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Highlights: [•] Discusses recent literature concerned with the base-rate fallacy. [•] Argues that responses to this worry undermine the traditional scientific realism debate. [•] Locates the problem in a poorly articulated naturalistic methodology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Constructive empiricism - as formulated by Bas van Fraassen - makes no epistemological claims about the nature of science. Rather, it is a view about the aim of science, to be situated within van Fraassen's broader voluntarist epistemology. Yet while this epistemically minimalist framework may have various advantages in defending the epistemic relevance of constructive empiricism, I show how it also has various disadvantages in maintaining its internal coherence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the syntax and semantics of observability according to A. Musgrave. It highlights the arguments of F. A. Muller and B. C. van Fraassen that contradict that of Musgrave, who objected that the constructive empiricist cannot continuously maintain his own distinction between the observable and the unobservable. Muller and van Fraassen claim that for a theory to consider an entity as unobservable, it should fail to identify the entity as observable.

James Ladyman ([2000]) argues that constructive empiricism is untenable because it cannot adequately account for modal statements about observability. In this paper, I attempt to resist Ladyman's conclusion, arguing that the constructive empiricist can grant his modal discourse objective, theory-independent truth-conditions, yet without compromising his empiricism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses an objection raised to Bas van Fraasen's constructive empiricism. Alan Musgrave objected to the distinction between the observable and unobservable in the epistemic coherence of Bas. Musgrave's objections are outlined and the assumptions of Fraasen's response to these are evaluated.

Abstract: In this paper, I explore Rosen’s (1994) ‘transcendental’ objection to constructive empiricism—the argument that in order to be a constructive empiricist, one must be ontologically committed to just the sort of abstract, mathematical objects constructive empiricism seems committed to denying. In particular, I assess Bueno’s (1999) ‘partial structures’ response to Rosen, and argue that such a strategy cannot succeed, on the grounds that it cannot provide an adequate metalogic for our scientific discourse. I conclude by arguing that this result provides some interesting consequences in general for anti-realist programmes in the philosophy of science. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]