De um modo geral, queríamos mostrar que a filosofia tem suas próprias áreas, mas tem também subáreas em interdisciplinaridade com as ciências. As ciências e as disciplinas acadêmicas em geral têm problemas, cuja a solução pode ser encontrada empiricamente, por meio de experimentos, entrevistas, documentos, ou formalmente, por meio de cálculos etc, porém os problemas das filosofias dessas disciplinas são justamente os problemas mais fundamentais dessas disciplinas, que fundam o quadro conceitual e de pesquisa das mesmas, e que só poderiam (...) ser respondidos por meio de uma extensa argumentação. A filosofia de cada uma dessas disciplinas é uma mistura (a) de metafísica da disciplina, perguntando-se qual a natureza e justificação das entidades que formam o quadro teórico da disciplina, i.e., quais delas realmente existem na realidade (não sendo meros instrumentos para obter resultados) e quais as suas categorizações fundamentais, naturezas e funções teóricas, (b) de epistemologia dessa disciplina, ao nos perguntarmos sobre como tal área poderia obter conhecimento de modo confiável e se ela de fato o faz, e (c) de teorias do valor, ao nos perguntarmos, por exemplo, sobre qual o valor moral do desenvolvimento de uma certa disciplina e, finalmente, (d) a lógica, que perpassa tudo, ao nos perguntarmos sobre a consistência das teses assumidas pela disciplina. Não é à toa que falamos que a filosofia é mãe de todas as ciências. Ela é mãe tanto num sentido geracional, pois a maioria das ciências foram desenvolvimentos particulares, empíricos ou de cálculo, das questões filosóficas sobre um certo tema, quanto num sentido fundamental, pois é a filosofia que fornece os fundamentos mais gerais, metafísicos, epistêmicos, valorativos e lógicos, na construção do quadro teórico de cada ciência e na qualidade dos métodos para se aproximar da verdade que a disciplina utiliza. A biologia, por exemplo, foi criada por Aristóteles, tal como os primeiros desenvolvimentos da meteorologia (na verdade, esta começa com os pré-socráticos), e grande parte do fundamento da física atual jaz nas discussões de filosofia da física. Sendo você filósofo ou cientista de outra área, a filosofia promete te dar as bases para uma reflexão geral ou sobre sua área, que seja muito mais informada e profunda do que aquilo que você poderia realizar sem ela. /// In general, we wanted to show that philosophy has its own areas, but it also has subareas in interdisciplinarity with the sciences. The sciences and academic disciplines in general have problems, the solution of which can be found empirically, through experiments, interviews, documents, or formally, through calculations etc., but the problems of the philosophies of these disciplines are precisely the most fundamental problems. of these disciplines, which build their conceptual and research framework, and which could only be answered through extensive argumentation. The philosophy of each of these disciplines is a mixture (a) of metaphysics of the discipline, asking what is the nature and justification of the entities that form the theoretical framework of the discipline, ie, which ones really exist in reality (not being mere instruments for achieving results) and what are its fundamental categorizations, natures and theoretical functions, (b) the epistemology of this discipline, when we ask ourselves how such an area could obtain knowledge reliably and if it does, and (c) theories of value, when we ask ourselves, for example, about the moral value of the development of a certain discipline and, finally, (d) the logic, which permeates everything, when we ask ourselves about the consistency of the theses assumed by the discipline. It is not for nothing that we say that philosophy is the mother of all sciences. It is a mother both in a generational sense, as most sciences were particular empirical or formal developments of philosophical questions on a certain topic, and in a fundamental sense, as it is philosophy that provides the most general, metaphysical, epistemic, evaluative and logical foundations, in the construction of the theoretical framework of each science and in the quality of the methods to approach the truth that the discipline uses. Biology, for example, was created by Aristotle, like the first developments in meteorology (in fact, it starts with the pre-Socratics), and much of the foundation of current physics lies in discussions of the philosophy of physics. Whether you are a philosopher or scientist from another area, philosophy promises to give you the basis for a general reflection or about your area, which is much more informed and profound than what you could accomplish without it. (shrink)

