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Born
Bas van Fraassen was born in Goes, Netherlands. -
Undergraduate
He had finished his undergraduate studies in philosophy at the University of Alberta in 1963 and obtained a Bachelor of Arts. -
Masters Degree
He has obtained a master's degree of Arts in Philosophy at the University of Pittsburgh. -
Ph.D
He then went on to get his Ph.D at the University of Pittsburgh. -
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The Philosophical Logic Phase
This vision is articulated through the development of several proposals guided by techniques from philosophical logic. Van Franssen's method of super valuations provides a way of retaining classical logic (classical logic's theorems) even in the presence of truth-value gaps. This method can then be used to accommodate logical paradoxes, such as the Liar another words a sentence that is not true. -
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The Constructive Empiricist Period
This is a view about the aim of science and the search for empirically adequate theories. Constructive empiricism is the version of scientific anti-realism promulgated in his famous 1980 book The Scientific Image. A final point to make about the constructive empiricist period is it distinguishes between the aim of an individual scientist or group of scientists and the aim of science itself. -
Teachings
He taught at Yale University, the University of Toronto, and the University of Southern California before moving to Princeton University, where he has been a Professor of Philosophy since 1982 -
The Empirical Stance Phase
Instead of articulating empiricism as a doctrine, Van Franssen insists that empiricism should be conceptualized as a stance with attitude, an epistemic policy. This move has several advantages. First, it avoids the incoherence of certain earlier empiricist proposals that failed to meet their own empiricist standards and secondly, the move also provides a way of understanding the role of experience in epistemic life, and how to make sense of scientific revolutions as a decision problem. -
American Academy
Bas was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences -
Retire and Unite
In the summer of 2008 Bas retired from Princeton and joined the Philosophy Department at San Francisco State University. -
Bas Van Frasseen Interview