CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2009
| Author | Grozdanoff, Boris Dimitroff |
|---|---|
| Title | A Priori Principles and Scientific Knowledge |
| Summary | The most influential rationalist model of scientific knowledge is the three-layered model formulated recently by Michael Friedman. At its surface are the empirical laws of nature, such as Newtonian law of gravitation or Einstein’s equations for gravitational field. At its deeper second level are the fundamental principles of science that determine the general spatio-temporal framework which enables the formulation and the testing of the empirical laws. At the third level are the philosophical meta-paradigms which guide the transition between scientific paradigms. The central epistemic claim of the model concerns the character of the fundamental principles; according to Friedman they are a priori, that is, they are independent from experience. Yet he is explicit that the principles change under empirical pressure. Friedman's position, however, faces the modern empiricist challenge instead of evading it: he has to explain how the principles could still be a priori if they change under empirical pressure. I argue that his defence, appealing to the old Reichenbachian notion of the constitutive a priori, is inconclusive. The present text provides a contemporary account of the epistemic character of the principles addressing the most recent work on the a priori. I argue that at least some principles are not empirically but a priori revisable, and in this way I respond to the empiricist challenge. In order to build the defence I formulate a general notion of epistemic revisability and I extract from it two corresponding kinds of specific revisabilities: an empirical and an a priori. I argue that the latter kind is as vital as the former and that it is also capable of meeting the argument from empirical revisability by providing an epistemic alternative of it. In this way, if some second level principles are shown to evolve through a priori revisions the leading empiricist argument fails. To demonstrate this I analyze two case studies, one from history of geometry and one from history of physics, and I show that the revisions were epistemically a priori and not empirical. The result is a two-fold one. First, a genuine alternative of empirical revisability is developed, and not just for a priori domains like mathematics but also for natural sciences. Second, a new mechanism for the dynamics of science is suggested, namely that scientific knowledge sometimes evolves through empirically independent moves. At the end, these enable a modern epistemic defence of the priori character of the second level principles in Friedman’s model and thus help to keep its vitality. |
| Supervisor | Miscevic, Nenad |
| Department | Philosophy PhD |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2009/fphgrb01.pdf |
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