Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-fbnjt Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-15T01:34:31.809Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Conventionalism, Truth, and Cosmological Furniture

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

J. O. Wisdom
J. O. Wisdom*
Affiliation:
York University
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

The problem to be discussed here concerns ontology so far as it may not be formed by scientific theory. In brief terms, the problem arises in the following way. On the one hand, the world surely consists of whatever is there, irrespective of whether human beings are around or not, and irrespective especially of whether human beings have constructed any scientific theories depicting the nature of the world; on the other hand, scientific theories are subject to the limitation that we can never verify them or prove them to be true, so that the ontology prescribed by scientific theory is not firmly established but is only what is attributed to the world by a fallible scientific theory at any given time. The problem could also be put in terms of ‘conceptual networks’ or in terms of language-systems.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 4 , Issue 3 , March 1975 , pp. 441 - 457
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 1975

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Agassi, J. (1966). “Sensationalism.” Mind, LXXV.10.1093/mind/LXXV.297.1CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Feyerabend, P. (1962). “Explanation, Reduction and Empiricism.” Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science. Vol. III. Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Grünbaum, Adolf (1966). “The Falsifiability of a Component of a Theoretical System.” Mind, Matter and Method. Edited by Feyerabend, P. and Maxwell, G.. Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Grünbaum, Adolf (1969). “Can We Ascertain the Falsity of a Scientific Hypothesis?” Studium Generale, XXII, 1061-1093.Google Scholar
Jarvie, I. (1964). The Revolution In Anthropology. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Körner, S. (1964). “Deductive Unification and Idealisation.” British journal of Philosophical Science, XIV.10.1093/bjps/XIV.56.274CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kuhn, T. S. (1962). The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Lakatos, I. (1968). “Criticism and the Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes.” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, LXVIII.Google Scholar
Lakatos, I. (1970a). “Changes in the Problem of Inductive Logic.” London Colloquium on the Philosophy of Science. Vol. III. Amsterdam: North-Holland.Google Scholar
Lakatos, I. (1970b). “History and Its Rational· Reconstructions.” Philosophy of Science Association, Boston, October, 1970.Google Scholar
Nowell-Smith, P. (1971a). “Cultural Relativism.” Philosophy of the Social Sciences, I.Google Scholar
Nowell-Smith, P. (1971b). “What Actually Happened.” Lindlay Lecture, University of Kansas.Google Scholar
Poincaré, H. (1952). Science and Hypothesis. New York: Dover.Google Scholar
Poincaré, H. (1958). The Value of Science. Part 3. New York: Dover.Google Scholar
Popper, K. R. (1959). The Logic of Scientific Discovery. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Quine, W. V. (1969). Ontological Relativity and Other Essays. New York: Columbia University Press, p. 50.10.7312/quin92204CrossRefGoogle Scholar
A., Tarski (1956). “The Concept of Truth in Formalized Languages.” Logic, Semantics, Metamathematics. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Wisdom, J. O. (1970). “Observations as the Building Blocks of Science in 20th Century Scientific Thought.” Philosophy of Science Association, Boston, October 23, 1970. Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science. Vol. VIII. Dordrecht: Reidel, 1972.Google Scholar
Wisdom, J. O. (1971). “Four Contemporary Interpretations of the Nature of Science.“ Foundations of Physics, I.Google Scholar
Wisdom, J. O. (1974). “The Incommensurability Thesis.” Philosophical Studies, XXV, 299–301.10.1007/BF00375719CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wittgenstein, L. (1921). Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. London: Routledge.Google Scholar