Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-g7gxr Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-03T00:37:24.120Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Observations, Theories and the Evolution of the Human Spirit

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 2022

Jim Bogen  and
Jim Woodward
Jim Bogen*
Affiliation:
Philosophy Field Group Pitzer College
Jim Woodward*
Affiliation:
Division of the Humanities and Social Sciences California Institute of Technology
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Standard philosophical discussions of theory-ladeness assume that observational evidence consists of perceptual outputs (or reports of such outputs) that are sentential or propositional in structure. Theory-ladeness is conceptualized as having to do with logical or semantical relationships between such outputs or reports and background theories held by observers. Using the recent debate between Fodor and Churchland as a point of departure, we propose an alternative picture in which much of what serves as evidence in science is not perceptual outputs or reports of such outputs and is not sentential in structure.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 59 , Issue 4 , December 1992 , pp. 590 - 611
Copyright
Copyright © 1992 by the Philosophy of Science Association

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.)

Footnotes

†

We would like to thank Paul Churchland, Jerry Fodor, David Hilbert and especially Cliff Hooker for helpful comments and correspondence.

‡

Send reprint requests to the authors, Philosophy Field Group, Pitzer College, Claremont, CA 91711, USA.

References

Bogen, J. and Woodward, J. (1988), “Saving the Phenomena”, Philosophical Review 97: 303–352.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bogen, J. and Woodward, J. (forthcoming), “Evading the IRS”, in Cartwright, N. and Jones, M. (eds.), Varieties of Idealization. Holland: Rodopi Publishers.Google Scholar
Boring, E. (1950), A History of Experimental Psychology. 2d ed. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts.Google Scholar
Churchland, P. (1979), Scientific Realism and the Plasticity of Mind. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Churchland, P. (1988), “Perceptual Plasticity and Theoretical Neutrality: A Reply to Jerry Fodor”, Philosophy of Science 55: 167–187.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Churchland, P. (1989), A Neurocomputational Perspective: The Nature of Mind and the Structure of Science. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Conant, J. B. and Nash, L. K. (eds.) (1957), Harvard Case Histories in Experimental Science, vol. 1. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, pp. 65–116.Google Scholar
Feyerabend, P. (1969), “Science Without Experience”, Journal of Philosophy 56: 791–794.10.2307/2024369CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fodor, J. (1984), “Observation Reconsidered”, Philosophy of Science 51: 167–187.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fodor, J. (1988), “A Reply to Churchland's Perceptual Plasticity and Theoretical Neutrality”, Philosophy of Science 55: 188–198.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fodor, J. (1991), “The Dogma that Didn't Bark”, Mind 100: 201–220.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Galilei, G. ([1610] 1989), The Sidereal Messenger. Reprint. Translated by A. Van Helden. (Originally published as Sidereus Nuncius. Venice.) Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Galison, P. (1983), “How the First Neutral Current Experiments Ended”, Reviews of Modern Physics 55: 477–509.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Galison, P. (1985), “Bubble Chambers and the Experimental Workplace”, in Achinstein, P. and Hannaway, O. (eds.), Observation, Experiment and Hypothesis in Modern Physical Science. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, pp. 309–373.Google Scholar
Galison, P. (1987), How Experiments End. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Goldman, A. (1986), Epistemology and Cognition. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Gregory, R. (1981), Mind in Science: A History of Explanations in Psychology and Physics. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Holmes, F. L. (1985), Lavoisier and the Chemistry of Life: An Exploration of Scientific Creativity. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.Google Scholar
Hooker, C. (1987), A Realistic Theory of Science. Albany: State University of New York Press.Google Scholar
Laymon, R. (1983), “Newton's Demonstration of Universal Gravitation and Philosophical Theories of Confirmation”, in J. Earman (ed.), Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science. Vol. 10, Testing Scientific Theories. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, pp. 179–199.Google Scholar
Lynch, M. and Woolgar, S. (eds.) (1990), Representation in Scientific Practice. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Priestly, J. (1970), Experiments and Observations on Different Kinds of Air and Other Branches of Natural Philosophy Connected with the Subject in Three Volumes, vol. 1. New York: Kraus Reprint Co.Google Scholar
Rudwick, M. (1985), The Great Devonian Controversy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shapin, S. and Schaffer, S. (1985), Leviathan and the Air Pump. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Sheehan, W. (1988), Planets and Perception: Telescopic Views and Interpretations, 1609–1909. Tucson: The University of Arizona Press.Google Scholar
Stuewer, R. (1985), “Artificial Distintegration and the Cambridge-Vienna Controversy”, in Achinstein, P. and Hannaway, O. (eds.), Experiment and Hypothesis in Modern Physical Science. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, pp. 239–307.Google Scholar
Swijtink, Z. (1987), “The Objectification of Observation: Measurement and Statistical Methods in the Nineteenth Century”, in Kruger, L., Daston, L., and Heidelberger, M. (eds.), The Probabilistic Revolution, vol. 1. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, pp. 261–285.Google Scholar
Woodward, J. (1989), “Data and Phenomena”, Synthese 79: 393–472.CrossRefGoogle Scholar