'Reason, Causation and Compatibility with the Phenomena' strives to give answers to the philosophical problem of the interplay between realism, explanation and experience. This book is a compilation of essays that recollect significant conceptions of rival terms such as determinism and freedom, reason and appearance, power and knowledge. This title discusses the progress made in epistemology and natural philosophy, especially the steps that led from the ancient theory of atomism to the modern quantum theory, and from mathematization to analytic philosophy. (...) Moreover, it provides possible gateways from modern deadlocks of theory either through approaches to consciousness or through historical critique of intellectual authorities. This work will be of interest to those either researching or studying in colleges and universities, especially in the departments of philosophy, history of science, philosophy of science, philosophy of physics and quantum mechanics, history of ideas and culture. Greek and Latin Literature students and instructors may also find this book to be both a fascinating and valuable point of reference. (shrink)

This paper offers an intellectual history of the scientific realism debate during the twentieth century. The telling of the tale will explain the philosophical significance and the prospects of the scientific realism debate, through the major turns it went through. The emphasis will be on the relations between empiricism and scientific realism and on the swing from metaphysics-hostile to metaphysics-friendly versions of realism.

REVIEW (1): "Jeff Kochan’s book offers both an original reading of Martin Heidegger’s early writings on science and a powerful defense of the sociology of scientific knowledge (SSK) research program. Science as Social Existence weaves together a compelling argument for the thesis that SSK and Heidegger’s existential phenomenology should be thought of as mutually supporting research programs." (Julian Kiverstein, in Isis) ---- REVIEW (2): "I cannot in the space of this review do justice to the richness and range of Kochan's (...) discussion [...]. There is a great deal in this foundational portion of Kochan's discussion that I find tremendously interesting and engaging [...]." (David R. Cerbone, in Studies in History and Philosophy of Science) ---- REVIEW (3): "Science as Social Existence will be of interest not only to Heidegger scholars but to anyone engaged in science and technology studies. [...] This is an informative and original book. Kochan should be praised for his clear, pleasant-to-read prose." (Michael Butler, in CHOICE). (shrink)

This paper aims to defend scientific realism against two versions of agnostic empiricism: a naive agnostic position, which suggests that the only rational option is to remain agnostic as to the truth of theoretical assertions, and van Fraassen's more sophisticated agnostic empiricism - which may be called "Hypercritical Empiricism". It first argues that given semantic realism, naive agnostic empiricism cannot be maintained: there is no relevant epistemic difference between theoretical assertions and observational ones. It then focuses on van Fraassen's more (...) sophisticated alternative to scientific realism and suggests that an attitude towards science which involves less than aiming at theoretical truth and believing in theories would be, in some concrete respect that empiricists should recognize, worse off than the recommended realist attitude. To this end, the paper develops the so-called conjunction argument into a diachronic argument for scientific realism. (shrink)

In this paper I develop five worries concerning Cartwright’s realism about entities and capacities. The first is that while she was right to insist on the ontic commitment that flows from causal explanation, she was wrong to tie these commitments solely to the entities that do the causal explaining. This move obscured the nature of causal explanation and its connection to laws. The second worry is that when she turned her attention to causal inference, by insisting on the motto of (...) ‘the most likely cause’, she underplayed her powerful argument for realism. For she focused her attention on an extrinsic feature of causal inference (or, indeed, of any ampliative inference), that is the demand of high probability, leaving behind the intrinsic qualities that causal explanation should have in order to provide the required understanding. The third worry is that her objections to Inference to the Best Explanation were unnecessarily tied to her objections about the falsity of fundamental laws. The fourth worry is that though her argument for positing capacities and being realist about them was supposed to take strength from its parallel with Sellars’s powerful argument for the indispensable explanatory role of positing unobservable entities, there are important disanalogies between the two arguments which cast doubt on the indispensability of capacities. The final (fifth) worry is that laws—perhaps brute regularities—might well have to come back from the front door, since they are still the most plausible candidates for explaining why objects have the capacities to do what they can do. (shrink)

When we think of scientific realism, there seem to be to ways to conceive of what it is about. The first is to see it as a view about scientific theories; the second is to see it as a view about the world. Some philosophers, most typically from Australia, think that the second way is the correct way. Scientific realism, they argue, is a metaphysical thesis: it asserts the reality of some types of entity, most typically, unobservable entities. I agree (...) that scientific realism has a metaphysical dimension, but I have insisted that it has other dimensions too. In my (1999), I took scientific realism to consist of three theses (or stances). (shrink)

