Hostname: page-component-6d856f89d9-4thr5 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-16T06:22:41.914Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Acceptance Without Belief

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 January 2023

Patrick Maher
Patrick Maher*
Affiliation:
University of Illinois—Urbana-Champaign
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Bas van Fraassen (1980) maintained that acceptance of a scientific theory does not involve belief that the theory is true, though it does involve belief that the theory is empirically adequate. This provoked a large literature attempting to refute van Fraassen’s position. For the most part, the critics attempted to show that van Fraassen’s position violates principles of inductive inference, or of rationality.2 Such criticisms do not question the possibility of conforming to van Fraassen’s conception of science; they merely argue that there is good reason not to do so.

But some of van Fraassen’s critics have taken a different tack. Simon Blackburn (1984, p. 223) has remarked, and Sam Mitchell (1988) and Paul Horwich (forthcoming) have argued, that acceptance of a theory, as understood by van Fraassen, is the same as believing the theory to be true. If this is right, then what van Fraassen is advocating is a logically contradictory position, and thus one to which it is impossible to conform.

Type
Part VII. Realism
Information
PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association , Volume 1990 , Issue 1: Volume One: Contributed Papers 1990 , 1990 , pp. 380 - 392
Copyright
Copyright © Philosophy of Science Association 1990

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.)

Footnotes

1

This paper was written while I was a fellow in the Michigan Society of Fellows. I have profited from comments by Janette Maher and the anonymous referee.

References

Blackburn, S. (1984), Spreading the Word. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Cavendish, H. (1879), The Electrical Researches of the Honorable Henry Cavendish, edited by Clerk Maxwell, J. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Churchland, P.M. and Hooker, C.A. (eds.) (1985), Images of Science. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Dorling, J. (1972), “Bayesianism and the Rationality of Scientific Inference”, British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 23: 181–190.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Giere, R.M. (1983), “Testing Theoretical Hypotheses”, in Earman, John (ed.), Testing Scientific Theories. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, pp. 269–298.Google Scholar
Horwich, P. (forthcoming), “On the Nature and Norms of Theoretical Commitment”, Philosophy of Science.Google Scholar
Laudan, L. (1977), Progress and Its Problems. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Leplin, J. (ed.) (1984), Scientific Realism. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Leplin, J. (1987), “Surrealism”, Mind 97: 519–524.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mitchell, S. (1988), “Constructive Empiricism and Anti-Realism”, PSA 1988 vol. 1: 174–180.Google Scholar
Newton-Smith, W. H. (1981), The Rationality of Science. Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ramsey, F. P. (1926), “Truth and Probability”, in Ramsey, F. P., Foundations, edited by Mellor, D.H.. Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Humanities Press, pp. 58–100.Google Scholar
Savage, L.J. (1954), The Foundations of Statistics. New York: John Wiley. Second edition, Dover 1972.Google Scholar
Shimony, A. (1970), “Scientific Inference”, in Colodny, Robert (ed.), The Nature and Function of Scientific Theories. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, pp. 79–172.Google Scholar
Thagard, P.R. (1988), Computational Philosophy of Science. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
van Fraassen, B.C. (1980), The Scientific Image. New York: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
van Fraassen, B.C. (1985), “Empiricism in the Philosophy of Science”, in Churchland, Paul M. and Hooker, Clifford A. (eds.), Images of Science. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, pp. 245–308.Google Scholar
van Fraassen, B.C. (1989), Laws and Symmetries. New York: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar