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Scientific Realism
Scientific realism is the philosophical view that the universe described by science (including both observable and unobservable aspects) exists independently of our perceptions, and that verified scientific theories are at least approximately true descriptions of what is real. Scientific realists typically assert that science, when successful, uncovers true (or approximately true) knowledge about nature, including aspects of reality that are not directly observable. Within philosophy of science, this view is often an answer to the question "how is the success of science to be explained?" The discussion on the success of science in this context centers primarily on the status of unobservable entities apparently talked about by scientific theories. Generally, those who are scientific realists assert that one can make valid claims about unobservables (viz., that they have the same ontological status) as observables, as opposed to instrumentalism. Main features Scientific realism ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Reality
Reality is the sum or aggregate of everything in existence; everything that is not imagination, imaginary. Different Culture, cultures and Academic discipline, academic disciplines conceptualize it in various ways. Philosophical questions about the nature of reality, existence, or being are considered under the rubric of ontology, a major branch of metaphysics in the Western intellectual tradition. Ontological questions also feature in diverse branches of philosophy, including the philosophy of science, philosophy of religion, religion, philosophy of mathematics, mathematics, and philosophical logic, logic. These include questions about whether only physical objects are real (e.g., physicalism), whether reality is fundamentally immaterial (e.g., idealism), whether hypothetical unobservable entities posited by scientific theories exist (e.g., scientific realism), whether God exists, whether numbers and other abstract objects exist, and whether possible worlds exist. Etymology a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Observational Term
Ramsey sentences are formal logical reconstructions of theoretical propositions attempting to draw a line between science and metaphysics. A Ramsey sentence aims at rendering propositions containing non-observable theoretical terms (terms employed by a theoretical language) clear by substituting them with observational terms (terms employed by an observation language, also called empirical language). Ramsey sentences were introduced by the logical empiricist philosopher Rudolf Carnap. However, they should not be confused with Carnap sentences, which are neutral on whether there exists anything to which the term applies. Scientific (real) questions vs. metaphysical (pseudo-)questions For Carnap, questions such as “Are electrons real?” and “Can you prove electrons are real?” were not legitimate questions, nor did they contain any great philosophical or metaphysical truths. Rather, they were meaningless "pseudo-questions without cognitive content,” asked from outside a lang ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John Hawthorne
John Patrick Hawthorne (born 25 May 1964) is an English philosopher, currently serving as Professor of Philosophy at the Australian Catholic University in Melbourne, and Professor of Philosophy at the University of Southern California. He is recognized as a leading contemporary contributor to metaphysics and epistemology. Early life and career Hawthorne was born on 25 May 1964 in Birmingham, England. He earned his PhD from Syracuse University, where he studied with William Alston and Jonathan Bennett. From 2006 to 2015, he was the Waynflete Professor of Metaphysical Philosophy at the University of Oxford. He has also taught at the University of New South Wales, Arizona State University, Syracuse University, Rutgers University, and Princeton University. Philosophical work Hawthorne's 2006 collection ''Metaphysical Essays'' offers original treatments of fundamental topics in philosophy, including identity, ontology, vagueness, and causation, which one reviewer called "esse ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tamar Gendler
Tamar Szabó Gendler (born December 20, 1965) is an American academic and philosopher. She has been the Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Yale University, where she is also the Vincent J. Scully Professor of Philosophy and a Professor of Psychology and Cognitive Sciences. Her academic research focuses on issues in philosophical psychology, epistemology, metaphysics, and areas related to philosophical methodology. Gendler is best known for her work on thought experiments, imagination—particularly on the phenomenon of imaginative resistance—and for coining the term alief. Early life and education Gendler was born in 1965 in Princeton, New Jersey, to Mary and Everett Gendler, a Conservative rabbi. She grew up in Andover, Massachusetts, where she attended public schools and then Phillips Academy Andover. As an undergraduate, she studied at Yale University, where she was a championship debater in the American Parliamentary Debate Association and a member of Manus ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Herman Cappelen
Herman Wright Cappelen (born 1967) is a Norwegian philosopher. He is currently the Chair Professor of Philosophy at the University of Hong Kong. Biography Cappelen is the son of author and publisher Peder Wright Cappelen and actress Kari Simonsen. Cappelen received a BA in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics from the University of Oxford, Balliol College, in 1989. In 1996, Cappelen received his PhD from the University of California, Berkeley. The title of his dissertation was "The Metaphysics of Words and the Semantics of Quotation". His advisors were Charles Chihara, Stephen Neale, and John Searle. Academic career Cappelen was previously a professor of philosophy at the University of Oslo and at the University of St Andrews in Scotland. He works primarily on philosophy of language and philosophical methodology and related areas in epistemology, philosophy of mind, and metaphysics. In 2013, he became editor of the journal ''Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal Of Philo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Constructive Empiricism
