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CHAIR'S STATEMENT FACULTY GRADUATE STUDENTS COLLOQUIUM CALENDAR UNDERGRADUATE PROGRAM GRADUATE PROGRAM GRADUATE PLACEMENT MASTER SCHEDULE UNDERGRADUATE BULLETIN GRADUATE BULLETIN ACADEMIC CALENDARS USC LIBRARIES CAS COMPUTING & IT USC COMPUTER SERVICES ABOUT COLUMBIA SC RESTRICTED ACCESS: Faculty | Graduate Students Search USC   THIS SITE		COLLOQUIA & CONFERENCES WHAT IS SO SPECIAL ABOUT OBSERVATION?   Otávio Bueno Department of Philosophy University of South Carolina   December 2, 2005 Friday, 4:00pm-6:00pm Nursing, Room 127   Two major problems have challenged empiricist views in the philosophy of science from Carnap through Quine to van Fraassen: the problem of finding a principled way of distinguishing observable and unobservable entities, and of explaining what is epistemically special about observation. In this paper, I argue that, by articulating further the notion of thick epistemic access (Azzouni [2004]), it's possible to (i) provide a distinction between the observable and the unobservable, (ii) explain what is special about observation, while (iii) avoiding the familiar charges that previous attempts at drawing the observable/unobservable distinction have faced. In this way, what is offered here is a first step toward an empiricist account of observation.
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