Works by Bas Van Fraassen
172 found
Order:
1 filter applied
DisambiguationsDisambiguations:
| Bas C. Van Fraassen [153] | Bas van Fraassen [32] | Bastiaan Cornelis Van Fraassen [1] | Bastiaan C. van Fraassen [1] |
- Laws and symmetry.Bas C. Van Fraassen -1989 - New York: Oxford University Press.Metaphysicians speak of laws of nature in terms of necessity and universality; scientists, in terms of symmetry and invariance. In this book van Fraassen argues that no metaphysical account of laws can succeed. He analyzes and rejects the arguments that there are laws of nature, or that we must believe there are, and argues that we should disregard the idea of law as an adequate clue to science. After exploring what this means for general epistemology, the author develops the empiricist (...) view of science as a construction of models to represent the phenomena. (shrink)
- The Scientific Image.William Demopoulos &Bas C. van Fraassen -1982 -Philosophical Review 91 (4):603.
- Scientific Representation: Paradoxes of Perspective.Bas C. Van Fraassen -2008 - Oxford, GB: Oxford University Press UK.Bas C. van Fraassen presents an original exploration of how we represent the world.
- The Empirical Stance.Bas C. Van Fraassen -2002 - New York: Yale University Press.What is empiricism and what could it be? Bas . van Fraassen, one of the world’s foremost contributors to philosophical logic and the philosophy of science, here undertakes a fresh consideration of these questions and offers a program for renewal of the empiricist tradition. The empiricist tradition is not and could not be defined by common doctrines, but embodies a certain stance in philosophy, van Fraassen says. This stance is displayed first of all in a searing, recurrent critique of metaphysics, (...) and secondly in a focus on experience that requires a voluntarist view of belief and opinion. Van Fraassen focuses on the philosophical problems of scientific and conceptual revolutions and on the not unrelated ruptures between religious and secular ways of seeing or conceiving of ourselves. He explores what it is to be or not be secular and points the way toward a new relationship between secularism and science within philosophy. (shrink)No categories
- (1 other version)Laws and Symmetry.Bas C. Van Fraassen -1989 -Revue Philosophique de la France Et de l'Etranger 182 (3):327-329.
- The Empirical Stance.Bas C. Van Fraassen -2002 - Yale University Press.What is empiricism and what could it be? Bas C. van Fraassen, one of the world’s foremost contributors to philosophical logic and the philosophy of science, here undertakes a fresh consideration of these questions and offers a program for renewal of the empiricist tradition. The empiricist tradition is not and could not be defined by common doctrines, but embodies a certain stance in philosophy, van Fraassen says. This stance is displayed first of all in a searing, recurrent critique of metaphysics, (...) and second in a focus on experience that requires a voluntarist view of belief and opinion._ _Van Fraassen focuses on the philosophical problems of scientific and conceptual revolutions and on the not unrelated ruptures between religious and secular ways of seeing or conceiving of ourselves. He explores what it is to be or not be secular and points the way toward a new relationship between secularism and science within philosophy. (shrink)
- (1 other version)Belief and the Will.Bas C. van Fraassen -1984 -Journal of Philosophy 81 (5):235–256.
- Singular terms, truth-value gaps, and free logic.Bas C. van Fraassen -1966 -Journal of Philosophy 63 (17):481-495.
- Belief and the problem of Ulysses and the sirens.Bas C. van Fraassen -1995 -Philosophical Studies 77 (1):7-37.This is surely a bit of Socrates' famous irony. He draws the analogy to explain how his friends should regard poetry as they regretfully banish it from the ideal state. But lovers were no more sensible then than they are now. The advice to banish poetry, undermined already by Plato's own delight and skill in drama, is perhaps undermined still further by this evocation of a 'sensible' lover who counts love so well lost. Yet Socrates' image is one of avowed (...) rationality and prudence. The sensible lover imitates the older literary example of Ulysses' tying himself to the mast. (The example belongs therefore to the class of problems treated in Elster (1979)). Both this lover and Ulysses foresee that under certain possible future conditions, their opinions, values and preferences will or would differ from what they are now, in a very definite fashion. To what extent is such foresight possible? Correspondingly (when we do not claim foreknowledge) to what extent is such opinion reasonable, rational, coherent, or consistent in some suitably broad sense? It is not easy to understand exactly what is possible or even logically permissible in this respect. In an earlier paper, "Belief and the Will", I argued for a principle ("Reflection") to govern such deliberation. Here I will both generalize the treatment of opinion in "Belief and the Will" and respond to criticism. Critical examples mainly resembled the story of Ulysses who foresaw a period of dysfunction (at the sound 2 of the sirens) in his epistemic and/or doxastic future. Other criticism focused on the model of opinion used (precise numerical subjective probability) and on the merits of Dutch Book arguments. The present argument will not rely on Dutch Book arguments and strategies, and the Reflection principle will be formulated so as to apply also to vague opinion. (shrink)
- Constructive Empiricism Now.Bas C. van Fraassen -2001 -Philosophical Studies 106 (1-2):151-170.Constructive empiricism, the view introduced in The Scientific Image, is a view of science, an answer to the question "what is science?" Arthur Fine's and Paul Teller's contributions to this symposium challenge especially two key ideas required to formulate that view, namely the observable/unobservable and acceptance/belief distinctions. I wish to thank them not only for their insightful critique but also for the support they include. For they illuminate and counter some misunderstandings of Constructive Empiricism along the way. That leaves me (...) free to focus on those two main challenges. (shrink)
- Probabilities of Conditionals.Bas van Fraassen -1975 - In C. Hooker,Foundations of probability theory, statistical inference, and statistical theories of science. Springer.
- The Charybdis of Realism: Epistemological Implications of Bell’s Inequality.Bas C. van Fraassen -1982 -Synthese 52 (1):25-38.No categories
- An introduction to the philosophy of time and space.Bas C. Van Fraassen -1970 - New York: Columbia University Press.
- Structure: Its shadow and substance.Bas C. van Fraassen -2006 -British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 57 (2):275-307.Structural realism as developed by John Worrall and others can claim philosophical roots as far back as the late 19th century, though the discussion at that time does not unambiguously favor the contemporary form, or even its realism. After a critical examination of some aspects of the historical background some severe critical challenges to both Worrall's and Ladyman's versions are highlighted, and an alternative empiricist structuralism proposed. Support for this empiricist version is provided in part by the different way in (...) which we can do justice to Worrall's original demands and in part by the viewpoint it provides (in contrast to e.g. Michael Friedman's) on the stability maintained through scientific theory change. Planck against the heretics 1.1 Poincaré on the meaning of Maxwell's equations 1.2 Two responses: reification and structuralism On the road to structuralism 2.1 The microscope 2.2 Mathematization of the world picture 2.3 The 18th–20th century The new structural realism 3.1 From scientific realism to structuralism 3.2 The Ladyman variant: objectivity and invariance 3.3 How is structural realism supported? An empiricist structuralism 4.1 Royal succession in science 4.2 Defence of the empiricist version 4.3 Structure: an empiricist view. (shrink)
- Values and the heart's command.Bas van Fraassen -1973 -Journal of Philosophy 70 (1):5-19.
- Presupposition, implication, and self-reference.Bas C. van Fraassen -1968 -Journal of Philosophy 65 (5):136-152.
