Formalized epistemology, logic, and grammar

  • Authors:

  • Michel Bitbol

  • Affiliations:

  • Centre de Recherche en Epistemologie Appliquee du CNRS, 1 rue Descartes, 75005 Paris, France

  • Venue:
  • Quantum mechanics, mathematics, cognition and action
  • Year:
  • 2002

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Abstract

The task of a formal epistemology is defined. It appears that a formal epistemology must be a generalization of "logic" in the sense of Wittgenstein's Tractatus. The generalization is required because, whereas logic presupposes a strict relation between activity and language, this relation may be broken in some domains of experimental enquiry (e.g., in microscopic physics). However, a formal epistemology should also retain a major feature of Wittgenstein's "logic": It must not be a discourse about scientific knowledge, but rather a way of making manifest the structures usually implicit in knowledge-gaining activity. This strategy is applied to the formalism of quantum mechanics.