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Full Idea
Both rationalists (who start with a priori truths and make deductions) and empiricists (starting with indubitable sense data and what follows) would guarantee truth, but neither even begins to account for scientific knowledge.
Gist of Idea
Neither a priori rationalism nor sense data empiricism account for scientific knowledge
Source
Paul Thagard (Coherence: The Price is Right [2012], p.46)
Book Ref
-: 'Southern Journal of Philosophy' [-], p.46
A Reaction
Thagard's answer, and mine, is inference to the best explanation, but goes beyond both the a priori truths and the perceptions.
| 17596 | Coherence problems have positive and negative restraints; solutions maximise constraint satisfaction [Thagard] |
| 17597 | Coherence is explanatory, deductive, conceptual, analogical, perceptual, and deliberative [Thagard] |
| 17598 | Explanatory coherence needs symmetry,explanation,analogy,data priority, contradiction,competition,acceptance [Thagard] |
| 17600 | Bayesian inference is forced to rely on approximations [Thagard] |
| 17599 | The best theory has the highest subjective (Bayesian) probability? [Thagard] |
| 17602 | Verisimilitude comes from including more phenomena, and revealing what underlies [Thagard] |
| 17601 | Neither a priori rationalism nor sense data empiricism account for scientific knowledge [Thagard] |
| 17064 | 1: Coherence is a symmetrical relation between two propositions [Thagard, by Smart] |
| 17065 | 2: An explanation must wholly cohere internally, and with the new fact [Thagard, by Smart] |
| 17066 | 3: If an analogous pair explain another analogous pair, then they all cohere [Thagard, by Smart] |
| 17067 | 4: For coherence, observation reports have a degree of intrinsic acceptability [Thagard, by Smart] |
| 17068 | 5: Contradictory propositions incohere [Thagard, by Smart] |
| 17069 | 6: A proposition's acceptability depends on its coherence with a system [Thagard, by Smart] |