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Feyerabend's Retreat from Realism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 2022

John Preston
John Preston*
Affiliation:
The University of Reading
*
†Department of Philosophy, The University of Reading, Reading RG6 2AA, England; e-mail: j.m.preston@reading.ac.uk
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Abstract

In attempting to assess the legacy of Paul Feyerabend's philosophical work, matters are complicated by the fact that there was a change in his basic orientation towards the philosophy of science around the end of the 1960s. Here I shall indicate one aspect of Feyerabend's divided legacy. My main aims are to sketch the principal themes in his (fairly extensive but little-known) 1990s output, to situate that later output insofar as it bears on the realism/antirealism debate, and (rather precipitously, perhaps) to identify what I take to be the single common premise of his entire philosophical work.

Type
Symposium: Paul Feyerabend and His Legacy
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 64 , Issue S4: Supplement. Proceedings of the 1996 Biennial Meetings of the Philosophy of Science Association. Part II: Symposia Papers Dec., 1997 , 1997 , pp. S421 - S431
Copyright
Copyright © Philosophy of Science Association 1997

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