Bas C. van Fraassen

• "The Day of the Dolphins: Puzzling Over Epistemic Partnership" (2005), pp. 111- 133 in A. Irvine and K. Peacock, eds., Mistakes of Reason. University of Tororonto Press, 2005.

• "The False Hopes of Traditional Epistemology"(abstract) to skip the abstract, go directly to the article

• Belief and the Will Journal of Philosophy 81 (1984):235-256.

• Belief and the Problem of Ulysses and the Sirens Philosophical Studies 77 (1995): 7-37.

• "Calibration: a Frequency Justification for Personal Probability" (1983)

• "Conditionalization, A New Argument For" (Topoi 18 (1999), 93-96.)
  to skip the abstract, go to the published version ,

• "A Defense of Van Fraassen's Critique of Abductive Inference" (1997): Reply to Psillos -- (with I. Douven, L. Horsten, and J. Ladyman) abstract only

• "Figures in a Probability Landscape" (1990)
  (theory of vague probability and expectation) Acrobat version, with a correction entered on page 349.

•   "Fine-Grained Opinion, Probability, and the Logic of Full Belief"    (1995)
  

• "The Peculiar Effects of Love and Desire" (1988) This is my own favorite paper

• The Problem of Old Evidence (1988)

• "Rational Belief and Probability Kinematics" (1980)

• "Sola experientia? Feyerabend's Refutation of Classical Empiricism" (1997)
  Synopsis only

Conditionalization, A New Argument For

ABSTRACT

Probabilism in epistemology does not have to be of the Bayesian variety. The probabilist represents a person's opinion as a probability function; the Bayesian adds that rational change of opinion must take the form of conditionalizing on new evidence. I will argue that this is the correct procedure under certain special conditions. Those special conditions are important, and instantiated for example in scientific experimentation, but hardly universal. My argument will be related to the much maligned Reflection Principle (van Fraassen 1984,1995), and partly inspired by the work of Brian Skyrms (1987).

A Defense of Van Fraassen's Critique of Abductive Inference: Reply to Psillos

James Ladyman, Igor Douven, Leon Horsten and Bas C. van Fraassen

ABSTRACT

Psillos has recently argued that van Fraassen's arguments against abduction fail. Moreover, he claimed that, if successful, these arguments would equally undermine van Fraassen's own constructive empiricism, for, Psillos thinks, it is only by appeal to abduction that constructive empiricism can be saved from issuing in a bald scepticism. In this paper we show that Psillos' criticisms are misguided, and that they are mostly based on grave misinterpretations of van Fraassen's arguments. Furthermore, we argue that Psillos' arguments for his claim that constructive empiricism itself needs abduction point up his failure to recognize the importance of van Fraassen's broader epistemology for constructive empiricism. Towards the end of our paper we discuss the suspected relationship between constructive empiricism and scepticism in the light of this broader epistemology, and from a somewhat more general perspective.

The False Hopes of Traditional Epistemology

to skip the abstract, go to: "The False Hopes of Traditional Epistemology"

After Hume, attempts to forge an empiricist epistemology have taken three forms, which I shall call the First, Middle, and Third Way. The First still attempts an a priori demonstration that our cognitive methods satisfy some (weak) criterion of adequacy. The Middle Way is pursued under the banners of naturalism and scientific realism, and aims at the same conclusion on non-apriori grounds. After arguing that both fail, I describe the general characteristics of the Third Way, an alternative epistemology suitable for empiricism.

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