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236065

Being moved by a way the world is not

Ward E. Jones

pp. 131-141

Abstract

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

Published in:

Rowbottom Darrell P., Bueno Otávio (2011) Stance and rationality. Synthese 178 (1).

Pages: 131-141

DOI: 10.1007/s11229-009-9522-z

Full citation:

Jones Ward E. (2011) „Being moved by a way the world is not“. Synthese 178 (1), 131–141.