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(2011) Synthese 178 (1).
At the end of Lecture 3 of The Empirical Stance, Bas van Fraassen suggests that we see the change of view involved in scientific revolutions as being, at least in part, emotional. In this paper, I explore one plausible way of cashing out this suggestion. Someone’s emotional approval of a description of the world, I argue, thereby shows that she takes herself to have reason to take that description seriously. This is true even if she is convinced—as a scientific community is when it considers alternative theories—that this description is false, that it is not the way the world is.
Publication details
DOI: 10.1007/s11229-009-9522-z
Full citation:
Jones, W. E. (2011). Being moved by a way the world is not. Synthese 178 (1), pp. 131-141.
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