When1: 1965
When2: 1966
Who: Carl Hempel [Hempel, Carl]
What: philosopher
Where: USA
works\ Aspects of Scientific Explanation [1965]; Philosophy of Natural Science [1966]
Detail: He lived 1905 to ? and was logical empiricist.
Description is result of physical laws.
Explanation and prediction differ only in time, because facts are deducible from other facts and at least one law {covering-law model} {deductive-nomological model}.
Sentence meaning is the publicly accessible outcome of publicly accessible procedures. Group beliefs establish outcomes and procedures, even in science. Cognitive and scientific meaning requires that sentence be expressible in logical language.
Psychology can treat internal states of people like black boxes, only checking stimuli and responses {methodological behaviorism}.
Induction can lead to statements but can also lead to statement contrapositives. Contrapositive statements are general, while statements are specific. Evidence for contrapositive statement cannot support statement. For example, "All ravens are black" is logically the same as its contrapositive, "All not black things are not ravens", and both have support from each raven observation {paradox of the ravens, Hempel} {ravens paradox, Hempel}.
Physical and material world concepts always change as people acquire new knowledge, so physicalism and functionalism are not static concepts {Hempel's dilemma}.
Social Sciences>Linguistics>History>Semantics
6-Linguistics-History-Semantics
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Date Modified: 2022.0224