Parsimony considerations are ubiquitous in the literature concerning the nature of mental states. Other things being equal, physicalist views are preferred over dualist accounts on the grounds of the fact that they do not posit new fundamental properties in addition to the physical ones. This paper calls into question the widespread assumption that parsimony can provide reasons for believing that physicalism is a better candidate than dualism for solving the mind–body problem. After presenting the theoretical core of physicalism and dualism, (...) I make explicit the meta-metaphysical assumptions the physicalist relies on when leveraging parsimony to support her view. In particular, the physicalist takes for granted that parsimony has an epistemic value in metaphysics. This point, however, is rather controversial. I argue that the most promising way to account for the epistemic value of parsimony is to ground it in the epistemic value of modesty, a higher-level theoretical virtue that has to do with the epistemic risk of a theory. Unfortunately for the physicalist, the modesty rationale does not ultimately favour physicalism over dualism. (shrink)

Including the perspectives of scientists about the nature and process of science is important for an authentic and nuanced portrayal of science in science education. The small number of studies that have explored scientists’ worldviews about science has thus far generated contradictory findings, with recent studies claiming that scientists simultaneously hold contradictory sophisticated and naïve views. This article reports on an exploratory study that uses the framework of Bhaskar’s critical realism to elicit and separately analyse academic scientists’ ontological and epistemological (...) views about science in semi-structured interviews. When the views of scientists are analysed through the lens of critical realism, it is clear that it is possible to hold a realist ontological commitment about what knowledge is of, simultaneously with a fallibilist epistemological commitment about knowledge itself. The apparent incongruence of scientists’ so-called naïve and sophisticated views about science is resolved when analysed using a critical realist framework. Critical realism offers a simple and coherent framework for science educators that avoids many of the problems of positivism and social constructivism by finding a middle ground between them. The three pillars of critical realism: ontological realism, epistemological fallibilism and judgmental rationality help to make sense of how socially constructed scientific knowledge can be anchored in an independent reality. (shrink)

The ontic structural realist stance is motivated by a desire to do philosophical justice to the success of science, whilst withstanding the metaphysical undermining generated by the various species of ontological underdetermination. We are, however, as yet in want of general principles to provide a scaffold for the explicit construction of structural ontologies. Here we will attempt to bridge this gap by utilizing the formal procedure of quantization as a guide to ontic structure of modern physical theory. The example of (...) non-relativistic particle mechanics will be considered and, for that case, it will be shown that a viable candidate for an ontic structural realism framework can be constituted in terms of the combination of a state-space with Poisson bracket structure, and a set of observables, with Lie algebra structure. 1 Introduction2 Formulation Underdetermination and Structural Ontologies3 Quantization and Structural Ontologies4 The Case of Non-relativistic Particle Mechanics4.1 Formulation underdetermination4.2 The classical ontology4.3 Quantum theory and the generalized structural ontology4.4 Interpretation of results5 Conclusion and Prospects. (shrink)

My aim is to evaluate a new realist strategy for addressing the pessimistic induction, Ludwig Fahrbach’s (Synthese 180:139–155, 2011) appeal to the exponential growth of science. Fahrbach aims to show that, given the exponential growth of science, the history of science supports realism. I argue that Fahrbach is mistaken. I aim to show that earlier generations of scientists could construct a similar argument, but one that aims to show that the theories that they accepted are likely true. The problem with (...) this is that from our perspective on the history of science we know their argument is flawed. Consequently, we should not be impressed or persuaded by Fahrbach’s argument. Fahrbach has failed to identify a difference that matters between today’s theories and past theories. But realists need to find such a difference if they are to undermine the pessimistic induction. (shrink)

This is a reply piece to a series of book symposium contributions to my book, Resisting Scientific Realism. The contributions were by Steven French, Peter Vickers, Stathis Psillos, and Kyle Stanford.

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 (...) to a PI. My goal is to advance our understanding of what the various PIs can teach us about science and the threat posed by PIs to scientific realism. (shrink)

Van Fraassen believes our current best theories enable us to make accurate predictions because they have been subjected to a selection process similar to natural selection. His explanation for the predictive success of our best theories has been subjected to extensive criticism from realists. I aim to clarify the nature of van Fraassen’s selectionist explanation for the success of science. Contrary to what the critics claim, the selectionist can explain why it is that we have successful theories, as well as (...) why it is reasonable to expect past successful theories to be successful in the future. I also argue that the plausibility of the realists’ explanation rests on an inaccurate understanding of the nature of predictive success . The predictive success of our best theories is a relative success. (shrink)

I aim to clarify the relationship between the success of a theory and the truth of that theory. This has been a central issue in the debates between realists and anti-realists. Realists assume that success is a reliable indicator of truth, but the details about the respects in which success is a reliable indicator or test of truth have been largely left to our intuitions. Lewis (Synthese 129:371–380, 2001) provides a clear proposal of how success and truth might be connected, (...) comparing a test of success of our theories to medical tests with low rates of false positives and false negatives. But, contrary to what Lewis claims, I argue that it is not enough for the realist to undercut the claim that success is not a reliable indicator of truth. Rather, the realist must show that our current best theories are likely true. Further, I argue that tests in science are unlike medical tests in a number of important ways. (shrink)

I take another look at the history of science and offer some fresh insights into why the history of science is filled with discarded theories. I argue that the history of science is just as we should expect it to be, given the following two facts about science: theories are always only partial representations of the world, and almost inevitably scientists will be led to investigate phenomena that the accepted theory is not fit to account for. Together these facts suggest (...) that most scientific theories are apt to be discarded sometime, superseded by new theories that better serve scientists’ new research interests. Consequently, it is reasonable to expect that many of the theories we currently accept, despite their many impressive successes, will be discarded sometime in the future. But I also argue that discarded theories are not always aptly characterized as a sign of failure or as a sign of some sort of shortcoming with science. Theories are discarded because scientists are making advances in their pursuit of knowledge. Thus, discarded theories are often a sign of the good health of science. Scientists are responding to their changing research interests. (shrink)

Realists and anti-realists disagree about whether contemporary scientists are epistemically privileged. Because the issue of epistemic privilege figures in arguments in support of and against theoretical knowledge in science, it is worth examining whether or not there is any basis for assuming such privilege. I show that arguments that try to explain the success of science by appeal to some sort of epistemic privilege have, so far, failed. They have failed to give us reason to believe (i) that scientists are (...) prone to develop theories that are true, (ii) that our current theories are not apt to be replaced in the future, and (iii) that science is nearing its completion. (shrink)

Are theories ‘underdetermined by the evidence’ in any way that should worry the scientific realist? I argue that no convincing reason has been given for thinking so. A crucial distinction is drawn between data equivalence and empirical equivalence. Duhem showed that it is always possible to produce a data equivalent rival to any accepted scientific theory. But there is no reason to regard such a rival as equally well empirically supported and hence no threat to realism. Two theories are empirically (...) equivalent if they share all consequences expressed in purely observational vocabulary. This is a much stronger requirement than has hitherto been recognised— two such ‘rival’ theories must in fact agree on many claims that are clearly theoretical in nature. Given this, it is unclear how much of an impact on realism a demonstration that there is always an empirically equivalent ‘rival’ to any accepted theory would have—even if such a demonstration could be produced. Certainly in the case of the version of realism that I defend—structural realism—such a demonstration would have precisely no impact: two empirically equivalent theories are, according to structural realism, cognitively indistinguishable. (shrink)

Realists about science tend to hold that our scientific theories aim for the truth, that our successful theories are at least partly true, and that the entities referred to by the theoretical terms of these theories exist. Antirealists about science deny one or more of these claims. A sizable minority of philosophers of science prefers not to take sides: they believe the realism debate to be fundamentally mistaken and seek to abstain from it altogether. In analogy with other realism debates (...) I will call these philosophers quietists. In the philosophy of science quietism often takes a somewhat peculiar form, which I will call naturalistic quietism. In this paper I will characterize Maddy’s Second Philosophy as a form of naturalistic quietism, and show what the costs for making it feasible are. (shrink)

