On What Empiricism Cannot Be

Metaphilosophy 47 (2):181-198 (2016)
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Abstract

Bas C. van Fraassen, in his Terry Lectures at Yale University, is concerned to elucidate what empiricism is, and could be, given past and current failures of characterization. He contends that naïve empiricism—the metaphilosophical position that characterizes empiricism in terms of a thesis—is self-refuting, and he offers a reductio ad absurdum to substantiate this claim. Moreover, in place of naïve empiricism, van Fraassen endorses stance empiricism: the metaphilosophical position that characterizes empiricism in terms of certain attitudes and commitments. The present article, however, argues that van Fraassen begs the question in his reductio of naïve empiricism, and thus that his primary defense of stance empiricism is inadequate.

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Alexander Bozzo
University of Wisconsin, Stout

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References found in this work

Naming and Necessity.Saul Kripke - 1980 - Philosophy 56 (217):431-433.
Naming and Necessity.Saul Kripke - 1980 - Critica 17 (49):69-71.
The Empirical Stance.Bas C. Van Fraassen - 2002 - New York: Yale University Press.
An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth.Bertrand Russell - 1940 - Les Etudes Philosophiques 18 (2):233-233.

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