Neo-Pyrrhonism, Empiricism, and Scientific Activity

Pyrrhonism involves the inability to defend claims about the unobservable world, or, more generally, about what is really going on beyond the phenomena (SEXTUS EMPIRICUS, 1994). As a result, the Pyrrhonist is not engaged in developing a philosophical doctrine, at least in the sense of defending a view about the underlying features of reality. The issue then arises as to whether the Pyrrhonist also has something positive to say about our knowledge of the world, while still keeping Pyrrhonism. In this paper, I develop a positive neo-Pyrrhonist attitude, indicating that we can use this attitude to make sense of important aspects of science and empirical knowledge. To do that, I explore the connection between this revived form of Pyrrhonism and contemporary versions of empiricism, in particular constructive empiricism (VAN FRAASSEN, 1980, 1989, 2002, 2008). Although constructive empiricism is not a form of skepticism, there are important elements in common between constructive empiricism and Pyrrhonism. The resulting form of Pyrrhonism suggests that there is something right about the original stance articulated by Sextus Empiricus, and that suitably formulated it provides an insightful approach to think about empirical knowledge (PORCHAT PEREIRA, 2006, for the original inspiration behind neoPyrrhonism).

A Filosofia da Ciência de Bas van Fraassen e o Seu Voluntarismo Epistêmico, de Kathleen Okruhlik

Resumo: A visão antirrealista acerca da ciência de Bas van Fraassen desempenhou um papel determinante no desenvolvimento da filosofia da ciência recente. Particularmente, seu empirismo construtivo tem sido amplamente discutido e criticado, nas revistas especializadas, e constitui um tópico comumente abordado nos programas das disciplinas de filosofia da ciência. Outros aspectos do empirismo de van Fraassen são menos conhecidos. Entre eles, sua abordagem empirista às leis científicas, sua reavaliação, relativamente recente, do que significa ser um empirista e seu estruturalismo empirista. O presente estudo visa a oferecer uma panorâmica desses diferentes aspectos do empirismo de van Fraassen e mostrar como estão relacionados entre si. Detém-se, ainda, sobre a natureza do voluntarismo epistêmico de van Fraassen e seu nexo com a filosofia da ciência empirista desse autor.

The object of inquiry and organization studies

This essay argues for reinforcing the empirical stance within organization studies by more systematically presuming non-organization. The empirical stance within organization studies thereby comes to revolve around organization as a claim made in empirical inquiries. The presumption of non-organization takes the legal principle of presumption of innocence as its paradigm. It works by placing the burden of proof on the empirical inquiries to establish, beyond a reasonable doubt, that what is inquired into is an instance of organization (where organization may be understood in terms of organizing, organization of something, formal organization etc.). Organization scholars may assume organization — and often for good reasons— when making a restaurant, a market, or something else object of inquiry. However, adopting the presumption of non-organization requires organization studies to make explicit what is understood by organization as well as what findings are mobilized to establish the claim that organization, in the sense subscribed to, is found. Hereby the presumption of non-organization reinforces the empirical stance as ‘a recurrent rebellion against the metaphysicians’ (van Fraassen). Metaphysics is not cancelled out by empirical inquiry, but it may be part and parcel of assumptions that inform empirical inquiry, and the presumption of non-organization calls for a recurrent test of such assumptions.

Getting Emotional: Wittgenstein, van Fraassen, and Making Sense of Revolution

This paper aims to demonstrate the fecundity of pairing specific insights from On Certainty with research in the philosophy and history of the natural sciences. To do so, it discusses one set of related themes in the work that focus on the possibility of and nature of revolutionary change. Specifically, I argue that several of Wittgenstein’s rather gnomic remarks presage van Fraassen’s insistence on the need for decisions and emotions throughout scientific revolutions. Moreover, I argue that reading both together enriches each’s individual account and helps further make sense of why and how conversion is not just a ‘mad leap in the dark’.