Past entities, events, and circumstances are neither observable nor manipulatable. Several philosophers argued that this inaccessibility precludes a realistic conception of the past. I survey versions of antirealism and agnosticism about the past formulated by Michael Dummett, Leon Goldstein, and Derek Turner. These accounts differ in their motivations and reasoning, but they share the opinion that the reality of at least large swathes of the past is unknowable. Consequently, they consider statements about them as referring, at most, to present constructs. (...) These antirealists about the past are not, however, antirealists or skeptics about time or chronology. They accept, among other things, that present traces can be dated and statements about their temporal provenances are referring and truth-apt.I posit that an antirealist who accepts that at least some of the present traces can be truth-aptly dated while holding that these traces do not support knowledge about past events and circumstances commits herself to a radically skeptic stance. Otherwise, she would be diluting her position so that it will be hardly distinguishable from realism. This problem could be avoided if antirealists about the past would extend their antirealism to estimates of the age of present traces. Such a position, however, would imply a very drastic form of scientific antirealism. I conclude that the past’s inaccessibility is insufficient to support antirealism about the past, either as a part of moderate scientific antirealism or as a stand-alone position. (shrink)

I respond to the frequent objection that structural realism fails to sharply state an alternative to the standard predicate-logic, object / property / relation, way of doing metaphysics. The approach I propose is based on what I call a ‘math-first’ approach to physical theories (close to the so-called ‘semantic view of theories') where the content of a physical theory is to be understood primarily in terms of its mathematical structure and the representational relations it bears to physical systems, rather than (...) as a collection of sentences that attempt to make true claims about those systems (a ‘language-first’ approach). I argue that adopting the math-first approach already amounts to a form of structural realism, and that the choice between epistemic and ontic versions of structural realism is then a choice between a language-first and math-first view of metaphysics; I then explore the status of objects (and properties and relations) in fundamental and non-fundamental physics for both versions of math-first structural realism. (shrink)

This paper offers a realist critique of socialresearch on health inequalities. A conspectus of thefield of health inequalities research identifies twomain research approaches: the positivist quantitativesurvey and the interpretivist qualitative `casestudy'. We argue that both approaches suffer fromserious philosophical limitations. We suggest that aturn to realism offers a productive `third way' bothfor the development of health inequality research inparticular and for the social scientific understandingof the complexities of the social world in general.

My main aim in this paper is to clarify the concepts of referential success and of referential continuity that are so crucial to the scientific realism debate. I start by considering the three dominant theories of reference and the intuitions that motivate each of them. Since several intuitions cited in support of one theory conflict with intuitions cited in support of another something has to give way. The traditional policy has been to reject all intuitions that clash with a chosen (...) theory. A more radical policy, tied to some experimental philosophers, has called for the rejection of any evidential role for intuitions. I explore a largely ignored third alternative, i.e. saving intuitions (and their evidential role) even when they are at odds. To accommodate conflicting intuitions different sets of internally consistent (yet externally inconsistent) intuitions are taken to lend credence to different concepts of reference. In the current context, this means that the concepts of referential success and referential continuity are not monolithic. They are what I call 'polylithic'. This paper is as much about meta-philosophical concerns with the role of intuitions as it is about reference and the scientific realism debate. Regarding the former I hope that a blueprint will emerge for similar projects in other philosophical domains. Regarding the latter, I hope that polylithicity helps disentangle claims about referential success and continuity in the scientific realism debate by making perspicuous which concepts are best equipped to evaluate the realist's epistemic claims against the historical record of science. (shrink)

Scientific realists endeavour to secure inferences from empirical success to approximate truth by arguing that despite the demise of empirically successful theories the parts of those theories responsible for their success do in fact survive theory change. If, as some anti-realists have recently suggested, those parts of theories that are responsible for their success are only identifiable in retrospect, namely as those that have survived, then the realist approach is trivialised for now success and survival are guaranteed to coincide. The (...) aim of this paper is to counter this argument by identifying successful theory parts independently from their survival. (shrink)

One of the popular realist responses to the pessimistic meta-induction is the ‘selective’ move, where a realist only commits to the ‘working posits’ of a successful theory, and withholds commitment to ‘idle posits’. Antirealists often criticise selective realists for not being able to articulate exactly what is meant by ‘working’ and/or not being able to identify the working posits except in hindsight. This paper aims to establish two results: sometimes a proposition is, in an important sense, ‘doing work’, and yet (...) does not warrant realist commitment, and the realist will be able to respond to PMI-style historical challenges if she can merely show that certain selected posits do not require realist commitment. These two results act to significantly adjust the dialectic vis-à-vis PMI-style challenges to selective realism. (shrink)

