Linguistique de l’écrit

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Consilience and natural kind reasoning

William Harper

pp. 115-152

Résumé

In his ongoing debate with Clark Glymour and other scientific realists, Bas van Fraassen (e.g. 1983 pp. 165–168, 1985 p. 247 pp. 280–281 pp. 294–295) has often appealed to a widely accepted doctrine that strength and security are conflicting virtues which must be traded off one against the other. In limiting his commitment to only the empirical adequacy of a theory van Fraassen claims to be simply more cautious than his realist opponents. Certainly, as he delights in pointing out, a theory T cannot be more probable than its empirical consequences E. For Probability is monotone with respect to entailment, so P(T)P(E) if T entails E. If security is measured by any function which, like probability, is monotone with entailment, then it would seem that the kind of trade-off between strength and security van Fraassen appeals to is unavoidable.1

Détails de la publication

Publié dans:

Brown James Robert, Mittelstrass Jürgen (1989) An intimate relation: studies in the history and philosophy of science presented to Robert E. Butts on his 60th birthday. Dordrecht, Springer.

Pages: 115-152

DOI: 10.1007/978-94-009-2327-0_7

Citation complète:

Harper William, 1989, Consilience and natural kind reasoning. In J. Brown & J. Mittelstrass (eds.) An intimate relation (115-152). Dordrecht, Springer.