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Full Idea
The choice among theories in science may be a choice to accept in some sense falling far short of endorsement as true.
Gist of Idea
We accept many scientific theories without endorsing them as true
Source
Bas C. van Fraassen (The Empirical Stance [2002], 1.5)
Book Ref
Fraassen,Bas van: 'The Empirical Stance' [Yale 2002], p.14
A Reaction
When put like this, it is hard to deny the force of Van Fraassen's reservations about science. Lots of people, including me, use scientific theories as working assumptions for life, with nothing like full confidence in their truth.
| 12772 | Philosophy is a value- and attitude-driven enterprise [Fraassen] |
| 12771 | Is it likely that a successful, coherent, explanatory ontological hypothesis is true? [Fraassen] |
| 12770 | We may end up with a huge theory of carefully constructed falsehoods [Fraassen] |
| 12769 | Inference to best explanation contains all sorts of hidden values [Fraassen] |
| 12768 | We accept many scientific theories without endorsing them as true [Fraassen] |
| 12773 | Analytic philosophy has an exceptional arsenal of critical tools [Fraassen] |
| 13066 | An explanation is just descriptive information answering a particular question [Fraassen, by Salmon] |
| 6783 | To 'accept' a theory is not to believe it, but to believe it empirically adequate [Fraassen, by Bird] |
| 6784 | Why should the true explanation be one of the few we have actually thought of? [Fraassen, by Bird] |
| 14917 | To accept a scientific theory, we only need to believe that it is empirically adequate [Fraassen] |
| 14919 | Empiricists deny what is unobservable, and reject objective modality [Fraassen] |