A success-to-truth inference has always been at the heart of scientific realist positions. But all attempts to articulate the inference have met with very significant challenges. This paper reconstructs the evolution of this inference, and brings together a number of qualifications in an attempt to articulate a contemporary success-to-truth inference which is realistic. I argue that this contemporary version of the inference has a chance, at least, of overcoming the historical challenges which have been proffered to date. However, there is (...) a price to pay: the developments which help the realist answer the historical challenges also serve to increase the number of non-historical challenges. (shrink)

Two successes of old quantum theory are particularly notable: Bohr’s prediction of the spectral lines of ionised helium, and Sommerfeld’s prediction of the fine-structure of the hydrogen spectral lines. Many scientific realists would like to be able to explain these successes in terms of the truth or approximate truth of the assumptions which fuelled the relevant derivations. In this paper I argue that this will be difficult for the ionised helium success, and is almost certainly impossible for the fine-structure success. (...) Thus I submit that the case against the realist’s thesis that success is indicative of truth is marginally strengthened. (shrink)

Despite the amount of work that has been produced on the subject over the years, the ‘transformation of cladistics’ is still a misunderstood episode in the history of comparative biology. Here, I analyze two outstanding, highly contrasting historiographic accounts on the matter, under the perspective of an influential dichotomy in the philosophy of science: the opposition between Scientific Realism and Empiricism. Placing special emphasis on the notion of ‘causal grounding’ of morphological characters in modern developmental biology’s theories, I arrive at (...) the conclusion that a ‘new transformation of cladistics’ is philosophically plausible. This ‘reformed’ understanding of ‘pattern cladistics’ entails retaining the interpretation of cladograms as ‘schemes of synapomorphies’, but in association to construing cladogram nodes as ‘developmental-genetic taxic homologies’, instead of ‘standard Darwinian ancestors’. The reinterpretation of pattern cladistics presented here additionally proposes to take Bas Van Fraassen’s ‘constructive empiricism’ as a philosophical stance that could properly support such analysis of developmental-genetic data for systematic purposes. The latter suggestion is justified through a reappraisal of previous ideas developed by prominent pattern cladists , which concerned a scientifically efficient ‘observable/non-observable distinction’ linked to the conceptual pair ‘ontogeny and phylogeny’. Finally, I argue that a robust articulation of Antirealist alternatives in systematics may provide a rational basis for its disciplinary separation from evolutionary biology, as well as for a critical reconsideration of the proper role of certain Scientific Realist positions, currently popular in comparative biology. (shrink)

Highly idealized models may serve various epistemic functions, notably explanation, in virtue of representing the world. Inferentialism provides a prima facie compelling characterization of what constitutes the representation relation. In this paper, I argue that what I call factive inferentialism does not provide a satisfactory solution to the puzzle of model-based—factive—explanation. In particular, I show that making explanatory counterfactual inferences is not a sufficient guide for accurate representation, factivity, or realism. I conclude by calling for a more explicit specification of (...) model-world mismatches and properties imputation. (shrink)

This paper seeks to evaluate the potential of the Newman objection to function as an immanent critique of Carnap's use of the Ramsey method of regimenting scientific theories. Stress is laid on the distinctive way in which ramseyfications are used by Carnap to formulate the analytic/synthetic distinction for the theoretical language and on the difference between the ontological and the epistemic readings of the Newman objection. While the former reading of the Newman objection is rejected as trading on an assumption (...) that Carnap did not share, the latter is accepted as critical. It is argued to turn on overlooking that the Ramsey sentence constitutes an idealization concerning which our normal expectations of what theories are like are bound to be frustrated. This idealisation need not reflect Carnap's considered view but can be regarded as adopted solely for the project of semantic explication. The distinctions drawn in the course of the argument also help to motivate Carnap's abstention from the discourse of realism and its denial. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue (i) that there are certain methodological practices that are epistemically significant, and (ii) that we can test for the success of these practices empirically by examining case-studies in the history of science. Analysing a particular episode from the history of medicine, I explain how this can help us resolve specific cases of underdetermination. I conclude that, while the anti-realist is (more or less legitimately) able to construct underdetermination scenarios on a case-by-case basis, he will have (...) to abandon the strategy of using algorithms to do so, thus losing the much needed guarantee that there will always be rival cases of the required kind. (shrink)

