Friday, January 13, 2017

Bas van Fraassen , San Francisco State University
3:30 pm, 817R CL

Abstract: The debate over theoretically postulated entities began more than half a century ago (famously, Hempel 1958).  Although ostensibly about questions of ontology, that debate shifted to topics in epistemology, which became ever more contentious, and remain so still.  I shall argue that traditional assumptions bedeviled this debate, and that disentangling the relations between confirmation and evidential support places scientific practice in a different light.