Switch to: References

Add citations

You must login to add citations.
  1. The Limits of Aesthetic Empiricism.Fabian Dorsch - 2014 - In Greg Currie, Matthew Kieran, Aaron Meskin & Jon Robson (eds.), Aesthetics and the Sciences of Mind. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. pp. 75-100.
    In this chapter, I argue against empiricist positions which claim that empirical evidence can be sufficient to defeasibly justify aesthetic judgements, or judgements about the adequacy of aesthetic judgements, or sceptical judgements about someone's capacity to form adequate aesthetic judgements. First, empirical evidence provides neither inferential, nor non-inferential justification for aesthetic opinions. Second, while empirical evidence may tell us how we do respond aesthetically to artworks, it cannot tell us how we should respond to them. And, third, empirical insights into (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   7 citations  
  • Hypothetical Entities and Realistic Interpretation: The Case of the Muriatic Radical.Jonathon Hricko - manuscript
    Scientific realists are committed to the claim that scientific discourse should be interpreted realistically, so that theoretical terms are understood as putatively referring expressions that have putative reference to empirical entities. In order to argue against realistic interpretation, I draw on an episode from the history of chemistry. One of the hypothetical entities of late 18th century chemistry was the muriatic radical, a hitherto unknown element that was thought to be a constituent of muriatic acid. I argue that the term (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • (1 other version)Science and Reality.Jan Faye - 2006 - In H. B. Andersen, F. V. Christiansen, K. F. Jørgensen & Vincent Hendriccks (eds.), The Way Through Science and Philosophy: Essays in Honour of Stig Andur Pedersen. College Publications. pp. 137-170.
    Scientific realism is the view that the aim of science is to produce true or approximately true theories about nature. It is a view which not only is shared by many philosophers but also by scientists themselves. Regarding Kuhn’s rejection of scientific progress, Steven Weinberg once declared: “All this is wormwood to scientists like myself, who think the task of science is to bring us closer and closer to objective truth.” But such a realist view on scientific theories is not (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  • (1 other version)Historical inductions, Old and New.Juha Saatsi - 2015 - Synthese:1-15.
    I review prominent historical arguments against scientific realism to indicate how they display a systematic overshooting in the conclusions drawn from the historical evidence. The root of the overshooting can be located in some critical, undue presuppositions regarding realism. I will highlight these presuppositions in connection with both Laudan’s ‘Old induction’ and Stanford’s New induction, and then delineate a minimal realist view that does without the problematic presuppositions.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   19 citations  
  • Identifying Difference, Engaging Dissent: What is at Stake in Democratizing Knowledge?L. King, B. Morgan-Olsen & J. Wong - 2016 - Foundations of Science 21 (1):69-88.
    Several prominent voices have called for a democratization of science through deliberative processes that include a diverse range of perspectives and values. We bring these scholars into conversation with extant research on democratic deliberation in political theory and the social sciences. In doing so, we identify systematic barriers to the effectiveness of inclusive deliberation in both scientific and political settings. We are particularly interested in what we call misidentified dissent, where deliberations are starkly framed at the outset in terms of (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  • The explanation paradox redux.Julian Reiss - 2013 - Journal of Economic Methodology 20 (3):280 - 292.
    I respond to some challenges raised by my critics. In particular, I argue in favour of six claims. First, against Alexandrova and Northcott, I point out that to deny the explanatoriness of economic models by assuming an ontic (specifically, causal) conception of explanation is to beg the question. Second, against defences of causal realism (by Hausman, Mäki, Rol and Grüne-Yanoff) I point out that they have provided no criterion to distinguish those claims a model makes that can be interpreted realistically (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   9 citations  
  • Historische Reflexion als Kritik naturwissenschaftlicher Ontologie. Ernst Machs Kritik an der mechanistischen Auffassung des Energieerhaltungssatzes und ihre Aktualität.Gregor Schiemann - 1999 - In J. Nida-Rümelin (ed.), Rationalität, Realismus, Revision. de Gruyter.
    Inwieweit vermag sich der ehemalige explanative Erfolg nicht mehr anerkannter Theorien auf die Geltung derjenigen Teilaussagen, die Nachfolgetheorien übernommen haben, zu stützen? Zur Klärung dieser Fragestellung können die Ergebnisse von Machs Untersuchung zur mechanistischen Auffassung des Energieerhaltungssatzes herangezogen werden. Indem er sich in seiner Kritik an den ontologischen Annahmen des Mechanismus auf die Wissenschaftsgeschichte beruft, steht er einer heutigen realismuskritischen Argumentation nahe. Andererseits mißt er den hypothesenfreien Theoriebestandteilen einen Geltungscharakter zu, der in seinem Wahrheitsanspruch durchaus mit einer heutigen realistischen Behauptung (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  • The Pessimistic Induction: A Bad Argument Gone Too Far.Moti Mizrahi - 2013 - Synthese 190 (15):3209-3226.
    In this paper, I consider the pessimistic induction construed as a deductive argument (specifically, reductio ad absurdum) and as an inductive argument (specifically, inductive generalization). I argue that both formulations of the pessimistic induction are fallacious. I also consider another possible interpretation of the pessimistic induction, namely, as pointing to counterexamples to the scientific realist’s thesis that success is a reliable mark of (approximate) truth. I argue that this interpretation of the pessimistic induction fails, too. If this is correct, then (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   62 citations  
  • A Confutation of the Pessimistic Induction.Seungbae Park - 2010 - Journal for General Philosophy of Science / Zeitschrift für Allgemeine Wissenschaftstheorie 42 (1):75-84.
    The pessimistic induction holds that successful past scientific theories are completely false, so successful current ones are completely false too. I object that past science did not perform as poorly as the pessimistic induction depicts. A close study of the history of science entitles us to construct an optimistic induction that would neutralize the pessimistic induction. Also, even if past theories were completely false, it does not even inductively follow that the current theories will also turn out to be completely (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   49 citations  
  • Coherence of Our Best Scientific Theories.Seungbae Park - 2011 - Foundations of Science 16 (1):21-30.
    Putnam (1975) infers from the success of a scientific theory to its approximate truth and the reference of its key term. Laudan (1981) objects that some past theories were successful, and yet their key terms did not refer, so they were not even approximately true. Kitcher (1993) replies that the past theories are approximately true because their working posits are true, although their idle posits are false. In contrast, I argue that successful theories which cohere with each other are approximately (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   13 citations  
  • Ontological Order in Scientific Explanation.Seungbae Park - 2003 - Philosophical Papers 32 (2):157-170.
    A scientific theory is successful, according to Stanford (2000), because it is suficiently observationally similar to its corresponding true theory. The Ptolemaic theory, for example, is successful because it is sufficiently similar to the Copernican theory at the observational level. The suggestion meets the scientific realists' request to explain the success of science without committing to the (approximate) truth of successful scientific theories. I argue that Stanford's proposal has a conceptual flaw. A conceptually sound explanation, I claim, respects the ontological (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   6 citations  
  • Approaching the truth via belief change in propositional languages.Gustavo Cevolani & Francesco Calandra - 2009 - In M. Suàrez, M. Dorato & M. Rèdei (eds.), EPSA Epistemology and Methodology of Science: Launch of the European Philosophy of Science Association. Springer. pp. 47--62.
    Starting from the sixties of the past century theory change has become a main concern of philosophy of science. Two of the best known formal accounts of theory change are the post-Popperian theories of verisimilitude (PPV for short) and the AGM theory of belief change (AGM for short). In this paper, we will investigate the conceptual relations between PPV and AGM and, in particular, we will ask whether the AGM rules for theory change are effective means for approaching the truth, (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   8 citations  
  • Modal Rationalism and Constructive Realism: Models and Their Modality.William Kallfelz - 2010
    I present a case for a rapprochement between aspects of rationalism and scientific realism, by way of a general framework employing modal epistemology and elements of 2-dimensional semantics (2DS). My overall argument strategy is meta-inductive: The bulk of this paper establishes a “base case,” i.e., a concretely constructive example by which I demonstrate this linkage. The base case or constructive example acts as the exemplar for generating, in a constructively ‘bottom-up’ fashion, a more generally rigorous case for rationalism-realism qua modal (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • The Pessimistic Induction, the Flight to Reference and the Metaphysical Zoo.Michael A. Bishop - 2003 - International Studies in the Philosophy of Science 17 (2):161 – 178.
    Scientific realism says of our best scientific theories that (1) most of their important posits exist and (2) most of their central claims are approximately true. Antirealists sometimes offer the pessimistic induction in reply: since (1) and (2) are false about past successful theories, they are probably false about our own best theories too. The contemporary debate about this argument has turned (and become stuck) on the question, Do the central terms of successful scientific theories refer? For example, Larry Laudan (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   8 citations  
  • Meta-inductia pesimista: Argumente pro si contra.Valentin Teodorescu - 2010 - Revista de Filosofie 57 (1-2):97-114.
    There are some arguments supporting the pessimistic meta-induction, coming from the direction of quantum theory (A. Kukla and J. Walmsley), from the direction of Laudan’s list with successful but false theories, and from the specific direction of the phlogiston theory (whom Kukla Walmsley, and S. Psillos consider to be false). Against these arguments we believe we can successfully oppose, in the first case the interactive quantum realism of I. Niiniluoto, in the second case the realism of the theoretical theoretical constituents (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • Reality in Perspectives.Mahdi Khalili - 2022 - Dissertation, Vu University Amsterdam
    This dissertation is about human knowledge of reality. In particular, it argues that scientific knowledge is bounded by historically available instruments and theories; nevertheless, the use of several independent instruments and theories can provide access to the persistent potentialities of reality. The replicability of scientific observations and experiments allows us to obtain explorable evidence of robust entities and properties. The dissertation includes seven chapters. It also studies three cases – namely, Higgs bosons and hypothetical Ϝ-particles (section 2.4), the Ptolemaic and (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  • How to Formulate Scientific Realism and Antirealism.Seungbae Park - 2019 - Journal for General Philosophy of Science / Zeitschrift für Allgemeine Wissenschaftstheorie 50 (4):477–488.
    The wider the gap between rivaling positions, the more there can be debates between rivaling interlocutors. The gap between the respective formulations of scientific realism and antirealism that invoke the Prussian conception of rationality is wider than the gap between the respective formulations of scientific realism and antirealism that invoke the English conception of rationality. Therefore, scientific realists and antirealists should choose the former over the latter as the framework of their debate.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  • Redefining revolutions.Andrew Aberdein - 2017 - In Moti Mizrahi (ed.), The Kuhnian Image of Science: Time for a Decisive Transformation? London: Rowman & Littlefield. pp. 133–154.
    In their account of theory change in logic, Aberdein and Read distinguish 'glorious' from 'inglorious' revolutions--only the former preserves all 'the key components of a theory' [1]. A widespread view, expressed in these terms, is that empirical science characteristically exhibits inglorious revolutions but that revolutions in mathematics are at most glorious [2]. Here are three possible responses: 0. Accept that empirical science and mathematics are methodologically discontinuous; 1. Argue that mathematics can exhibit inglorious revolutions; 2. Deny that inglorious revolutions are (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  • Historical Inductions Meet the Material Theory.Elay Shech - 2019 - Philosophy of Science 86 (5):918-929.
    Historical inductions, that is, the pessimistic metainduction and the problem of unconceived alternatives, are critically analyzed via John D. Norton’s material theory of induction and subsequently rejected as noncogent arguments. It is suggested that the material theory is amenable to a local version of the pessimistic metainduction, for example, in the context of some medical studies.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   5 citations  
  • The Anti-Induction for Scientific Realism.Seungbae Park - 2018 - Grazer Philosophische Studien 95 (3):329-342.
    In contemporary philosophy of science, the no-miracles argument and the pessimistic induction are regarded as the strongest arguments for and against scientific realism, respectively. In this paper, I construct a new argument for scientific realism which I call the anti-induction for scientific realism. It holds that, since past theories were false, present theories are true. I provide an example from the history of science to show that anti-inductions sometimes work in science. The anti-induction for scientific realism has several advantages over (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   7 citations  
  • Truth and Scientific Change.Gila Sher - 2017 - Journal for General Philosophy of Science / Zeitschrift für Allgemeine Wissenschaftstheorie 48 (3):371-394.
    The paper seeks to answer two new questions about truth and scientific change: What lessons does the phenomenon of scientific change teach us about the nature of truth? What light do recent developments in the theory of truth, incorporating these lessons, throw on problems arising from the prevalence of scientific change, specifically, the problem of pessimistic meta-induction?
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   3 citations  
  • What is structural realism?James Ladyman - 1998 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 29 (3):409-424.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   441 citations  
  • Survey of Structuralism in the Natural Sciences.Ioannis Votsis - manuscript
    This chapter traces the development of structural realism within the scientific realism debate and the wider current of structuralism that has swept the philosophy of the natural sciences in the twentieth century.1 The primary aim is to make perspicuous the many manifestations of structural realism and their underlying claims. Among other things, I will compare structural realism’s various manifestations in order to throw more light onto the relations between them. At the end of the chapter, I will identify the main (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • Review. A novel defense of scientific realism. Jarrett Leplin.Jac Ladyman - 1999 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 50 (1):181-188.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   10 citations  
  • Why Does Laudan’s Confutation of Convergent Realism Fail?Antonio Diéguez-Lucena - 2006 - Journal for General Philosophy of Science / Zeitschrift für Allgemeine Wissenschaftstheorie 37 (2):393 - 403.
    In his paper "A Confutation of Convergent Realism", Larry Laudan offered one of the most powerful criticisms of scientific realism. I defend here that although Laudan's criticism is right, this does not refute the realist position. The thesis that Laudan confutes is a much stronger thesis than realist needs to maintain. As I will exemplify with Salmon's statistical-relevance model, a less strict notion of explanation would allow us to claim that (approximate) truth is the best explanation for such success, even (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  • Underdetermination: A Realist Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics and Bohmian Mechanics.Chunling Yan - 2023 - Foundations of Science 28 (2):529-550.
    It is generally believed that two rival non-relativistic quantum theories, the realist interpretation of quantum mechanics and Bohmian mechanics, are empirically equivalent. In this paper, I use these two quantum theories to show that it is possible to offer a solution to underdetermination in some local cases, by specifying what counts as relevant empirical evidence in empirical equivalence and underdetermination. I argue for a _domain-sensitive_ approach to underdetermination. Domain sensitivity on theories’ predictions plays a role in determining whether two or (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • The Relevance of Evidence from the History of Science in the Contemporary Realism/Anti-realism Debate.K. Brad Wray - 2018 - Spontaneous Generations 9 (1):143-145.
    It is widely assumed that it is the anti-realist who stakes his case on evidence from the history of science. I argue that realists have failed to recognize the need to collect evidence from the history of science to support their methodological claims, and anti-realists do not rely on evidence from the history of science to the extent that many suggest.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • Putnam’s no Miracles Argument.Marco Bastianelli - 2021 - European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy 13 (2).
    In this paper I investigate Hilary Putnam’s conception of scientific realism by examining the so-called “no miracles argument.” According to a widespread reconstruction of his thought, Putnam has been moving from scientific realism, through internal realism to natural realism of common sense. Nonetheless, I show that, in fact, the American philosopher has always been a scientific realist. This notion needs however to be made clearer, because Putnam tends to move constantly on the razor’s edge between metaphysical realism and anti-realism. I (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • Incompatibility and the pessimistic induction: a challenge for selective realism.Florian J. Boge - 2021 - European Journal for Philosophy of Science 11 (2):1-31.
    Two powerful arguments have famously dominated the realism debate in philosophy of science: The No Miracles Argument (NMA) and the Pessimistic Meta-Induction (PMI). A standard response to the PMI is selective scientific realism (SSR), wherein only the working posits of a theory are considered worthy of doxastic commitment. Building on the recent debate over the NMA and the connections between the NMA and the PMI, I here consider a stronger inductive argument that poses a direct challenge for SSR: Because it (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  • The Pessimistic Meta-induction: Obsolete Through Scientific Progress?Florian Müller - 2015 - International Studies in the Philosophy of Science 29 (4):393-412.
    Recently, Fahrbach and Park have argued that the pessimistic meta-induction about scientific theories is unsound. They claim that this very argument does not properly take into account scientific progress, particularly during the twentieth century. They also propose amended arguments in favour of scientific realism, which are supposed to properly reflect the history of science. I try to show that what I call the argument from scientific progress cannot explain satisfactorily why the current theories should have reached a degree of success (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   7 citations  
  • Pessimistic Inductions: Four Varieties.K. Brad Wray - 2015 - International Studies in the Philosophy of Science 29 (1):61-73.
    The pessimistic induction plays an important role in the contemporary realism/anti-realism debate in philosophy of science. But there is some disagreement about the structure and aim of the argument. And a number of scholars have noted that there is more than one type of PI in the philosophical literature. I review four different versions of the PI. I aim to show that PIs have been appealed to by philosophers of science for a variety of reasons. Even some realists have appealed (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   25 citations  
  • Algumas razões para levar a sério a metaindução pessimista.Tiago Luís Teixeira Oliveira - 2014 - Principia: An International Journal of Epistemology 18 (2):269.
    The present paper aims to give an account of pessimistic meta-induction and reply to some representative realist authors who want to consider PMI a fallacy. Most of that accounts are misinterpretations of Laudant’s ideas and fails the target. This work intend that PMI is neither a induction nor a reductio, but a skeptic challenge. If this is right then PMI could not be a fallacy and the realism cannot escape from the task of explain why the success is a good (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   4 citations  
  • Review. [REVIEW]Stathis Psillos - 1996 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 47 (4):663-668.
    Two things seem to make science different from other human activities: the existence of a special method and the claim that this method produces objective knowledge of the world. Yet, as Barry Gower’s impressive book shows, after centuries of philosophical reflection on scientific method, there is considerable disagreement as to what exactly this method is. What is more interesting is that all attempts to characterise scientific method, from Galileo and Descartes up until the present, suffer from an internal tension: whatever (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • The Challenge of Scientific Realism to Intelligent Design.Christian Carman - 2022 - European Journal for Philosophy of Religion 14 (4):42-69.
    Intelligent Design (ID) argues for the existence of a designer, postulating it as a theoretical entity of a scientific theory aiming to explain specific characteristics in nature that seems to show design. It is commonly accepted within the Scientific Realism debate, however, that asserting that a scientific theory is successful is not enough for accepting the extramental existence of the entities it postulates. Instead, scientific theories must fulfill additional epistemic requirements, one of which is that they must show successful novel (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • Why the Realism Debate Matters for Science Policy: The Case of the Human Brain Project.Jamie Craig Owen Shaw - 2018 - Spontaneous Generations 9 (1):82-98.
    There has been a great deal of skepticism towards the value of the realism/anti-realism debate. More specifically, many have argued that plausible formulations of realism and anti-realism do not differ substantially in any way. In this paper, I argue against this trend by demonstrating how a hypothetical resolution of the debate, through deeper engagement with the historical record, has important implications for our criterion of theory pursuit and science policy. I do this by revisiting Arthur Fine’s ‘small handful’ argument for (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   9 citations  
  • Kitcher on reference.Stathis Psillos - 1997 - International Studies in the Philosophy of Science 11 (3):259 – 272.
    In his (1978) and parts of (1993), Philip Kitcher advances a new context-sensitive theory of reference which he applies to abandoned theoretical expression-types, such as Joseph Priestley’s ‘dephlogisticated air’, in order to show that, although qua types they fail to refer uniformly, they nonetheless have referential tokens. This piece offers a critical examination of Kitcher’s theory. After a general investigation into the overall adequacy of Kitcher’s theory as a general account of reference, I focus on the case of abandoned theoretical (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   15 citations  
  • Scientific realism: quo vadis? Introduction: new thinking about scientific realism.Stathis Psillos & Emma Ruttkamp-Bloem - 1999 - Synthese 194 (9):3187-3201.
    This Introduction has two foci: the first is a discussion of the motivation for and the aims of the 2014 conference on New Thinking about Scientific Realism in Cape Town South Africa, and the second is a brief contextualization of the contributed articles in this special issue of Synthese in the framework of the conference. Each focus is discussed in a separate section.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   10 citations  
  • Uma solução baseada no realismo experimental para dois argumentos pessimistas.Tiago Luís Teixeira Oliveira - 2017 - Veritas – Revista de Filosofia da Pucrs 62 (3):595-623.
    No presente trabalho procurarei expor dois desafios antirrealistas ancorados na história da ciência, que Stanford apelidou respectivamente de ‘antiga’ e ‘nova indução pessimista’. Argumentarei que existe uma solução realista já disponível a ambos os desafios pessimistas: o realismo experimental, inicialmente proposto por Hacking e Cartwritght, segundo o qual é possível comprometer-se com entidades teóricas com as quais desenvolvemos interações causais e com as quais produzimos fenômenos controlados, sem que tal compromisso se estenda às teorias mesmas. Tomarei como parâmetro não propriamente (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   3 citations  
  • Reference invariance and truthlikeness.Ilkka Niiniluoto - 1997 - Philosophy of Science 64 (4):546-554.
    A holistic account of the meaning of theoretical terms leads scientific realism into serious troubles. Alternative methods of reference fixing are needed by a realist who wishes to show how reference invariance is possible in spite of meaning variance. This paper argues that the similarity theory of truthlikeness and approximate truth, developed by logicians since the mid 1970s, helps to make precise the idea of charitable theoretical reference. Comparisons to the recent proposals by Kitcher and Psillos are given. This argument (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   8 citations  
  • Must Scientific Realists Respond to The Challenge of the PMI?Zoltán Vecsey - forthcoming - Teorie Vědy / Theory of Science.
    The Pessimistic Meta-Induction (PMI) says that because most past scientific theories turned out to be false, we have no reason to believe in the truthfulness of our current scientific theories. According to current consensus, this anti-realist argument presents a serious challenge to which proponents of the realist conception of science must give a response. In accordance with this requirement, some scientific realists try to demonstrate that PMI is a fallacious argument. Other realists make an attempt to block the pessimistic conclusion. (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark