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The Truth of Scientific Claims

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 2022

Edward MacKinnon
Edward MacKinnon*
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy, California State University, Hayward
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Abstract

The idea that science aspires to and routinely achieves truths about the world has been challenged in recent writings. Rather than beginning with a theory of scientific development, or of scientific explanation, we begin with a consideration of truth claims in ordinary discourse, particularly with Davidson's truth-functional semantics. Next we consider the way in which some framework features of ordinary language discourse are extended to and modified in scientific discourse. Two areas are treated in more detail: quantum theory, and the peculiar problem of semantic entailment it involves; and quantum field theory. These supply a basis for criticizing some historicist and logicist treatments of the truth of scientific claims.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 49 , Issue 3 , September 1982 , pp. 437 - 462
Copyright
Copyright © Philosophy of Science Association 1982

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