This essay examines the perspective from which Bas van Fraassen, in his book, The Empirical Stance, explains the project of empiricism. I argue that this perspective is a robustly transcendental perspective, which suggests that the tradition of empiricism lacks the resources to explain itself. I offer an alternative history of epistemic voluntarism in twentieth-century philosophy to the history van Fraassen himself provides, one that finds the novelty in van Fraassen's own views to be precisely his reintroduction of the knowing mind (...) into the tradition of analytic philosophy of science. (shrink)

The relationship between Peircean abduction and the modern notion of Inference to the Best Explanation is a matter of dispute. Some philosophers, such as Harman :88–95, 1965) and Lipton, claim that abduction and IBE are virtually the same. Others, however, hold that they are quite different :503, 1998; Minnameier in Erkenntnis 60:75–105, 2004) and there is no link between them :419–442, 2009). In this paper, I argue that neither of these views is correct. I show that abduction and IBE have (...) important similarities as well as differences. Moreover, by bringing a historical perspective to the study of the relationship between abduction and IBE—a perspective that is lacking in the literature—I show that their differences can be well understood in terms of two historic developments in the history of philosophy of science: first, Reichenbach’s distinction between the context of discovery and the context of justification—and the consequent jettisoning of the context of discovery from philosophy of science—and second, underdetermination of theory by data. (shrink)

Our main goal in this paper is to present and scrutinize Reichenbach’s own naturalism in our contemporary context, with special attention to competing versions of the concept. By exploring the idea of Reichenbach’s naturalism, we will argue that he defended a liberating, therapeutic form of naturalism, meaning that he took scientific philosophy to be a possible cure for bad old habits and traditional ways of philosophy. For Reichenbach, naturalistic scientific philosophy was a well-established form of liberation. We do not intend (...) to suggest that Reichenbach acted as an inventor of naturalism; nonetheless, invoking the term and the idea of ‘naturalism’ is more than a simple rhetorical strategy for rehabilitating Reichenbach as a forerunner of this field. We think that his ideas can make a valuable contribution to contemporary debates, and that he presents an interesting case among the other scientifically oriented proponents of his time. After presenting a short reconstruction of the meaning of naturalism—or, more appropriately, naturalisms—in order to be able to correctly situate Reichenbach within his own as well as a systematic context, we discuss Reichenbach’s naturalism against the background of his scientific philosophy, his views on the relation of common-sense knowledge to science, and his efforts at popularization. To delve deeper into this topic, we present a case study to show how Reichenbach argued that in both scientific and philosophical discussions, it is necessary to move from the request and value of truth to probability. And, finally, we argue that the liberation of knowledge and nature was a socio-political program for Reichenbach, who talked about his own scientific philosophy as “a crusade.” By emphasizing this aspect of Reichenbach’s naturalism, we may be in a better position to situate him in the history of analytic philosophy in general, and in the yet-to-be-written narrative of the naturalistic movement in particular. (shrink)