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Full Idea
The specter that faces us is that we may end up having explained all that is dreamt of in our philosophies by intricately crafted postulates that are false.
Gist of Idea
We may end up with a huge theory of carefully constructed falsehoods
Source
Bas C. van Fraassen (The Empirical Stance [2002], 1.5)
Book Ref
Fraassen,Bas van: 'The Empirical Stance' [Yale 2002], p.16
A Reaction
This is more persuasive that Idea 12769. People who cannot bear to live with a total absence of explanation (with Keats's 'negative capability') are most in danger from this threat.
Related Idea
Idea 12769 Inference to best explanation contains all sorts of hidden values [Fraassen]
| 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] |