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Logical Reconstruction, Realism and Pure Semiotic

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2022

Herbert Feigl*
Affiliation:
University of Minnesota

Extract

In this rejoinder to the critical comments elicited by my essay “Existential Hypotheses,” I propose to deal first with the challenge coming from the avowedly different philosophical outlook of Professor Churchman. My other critics, Professors Frank, Hempel, Nagel and Ramsperger, on the whole, share my basic conception of the tasks of philosophy of science and epistemology, even if they dissent in one important respect or another from the special solution I suggested. But since I discern even in Professor Nagel's remarks (and possibly also between the lines of Professor Ramsperger's comments) a pragmatist or instrumentalist strain akin to the major contentions of Professor Churchman, it will be well to begin with a defense and further clarification of my underlying point of view. Only after this restatement of my platform will I undertake to defend semantic realism against the specific criticisms advanced by the last four authors.

Type
Symposium on “Existential Hypotheses”
Copyright
Copyright © Philosophy of Science Association 1950

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References

1 Cf. H. Reichenbach, Experience and Prediction (§1) for a clear statement of this difference.

2 A. C. Benjamin, An Introduction to the Philosophy of Science, Macmillan, 1937, New York:esp. pp. 131–134.

3 Entitled “De Principiis non est disputandum —?” forthcoming in Essays in Analytic Philosophy, ed. by M. Black, Cornell University Press, 1950.

4 Contained in Gesammelte Aufsätze, Gerold, Vienna, 1938.

5 Similar cases in point are: the outcome of the von Laue and Bragg X-ray diffraction patterns revealing the atomic structure of crystals; the cloud chamber tracks and Geiger counter indications in many other experiments; the Stern-Gerlach results on the magnetic moments of atoms; and countless other results in recent experimental atomic and nuclear physics.—Genetics and bacteriology furnish analogous illustrations.