Abstract

This position is not confined to the philosophical pragmatists of yore. More recent methodologists of science have reacted to Rudolf Carnap’s thesis that science can dispense with accepting hypotheses as true by maintaining that scientists do accept hypotheses, albeit on practical rather than theoretical grounds. On the position adopted by this school of thought, "accepting a hypothesis as true" is to be reinterpreted to amount to "acting or being disposed to act in the manner which would be best relative to a given objective." Accordingly, such theorists propose in effect to reconstrue acceptability-as-true in terms of successful action.