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Conventionalism, Truth, and Cosmological Furniture

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

J. O. Wisdom
J. O. Wisdom*
Affiliation:
York University
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Extract

The problem to be discussed here concerns ontology so far as it may not be formed by scientific theory. In brief terms, the problem arises in the following way. On the one hand, the world surely consists of whatever is there, irrespective of whether human beings are around or not, and irrespective especially of whether human beings have constructed any scientific theories depicting the nature of the world; on the other hand, scientific theories are subject to the limitation that we can never verify them or prove them to be true, so that the ontology prescribed by scientific theory is not firmly established but is only what is attributed to the world by a fallible scientific theory at any given time. The problem could also be put in terms of ‘conceptual networks’ or in terms of language-systems.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 4 , Issue 3 , March 1975 , pp. 441 - 457
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 1975

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