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Queries about Internal Realism

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Part of the book series: Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science ((BSPS,volume 169))

Abstract

In his Presidential Address at the 1990 biennial meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association (PSA) in Minneapolis, Thomas S. Kuhn announced his project of writing a philosophical book on realism and truth. The audience included also members of the Society for Social Studies of Science (4S). To the disappointment of many sociologists of science, who have taken Kuhn as an authority in their campaign for relativist and anti-realist views, Kuhn now argued that the concept of incommensurability is in fact needed “to defend notions like truth and knowledge from, for example, the excesses of post-modernist movements like the strong program”.1 A “strong concept of truth” is needed, he argued, to understand the “normal rules of evidence” for accepting or rejecting theories.2

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© 1996 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht

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Niiniluoto, I. (1996). Queries about Internal Realism. In: Cohen, R.S., Hilpinen, R., Renzong, Q. (eds) Realism and Anti-Realism in the Philosophy of Science. Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, vol 169. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-8638-2_4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-8638-2_4

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht

  • Print ISBN: 978-90-481-4493-8

  • Online ISBN: 978-94-015-8638-2

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