This paper takes up an important epistemological challenge to the naturalistic moral realist: that her metaphysical commitments are difficult to square with a plausible rationalist view about the epistemology of morality. The paper begins by clarifying and generalizing this challenge. It then illustrates how the generalized challenge can be answered by a form of naturalistic moral realism that I dub joint-carving moral realism. Both my framing of this challenge and my answer advertise the methodological significance of non-fundamental epistemological theorizing, which (...) defends and deploys epistemological claims without adverting to the most fundamental epistemological facts. (shrink)

In Pragmatism, James promised his readers a theory of truth. However, many of his readers (even those sympathetic with other parts of James’s work) have concluded that James’s “theory” was little more than a tangle of mistakes. In this chapter, I offer an interpretation and defence of James’s theory of truth. I emphasize James’s truth pluralism.

In this paper, we show that Arrow’s well-known impossibility theorem is instrumental in bringing the ongoing discussion about verisimilitude to a more general level of abstraction. After some preparatory technical steps, we show that Arrow’s requirements for voting procedures in social choice are also natural desiderata for a general verisimilitude definition that places content and likeness considerations on the same footing. Our main result states that no qualitative unifying procedure of a functional form can simultaneously satisfy the requirements of Unanimity, (...) Independence of irrelevant alternatives and Non-dictatorship at the level of sentence variables. By giving a formal account of the incompatibility of the considerations of content and likeness, our impossibility result makes it possible to systematize the discussion about verisimilitude, and to understand it in more general terms. (shrink)

This paper focuses on two questions: Is understanding intimately bound up with accurately representing the world? Is understanding intimately bound up with downstream abilities? We will argue that the answer to both these questions is “yes”, and for the same reason-both accuracy and ability are important elements of orthogonal evaluative criteria along which understanding can be assessed. More precisely, we will argue that representational-accuracy and intelligibility are good-making features of a state of understanding. Interestingly, both evaluative claims have been defended (...) by philosophers in the literature on understanding as the criterion of evaluation. We argue that proponents of both approaches have important insights and that, drawing on both their own observations and a few novel arguments, we can construct a more complete picture of understanding evaluation. We thus posit the theory of there being Multiple Understanding Dimensions. The main thing to note about our dualism regarding the evaluative criteria of understanding is that it accounts for the intuitions about cases underlying both previously held positions. (shrink)

In this paper, three theories of progress and the aim of science are discussed: the theory of progress as increasing explanatory power, advocated by Popper in The logic of scientific discovery ; the theory of progress as approximation to the truth, introduced by Popper in Conjectures and refutations ; the theory of progress as a steady increase of competing alternatives, which Feyerabend put forward in the essay “Reply to criticism. Comments on Smart, Sellars and Putnam” and defended as late as (...) the last edition of Against method. It is argued that, contrary to what Feyerabend scholars have predominantly assumed, Feyerabend's changing attitude towards falsificationism—which he often advocated at the beginning of his career, and vociferously attacked in the 1970s and 1980s—must be explained by taking into account not only Feyerabend's very peculiar view of the aim of science, but also Popper's changing account of progress. (shrink)

This paper argues that some of the discussion around meta-scientific issues can be viewed as an argument over different “meta-hypotheses” – assumptions made about how different hypotheses in a scientific literature relate to each other. I argue that, currently, such meta-hypotheses are typically left unstated except in methodological papers and that the consequence of this practice is that it is hard to determine what can be learned from a direct replication study. I argue in favor of a procedure dubbed the (...) “limited homogeneity assumption” – assuming very little heterogeneity of effect sizes when a literature is initiated but switching to an assumption of heterogeneity once an initial finding has been successfully replicated in a direct replication study. Until that has happened, we do not allow the literature to proceed to a mature stage. This procedure will elevate the scientific status of direct replication studies in science. Following this procedure, a well-designed direct replication study is a means of falsifying an overall claim in an early phase of a literature and thus sets up a hurdle against the canonization of false facts in the behavioral sciences. (shrink)

The main question addressed in this paper is whether some false sentences can constitute evidence for the truth of other propositions. In this paper it is argued that there are good reasons to suspect that at least some false propositions can constitute evidence for the truth of certain other contingent propositions. The paper also introduces a novel condition concerning propositions that constitute evidence that explains a ubiquitous evidential practice and it contains a defense of a particular condition concerning the possession (...) of evidence. The core position adopted here then is that false propositions that are approximately true reports of measurements can constitute evidence for the truth of other propositions. So, it will be argued that evidence is only quasi-factive in this very specific sense. (shrink)

Zwart and Franssen’s impossibility theorem reveals a conflict between the possible-world-based content-definition and the possible-world-based likeness-definition of verisimilitude. In Sect. 2 we show that the possible-world-based content-definition violates four basic intuitions of Popper’s consequence-based content-account to verisimilitude, and therefore cannot be said to be in the spirit of Popper’s account, although this is the opinion of some prominent authors. In Sect. 3 we argue that in consequence-accounts , content-aspects and likeness-aspects of verisimilitude are not in conflict with each other, but (...) in agreement . We explain this fact by pointing towards the deep difference between possible-world- and the consequence-accounts, which does not lie in the difference between syntactic (object-language) versus semantic (meta-language) formulations, but in the difference between ‘disjunction-of-possible-worlds’ versus ‘conjunction-of-parts’ representations of theories. Drawing on earlier work, we explain in Sect. 4 how the shortcomings of Popper’s original definition can be repaired by what we call the relevant element approach. We propose a quantitative likeness-definition of verisimilitude based on relevant elements which provably agrees with the qualitative relevant content-definition of verisimilitude on all pairs of comparable theories. We conclude the paper with a plea for consequence-accounts and a brief analysis of the problem of language-dependence (Sect. 6). (shrink)

Zwart and Franssen’s impossibility theorem reveals a conflict between the possible-world-based content-definition and the possible-world-based likeness-definition of verisimilitude. In Sect. 2 we show that the possible-world-based content-definition violates four basic intuitions of Popper’s consequence-based content-account to verisimilitude, and therefore cannot be said to be in the spirit of Popper’s account, although this is the opinion of some prominent authors. In Sect. 3 we argue that in consequence-accounts, content-aspects and likeness-aspects of verisimilitude are not in conflict with each other, but in (...) agreement. We explain this fact by pointing towards the deep difference between possible-world- and the consequence-accounts, which does not lie in the difference between syntactic versus semantic formulations, but in the difference between ‘disjunction-of-possible-worlds’ versus ‘conjunction-of-parts’ representations of theories. Drawing on earlier work, we explain in Sect. 4 how the shortcomings of Popper’s original definition can be repaired by what we call the relevant element approach. We propose a quantitative likeness-definition of verisimilitude based on relevant elements which provably agrees with the qualitative relevant content-definition of verisimilitude on all pairs of comparable theories. We conclude the paper with a plea for consequence-accounts and a brief analysis of the problem of language-dependence. (shrink)

Selectivism holds that some theoretical contents of most present theories will be preserved in future theories. By contrast, optimistic realism holds that most theoretical contents of most present theories will be preserved in future theories. I construct a pessimistic induction over selectivists to undermine selectivism, and an optimistic induction over optimistic realists to support optimistic realism. The former holds that since the selectivists of the early twentieth century were overly cautious about their present theories, those of the early twenty-first century (...) are also overly cautious about their present theories. The latter holds that since the optimistic realists of the early twentieth century were right about their present theories, those of the early twenty-first century are also right about their present theories. (shrink)

Scientific realists use the “no miracle argument” to show that the empirical and pragmatic success of science is an indicator of the ability of scientific theories to give true or truthlike representations of unobservable reality. While antirealists define scientific progress in terms of empirical success or practical problem-solving, realists characterize progress by using some truth-related criteria. This paper defends the definition of scientific progress as increasing truthlikeness or verisimilitude. Antirealists have tried to rebut realism with the “pessimistic metainduction”, but critical (...) realists turn this argument into an optimistic view about progressive science. (shrink)

Recent years have seen a renewed interest in the philosophical study of information. In this paper a two-part analysis of information gain—objective and subjective—in the context of doxastic change is presented and discussed. Objective information gain is analyzed in terms of doxastic movement towards true belief, while subjective information gain is analyzed as an agent’s expectation value of her objective information gain for a given doxastic change. The resulting expression for subjective information gain turns out to be a familiar one (...) with well-known formal properties: the Kullback–Leibler divergence. The two notions of information are discussed and the suggested measure of subjective information gain is then compared with the widely held view that information gain equals uncertainty reduction. (shrink)

Scientific progress has many facets and can be conceptualized in different ways, for example in terms of problem-solving, of truthlikeness or of growth of knowledge. The main claim of the paper is that the most important prerequisite of scientific progress is the institutionalization of competition and criticism. An institutional framework appropriately channeling competition and criticism is the crucial factor determining the direction and rate of scientific progress, independently on how one might wish to conceptualize scientific progress itself. The main intention (...) is to narrow the divide between traditional philosophy of science and the sociological, economic and political outlook at science that emphasizes the private interests motivating scientists and the subsequent contingent nature of the enterprise. The aim is to show that although science is a social enterprise taking place in historical time and thus is of a contingent nature, it can and in fact does lead to genuine scientific progress - contrary to the claims of certain sociologists of science and other relativists who standardly stress its social nature, but deny its progressive character. I will first deal with the factual issue by way of introducing the main concepts and mechanisms of modern institutional theory and by applying them to the analysis of the cultural phenomenon that we call modern science. I will then turn to the normative issue: what is the appropriate content of the institutional framework, for scientific progress to emerge and be sustained at which level should it be set and by whom? Addressing this problematic is equivalent to conducting a constitutional debate leading to a Constitution of Science. (shrink)

A dogma of contemporary ethical theory maintains that the nature of normative support for affective attitudes is the very same as the nature of normative support for actions. The prevailing view is that normative reasons provide the support across the board. I argue that the nature of normative support for affective attitudes is importantly different from the nature of normative support for actions. Actions are indeed supported by reasons. Reasons are gradable and contributory. The support relations for affective attitudes are (...) neither. So-called reasons of the right kind for affective attitudes are facts that make those very attitudes fitting. Unlike reasons, fit-making facts for affective attitudes do not conflict with each other or combine in the explanation of further normative facts. More fit-making facts just make a more complex set of reactions fitting. This result undermines various analyses and unity theses in the philosophy of normativity. (shrink)

Assuming that the target of theory oriented empirical science in general and of nomic truth approximation in particular is to characterize the boundary or demarcation between nomic possibilities and nomic impossibilities, I have presented, in my article entitled “Models, postulates, and generalized nomic truth approximation” :3057–3077, 2016. 10.1007/s11229-015-0916-9), the ‘basic’ version of generalized nomic truth approximation, starting from ‘two-sided’ theories. Its main claim is that nomic truth approximation can perfectly be achieved by combining two prima facie opposing views on theories: (...) the traditional view: theories are postulates that exclude certain possibilities from being realizable, enabling explanation and prediction and the model view: theories are sets of models that claim to represent certain realizable possibilities. Nomic truth approximation, i.e. increasing truth-content and decreasing falsity-content, becomes in this way revising theories by revising their models and/or their postulates in the face of increasing evidence. The basic version of generalized nomic truth approximation is in many respects as simple as possible. Among other things, it does not take into account that one conceptual possibility may be more similar to another than a third one. However, for example, one theory may include a possibility that is more similar to a wrongly not included possibility than another theory can offer. Similarly, for wrongly not excluded possibilities. In this article it will be shown that such ‘refined’ considerations can be taken into account by adapted clauses based on a ternary similarity relation between possibilities. This allows again abductive conclusions about refined truth approximation if a theory is persistently more successful in the refined sense than another. It will also be indicated and illustrated that this refined approach enables a specification to the effect that refined truth approximation can be obtained by the method of idealization and subsequent concretization. Finally, the basic and the refined approach will be evaluated with regard to some general principles and objections that have been discussed in the literature. (shrink)

In my From Instrumentalism to Constructive Realism I have shown how an instrumentalist account of empirical progress can be related to nomic truth approximation. However, it was assumed that a strong notion of nomic theories was needed for that analysis. In this paper it is shown, in terms of truth and falsity content, that the analysis already applies when, in line with scientific common sense, nomic theories are merely assumed to exclude certain conceptual possibilities as nomic possibilities.

The qualitative theory of nomic truth approximation, presented in Kuipers in his, in which ‘the truth’ concerns the distinction between nomic, e.g. physical, possibilities and impossibilities, rests on a very restrictive assumption, viz. that theories always claim to characterize the boundary between nomic possibilities and impossibilities. Fully recognizing two different functions of theories, viz. excluding and representing, this paper drops this assumption by conceiving theories in development as tuples of postulates and models, where the postulates claim to exclude nomic impossibilities (...) and the models claim to represent nomic possibilities. Revising theories becomes then a matter of adding or revising models and/or postulates in the light of increasing evidence, captured by a special kind of theories, viz. ‘data-theories’. Under the assumption that the data-theory is true, achieving empirical progress in this way provides good reasons for the abductive conclusion that truth approximation has been achieved as well. Here, the notions of truth approximation and empirical progress are formally direct generalizations of the earlier ones. However, truth approximation is now explicitly defined in terms of increasing truth-content and decreasing falsity-content of theories, whereas empirical progress is defined in terms of lasting increased accepted and decreased rejected content in the light of increasing evidence. These definitions are strongly inspired by a paper of Gustavo Cevolani, Vincenzo Crupi and Roberto Festa, viz., “Verisimilitude and belief change for conjunctive theories” :183–222, 2011). (shrink)

Kyle Stanford’s arguments against scientific realism are assessed, with a focus on the underdetermination of theory by evidence. I argue that discussions of underdetermination have neglected a possible symmetry which may ameliorate the situation.

A metric approach to Popper's verisimilitude question is proposed which is related to point-free geometry. Indeed, we define the theory of approximate metric spaces whose primitive notions are regions, inclusion relation, minimum distance, and maximum distance between regions. Then, we show that the class of possible scientific theories has the structure of an approximate metric space. So, we can define the verisimilitude of a theory as a function of its (approximate) distance from the truth. This avoids some of the difficulties (...) arising from the known definitions of verisimilitude. (shrink)

In epistemology and philosophy of science, there has been substantial debate about truth’s relation to understanding. “Non-factivists” hold that radical departures from the truth are not always barriers to understanding; “quasi-factivists” demur. The most discussed example concerns scientists’ use of idealizations in certain derivations of the ideal gas law from statistical mechanics. Yet, these discussions have suffered from confusions about the relevant science, as well as conceptual confusions. Addressing this example, we shall argue that the ideal gas law is best (...) interpreted as favoring non-factivism about understanding, but only after delving a bit deeper into the statistical mechanics that has informed these arguments and stating more precisely what non-factivism entails. Along the way, we indicate where earlier discussions have gone astray, and highlight how a naturalistic approach furnishes more nuanced normative theses about the interaction of rationality, understanding, and epistemic value. (shrink)

According to what is now commonly referred to as “the Equation” in the literature on indicative conditionals, the probability of any indicative conditional equals the probability of its consequent of the conditional given the antecedent of the conditional. Philosophers widely agree in their assessment that the triviality arguments of Lewis and others have conclusively shown the Equation to be tenable only at the expense of the view that indicative conditionals express propositions. This study challenges the correctness of that assessment by (...) presenting data that cast doubt on an assumption underlying all triviality arguments. (shrink)

It has been claimed that epistemic peers, upon discovering that they disagree on some issue, should give up their opposing views and ‘split the difference’. The present paper challenges this claim by showing, with the help of computer simulations, that what the rational response to the discovery of peer disagreement is—whether it is sticking to one’s belief or splitting the difference—depends on factors that are contingent and highly context-sensitive.Keywords: Peer disagreement; Computer simulations; Opinion dynamics; Hegselmann–Krause model; Social epistemology.

Traditionally, epistemologists have held that only truth-related factors matter in the question of whether a subject can be said to know a proposition. Various philosophers have recently departed from this doctrine by claiming that the answer to this question also depends on practical concerns. They take this move to be warranted by the fact that people’s knowledge attributions appear sensitive to contextual variation, in particular variation due to differing stakes. This paper proposes an alternative explanation of the aforementioned fact, one (...) that allows us to stick to the orthodoxy. The alternative applies the conceptual spaces approach to the concept of knowledge. With knowledge conceived of spatially, the variability in knowledge attributions follows from recent work on identity, according to which our standards for judging things (including concepts) to be identical are context-dependent. On the proposal to be made, it depends on what is at stake in a context whether it is worth distinguishing between knowing and being at least close to knowing. (shrink)

The merging/fusion of belief/data collections in propositional logic form is a topic that has received due attention within the domains of database and AI research. A distinction can be made between two types of scenarios to which the process of merging can be applied. In the first type, the collections represent preferences, such as the voting choices of a group of people, that need to be aggregated so as to give a consistent result that in some way best represents the (...) collective judgement of the group. In the second type, the collections represent factual data that is to be aggregated with an aim of obtaining a result that maximises factual correctness. After introducing a general framework for belief merging via some prominent literature on the topic, this paper then introduces and considers a method for belief merging with the second type of scenario in mind. Its suitability is corroborated by demonstrating how it can be seen as a special case of a merging procedure that combines aggregation of probabilities and maximisation of expected truthlikeness. (shrink)

Defenders of Inference to the Best Explanation claim that explanatory factors should play an important role in empirical inference. They disagree, however, about how exactly to formulate this role. In particular, they disagree about whether to formulate IBE as an inference rule for full beliefs or for degrees of belief, as well as how a rule for degrees of belief should relate to Bayesianism. In this essay I advance a new argument against non-Bayesian versions of IBE. My argument focuses on (...) cases in which we are concerned with multiple levels of explanation of some phenomenon. I show that in many such cases, following IBE as an inference rule for full beliefs leads to deductively inconsistent beliefs, and following IBE as a non-Bayesian updating rule for degrees of belief leads to probabilistically incoherent degrees of belief. (shrink)

In this paper, we investigate the problem of truth approximation via belief merging, i.e., we ask whether, and under what conditions, a group of inquirers merging together their beliefs makes progress toward the truth about the underlying domain. We answer this question by proving some formal results on how belief merging operators perform with respect to the task of truth approximation, construed as increasing verisimilitude or truthlikeness. Our results shed new light on the issue of how rational (dis)agreement affects the (...) inquirers’ quest for truth. In particular, they vindicate the intuition that scientific inquiry, and rational discussion in general, benefits from some heterogeneity in opinion and interaction among different viewpoints. The links between our approach and related analyses of truth tracking, judgment aggregation, and opinion dynamics, are also highlighted. (shrink)

In a recent paper in this journal, entitled ‘Scientific Progress: Why Getting Closer to Truth is Not Enough’ (2017), Moti Mizrahi argues that the view of progress as approximation to the truth or increasing verisimilitude is plainly false. The key premise of his argument is that on such a view of progress, in order to get closer to the truth one only needs to arbitrarily add a true disjunct to a hypothesis or theory. Since quite clearly scientific progress is not (...) a matter of adding true disjuncts to theories, the argument goes, the view of progress as approximation to the truth is untenable. We show that the key premise of Mizrahi’s argument is false: according to verisimilitude-based accounts of progress, adding arbitrary true disjuncts to existing theories is just not enough to get closer to the truth. (shrink)

In this paper we provide a compact presentation of the verisimilitudinarian approach to scientific progress (VS, for short) and defend it against the sustained attack recently mounted by Alexander Bird (2007). Advocated by such authors as Ilkka Niiniluoto and Theo Kuipers, VS is the view that progress can be explained in terms of the increasing verisimilitude (or, equivalently, truthlikeness, or approximation to the truth) of scientific theories. According to Bird, VS overlooks the central issue of the appropriate grounding of scientific (...) beliefs in the evidence, and it is therefore unable (a) to reconstruct in a satisfactory way some hypothetical cases of scientific progress, and (b) to provide an explanation of the aversion to falsity that characterizes scientific practice. We rebut both of these criticisms and argue that they reveal a misunderstanding of some key concepts underlying VS. (shrink)

Judgment aggregation problems are language dependent in that they may be framed in different yet equivalent ways. We formalize this dependence via the notion of translation invariance, adopted from the philosophy of science, and we argue for the normative desirability of translation invariance. We characterize the class of translation invariant aggregation functions in the canonical judgment aggregation model, which requires collective judgments to be complete. Since there are reasonable translation invariant aggregation functions, our result can be viewed as a possibility (...) theorem. At the same time, we show that translation invariance does have certain normatively undesirable consequences (e.g. failure of anonymity). We present a way of circumventing them by moving to a more general model of judgment aggregation, one that allows for incomplete collective judgments. (shrink)

We often think or say that someone was wrong about something but almost right about it or close to the truth. This can mean more than one thing. Here, I propose an analysis of the idea of being epistemically close to the truth. This idea plays an important role in our practice of epistemic evaluation and therefore deserves some detailed attention. I start with an exposition of the idea of getting things right by looking at the main forms of reliabilism (...) about true belief and belief acquisition. The focus on reliabilism is justified because everyone is a reliabilist in a basic sense. Section 2 develops a notion of closeness to the truth in two steps. Section 3 mentions some ways in which this notion is useful, one having to do with the Gettier problem. (shrink)

By means of multi-agent simulations, it investigates the truth and consensus-conduciveness of controversial debates. The book brings together research in formal epistemology and argumentation theory.

Most philosophers agree that abduction (in the sense of Inference to the Best Explanation) is a type of inference that is frequently employed, in some form or other, both in everyday and in scientific reasoning. However, the exact form as well as the normative status of abduction are still matters of controversy. This entry contrasts abduction with other types of inference; points at prominent uses of it, both in and outside philosophy; considers various more or less precise statements of it; (...) discusses its normative status; and highlights possible connections between abduction and Bayesian confirmation theory. (shrink)

Yleensä Wienin piirin loogista empirismiä kannattaneet filosofit mielletään antirealisteiksi. Tässä artikkelissa kuitenkin argumentoidaan, että piirin johtohahmo Moritz Schlick oli eräänlainen realisti myös nykystandardien valossa. Näin ollen – niin yllättävältä kuin se kuulostaakin – positivismi ja realismi ovat yhteensovitettavissa. Schlick tosin erotti kannattamansa empiirisen realismin jyrkästi metafyysisestä realismista, jota hän piti merkityksettömänä. Schlickin realismin esittelyn lisäksi artikkelissa tarkastellaan yleisellä tasolla hänen epistemologiaansa, kielifilosofiaansa ja metafysiikan kritiikkiään. Tekstissä pohditaan myös Schlickin suosiman realismin asemaa ja relevanssia nykyisessä realismikeskustelussa.

The question of truth is a broadly broached subject in Philosophy as it features along the entire historical and polemical growth of the discipline right from the time of the Ancients down to our Post-Modern era. Yet, the delimiting realization of being unable to register general success in our dogged attempts at truth and knowledge, mostly stares us blankly in the face, for matters on which philosophy endeavours to speculate on, are beyond the reach of definite knowledge.1 Our theories of (...) the universe open up to modifications, refutations, and further propositions, evidencing a historical development in philosophical inquiry. This generally is the growth of our science, of our knowledge. This paper critically seeks to examine Popper’s notion of verisimilitude. It takes us through the scientist’s journey from ignorance to truth, and the difference between probability and verisimilitude. It addresses the relevance of the theory of content in understanding verisimilitude, under its distinctions as quantitative and qualitative. Finally, it discusses corroboration and the criteria for theory-choice. (shrink)