- On the extension of Beth's semantics of physical theories.Bas C. van Fraassen -1970 -Philosophy of Science 37 (3):325-339.A basic aim of E. Beth's work in philosophy of science was to explore the use of formal semantic methods in the analysis of physical theories. We hope to show that a general framework for Beth's semantic analysis is provided by the theory of semi-interpreted languages, introduced in a previous paper. After developing Beth's analysis of nonrelativistic physical theories in a more general form, we turn to the notion of the 'logic' of a physical theory. Here we prove a result (...) concerning the conditions under which semantic entailment in such a theory is finitary. We argue, finally, that Beth's approach provides a characterization of physical theory which is more faithful to current practice in foundational research in the sciences than the familiar picture of a partly interpreted axiomatic theory. (shrink)
- Facts and tautological entailments.Bas C. Van Fraassen -1969 -Journal of Philosophy 66 (15):477-487.
- (2 other versions)The pragmatics of explanation.Bas C. Van Fraassen -1977 -American Philosophical Quarterly 14 (2):143-150.
- Figures in a Probability Landscape.Bas van Fraassen -1990 - In J. Dunn & A. Gupta,Truth or Consequences: Essays in Honor of Nuel Belnap. Boston, MA, USA: Kluwer Academic Publishers. pp. 345-356.
- Formal semantics and logic.Bas C. Van Fraassen -1971 - New York,: Macmillan.
- The Logic of Conditional Obligation.Bas C. Van Fraassen -1972 -Journal of Philosophical Logic 1 (3/4):417.
- One or Two Gentle Remarks about Hans Halvorson’s Critique of the Semantic View.Bas C. van Fraassen -2014 -Philosophy of Science 81 (2):276-283,.In recent papers Hans Halvorson has offered a critique of the semantic view of theories, showing that theories may be the same although the corresponding sets of models are different and, conversely, that theories may be different although the corresponding sets of models are the same. This critique will be assessed, first, as it pertains to issues concerning scientific models in the empirical sciences and, second, independent of any concern with empirical science.
- A problem for relative information minimizers in probability kinematics.Bas C. van Fraassen -1981 -British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 32 (4):375-379.
- Fine-grained opinion, probability, and the logic of full belief.Bas C. van Fraassen -1995 -Journal of Philosophical Logic 24 (4):349-377.
- A Defence of Van Fraassen’s Critique of Abductive Inference: Reply to Psillos.James Ladyman,Igor Douven,Leon Horsten &Bas van Fraassen -1997 -Philosophical Quarterly 47 (188):305 - 321.Psillos has recently argued that van Fraassen’s arguments against abduction fail. Moreover, he claimed that, if successful, these arguments would equally undermine van Fraassen’s own constructive empiricism, for, Psillos thinks, it is only by appeal to abduction that constructive empiricism can be saved from issuing in a bald scepticism. We show that Psillos’ criticisms are misguided, and that they are mostly based on misinterpretations of van Fraassen’s arguments. Furthermore, we argue that Psillos’ arguments for his claim that constructive empiricism itself (...) needs abduction point up to his failure to recognize the importance of van Fraassen’s broader epistemology for constructive empiricism. Towards the end of our paper we discuss the suspected relationship between constructive empiricism and scepticism in the light of this broader epistemology, and from a somewhat more general perspective. (shrink)
- The perils of Perrin, in the hands of philosophers.Bas C. van Fraassen -2009 -Philosophical Studies 143 (1):5 - 24.The story of how Perrin’s experimental work established the reality of atoms and molecules has been a staple in (realist) philosophy of science writings (Wesley Salmon, Clark Glymour, Peter Achinstein, Penelope Maddy, …). I’ll argue that how this story is told distorts both what the work was and its significance, and draw morals for the understanding of how theories can be or fail to be empirically grounded.
- The only necessity is verbal necessity.Bas C. van Fraassen -1977 -Journal of Philosophy 74 (2):71-85.
- Representational of conditional probabilities.Bas C. Van Fraassen -1976 -Journal of Philosophical Logic 5 (3):417-430.
- Calibration: A Frequency Justification for Personal Probability.Bas van Fraassen -1983 - In Robert S. Cohen & Larry Laudan,Physics, Philosophy and Psychoanalysis: Essays in Honor of Adolf Grünbaum. D. Reidel.