Adequação empírica, linguagem e mundo em The Scientific Image

Neste ano de 2020, celebra-se o quadragésimo aniversário de The Scientific Image, o seminal livro de Bas van Fraassen. Causa surpresa, depois de tanto tempo, ainda mais considerando o quanto a proposta desse autor foi debatida nestas quatro décadas, a publicação, no número de março da revista Metascience, de mais uma resenha da obra do fundador do empirismo construtivo. Em “Concluding unscientific image”, Hans Halvorson defende que nela não se propõe apenas uma defesa de uma perspectiva antirrealista acerca da ciência - e, ao mesmo tempo, uma crítica ao realismo científico -, mas se coloca também em discussão o próprio modo de fazer filosofia que, desde Quine, parecia dominar a filosofia analítica. O presente estudo pretende focar nas alegações de Halvorson acerca daquilo que a afirmação da adequação empírica de uma teoria comportaria - e que segundo ele, van Fraassen teria em mente - e mostrar que talvez não correspondam àquilo que van Fraassen realmente defende em seu livro.

How Ontic Structural Realism would Formalize Scientific Progress

This essay tries to make a tangential cut between the debate that seeks the most adequate definition of scientific progress (involving authors such as K. Popper, T Kuhn, A Bird or J Saatsi) and the debate on the viability of structural realism to be considered the best epistemological approach to the understanding of nature (B van Fraassen, J Ladyman, J Worrall, S Psillos...). Thus, we will first connect both debates by showing that they shared a common problem before their progressive distancing. Finally, we will outline a formulation of scientific progress inferred from the structural realism approach; in particular, our definition will be based on J. Ladyman’s proposal in Every Thing Must Go as we will emphasize that it also provides an answer to the aforementioned original problem. Our conclusion is that this formulation of scientific progress differs from the three main ones, namely, truthlikeness, problem-solving, and accumulation of knowledge. This fourth form is necessarily linked to a speculative approximation of reality. Moreover, we want to suggest that this fourth conception is articulated under the shadow of the ideas of CS Peirce. Keywords: structural realism, scientific progress, J Ladyman, speculative realism

Against Trivialism and Mere-Verbalism (and Toward a Better Understanding of the Kind of Non-Factualism Argued for in This Book)

Chapter 2 does two main things. First, it distinguishes the kinds of non-factualist views argued for in this book from two other kinds of anti-metaphysical views, namely, trivialist views and mere-verbalist views. Second, it argues that (a) mere-verbalist views are false, and given this, (b) trivialist views are metaphysically irrelevant in the sense that even if they’re true, they’re metaphysically uninteresting and unimportant. This is important for two different reasons. First, trivialist and mere-verbalist views have been extremely popular among philosophers—they’ve been endorsed by, e.g., Hume, Carnap, Putnam, Dennett, Parfit, van Fraassen, Chalmers, Hirsch, Thomasson, Sidelle, Schiffer, Rayo, and Sosa—and so it’s important to see how my non-factualist views differ from these more popular views. Second, the arguments that I construct for my non-factualist views later in the book depend on the arguments that I give in this chapter for the metaphysical irrelevance of trivialist views.

Scientific Realism

This chapter addresses scientific realism. After the heyday of empiricism in the interwar period and its immediate aftermath, many critical reactions to empiricism seemed to suggest scientific realism. It was widely agreed that scientific theories make references to things that cannot be directly observed (or at least seen), and thus emerged the issue of the status of non-observables. As scientific realism became increasingly dominant, new philosophical stances such as Bas C. van Fraassen’s constructive empiricism were often defined in opposition to it. Van Fraassen understands scientific realism as a claim that science aims to give us, in its theories, a literally true story of what the world is like; and acceptance of a scientific theory involves the belief that it is true. More in line with established forms of scientific realism, Ilkka Niiniluoto talks about verisimilitude, or truth-likeness. This concept is supposed to avoid the consequences of claiming to have access to the truth itself. The chapter then considers how the social sciences seem to pose difficulties for scientific realism.