Delphine Chapuis-Schmitz
Collége de France, France
Academic Year 2007-08
Emperical realism

September 2007

Delphine’s interest for logical empiricism has led her from Paris to Pittsburgh, with stops in Berlin, Vienna and Chicago. Before engaging in the field, she never thought philosophy would give her the occasion to travel so much.

The project she will be pursuing this year at the Center aims at clarifying the kind of position advocated by logical empiricists on the issue of scientific realism. Far from having escaped this kind of questions, these philosophers have indeed tried to make good sense of what is involved in existence claims. She intends to examine in more detail Carnap’s, Feigl’s and Schlick’s respective views on this problem, in order to be in a position to evaluate what can be retained of their conceptions today. In particular, what is the relevance of the empirical realism they advocate – the idea that questions as to the reality of scientific entities have a definite meaning insofar as they can be answered on empirical grounds in the framework of a relevant scientific theory?

Delphine has defended her PhD dissertation at the University Paris 1 and got a position as research assistant of Prof. Bouveresse at the College de France in Paris.

Despite the fact that she could not find a tae kwon do course in Pittsburgh (if someone has a tip, please let her know), she finds the city very pleasant – especially since she discovered the possibility of watching great indie films at Pittsburgh’s Filmmakers.