Bas van Fraassen: Why Science Does Not Reveal the Truth
episodePreviously titled “Bas van Fraassen: Why Science Doesn't Reveal Reality” — renamed by the publisher on Aug 3, 2026
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What does Bas mean when he says “I’m not a thing” at the beginning of the interview?
I'm not a thing. I'm not a thing of any kind. I'm not a physical thing. I'm not an abstract thing. I'm not something supernatural. I'm not a thing. Period.
Professor Bos von Frasen's 1980 book, The Scientific Image, detonated a bomb in the philosophy of science that's still reverberating to this day. The professor argues that science doesn't aim to give us true theories about unobservable reality, science just aims for empirical adequacy, full stop. So all of this truth about quarks, wave functions, space-time curvature, it's all just super. Optional, not the goal. Today we turn to the self and the limits of language.
How does Bas introduce the idea that science aims for empirical adequacy rather than literal truth?
Von Frasen draws on Tarski's limitative theorems and demonstrates that we can't construct a true representation of our own language, and therefore we can't adequately represent ourselves. It's logically impossible. My name's Kurt Jaimungel, and on this channel I interview researchers about their theories. Of reality with rigor and technical depth. Most of the time it's from a theoretical physics perspective, but today I have one of the legends in contemporary philosophy, one of the most cited philosophers in the philosophy of science, Professor Boss von Frasen. Questions explored today are what is real? What is science? Where does free will enter? What am I, slash who are you? Even faith, and what is God?
Many people have a concept of quote unquote reality, and so do many philosophers. What is that concept? And why do you think the question of what is reality is not such a great question?
Well, I would say logically speaking, everything is real. Um and um but we can make a distinction between reality and appearance. Um, you know, like Carlo Rovelli's book with the title Uh uh Reality Is Not What It Looks Like, I think something like that, right? Real reality is not what it appears. We can make a distinction between how things appear to us and how we think they really are. Now that has been a a philosophical problem, uh d during the modern period. But for me it's not a very good question because um I think that what's important is exactly what appears to us. And um when we uh try to uh add to this a kind of what's should I say, superstructure or substructure, we are theorizing, we're fictionalizing, we are trying to find things that go beyond our can, so to speak.
And uh it seems to me that um uh it has been a typical misconception of science that that is what it's trying to do. Does science always provide a model? Hm, yes. Science provides mod yes. Science scientists can start models. Uh models are representations. I mean you can begin with a tabletop model, right? Say with a double helix. Uh you can make a mathematical model, which is what typically of course one one does now. in the sciences. It is the what what the scientists do is they construct representations of the phenomena that they target. And uh a theory will be a kind of outline of what these representations have to be like. So the models of a theory are different possible representations of of the phenomena.
Then the next question is what exactly is the relation between representation and the target? Right? And most people immediately say, Oh, it must resemble what it represents. But that is um for a long time r be regarded as a poor answer because First of all, representation, even when it does trade on resemblance, which often it doesn't, is very selective. A subway map doesn't look like a subway. The resemblance is very selective about what exactly it represents. And I was and I think of scientific models in the same way. Scientific models do trade on resemblance to some extent, but very selectively, and uh not without uh adding anything necessary to help the theory run well.
So is a model a just a specific type of representation? Yes. In other words, not every representation is a model, but every model is a representation? Yes, I would say so, yes. Now you said that some scientific models trade on resemblance, but not necessarily. Okay. Now the standard folklore that people hear is that it goes from, well, anything that you do, let's suppose that's some consequence of psychology, which is some but some consequence of neurology, and then chemistry and or biochemistry to then chemistry to then physics.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What does Bas mean when he says “I’m not a thing” at the beginning of the interview?
0:00–0:43
2
How does Bas introduce the idea that science aims for empirical adequacy rather than literal truth?
0:43–6:51
3
What is the difference between scientific realism and anti‑realism as discussed by the hosts?
6:51–11:15
4
How does Bas explain his view on free will and the self in relation to physics?
11:15–1:07:00
5
How does language shape our ability to express intention and meaning?
1:07:00–1:18:06
6
What are the limits of a universal language and why do paradoxes arise?
1:18:06–1:35:37
7
Why does Bas claim that the self is not a ‘thing’ but still exists?
1:35:37–1:50:20
8
How can one maintain belief in God without relying on traditional metaphysics?
1:50:20–2:10:08
Speakers
1 identifiedMore from Theories of Everything with Curt Jaimungal
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Tim Maudlin: Quantum Nonlocality Explained FROM SCRATCH
Adrian Owen: Awake. Aware. Unable to Move.
Peter Godfrey-Smith: This Scientist Found Earth’s “Alien” Minds
Jacob Tsimerman: He Won Math's Highest Prize. Then Announced the End