- What is Scientific Realism?Anjan Chakravartty &Bas C. van Fraassen -2018 -Spontaneous Generations 9 (1):12-25.Decades of debate about scientific realism notwithstanding, we find ourselves bemused by what different philosophers appear to think it is, exactly. Does it require any sort of belief in relation to scientific theories and, if so, what sort? Is it rather typified by a certain understanding of the rationality of such beliefs? In the following dialogue we explore these questions in hopes of clarifying some convictions about what scientific realism is, and what it could or should be. En route, we (...) encounter some profoundly divergent conceptions of the nature of science and of philosophy. (shrink)
- A Problem for Relative Information Minimizers.Bas van Fraassen -1981 -British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 32.
- Reflection and conditionalization: Comments on Michael Rescorla.Bas C. van Fraassen -2023 -Noûs 57 (3):539-552.Rescorla explores the relation between Reflection, Conditionalization, and Dutch book arguments in the presence of a weakened concept of sure loss and weakened conditions of self‐transparency for doxastic agents. The literature about Reflection and about Dutch Book arguments, though overlapping, are distinct, and its history illuminates the import of Rescorla's investigation. With examples from a previous debate in the 70s and results about Reflection and Conditionalization in the 80s, I propose a way of seeing the epistemic enterprise in the light (...) of practical requirements to be met by demands for synchronic coherence and probability updating policies. This includes a defense of principles rejected by Rescorla, while allowing for the value of his results in the borderland between theories of cognition and formal epistemology. (shrink)
- Meaning relations among predicates.Bas C. van Fraassen -1967 -Noûs 1 (2):161-179.
- Rovelli’s World.Bas C. van Fraassen -2010 -Foundations of Physics 40 (4):390-417.Carlo Rovelli’s inspiring “Relational Quantum Mechanics” serves several aims at once: it provides a new vision of what the world of quantum mechanics is like, and it offers a program to derive the theory’s formalism from a set of simple postulates pertaining to information processing. I propose here to concentrate entirely on the former, to explore the world of quantum mechanics as Rovelli depicts it. It is a fascinating world in part because of Rovelli’s reliance on the information-theory approach to (...) the foundations of quantum mechanics, and in part because its presentation involves taking sides on a fundamental divide within philosophy itself. (shrink)
- Replies to discussion on the Empirical Stance.Bas C. van Fraassen -2004 -Philosophical Studies 121 (2):171-192.
- (1 other version)To save the phenomena.Bas C. Van Fraassen -1976 -Journal of Philosophy 73 (18):623-632.No categories
- Representation: The problem for structuralism.Bas C. van Fraassen -2006 -Philosophy of Science 73 (5):536-547.What does it mean to embed the phenomena in an abstract structure? Or to represent them by doing so? The semantic view of theories runs into a severe problem if these notions are construed either naively, in a metaphysical way, or too closely on the pattern of the earlier syntactic view. Constructive empiricism and structural realism will then share those difficulties. The problem will be posed as in Reichenbach's The Theory of Relativity and A Priori Knowledge, and realist reactions will (...) be examined, but they will be argued to dissolve upon scrutiny. (shrink)
- From a view of science to a new empiricism.Bas C. van Fraassen -2007 - In Bradley John Monton,Images of empiricism: essays on science and stances, with a reply from Bas C. van Fraassen. New York: Oxford University Press.
- Conditionalization, a new argument for.Bas C. van Fraassen -1999 -Topoi 18 (2):93-96.Probabilism in epistemology does not have to be of the Bayesian variety. The probabilist represents a person''s opinion as a probability function; the Bayesian adds that rational change of opinion must take the form of conditionalizing on new evidence. I will argue that this is the correct procedure under certain special conditions. Those special conditions are important, and instantiated for example in scientific experimentation, but hardly universal. My argument will be related to the much maligned Reflection Principle (van Fraassen, 1984, (...) 1995), and partly inspired by the work of Brian Skyrms (1987). (shrink)
- The Agnostic Subtly Probabilified.Bas C. van Fraassen -1998 -Analysis 58 (3):212-220.
