Taxonomy, truth-value gaps and incommensurability: a reconstruction of Kuhn’s taxonomic interpretation of incommensurability

Kuhn’s Incommensurability Thesis: What’s the Argument? Forthcoming in Social Epistemology

In this paper, I argue that there is neither valid deductive support nor strong inductive support for Kuhn’s incommensurability thesis. There is no valid deductive support for Kuhn’s incommensurability thesis because, from the fact that the reference of the same kind terms changes or discontinues from one theoretical framework to another, it does not necessarily follow that these two theoretica...

Incommensurability and Dynamic Conceptual Structures

One important problem concerning incommensurability is to explain how theories that are incommensurable can nevertheless compete. In this paper I shall briefly review Kuhn’s account of the difference between revolutionary and non-revolutionary conceptual developments. I shall argue that his taxonomic approach and the no-overlap principle it entails does not suffice to distinguish between revolu...

Kuhn’s Incommensurability Thesis

1 “ Kuhn , Pedagogy , and Practice : A Local Reading of Structure ” 1

Moti Mizrahi has argued that Thomas Kuhn does not have a good argument for the incommensurability of successive scientific paradigms. With Rouse, Andersen, and others, I defend a view on which Kuhn primarily was trying to explain scientific practice in Structure. Kuhn, like Hilary Putnam, incorporated sociological and psychological methods into his history of science. On Kuhn’s account, the edu...

Semantic Incommensurability and Empirical Comparability: The Case of Lorentz and Einstein

Semantic incommensurability is understood as non-translatability of concepts taken from different theories. My aim is to give a rational reconstruction of the notion of incommensurability underlying the writings of Philosophia Scientiæ, 8 (1), 2004, 73–94.