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.
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References
Everson W. (2003) Dark God of Eros. Heyday Books, Berkeley, CA
Gordon R. (1987) The structure of emotions. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
Nehamas, A. (2000, Winter). An essay on beauty and judgment. The threepenny review.
van Fraassen B. (2002) The empirical stance. Yale University Press, New Haven
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Jones, W.E. Being moved by a way the world is not. Synthese 178, 131–141 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-009-9522-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-009-9522-z