more on this theme | more from this text
Full Idea
To 'accept' a theory is not to believe it, but is instead to believe it to be empirically adequate.
Gist of Idea
To 'accept' a theory is not to believe it, but to believe it empirically adequate
Source
report of Bas C. van Fraassen (The Scientific Image [1980]) by Alexander Bird - Philosophy of Science Ch.4
Book Ref
Bird,Alexander: 'Philosophy of Science' [UCL Press 2000], p.143
A Reaction
The second half of this doesn't avoid the word 'belief'. Nevertheless the suggestion is that we never believe (i.e. commit to truth) ever again. So you avoid an on-coming bus because the threat appears to be 'empirically adequate'. Hm.
| 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] |