7. Towards a New Epistemology

Author: van Fraassen, Bas C.

Source: Laws and Symmetry, November 1989 , pp. 151-183(33)

Publisher: Oxford Scholarship Online Monographs

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Abstract:

The underground river of probabilism, slowly growing in force over three centuries, burst forth above ground in the twentieth century and brought new hope for epistemology. Probabilism sees its historical origin in the work of Blaise Pascal in the seventeenth century, but has for the main part been developed in the last 100 years, notably by Leonard Savage, Rudolf Carnap, Bruno De Finetti, Isaac Levi, Richard Jeffrey, and many other writers on the interface of statistics, probability theory, and epistemology. This chapter provides a liberal version of probabilism, as basic framework for descriptive epistemology. Benefits include proofs of the incoherence of Inference to the Best Explanation and related ideas pertaining to Induction or, in general, to rule-governed notions of rational opinion change. It is argued that this is not a form of scepticism and does provide a basis for an empiricist epistemology adequate for philosophy of science.

Keywords: scepticism; Blaise Pascal; Leonard Savage; probability theory; Rudolf Carnap; inference to the best explanation; Richard Jeffrey; Isaac Levi; epistemology; Bruno De Finetti; probabilism