The case of John Snow has long been important to epidemiologists and public health officials. However, despite the fact that there have been many discussions about the various aspects of Snow’s case, there has been virtually no discussion about what guided Snow’s reasoning in his coming to believe his various conclusions about cholera. Here, I want to take up this question in some detail and show that there are a number of specific principles of reasoning that played a crucial role (...) for Snow. Moreover, these principles were episte- mologically important to Snow, a fact about which Snow is explicit in many places. An analysis of Snow’s case suggests that, because of the epistemic role such principles of reasoning can play, health care practitioners ought to understand their practices to be theoretically informed in these ways, and not just data driven. (shrink)

My purpose in this paper is to show how a re-examination of Snow’s famous South London water study, widely taken to have established that cholera is water-borne, highlights some problems with current, scientific realist accounts of theory-change. When examining scientific controversies, such accounts focus disproportionately on the ‘winning’ theories and their properties, or on those of the reasoning of the scientists who proposed them. I argue that this focus is misguided and leads us to neglect much of what is epistemically (...) valuable in episodes of theory-change, thereby leading to inaccurate views about both the dynamics of theory-change and the notion of scientific progress that accompanies it. I end by sketching some implications for the philosophy of epidemiology. (shrink)

One typical realist response to the argument from underdetermination of theories by evidence is an appeal to epistemic criteria besides the empirical evidence to argue that, while scientific theories might be empirically equivalent, they are not epistemically equivalent. In this article, I spell out a new and reformulated version of the underdetermination argument that takes such criteria into account. I explain the notion of epistemic equivalence which this new argument appeals to, and argue that epistemic equivalence can be achieved in (...) several, significantly different, ways. On the basis of this ‘multiple realisability’ of epistemic equivalence, I then proceed to explain and examine some of the main consequences of this reformulated underdetermination argument for both realists and anti-realists. (shrink)

In the mid-1800s, there was much debate about the origin or 'exciting cause' of cholera. Despite much confusion surrounding the disease, the so-called miasma theory emerged as the prevalent account about cholera's cause. Going against this mainstream view, the British physician John Snow inferred several things about cholera's origin and pathology that no one else inferred. Without observing the vibrio cholerae, however,-data unavailable to Snow and his colleagues-, there was no way of settling the question of what exactly was causing (...) cholera and how, or if, it was passed on. The question then arises as to how Snow arrived at conclusions so systematically different from those of his opponents. In this paper, I want to look at Snow's reasoning in some detail, and show that there were certain principles, explanatory power in particular, that were epistemologically important to Snow in their own right. I will show that Snow himself takes explanatory power to be an epistemic property, and makes explicit links between explanatory power and confirmation. Systematically juxtaposing Snow's claims and his opponents', I will show that Snow was right to tout the explanatory power of his theory, and that his conclusions about the epistemic superiority of his theory over that of the miasmatists' were justified. (shrink)

It has recently been suggested that realist responses to historical cases featured in pessimistic meta-inductions are not as successful as previously thought. In response, selective realists have updated the basic divide et impera strategy specifically to take such cases into account and to argue that more modern realist accounts are immune to the historical challenge. Using a case study—that of the nineteenth-century zymotic theory of disease—I argue that these updated proposals fail and that even the most sophisticated recent realist accounts (...) remain vulnerable to the challenge from history. (shrink)

This paper considers how explanatory factors can play a role in our ampliative inferential practices. Van Fraassen has argued that there is no possible rational rule that governs ampliative inferences and includes weightings for explanatory beauty. In opposition to van Fraassen, Douven has argued that ampliative inferential rules that include weightings for explanatory factors can be rationally followed. There is, however, a crucial difficulty with Douven's approach: applying the ampliative rule that he suggests leads into irrational belief states. A way (...) to remove the difficulties with Douven's account is suggested. The implications of rationally including explanatory factors in ampliative inferences are then considered. Introduction The proposed interpretations Van Fraassen's justification of the Bayesian approach A rational non-Bayesian interpretation? Further restrictions on D(A,B) Conclusion. (shrink)

