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The Pragmatics of Observation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 January 2023

Richard Creath
Richard Creath*
Affiliation:
Arizona State University
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Extract

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My eyes are notoriously bad, so I am not sure whether I have ever seen a meteor. Others have seen them, of course, but it is important to me to observe them first hand. I even go to the trouble to hike at night in the desert mountains so that viewing conditions will be ideal. I scan the sky through my thick glasses, but to no avail. My companions have sighted several, the latest just to the left of that peak. And still I am unsure. Did I really see the meteor, or was it just that my eye twitched? I suspect that this question has no unambiguous answer and that understanding why it lacks such an answer will provide important clues about the role of observation in scientific theorizing.

Type
Part V. Perception and Psychology
Information
PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association , Volume 1988 , Issue 1: Volume One: Contributed Papers 1988 , 1988 , pp. 149 - 153
Copyright
Copyright © Philosophy of Science Association 1988

Footnotes

1

An earlier version of this paper was read at the Seventh International Congress of Logic, Methodology, and Philosophy of Science. I would like to thank colleagues there and at Arizona State for helpful comments.

References

van Fraassen, B.C. (1980). The Scientific Image. Oxford: Clarendon Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar