The empirical stance / Bas C. van Fraassen.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Van Fraassen, Bas C., 1941-

Series:

Terry lectures.

The Terry lectures

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Empiricism.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (304 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

New Haven, CT : Yale University Press, c2002.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

What is empiricism and what could it be? Bas C. van Fraassen, one of the world's foremost contributors to philosophical logic and the philosophy of science, here undertakes a fresh consideration of these questions and offers a program for renewal of the empiricist tradition. The empiricist tradition is not and could not be defined by common doctrines, but embodies a certain stance in philosophy, van Fraassen says. This stance is displayed first of all in a searing, recurrent critique of metaphysics, and second in a focus on experience that requires a voluntarist view of belief and opinion. Van Fraassen focuses on the philosophical problems of scientific and conceptual revolutions and on the not unrelated ruptures between religious and secular ways of seeing or conceiving of ourselves. He explores what it is to be or not be secular and points the way toward a new relationship between secularism and science within philosophy.

Contents:

Front matter

Contents

Preface

Introduction

Lecture 1. Against Analytic Metaphysics

Lecture 2. What Is Empiricism and What Could It Be?

Lecture 3. Scientific Revolution/Conversion as a Philosophical Problem

Lecture 4. Experience: (Epistemic) Life Without Foundations

Lecture 5. What Is Science-and What Is It to Be Secular?

Appendix A. Scientific Cosmology

Appendix B. A History of the Name ''Empiricism''

Appendix C. Bultmann's Theology Is Not a Philosophy

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Includes bibliographical references (p. [261]-273) and index.

ISBN:

9786611729868

9781281729866

1281729868

9780300127966

0300127960

OCLC:

648180095