Feyerabend by Preston, John -- Read -- Imperial Library of Trantor

Index

Cover Page Title Page Copyright Dedication Contents Preface Acknowledgements Note on References Introduction: Feyerabend’s Life and Work 1 Philosophy and the Aim of Science

1.1 Scientific and Analytical Philosophy 1.2 The Third-Person Approach to Epistemology 1.3 Feyerabend’s Project: A ‘Model for the Acquisition of Knowledge’ 1.4 Normative Epistemology, and Falsificationism 1.5 Inductive Scepticism 1.6 The Ethical Basis of Philosophy

2 Meaning: The Attack on Positivism

2.1 Wittgenstein’s Conception of Meaning 2.2 The Contextual Theory of Meaning 2.3 The Contextual Theory of Meaning and Scientific Realism 2.4 The Positivist/Realist Dispute 2.5 Positivistic Theories of Meaning 2.6 Feyerabend’s Attack on the Stability-Thesis

3 Theories of Observation

3.1 The Theory-Ladenness of Observation-Statements 3.2 Feyerabend’s Pragmatic Theory of Observation 3.3 Radical Conceptual Change 3.4 Humans as Measuring Instruments 3.5 The ‘Problem of Theoretical Entities’ 3.6 The Critique of Sense-Datum Epistemologies

4 Scientific Realism and Instrumentalism

4.1 Feyerabend’s Scientific Realism 4.2 Instrumentalism 4.3 Astronomical Instrumentalism 4.4 Quantum Instrumentalism 4.5 Musgrave on Feyerabend’s Defence of Instrumentalism 4.6 Feyerabend’s Attack on Instrumentalism

5 Theoretical Monism

5.1 The Myth Predicament 5.2 Nagel on Science and Reduction 5.3 Feyerabend’s Anti-Reductionism 5.4 Kuhn’s Historical Case for Paradigm-Monism 5.5 Kuhn’s Functional Arguments

6 Incommensurability

6.1 The Condition of Meaning Invariance 6.2 The Thesis of Incommensurability 6.3 ‘On the “Meaning” of Scientific Terms’ 6.4 The Desirability of Incommensurability 6.5 Comparing Incommensurable Theories

7 Theoretical Pluralism

7.1 The Orthodox Test Model and the Autonomy Principle 7.2 The Case of the Brownian Motion 7.3 The Generalized Refutation Schema 7.4 A New Conception of Empirical Content? 7.5 Pluralistic Methodology 7.6 Which Principle of Proliferation?

8 Materialism

8.1 Super-Realism 8.2 Science and Material-Object Concepts 8.3 Reductive Materialism 8.4 Eliminative Materialism 8.5 ‘Folk Psychology’

9 Science without Method

9.1 ‘The Stinkbomb’ 9.2 Epistemological Anarchism 9.3 Deductivism and Inductive Methodological Rules 9.4 Popper’s Methodological Anarchism 9.5 The Linguistic Relativity Principle 9.6 The Anthropological Method

10 Relativism, Rationalism and a Free Society

10.1 Truth, and other Epistemic Ideals 10.2 Rationalism vs. Relativism 10.3 Idealism, Naturalism, Interactionism 10.4 ‘Democratic Relativism’ 10.5 The Problem of the Excellence of Science 10.6 Science and Society 10.7 Conclusion

Notes Bibliography Index