to be directly observed (observable). He does so by presenting two contrasting ways of observing the center of the sun. However, his examples, which are probabilistic in nature, are at odds with his analysis, which is absolute. I argue that of the three features of the examples which could serve as the basis for the analysis (...) only one--the amount of alteration to the information being transmitted--can plausibly do so. Having reworked Shapere's analysis on the basis of this feature, I show that the analysis still fails to provide a sufficient condition for observation. (shrink)

Interpretari necesse est (Interpretation is necessary). This slogan is summarizing the methodological and epistemological essay concentrating on what can be called a transcendental interpretationism and a methodological interpretationism. This approach is combining a pragmatic interpretive approach with a constitutional quasi Kantian but more pluralistic and flexible epistemology. It takes up the assets of Nietzsches radical interpretationism without ending up in an interpretationist idealism. Though a basic fundamental insight is a statement of the interpretation-impragnatedness of any knowledge and experience whatsoever, there (...) is nevertheless a possibility to combine a kind of critical realism with this interpretationist approach. Though we are always obliged to use interpretation-dependent epistemological schemata and concepts as well as theories (we have no non-interpretive concepts, theories and ways of gaining and constructing knowledge), we have still, for practical reasons, to presuppose an external independent world which can however only be described in interpretation-dependent terms. Even this epistemological model is certainly an interpretive one. If we distinguish between different levels of more or less variable interpretations (we cannot, by our very biological constitution, change primary interpretations built in to our biological constitution and make-up of sense-organs etc.), we can analyse and define truth as a relation between different levels and types of interpretations. The ideal of truth makes some sense of a concept of correspondence, though in the last analysis it is a combination of coherence-theoretical and pragmatic-constructivist ideas. — The model of an epistemological interpretationism has the advantage (by contradistinction, e.g., with critical rationalism) to be consistently applied to itself: The interpretive epistemology is certainly but an interpretational model itself. — The sketched interpretationism has certain similarities with Nelson Goodman's constructive interpretive pluralism and Hilary Putnam's internal realism, although there are slight, but decisive differences to be carefully observed. The differences have to do with the mentioned practical realism and the presupposition of one world in which we live. The similarities are greater with respect to internal realism. A decisive difference is only that you cannot, according to methodological and transcendental interpretationism, compel somebody towards the uniqueness of language use. There are always degrees of freedom and variation to change the usage of signs. There is no socially intended uniqueness and compulsory usage of signs and their meanings. Even within the language community the rules are always only conventionally realized and actualized. There is no real correspondence between signs and signs (or interpretive constructs, for that matter). Any correspondence whatsoever can only refer to interpretational constructs itself. Any classification, verification, selection and identification of facts, even any thinking of data and facts as such is in the last analysis dependent on interpretations. Even the conception of an epistemological subject is but an interpretational construct on a higher level. (shrink)

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 (...) realism. (shrink)

00 Drawing on the phenomenological tradition in the philosophy of science and philosophy of nature, Patrick Heelan concludes that perception is a cognitive, ...

Many realists have maintained that the success of scientific theories can be explained only if they may be regarded as approximately true. Laurens Laudan has in turn contended that a necessary condition for a theory's being approximately true is that its central terms refer, and since many successful theories of the past have employed central terms which we now understand to be non-referential, realism cannot explain their success. The present paper argues that a realist can adopt a view of reference (...) according to which a theory might plausibly be said to be approximately true even though its central terms do not refer, or alternatively, he may construe reference in such a way as to assign reference to a range of successful older theories which includes Laudan's purported counterexamples. (shrink)

Summary The non-statement view of scientific theories contains a new conception of theoreticity: A function is „T-theoretical if T must be presupposed for its calculation. On the basis of this conception some philosophers came to the conclusion that scientific theories are not empirically testable because they contain T-theoretical functions. It is claimed that the attempt to test them ends in a circularity: The test of T presupposes T itself.

Several arguments are considered which purport to demonstrate the impossibility of theory-neutral observation. The most important of these infers the continuity of observation with theory from the presumed continuity of perception with cognition, a doctrine widely espoused in recent cognitive psychology. An alternative psychological account of the relation between cognition and perception is proposed and its epistemological consequences for the observation/theory distinction are then explored.