Bastiaan Cornelis "Bas" van Fraassen (; ; born 5 April 1941) is a
Dutch-American philosopher noted for his contributions to
philosophy of science
Philosophy of science is the branch of philosophy concerned with the foundations, methods, and implications of science. Amongst its central questions are the difference between science and non-science, the reliability of scientific theories, ...
,
epistemology
Epistemology is the branch of philosophy that examines the nature, origin, and limits of knowledge. Also called "the theory of knowledge", it explores different types of knowledge, such as propositional knowledge about facts, practical knowle ...
and
formal logic
Logic is the study of correct reasoning. It includes both formal and informal logic. Formal logic is the study of deductively valid inferences or logical truths. It examines how conclusions follow from premises based on the structure o ...
. He is a
Distinguished Professor of
Philosophy
Philosophy ('love of wisdom' in Ancient Greek) is a systematic study of general and fundamental questions concerning topics like existence, reason, knowledge, Value (ethics and social sciences), value, mind, and language. It is a rational an ...
at
San Francisco State University
San Francisco State University (San Francisco State, SF State and SFSU) is a Public university, public research university in San Francisco, California, United States. It was established in 1899 as the San Francisco State Normal School and is ...
and the McCosh Professor of Philosophy
Emeritus
''Emeritus/Emerita'' () is an honorary title granted to someone who retires from a position of distinction, most commonly an academic faculty position, but is allowed to continue using the previous title, as in "professor emeritus".
In some c ...
at
Princeton University
Princeton University is a private university, private Ivy League research university in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the List of Colonial ...
.
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
Hamburg (, ; ), officially the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg,. is the List of cities in Germany by population, second-largest city in Germany after Berlin and List of cities in the European Union by population within city limits, 7th-lar ...
. After the war, the family reunited and, in 1956, emigrated to
Edmonton
Edmonton is the capital city of the Provinces and territories of Canada, Canadian province of Alberta. It is situated on the North Saskatchewan River and is the centre of the Edmonton Metropolitan Region, which is surrounded by Central Alberta ...
, in western
Canada
Canada is a country in North America. Its Provinces and territories of Canada, ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, making it the world's List of coun ...
.
Van Fraassen earned his
B.A. (1963) from the
University of Alberta
The University of Alberta (also known as U of A or UAlberta, ) is a public research university located in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. It was founded in 1908 by Alexander Cameron Rutherford, the first premier of Alberta, and Henry Marshall Tory, t ...
and his
M.A. (1964) and
Ph.D. (1966, under the direction of
Adolf Grünbaum
Adolf Grünbaum (; ; May 15, 1923 – November 15, 2018) was a German-American philosopher of science and a critic of both psychoanalysis and Karl Popper's philosophy of science. He was the first Andrew Mellon Professor of Philosophy at the Unive ...
) from the
University of Pittsburgh
The University of Pittsburgh (Pitt) is a Commonwealth System of Higher Education, state-related research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States. The university is composed of seventeen undergraduate and graduate schools and colle ...
. He previously taught at
Yale University
Yale University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701, Yale is the List of Colonial Colleges, third-oldest institution of higher education in the United Stat ...
, the
University of Southern California
The University of Southern California (USC, SC, or Southern Cal) is a Private university, private research university in Los Angeles, California, United States. Founded in 1880 by Robert M. Widney, it is the oldest private research university in ...
, the
University of Toronto
The University of Toronto (UToronto or U of T) is a public university, public research university whose main campus is located on the grounds that surround Queen's Park (Toronto), Queen's Park in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It was founded by ...
and, from 1982 to 2008, at
Princeton University
Princeton University is a private university, private Ivy League research university in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the List of Colonial ...
, where he is now emeritus.
[ Since 2008, Van Fraassen has taught at ]San Francisco State University
San Francisco State University (San Francisco State, SF State and SFSU) is a Public university, public research university in San Francisco, California, United States. It was established in 1899 as the San Francisco State Normal School and is ...
, where he teaches courses in the philosophy of science
Philosophy of science is the branch of philosophy concerned with the foundations, methods, and implications of science. Amongst its central questions are the difference between science and non-science, the reliability of scientific theories, ...
, philosophical logic
Understood in a narrow sense, philosophical logic is the area of logic that studies the application of logical methods to philosophical problems, often in the form of extended logical systems like modal logic. Some theorists conceive philosophic ...
, and the role of modeling in scientific practice.
