More recently, Bas has taken up the trapeze with his characteristic enthusiasm. His personal webpage contains a photo of him, flying across the page with the greatest of ease.
Bas van Fraassen has been one of the most distinguished, most original, and most colorful members of the profession and of the department. He leaves behind a gap impossible to fill. Princeton University. Annual Emeriti Booklet Excerpt:. Bastiaan Cornelius van Fraassen Book.
Skip to main content. Closer to Truth Closer to Truth. Home Topics Cosmos. Search Closer to Truth. Via Social. Create new account Request new password. Contributor Bas C. Biography Bas C. Featured Bas C. See Section 3. Observability can still serve as a useful concept in the philosophy of science, as long as there are clear cases of observability and clear cases of unobservability.
It is important to clarify that, as a constructive empiricist would use the terminology, one only observes something when the observation is unaided.
One does not see cells through a microscope; instead one sees an image, an image which the scientific gnostic understands one way but the scientific agnostic understands a different way.
Since what counts as observable is relative to what epistemic community the observer is part of, and since the members of that epistemic community are the subject of scientific theory, the constructive empiricist takes what counts as observable as the subject of scientific theory and not something that can be determined a priori van Fraassen , 56— Science itself, then, is ultimately the arbiter of what counts as observable.
For worries about circularity in the use of accepted scientific theory to determine which parts of the world are observable and hence to determine which theories of science are empirically adequate and thereby candidates for acceptance , see Section 3.
Acceptance has both an epistemic and a pragmatic component. When one accepts a theory, one has a belief, and also a commitment. The belief is that the theory is empirically adequate. According to the constructive empiricist, this commitment is made at least in part on pragmatic grounds: there is an important role for non-epistemic values in theory choice van Fraassen , For the constructive empiricist, acceptance comes in degrees.
This can influence how one engages in discourse in the domain of the theory:. When one looks at scientific discourse, this is what scientists are often doing: they treat a theory as if they fully believe it, and answer questions and give explanations using the resources of the theory.
The constructive empiricist can account for this behavior, without attributing full belief in the theory to the scientists, by describing the scientists as merely accepting, without fully believing, the theories they develop van Fraassen , 81— The constructive empiricist can acknowledge that scientific realists also recognize that there is a pragmatic dimension to theory acceptance.
Before turning to stronger arguments for constructive empiricism, it will be helpful to draw attention to a couple scientific anti-realist arguments that the constructive empiricist would be well-advised not to use in support of her view. First, consider the Argument from Underdetermination. The argument goes on to say that it follows that all the empirically equivalent theories are equally believable, and hence belief in the truth of any one of those empirically equivalent theories must be irrational.
While the constructive empiricist view is a view about the aims of science and not a normative theory in epistemology, the constructive empiricist is an individual who values the sort of epistemic modesty which might motivate one to harbor anti-realist sympathies in general. Such an attitude might seem the natural epistemic one for the constructive empiricist to hold, insofar as the constructive empiricist is impressed by the cognitive limits that prevent us from having conclusive evidence in favor of any one particular theory.
One reason the constructive empiricist would be well-advised not to embrace the Argument from Underdetermination, then, is that it goes against a voluntarist position in epistemology. This point is clearly made by Van Dyck , 19—22, and agreed to by van Fraassen , The relatively permissive epistemological view of a constructive empiricist who is also an epistemic voluntarist helps explain why such a constructive empiricist would be prudent not to take constructive empiricism to be a normative theory concerning the deliverances of science.
Such a constraint on the rationality of opinion is clearly at odds with any epistemic voluntarism the constructive empiricist might embrace. Gideon Rosen , — gives another reason that the constructive empiricist ought not accept underdetermination arguments as grounds for constructive empiricism. Consider the following two hypotheses:. So by an underdetermination-style argument, one is not justified in believing either hypothesis. But belief in A is the belief the constructive empiricist contends is involved in theory acceptance.
The second scientific anti-realist argument a person would be well-advised not to use in support of constructive empiricism is the Pessimistic Induction Argument. This argument points out that scientific theories in the past have been shown to be false, so by induction, we should think that current theories are false, too.
If this argument is taken to have the conclusion that belief in our current theories is irrational, then, as above, the argument is incompatible with any voluntarism the constructive empiricist might embrace.
The argument is also incompatible with the view of a constructive empiricist who, in the skeptical spirit of anti-realist views in general, rejects reasoning based on a principle of induction.
