bas van fraassen’s philosophy blog

What Could Be the Most Basic Logic?

It was only in the 19th century that alternatives to Euclidean geometry appeared.  What was to be respected as the most basic geometry for the physical sciences: Euclidean, non-Euclidean with constant curvature, projective?  Frege, Poincare, Russell, and Whitehead were, to various degrees, on the conservative side on this question.>[1]   In the 20th, alternatives to classical logic appeared, even…

by Bas van Fraassen

The curious roles atomic sentences can play (2)

[A reflection on some papers by Hallden, Lemmon, Hiz, Makinson, and Segerberg, listed at the end.  Throughout I will use my own symbols for connectives, to keep the text uniform.] Lemmon (1966) proved a theorem that I found quite startling at first sight, and I wondered what to make of it.  But then I found that Makinson…

by Bas van Fraassen

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2 thoughts on “bas van fraassen’s philosophy blog”

  1. Dear Prof van Fraassen,

    In modern science there is a shift in focus from final causes to the search for efficient/mechanical causes. People spoke about “laws” of nature and extended this view to human society. August Comte represents this view and via him it influenced sociology (Emile Durkheim) and perhaps also public relations (Edward Bernays).  Could you comment upon this?

    Thank you.

    Leendert Brouwer

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  2. I think that:

    – knowledge starts with the experience of facts of Nature,

    – we can formulate hypotheses, but as long as they are not confirmed by asking Nature, they are just hypotheses,

    – Nature doesn’t have to answer all of our questions to her,

    – sometimes we don’t get an answer from Nature,

    – when we don’t get an answer, this is never a license to invent an answer,

    – the only decent attitude is recognize “I don’t know” and stop there.

    (I’m skipping identifying the “metaphysical” positions in all this, which I’ll deny is metaphysics at all, but will accept as “hypotheses” till verified)

    Am I a constructive empiricist?

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