Van Fraassen is an adult convert to the Roman Catholic Church
The Catholic Church (), also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the List of Christian denominations by number of members, largest Christian church, with 1.27 to 1.41 billion baptized Catholics Catholic Church by country, worldwid ...
and is one of the founders of the Kira Institute. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences; an overseas member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences
The Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (, KNAW) is an organization dedicated to the advancement of science and literature in the Netherlands. The academy is housed in the Trippenhuis in Amsterdam.
In addition to various advisory a ...
since 1995; and a member of the International Academy of Philosophy of Science. In 1986, Van Fraassen received the Lakatos Award
The Lakatos Award is given annually for an outstanding contribution to the philosophy of science, widely interpreted. The contribution must be in the form of a monograph, co-authored or single-authored, and published in English during the previou ...
for his contributions to the philosophy of science and, in 2012, the Philosophy of Science Association
The Philosophy of Science Association (PSA) is an international academic organization founded in 1933 that promotes research, teaching, and free discussion of issues in the philosophy of science from diverse standpoints. The PSA engages in activi ...
's inaugural Hempel Award for lifetime achievement in philosophy of science.
Among his many students are the philosophers Elisabeth Lloyd at Indiana University
Indiana University (IU) is a state university system, system of Public university, public universities in the U.S. state of Indiana. The system has two core campuses, five regional campuses, and two regional centers under the administration o ...
, Anja Jauernig at New York University
New York University (NYU) is a private university, private research university in New York City, New York, United States. Chartered in 1831 by the New York State Legislature, NYU was founded in 1832 by Albert Gallatin as a Nondenominational ...
, Jenann Ismael at Johns Hopkins University, Ned Hall at Harvard University, Alan Hajek at the Australian National University and Professor of Mathematics Jukka Keranen at UCLA
The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California, United States. Its academic roots were established in 1881 as a normal school then known as the southern branch of the C ...
.
Philosophical work
Philosophy of science
Van Fraassen coined the term "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.
Overv ...
" in his 1980 book ''The Scientific Image'', in which he argued for agnosticism about the reality of unobservable entities. That book was "widely credited with rehabilitating scientific anti-realism
In analytic philosophy, anti-realism is the position that the truth of a statement rests on its demonstrability through internal logic mechanisms, such as the context principle or intuitionistic logic, in direct opposition to the realist notion t ...
." According to the ''Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
The ''Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy'' (''SEP'') is a freely available online philosophy resource published and maintained by Stanford University, encompassing both an online encyclopedia of philosophy and peer-reviewed original publication ...
'':
Paul M. Churchland, one of Van Fraassen's critics, contrasted Van Fraassen's idea of unobservable phenomena with the idea of merely phenomena.
In his 1989 book ''Laws and Symmetry'', Van Fraassen attempted to lay the ground-work for explaining physical phenomena
A phenomenon ( phenomena), sometimes spelled phaenomenon, is an observable Event (philosophy), event. The term came into its modern Philosophy, philosophical usage through Immanuel Kant, who contrasted it with the noumenon, which ''cannot'' be ...
without assuming that such phenomena are caused by rules or laws which can be said to cause or govern their behavior. Focusing on the problem of underdetermination
In the philosophy of science, underdetermination or the underdetermination of theory by data (sometimes abbreviated UTD) is the idea that evidence available to us at a given time may be insufficient to determine what beliefs we should hold in re ...
, he argued for the possibility that theories could have empirical equivalence but differ in their ontological
Ontology is the philosophical study of being. It is traditionally understood as the subdiscipline of metaphysics focused on the most general features of reality. As one of the most fundamental concepts, being encompasses all of reality and every ...
commitments. He rejects the notion that the aim of science is to produce an account of the physical world that is literally true and instead maintains that its aim is to produce theories that are empirically adequate. Van Fraassen has also studied the philosophy of quantum mechanics, philosophical logic, and Bayesian epistemology.
Philosophical logic
Van Fraassen has been the editor of the '' Journal of Philosophical Logic'' and co-editor of the ''Journal of Symbolic Logic
The '' Journal of Symbolic Logic'' is a peer-reviewed mathematics journal published quarterly by Association for Symbolic Logic. It was established in 1936 and covers mathematical logic. The journal is indexed by '' Mathematical Reviews'', Zent ...
''.[Bas C. van Fraassen, Curriculum Vitae]
/ref>
In logic, Van Frassen is best known for his work on free logic
A free logic is a logic with fewer existential presuppositions than classical logic. Free logics may allow for terms that do not denote any object. Free logics may also allow models that have an empty domain. A free logic with the latter propert ...
and his introduction of the supervaluation semantics
Semantics is the study of linguistic Meaning (philosophy), meaning. It examines what meaning is, how words get their meaning, and how the meaning of a complex expression depends on its parts. Part of this process involves the distinction betwee ...
. In his paper "Singular Terms, Truth-value Gaps, and Free Logic", Van Fraassen opens with a very brief introduction of the problem of non-referring names.
Instead of any unique formalization, though, he simply adjusts the axioms of a standard predicate logic such as that found in Willard Van Orman Quine
Willard Van Orman Quine ( ; known to his friends as "Van"; June 25, 1908 – December 25, 2000) was an American philosopher and logician in the analytic tradition, recognized as "one of the most influential philosophers of the twentieth century" ...
's ''Methods of Logic''. Instead of an axiom like he uses ; this will naturally be true if the existential claim of the antecedent is false. If a name fails to refer, then the atomic sentence containing it can be assigned a truth value arbitrarily, provided that it is not an identity statement. Free logic is proved to be complete under this interpretation.
He indicates that, however, he sees no good reason to call statements which employ them either true or false. Some have attempted to solve this problem by means of many-valued logic
Many-valued logic (also multi- or multiple-valued logic) is a propositional calculus in which there are more than two truth values. Traditionally, in Aristotle's Term logic, logical calculus, there were only two possible values (i.e., "true" and ...
s; Van Fraassen offers in their stead the use of supervaluations. Questions of completeness change when supervaluations are admitted, since they allow for valid arguments that do not correspond to logically true conditionals.
His paper "Facts and tautological entailment" (J Phil 1969) is now regarded as the beginning of truth-maker semantics.
Bayesian epistemology
In "Belief and the Will", Van Fraassen proposed what is now known as Van Fraassen's reflection principle: "to satisfy the principle, the agent's present subjective probability for proposition ''A'', on the supposition that his subjective probability for this proposition will equal ''r'' at some later time, must equal this same number ''r''". Within Bayesian epistemology this principle is recognized as an important synchronic norm; however Van Fraassen points out that a Dutch Book argument
In decision theory, economics, and probability theory, the Dutch book arguments are a set of results showing that agents must satisfy the axioms of rational choice to avoid a kind of self-contradiction called a Dutch book. A Dutch book, somet ...
can be made against the principle. [W. J. Talbott, "Two Principles of Bayesian Epistemology", ''Philosophical Studies'' 62(2), May 1991, pp. 135–150.]
Books
* ''Scientific Representation: Paradoxes of Perspective'', OUP, 2008.
* ''The Empirical Stance'', Yale University Press, 2002.
* ''Quantum Mechanics: An Empiricist View'', Oxford University Press, 1991.
* ''Laws and Symmetry'', Oxford University Press 1989.
* ''The Scientific Image'', Oxford University Press 1980.
* ''Derivation and Counterexample: An Introduction to Philosophical Logic'' (with Karel Lambert), Dickenson Publishing Company, Inc. 1972.
* ''Formal Semantics and Logic'', Macmillan, New York 1971.
* ''An Introduction to the Philosophy of Time and Space'', Random House, New York 1970.
See also
*American philosophy
American philosophy is the activity, corpus, and tradition of philosophers affiliated with the United States. The ''Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy'' notes that while it lacks a "core of defining features, American Philosophy can neverthe ...
*List of American philosophers
American philosophy is the activity, corpus, and tradition of philosophers affiliated with the United States. The ''Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy'' notes that while it lacks a "core of defining features, American Philosophy can neverthe ...
References
External links
Van Fraassen's homepage
at Princeton.
Van Fraassen's faculty page (2009)
at the Department of Philosophy, San Francisco State University.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Van Fraassen, Bas
1941 births
Living people
20th-century American male writers
20th-century American non-fiction writers
20th-century American philosophers
20th-century Dutch male writers
20th-century Dutch non-fiction writers
20th-century Dutch philosophers
20th-century Roman Catholics
21st-century American male writers
21st-century American non-fiction writers
21st-century American philosophers
21st-century Dutch male writers
21st-century Dutch non-fiction writers
21st-century Dutch philosophers
21st-century Roman Catholics
Academic staff of the University of Toronto
American epistemologists
American logicians
American male non-fiction writers
American philosophy academics
American Roman Catholic writers
Analytic philosophers
Catholic philosophers
Converts to Roman Catholicism
Corresponding fellows of the British Academy
Fraassen, Bas van
Dutch male non-fiction writers
Fraassen, Bas van
Lakatos Award winners
Fraassen, Bas van
Fraassen, Bas van
Philosophers of physics
Philosophers of time
Princeton University faculty
San Francisco State University faculty
University of Alberta alumni
University of Pittsburgh alumni
University of Southern California faculty
Yale University faculty