Abstract
There will be two aims of this talk: i) to argue against philosophy of science in its traditional form (i.e. non-naturalized) and ii) to sketch how a naturalized philosophy of science should look like. As for the first critical part, I will turn my focus on the main problematic areas which can be found in the positivistic, post-positivistic and the historical ("kuhnian") school as well.
The problem lies in the method of conceptual analysis. I will distinguish between two possible construals of this method.
One way to construe it is to view the conceptual analysis as a method which starts with concepts and proceeds to search for necessary and sufficient conditions. This has usually been done in a following way: 'What is X' is to be investigated through the means of concepts and intuitions without any regard to serious empirical work.
The other way is to view conceptual analysis in a naturalized way, i.e. the bulk of the work lies in an empirical investigation. I will argue that the non-naturalized way of using conceptual analysis in philosophy of science is a mistake and I will do so by showing it on concrete examples (e.g., theories of reference, approximative truth).
I will also defend the prospects of the naturalized way, since it is the only way to make sense of scientific practice. The second part of my talk will be aimed at sketching a positive image of how the naturalized philosophy of science (the naturalized conceptual analysis) can make sense of several aspects of scientific practice.
Here, I will base my argument on the model-based approach towards scientific theories and reasoning.