Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-mlc7c Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-19T08:33:38.107Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Discussion: Professor Nagel on the Cognitive Status of Scientific Theories

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2022

Henry C. Byerly
Henry C. Byerly*
Affiliation:
University of Arizona
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

1. Introduction. Professor Nagel's account of the “cognitive status” of scientific theories has been attacked by P. K. Feyerabend [5] and M. B. Hesse [8] in terms of his alledgedly misguided distinction between experimental laws and theories. The difficulty lies, these critics agree, in Nagel's attempt to find a stable basis for scientific theories in an observational basis of experimental laws. Both Feyerabend and Hesse note the vacillation in Nagel's account of the stability of the meaning of experimental terms and in his discussion of the status of observational as opposed to theoretical terms. They find Nagel too “positivistic” and see as a first step toward a more adequate account of scientific theories the abandonment of the theoretical-observational dichotomy as having more than a pragmatic significance. Nagel's discussion of the theoretical-observational dichotomy is, I agree, inadequate in certain respects. I shall, however, suggest a quite different remedy from those of Feyerabend and Hesse, one that depends neither on a phenomenalistic reduction of theoretical entities nor on a blurring of the theoretical-observational dichotomy.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 35 , Issue 4 , December 1968 , pp. 412 - 423
Copyright
Copyright © Philosophy of Science Association 1968

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

[1] Bergmann, G., “Physics and Ontology,” Philosophy of Science, vol. 28, 1961, pp. 1–14. Reprinted in Logic and Reality, University of Wisconsin Press, Madison, 1964, pp. 108–123.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
[2] Bergmann, G., “Realistic Postscript,” in Logic and Reality, University of Wisconsin Press, Madison, 1964, pp. 302–340.Google Scholar
[3] Brodbeck, M., “Structure of Science” (review of Nagel [10]), Science, vol. 134, 1961, pp. 997–999.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
[4] Feyerabend, P. K., “An Attempt at a Realistic Interpretation of Experience,” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, vol. 58, 1958, pp. 144–151.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
[5] Feyerabend, P. K., Review of Nagel [10], British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, vol. 17, 1966, 237–249.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
[6] Goodstein, R. L., “Language and Experience,” in Constructive Formalism: Essays on the Foundations of Mathematics, University Press, Leicester, 1951.Google Scholar
[7] Hempel, C. G., Philosophy of Natural Science, Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1966.Google Scholar
[8] Hesse, M. B., Review of Nagel [10], Mind, vol. 72, 1963, pp. 429–441.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
[9] Maxwell, G., “The Ontological Status of Theoretical Entities,” in Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science, III, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 1962, pp. 3–27.Google Scholar
[10] Nagel, E., The Structure of Science: Problems in the Logic of Scientific Explanation, Harcourt, Brace and World, New York, 1961.CrossRefGoogle Scholar