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Getting to the Truth Through Conceptual Revolutions

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 January 2023

Kevin T. Kelly  and
Clark Glymour
Kevin T. Kelly
Affiliation:
Carnegie Mellon University
Clark Glymour
Affiliation:
Carnegie Mellon University
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Extract

[I]t would be absurd for us to hope that we can know more of any object than belongs to the possible experience of it or lay claim to the least knowledge of how anything not assumed to be an object of possible experience is determined according to the constitution that it has in itself.

* * *

It would be… a still greater absurdity if we conceded no things in themselves or declared our experience to be the only possible mode of knowing things….

[Kant, Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics]

A certain line of skepticism about normative epistemology has become more or less standard in contemporary philosophy of science. It runs like this.

Scientific method is a matter of choosing among theories on the basis of evidence.

But in “conceptual revolutions”, meaning, truth, and even what counts as observable can all be theory-relative.

Type
Part II. Discovery and Change
Information
PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association , Volume 1990 , Issue 1: Volume One: Contributed Papers 1990 , 1990 , pp. 89 - 96
Copyright
Copyright © Philosophy of Science Association 1990

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