Yale University Press eBooks· 2017· Book chapter
The Empirical Stance
- 370citations
- 2017year
Short summary
Empiricism is best understood not by fixed doctrines but as a philosophical stance characterized by critique of metaphysics and a focus on experience, requiring a voluntarist view of belief.
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Key points
- Empiricism is defined by a philosophical stance, not by common doctrines.
- This stance involves a critique of metaphysics.
- It emphasizes experience and requires a voluntarist view of belief.
- The stance is relevant to understanding scientific revolutions and secularism.
AI-generated from the title and abstract; the full text is not read.
Abstract
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.
The authors' abstract, as published at the source. Yale University Press eBooks, 2017 · DOI ↗
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Field: History and Philosophy of Science
History and Philosophy of ScienceArts and Humanities