In philosophy of science, constructive empiricism is a form of empiricism. While it is sometimes referred to as an empiricist form of structuralism, its main proponent, Bas van Fraassen, has consistently distinguished between the two views. Overview Bas van Fraassen is nearly solely responsible for the initial development of constructive empiricism; its historically most important presentation appears in his ''The Scientific Image'' (1980). Constructive empiricism states that scientific theories are semantically literal, that they aim to be empirically adequate, and that their acceptance involves, as belief, only that they are empirically adequate. A theory is empirically adequate if and only if everything that it says about observable entities is true (regardless of what it says about unobservable entities). A theory is semantically literal if and only if the language of the theory is interpreted in such a way that the claims of the theory are either true or false (as opposed ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Scientific Image
Bastiaan Cornelis "Bas" van Fraassen (; ; born 5 April 1941) is a Dutch-American philosopher noted for his contributions to philosophy of science, epistemology and formal logic. He is a Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at San Francisco State University and the McCosh Professor of Philosophy Emeritus at Princeton University. Biography and career Van Fraassen was born in the German-occupied Netherlands on 5 April 1941. His father, a steam fitter, was forced by the Nazis to work in a factory in Hamburg. After the war, the family reunited and, in 1956, emigrated to Edmonton, in western Canada. Van Fraassen earned his B.A. (1963) from the University of Alberta and his M.A. (1964) and Ph.D. (1966, under the direction of Adolf Grünbaum) from the University of Pittsburgh. He previously taught at Yale University, the University of Southern California, the University of Toronto and, from 1982 to 2008, at Princeton University, where he is now emeritus. Since 2008, Van Fraasse ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Emerald Group Publishing
Emerald Publishing Limited is a scholarly publisher of academic journals and books, headquartered in Leeds, England. Originally focused in the areas of social sciences and management, including management, business, education, and library studies, Emerald also publishes in the areas of health, science, engineering, and technology. Emerald Publishing began as an independent publishing house, formed by Keith Howard (OBE) and a group of management academics from the University of Bradford. Howard stepped down as Chairman of the Emerald Group in 2017. Vicky Williams became the CEO of Emerald Publishing in 2018, replacing Richard Bevan, who took over Howard's role of Executive Chairman. Emerald Group Publishing was acquired by US-based Cambridge Information Group on 10 June 2022. History Emerald was founded in the United Kingdom in 1967 as ''Management Consultants Bradford (MCB) UP Ltd.'' The publisher changed its name to Emerald in 2002 following the success of its Emerald Fu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bingley
Bingley is a market town and civil parish in the metropolitan borough of the City of Bradford, West Yorkshire, England. It is sited on the River Aire and the Leeds and Liverpool Canal. The town had a population of 18,040 at the United Kingdom 2021 Census, 2021 Census. History In 1775, a farmer near Bingley discovered a chest of silver coins, of which some dated to the rule of Julius Caesar, on his land. Founding Bingley was likely founded by the Saxon people, Saxons, by a ford on the River Aire. This crossing gave access to Harden, West Yorkshire, Harden, Cullingworth and Wilsden on the southern side of the river. The origins of the name are from the Old English personal name ''Bynna'' + ''ingas'' ("descendants of") + ''lēah'' ("clearing in a forest"). Altogether, this would mean the "wood or clearing of the Bynningas, the people called after Bynna". Normans In the Domesday Book of 1086, Bingley is listed as "Bingheleia": ''m In Bingheleia hb. Gospatric iiij car' tra e' a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hilary Putnam
Hilary Whitehall Putnam (; July 31, 1926 – March 13, 2016) was an American philosopher, mathematician, computer scientist, and figure in analytic philosophy in the second half of the 20th century. He contributed to the studies of philosophy of mind, philosophy of language, philosophy of mathematics, and philosophy of science. Outside philosophy, Putnam contributed to mathematics and computer science. Together with Martin Davis (mathematician), Martin Davis he developed the Davis–Putnam algorithm for the Boolean satisfiability problem and he helped demonstrate the unsolvability of Hilbert's tenth problem. Putnam applied equal scrutiny to his own philosophical positions as to those of others, subjecting each position to rigorous analysis until he exposed its flaws. As a result, he acquired a reputation for frequently changing his positions. In philosophy of mind, Putnam argued against the type physicalism, type-identity of mental and physical states based on his hypothesis of th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Thomas Samuel Kuhn
Thomas Samuel Kuhn (; July 18, 1922 – June 17, 1996) was an American historian and philosopher of science whose 1962 book ''The Structure of Scientific Revolutions'' was influential in both academic and popular circles, introducing the term '' paradigm shift'', which has since become an English-language idiom. Kuhn made several claims concerning the progress of scientific knowledge: that scientific fields undergo periodic "paradigm shifts" rather than solely progressing in a linear and continuous way, and that these paradigm shifts open up new approaches to understanding what scientists would never have considered valid before; and that the notion of scientific truth, at any given moment, cannot be established solely by objective criteria but is defined by a consensus of a scientific community. Competing paradigms are frequently incommensurable; that is, there is no one-to-one correspondence of assumptions and terms. Thus, our comprehension of science can never rely wh ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
