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SCIENCE STUDIES EVENTS
HOW TO BE AN EMPIRICIST Otávio Bueno Department of Philosophy University of South Carolina November 21, 2002 Thursday, 12:30pm Preston Seminar Room There are two important questions about empiricism: (1) What exactly is empiricism? (2) How to be an empiricist? In this paper, I argue that the most natural answer to the first question (by identifying empiricism with the claim that experience is the only legitimate source of information about the world) makes it impossible to answer the second question. However, by answering the second question first, we obtain a radically different way of conceptualizing empiricism, and a very different way of answering the first question. This change in perspective leads to a different appreciation of the empiricist tradition (a tradition that includes both philosophers and scientists, from Hume through Mach and Carnap to Bohr, Heisenberg and von Neumann). I then discuss how this way of conceptualizing empiricism connects with recent work by Bas van Fraassen on the empirical stance, and I respond to a challenge that has been recently raised against van Fraassen's perspective. This talk is also part of the Philosophy Department's Research Seminar Series. |
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Last updated 4/8/08 10:33 PM
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