Bas van Fraassen

Bastiaan Cornelis van Fraassen

Full name	Bastiaan Cornelis van Fraassen
Era	21st-century philosophy
Region	Western Philosophy
School	Analytic philosophy
Main interests	Philosophy of Science, Epistemology, Philosophical logic, Philosophy of Physics

Bastiaan Cornelis van Fraassen (born Goes, the Netherlands, 5 April 1941) is a Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at San Francisco State University, teaching courses in philosophy of science, the role of models in scientific practice and philosophical logic. He previously taught at Yale University, the University of Southern California (USC), the University of Toronto, and Princeton University. He coined the term "constructive empiricism" in his 1980 book The Scientific Image. Van Fraassen earned his B.A. (1963) from the University of Alberta and his M.A. (1964) and Ph.D. (1966, under the direction of Adolf Grünbaum) from the University of Pittsburgh.

A philosopher of science, van Fraassen's 1989 book Laws and Symmetry attempted to lay the ground-work for explaining physical phenomena without using the assumption that such phenomena are caused by rules or laws which can be said to cause or govern their behavior. Focusing on the problem of underdetermination, he argued for the possibility that theories could have empirical equivalence but differ in their ontological commitments. He rejects the notion that the aim of science is to produce an account of the physical world that is literally true, and instead insists its aim is to produce theories that are empirically adequate. Van Fraassen has also done work on the philosophy of quantum mechanics, philosophical logic, and epistemology.

Van Fraassen is also known for his pioneering work in philosophical logic.

He is the laureate of the 1986 Lakatos Award for his contributions to the philosophy of science.

Van Fraassen is an adult convert to the Roman Catholic Church.

He has been active as editor of the Journal of Philosophical Logic and co-editor of the Journal of Symbolic Logic, as well as in the American Philosophical Association, the Philosophy of Science Association, Society for Exact Philosophy, Evert Willem Beth Stichting, Association for Symbolic Logic, and the International Union for History and Philosophy of Science, and as McCosh Professor of Philosophy (Princeton University); D. Lett (hon), (University of Lethbridge); LL. D.(hon),(University of Notre Dame), Ph. D. (hon), (Kath. Univ. Leuven), Foreign Member of the Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen (Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences); Titular Member of the Académie Internationale de Philosophie des Sciences; Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy; Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Van Fraassen is one of the founders of the Kira Institute.

Singular Terms, truth-value Gaps, and Free Logic

In his paper Singular Terms, truth-value Gaps, and Free Logic, van Fraassen opens with a very brief introduction of the problem of non-referring names. He indicates that he sees no good reason to call statements which employ them either true or false. Some have attempted to solve this problem by means of many-valued logics, and van Fraassen states that he would not argue against such a thing. However, he thinks that free logic is more apt and convenient to explain the natural language.

Instead of any unique formalization, though, he simply adjusts the axioms of a standard predicate logic such as that found in Quine's Methods of Logic. Instead of an axiom like $\forall x\,Px \Rightarrow \exists x\,Px$ he uses $( \forall x\,Px \and \exists x\,(x = a)) \Rightarrow \exists x\,Px$. Thus, if a name fails to refer, then it will be assigned a truth value here—which, naturally, will be true, because the existential claim of the antecedent is false.

He then shows that such a free logic is complete, but if one uses the free logic to accommodate supervaluationism then it is not.

Published books

• Scientific Representation: Paradoxes of Perspective, OUP, 2008.
• Possibilities and Paradox (with JC Beall), OUP, 2003.
• The Empirical Stance, Yale University Press, 2002.
• Quantum Mechanics: An Empiricist View, Oxford University Press, 1991.
• Laws and Symmetry, Oxford University Press 1989.
  • French translation and introduction by C. Chevalley. Paris: Vrin, 1994.
• The Scientific Image, Oxford University Press 1980.
  • Co-winner, Franklin J. Matchette Prize for Philosophical Books, 1982.
  • Co-winner, Imre Lakatos Award for 1986.
  • Italian Edition, with new preface, Bologna 1985.
  • Japanese Edition, with new preface, Tokyo 1987.
  • Spanish Edition, Mexico, 1995.
  • Chinese Edition, Shanghai, 2002
• Derivation and Counterexample: An Introduction to Philosophical Logic (with Karel Lambert), Dickenson Publishing Company, Inc. 1972.
• Formal Semantics and Logic, Macmillan, New York 1971
  • Spanish Translation, Mexico (Universitat Nacional Autonoma de Mexico), tr. J.A. Robles, 1987.
• An Introduction to the Philosophy of Time and Space, Random House, New York 1970.
  • Spanish Translation, Barcelona (Editorial Labor, S.A.), tr. J-P.A. Goicoechea, 1978.
  • Second edition, with new preface and postscript. Columbia University Press, 1985.

See also

• American philosophy
• List of American philosophers

External links

• His site at Princeton
• Bas van Fraassen's faculty page in the Department of Philosophy at San Francisco State University (2009)