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Microscopes and the Theory-Ladenness of Experience in Bas van Fraassen’s Recent Work

  • Special Section Article: Theory-Ladenness
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Abstract

Bas van Fraassen’s recent book Scientific Representation: Paradoxes of Perspective (2008) modifies and refines the “constructive empiricism” of The Scientific Image (1980) in a number of ways. This paper investigates the changes concerning one of the most controversial aspects of the overall position, that is, van Fraassen’s agnosticism concerning the veridicality of microscopic observation. The paper tries to make plausible that the new formulation of this agnosticism is an advance over the older rendering. The central part of this investigation is an attempt to answer Marc Alspector-Kelly’s 2004-criticism of an early (2001) version of van Fraassen’s new position. Alspector-Kelly’s contribution it is to date the most extensive attack on van Fraassen’s twenty-first-century work on the topic of microscopic observation. One of the central ideas emerging from the present discussion is a link between the debate over the veridicality of microscopic observation and the issue of the theory-ladenness of experience.

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Notes

  1. For an important assessment of the new theme of voluntarism, see Dicken (2010).

  2. It was criticized in considerable depth by Resnik (1994).

  3. I am grateful to one of my referees for urging me to explicitly address this criticism.

  4. Here I follow one of my referees' reconstruction of Alspector-Kelly’s argument.

  5. Alspector-Kelly's fourth argument has some similarities with Paul Churchland's argument that there could be aliens with electromicroscopes for eyes. But the former is not open to van Fraassen’s response that “observe” varies with communities. Cf. Churchland (1985)—I am grateful to Paul Dicken for suggesting the parallel, and to a referee for preventing me from taking it too far.

  6. Paul Dicken has suggested to me that the theory-ladenness of phenomenology also fits well with van Frassen's voluntarism. One's epistemic stance does not only come with its own meta-philoso-phical standards, it also comes with its own phenomenology.

  7. For criticisms and suggestions I am grateful to the participants of the Düsseldorf workshop, especially Gerhard Schurz and Ioannis Votsis. Paul Dicken read the paper and made a number of very useful suggestions. Special thanks are due to two referees who forced me to rethink almost every second paragraph of a first version of this paper. Work on this paper was supported by ERC Grant 339382 ("The Emergence of Relativism").

References

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Kusch, M. Microscopes and the Theory-Ladenness of Experience in Bas van Fraassen’s Recent Work . J Gen Philos Sci 46, 167–182 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10838-015-9287-7

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