So how might one argue for constructive empiricism? One argument for constructive empiricism hinges on the fact that belief in the empirical adequacy of a theory is less epistemically audacious than belief in the truth of the theory. Both beliefs, of course, go beyond the evidence:. So why is belief that a theory is empirically adequate preferable to the belief that the theory is true? Van Fraassen famously and pithily puts the point as follows:. The constructive empiricist rejects arguments that suggest that one is rationally obligated to believe in the truth of a theory, given that one believes in the empirical adequacy of the theory.
For this epistemological argument to work, the distinction between empirical adequacy and truth has to be well-founded. A significant part of The Scientific Image is devoted to that task. As described in Section 1. One might reasonably think of belief in the empirical adequacy of accepted theories as the weakest attitude one can attribute to scientists at the same time that one is still able to make sense of their scientific activity.
At the same time, belief in the empirical adequacy of a theory is sufficiently cautious as to allow the believer to remain faithful to the spirit of empiricism. Thus, constructive empiricism is a view which allows one to regard the activity of science as activity the empiricist can safely endorse. One worry for the constructive empiricist is that theory acceptance can be had under conditions that do not require belief in the empirical adequacy of the accepted theories.
As Healey points out, scientists appreciate that many of our best scientific theories are not able properly to account for all the observable phenomena they are meant to account for; the theories are not, in fact, entirely empirically adequate. Scientists nevertheless accept those theories: they treat them as working hypotheses to use in the undertaking of their work, and as van Fraassen , 88, suggests the scientists are committed to confronting new empirical phenomena in the framework those theories offer.
One initial response the constructive empiricist might offer to this challenge is the following: if the scientists truly believe the theories to be empirically inadequate, they are not actually accepting the theories, after all. The constructive empiricist can allow that a scientist mostly accepts a theory, insofar as:. The satisfaction of 1 and 2 suffice for the scientist to accept the theory to a high degree, even if the scientist does not accept the theory in a categorical, unqualified way.
As van Fraassen himself acknowledges, it is only un qualified acceptance of a theory that involves the belief that the theory is empirically adequate , The reality is more subtle—the acceptance is almost always a qualified one. The constructive empiricist can be understood as giving two arguments for this claim; the first argument will be presented here, and the second argument will be presented in the next subsection. Constructive empiricists might maintain that, for working scientists, the real importance of scientific theories is that they are a factor in experimental design.
They contrast this with the traditional picture presented by philosophy of science. According to the traditional picture, the main goal of scientific practice is to discern the fundamental structure of the world, and experimentation simply is used to determine whether theories should be taken to be true, and hence as contributing to our knowledge of the fundamental structure. The constructive empiricist, in contrast, suggests that the reason a scientist turns to a theory is that experimental design is difficult, and theories are needed to guide experimental inquiry.
Scientific realists take this experiment to be making a discovery about the nature of the unobservable entities known as electrons. In doing the experiment, Millikan was discovering a regularity in the observable part of the world, and was providing a value for a quantity in atomic theory. Millikan need not be understood as discovering something about the nature of unobservable objects in the world.
Another way in which, according to the constructive empiricist, constructive empiricism makes better sense of science than realism does has to do with theory choice. Some virtues that scientists see in theories are pragmatic virtues, not epistemic virtues. This shows that scientists are choosing between theories using criteria other than truth.
Some scientific realists might hold that some of these are epistemic virtues, not pragmatic virtues. With regard to simplicity, the constructive empiricist can recognize that scientific realists sometimes hold that simpler theories are more likely to be true, but at the same time the constructive empiricist can contend that.
With regard to explanation, constructive empiricists recognize that scientific realists typically attach an objective validity to requests for explanation van Fraassen , 13 , but constructive empiricists do not grant that objective validity. Constructive empiricists recognize that these pragmatic factors like simplicity and explanatory power are important guides in the pursuit of the aim of science van Fraassen , But they insist that these factors are valuable in that pursuit only insofar as their consideration advances the development of theories that are empirically adequate and empirically strong.
The factors do not have special value as indicators of the truth of what the theories say about the unobservable parts of the world. Scientific realists, by contrast, sometimes say that they believe in the truth of scientific theories because the theories provide a satisfying explanation of the observable phenomena, an explanation that unifies what would otherwise be disparate observations. On Representing Evidence. Values, Choices, and Epistemic Stances. Back Matter Pages Editors and affiliations.
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