- From Vicious Circle to Infinite Regress, and Back Again.Bas C. van Fraassen -1992 -PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association 1992:6-29.The attempt to formulate a viable empiricist and non-foundationalist epistemology of science faces four problems here confronted. The first is an apparent loss of objectivity in science, in the conditions of use of models in applied science. The second derives from the theory-infection of scientific language, with an apparent loss of objective conditions of truth and reference. The third, often cited as objection to The Scientific Image, is the apparent theory-dependence of the distinction between what is and is not observable. (...) The fourth and last is the loss of the possibility of objective evaluation of rationality in scientific methodology. It is argued that each of these problems is illusory. (shrink)
- The Experimental Side of Modeling.Isabelle F. Peschard &Bas C. Van Fraassen (eds.) -2018 - Minneapolis: Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science.An innovative, multifaceted approach to scientific experiments as designed by and shaped through interaction with the modeling process The role of scientific modeling in mediation between theories and phenomena is a critical topic within the philosophy of science, touching on issues from climate modeling to synthetic models in biology, high energy particle physics, and cognitive sciences. Offering a radically new conception of the role of data in the scientific modeling process as well as a new awareness of the problematic aspects (...) of data, this cutting-edge volume offers a multifaceted view on experiments as designed and shaped in interaction with the modeling process. Contributors address such issues as the construction of models in conjunction with scientific experimentation; the status of measurement and the function of experiment in the identification of relevant parameters; how the phenomena under study are reconceived when accounted for by a model; and the interplay between experimenting, modeling, and simulation when results do not mesh. Highlighting the mediating role of models and the model-dependence of data measurement, this volume proposes a normative and conceptual innovation in scientific modeling--that the phenomena to be investigated and modeled must not be precisely identified at the start but specified during the course of the interactions arising between experimental and modeling activities. Contributors: Nancy D. Cartwright, U of California, San Diego; Anthony Chemero, U of Cincinnati; Ronald N. Giere, U of Minnesota; Jenann Ismael, U of Arizona; Tarja Knuuttila, U of South Carolina; Andrea Loettgers, U of Bern, Switzerland; Deborah Mayo, Virginia Tech; Joseph Rouse, Wesleyan U; Paul Teller, U of California, Davis; Michael Weisberg, U of Pennsylvania; Eric Winsberg, U of South Florida. (shrink)No categories
- Modeling and Measurement: The Criterion of Empirical Grounding.Bas C. van Fraassen -2012 -Philosophy of Science 79 (5):773-784.A scientific theory offers models for the phenomena in its domain; these models involve theoretical quantities, and a model's structure is the set of relations it imposes on these quantities. A fundamental demand in scientific practice is for those quantities to be clearly and feasibly related to measurement. This demand for empirical grounding can be articulated by displaying the theory-dependent criteria for a procedure to count as a measurement and for identifying the quantity it measures.
- Putnam's paradox: Metaphysical realism revamped and evaded.Bas C. Van Fraassen -1997 -Philosophical Perspectives 11:17-42.Hilary Putnam's argument against metaphysical realism (commonly referred to as the "model theoretic argument") has now enjoyed two decades of discussion.(1) The text is rich and contains variously construable arguments against variously construed philosophical positions. David Lewis isolated one argument and called it "Putnam's Paradox".(2) That argument is clear and concise; so is the paradoxical conclusion it purports to demonstrate; and so is Lewis' paradox-avoiding solution. His solution involves a position I call "anti-nominalism": not only are classes real, but they (...) are divided into arbitrary and 'natural' classes. The natural classes 'carve nature at the joints', being (as other philosophers might say) the extensions of 'real' properties, universals, or Forms.(3) Thus the argument was turned, in effect, into support for a metaphysical realism stronger than Putnam envisaged. (shrink)
- The Question of Hermeneutics.Bas C. van Fraassen (ed.) -1994No categories
- The problem of indistinguishable particles.Bas van Fraassen -1984 - In James T. Cushing, Cornelius F. Delaney & Gary Gutting,Science and Reality: Recent Work in the Philosophy of Science. University of Notre Dame Press.
