Off-campus UMass Amherst users: To download dissertations, please use the following link to log into our proxy server with your UMass Amherst user name and password.
Non-UMass Amherst users, please click the view more button below to purchase a copy of this dissertation from Proquest.
(Some titles may also be available free of charge in our Open Access Dissertation Collection, so please check there first.)
Intuition, hypothesis, and reality
Abstract
Realism about the external, natural world is an overarching empirical hypothesis. The method of hypothetical realism rejects as an excessive concession to the skeptic these two assumptions of constructivist intuitionism: first, that everything real must be exhaustively inspectable; and second, that our beliefs are to be justified to the point of certainty. We prefer to say that nothing is ever known directly; that all of our contact with the world is mediated by thoughts, words, and percepts construed as signs having referents distinct from themselves. We organize these signs into meaningful and possibly true hypotheses as we speculate--in practice, science and metaphysics--about a world we have not made.
Subject Area
Philosophy
Recommended Citation
Johnson, David K, "Intuition, hypothesis, and reality" (1991). Doctoral Dissertations Available from Proquest. AAI9120896.
https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations/AAI9120896