Empiricism from Ockham to van Fraassen

Abstract

This chapter gives a brief overview of the empiricist tradition in philosophy. Although medieval nominalism primarily was motivated by logical and semantic considerations, in retrospect it is fair to view it as an empiricist position and a natural starting point for an overview of empiricism. The chapter continues by discussing classical empiricism, Mach’s and Duhem’ empiricism, logical positivism, Quine’s and finally van Fraassen’s versions of empiricism. The core of the chapter is Sect. 3.8 containing a discussion of what to accept as empirical evidence for a theory. In Sect. 3.9 an empiricist and nominalist conception of natural kinds is presented. The chapter ends with a presentation of six doctrines, jointly making up my empiricist position.