- On stance and rationality.Bas C. van Fraassen -2011 -Synthese 178 (1):155 - 169.
- The Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen Paradox.Bas C. van Fraassen -1974 -Synthese 29 (1/4):291.
- Science as representation: Flouting the criteria.Bas C. van Fraassen -2004 -Philosophy of Science 71 (5):794-804.Criteria of adequacy for scientific representation of the phenomena pertain to accuracy and truth. But that representation is selective and may require distortion even in the selected parameters; this point is intimately connected with the fact that representation is intentional, and its adequacy relative to its particular purpose. Since observation and measurement are perspectival and the appearances to be saved are perspectival measurement outcomes, the question whether this “saving” is an explanatory relation provides a new focus for the realist/antirealist debate. (...) The Born rule and von Neumann's “collapse” postulate in quantum mechanics provide a telling case for this question in recent physics. (shrink)
| 1 — 50 / 172 |
Off-campus access
Using PhilPapers from home?
Create an account to enable off-campus access through your institution's proxy server or OpenAthens.
Monitor this page
Be alerted of all new items appearing on this page. Choose how you want to monitor it:
 Email |  RSS feed |
Editorial team
General Editors:
David Bourget (Western Ontario)
David Chalmers (ANU, NYU)
Area Editors:
David Bourget
Gwen Bradford
Berit Brogaard
Margaret Cameron
David Chalmers
James Chase
Rafael De Clercq
Ezio Di Nucci
Esa Diaz-Leon
Barry Hallen
Hans Halvorson
Jonathan Ichikawa
Monte Johnson
Michelle Kosch
Øystein Linnebo
Paul Livingston
Brandon Look
Manolo Martínez
Matthew McGrath
Michiru Nagatsu
Susana Nuccetelli
Giuseppe Primiero
Jack Alan Reynolds
Darrell P. Rowbottom
Aleksandra Samonek
Constantine Sandis
Howard Sankey
Jonathan Schaffer
Thomas Senor
Daniel Star
Jussi Suikkanen
Aness Kim Webster
Other editors
Contact us
Learn more about PhilPapers
David Bourget (Western Ontario)
David Chalmers (ANU, NYU)
Area Editors:
David Bourget
Gwen Bradford
Berit Brogaard
Margaret Cameron
David Chalmers
James Chase
Rafael De Clercq
Ezio Di Nucci
Esa Diaz-Leon
Barry Hallen
Hans Halvorson
Jonathan Ichikawa
Monte Johnson
Michelle Kosch
Øystein Linnebo
Paul Livingston
Brandon Look
Manolo Martínez
Matthew McGrath
Michiru Nagatsu
Susana Nuccetelli
Giuseppe Primiero
Jack Alan Reynolds
Darrell P. Rowbottom
Aleksandra Samonek
Constantine Sandis
Howard Sankey
Jonathan Schaffer
Thomas Senor
Daniel Star
Jussi Suikkanen
Aness Kim Webster
Other editors
Contact us
Learn more about PhilPapers
Home |New books and articles |Bibliographies |Philosophy journals |About PhilPapers |API |Contact us |Code of conduct
PhilPapers logo byAndrea Andrews andMeghan Driscoll.
This site uses cookies and Google Analytics (see ourterms & conditions for details regarding the privacy implications).Use of this site is subject toterms & conditions.
All rights reserved byThe PhilPapers Foundation
Server: philpapers-web-5b9ff6f457-cbsf4 uwo