On Van Fraassen's Views Of Theory Acceptance

Many discussions in philosophy of science are relevant to theory acceptance and American philosopher Bas C. van Fraassen's views of theory acceptance become very important recently. Generally speaking, the domestic research about the philosophic thinking of van Fraassen in the past overlooked this important idea of him. But van Fraassen's discussion about theory acceptance is highly relevant to all parts of his philosophic thinking, especially to his semantic view of theories, pragmatics to explanation and the interpretation of quantum mechanics. The improved understanding of van Fraassen's views about theory acceptance can make a better understanding about his constructive empiricism or even his philosophic thinking about science. Consequently, this thesis will try to make a specialty of van Fraassen's views of theory acceptance.Roughly speaking, van Fraassen claimed that two requirements must be satisfied in acceptance of a theory: One is that the belief involved in accepting a scientific theory is only to the observable phenomena but not to the unobservable phenomena; the other is that to accept a theory also involves to make a pragmatic commitment to the theory that it can be applied to the scientific practice. However, the connotation about van Fraassen's views of theory acceptance should be understood not noly from this claim of him but also as a strategy that made the difference between him and the realist. On the background of the argument between realism and anti-realism, this thesis makes a summarization to van Fraassen's views about theory acceptance. At the same time, based on the related discourse of van Fraassen's ideas about theory acceptance in recent thirty years, a tentative appraisal was given by the author.This thesis preliminary reveal the specificity of the van Fraassen's views of theory acceptance compared to the idea of some philosophers before him, such as giving the difference between Popper and van Fraassen about the idea of theory acceptance. The succession and similarity which between van Fraassen's distinguishing acceptance from belief and Laudan's distinguishing acceptance from pursuit as well as the differences between them were shown. The relationship between van Fraassen's illustration of the acceptance of a specific theory and his general viewpoints about theory acceptance were discussed preliminarily and the meaning of acceptance which van Fraassen used was analyzed.