conjecturalism

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noun

The belief that intentionally supposing that a proposition is true is a good reason to believe that proposition in the absence of evidence of its falsehood.

Scrabble 27

Meanings

nounconjecturalism (uncountable)
  1. uncountablehuman sciencesThe belief that intentionally supposing that a proposition is true is a good reason to believe that proposition in the absence of evidence of its falsehood.

    If conjecturalism in a suitably strengthened form is to succeed where its original Popperian version fails, one major aim of the book under review is, as one might put it, to defeat rationality-scepticism.

    1985, Journal of Indian Council of Philosophical Research, page 142
    2 more examples

    Extreme conjecturalism is inevitably accompanied by Pyrrhonism. Against conjecturalism and Pyrrhonism there is only the old remedy: the cautious and methodical examination of documents with all the skills that were developed in the collaboration of antiquaries and textual critics in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

    Quoted in 2007, Peter N. Miller, Momigliano and Antiquarianism: Foundations of the Modern Cultural Sciences (page 339)

    It is in the light of Kant's conjecturalism, for example, that we should interpret the famous passage of the first Critique, at B XIII: the intellectual revolution by which the experimental method of modern science emerged is there interpreted by Kant as amounting to the realisation that "reason has insight only into that which it produces after a plan of its own". This means that, regarding nature as the object of scientific knowledge, that which reason puts into nature, that is, our conjectures, serve^([sic]) as reason's own guide: in order that we can further our knowledge of nature, we must constrain, or compel it to answer questions we ourselves formulate.

    2013, Sergio L. de C. Fernandes, Foundations of Objective Knowledge

Origin

Cite this entry
APA

conjecturalism. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 3, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/conjecturalism

MLA

“conjecturalism.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/conjecturalism. Accessed November 3, 2026.

Chicago

WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “conjecturalism,” accessed November 3, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/conjecturalism.

Source: conjecturalism on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.