Barry Allen defends a highly unorthodox and compact account of humans and their evolutionary adventure, which comprises inter alia epistemological, alethic, technological, and artistic aspects. His anthropocentric view distinguishes itself from traditional forms of realism and anti-realism by virtue of its dynamic and non-reductionist character. Allen adopts a certain perspective of techno-artistic and onto-epistemic construction, which we dub “panartifactualism,” claiming principally that nothing at all escapes the artifactualizing power of human beings. We maintain that, under closer scrutiny, various dimensions of (...) Allen’s account conflict and that his philosophical approach to “being” and “making” ultimately gives rise to a rather problematic ontological picture. Having pointed out its shortcomings and untenable results, we spell out the conceptual contours of a contemporary and far more attractive version of realism which suffers neither from the issues faced by views like panartifactualism nor from the obvious difficulties of noumenalist realism justifiably opposed by Allen. (shrink)

In this paper we focus on two claims, put forward by Feyerabend in his later writings , which constitute the metaphysical core of his view of scientific inquiry. The first, that we call the pliability thesis, is the claim that the world can be described by indefinitely many conceptual systems, none of them enjoying a privileged status. The second, that we call the resistance thesis, is the claim that the pliability of the world is limited, i.e., not all the different (...) conceptual systems that can be used to describe the world will be equally successful: the world offers resistance to some attempts to describe it. We show that, in spite of the later Feyerabend’s notorious antirealist leanings, the pliability thesis is fully compatible with a robustly realist view of science, and we suggest that, surprisingly, Feyerabend’s insights concerning the limited pliability of the world turn out to be those of a potential ally of sophisticated versions of scientific realism. (shrink)

When new theoretical terms are introduced into scientific discourse, prevailing accounts imply, analytic or semantic truths come along with them, by way of either definitions or reference-fixing descriptions. But there appear to be few or no analytic truths in scientific theory, which suggests that the prevailing accounts are mistaken. This paper looks to research on the psychology of natural kind concepts to suggest a new account of the introduction of theoretical terms that avoids both definition and reference-fixing description. At the (...) core of the account is a novel psychological process that I call introjection. (shrink)

The central concern of this article is whether the semantic approach has the resources to appropriately capture the core tenets of structural realism. Chakravartty (2001) has argued that a realist notion of correspondence cannot be accommodated without introducing a linguistic component, which undermines the approach itself. We suggest that this worry can be addressed by an appropriate understanding of the role of language in this context. The real challenge, however, is how to incorporate the core notion of `explanatory approximate truth' (...) in such a way that the emphasis on structure is retained. (shrink)

Prediction Error Minimization theory (PEM) is one of the most promising attempts to model perception in current science of mind, and it has recently been advocated by some prominent philosophers as Andy Clark and Jakob Hohwy. Briefly, PEM maintains that “the brain is an organ that on aver-age and over time continually minimizes the error between the sensory input it predicts on the basis of its model of the world and the actual sensory input” (Hohwy 2014, p. 2). An interesting (...) debate has arisen with regard to which is the more adequate epistemological interpretation of PEM. Indeed, Hohwy maintains that given that PEM supports an inferential view of perception and cognition, PEM has to be considered as conveying an internalist epistemological perspective. Contrary to this view, Clark maintains that it would be incorrect to interpret in such a way the indirectness of the link between the world and our inner model of it, and that PEM may well be combined with an externalist epistemological perspective. The aim of this paper is to assess those two opposite interpretations of PEM. Moreover, it will be suggested that Hohwy’s position may be considerably strengthened by adopting Carlo Cellucci’s view on knowledge (2013). (shrink)

To consider metaphysical claims a priori and devoid of empirical content, is a rather commonplace received opinion. This paper attempts an exploration of a contemporary philosophical heresy: it is possible to test metaphysical claims if they play an indispensable role in producing empirical success, i.e. novel predictions. To do so one, firstly, needs to express the metaphysical claims employed in the logico-mathematical language of a scientific theory, i.e. to explicate them. Secondly, one should have an understanding of what it is (...) to test and to verify or to falsify a metaphysical claim. Finally, one also need to consider the philosophical practice of testing a metaphysical claim. These three aspects are introduced in this paper and they are illustrated by means of the metaphysical concept of common cause and the principle of the common cause. (shrink)

This paper is structured around the three elements of the title. Section 2 claims that (a) structures need objects and (b) scientific structuralism should focus on in re structures. Therefore, pure structuralism is undermined. Section 3 discusses whether the world has `excess structure' over the structure of appearances. The main point is that the claim that only structure can be known is false. Finally, Section 4 argues directly against ontic structural realism that it lacks the resources to accommodate causation within (...) its structuralist slogan. (shrink)

In this paper I revisit an important response to the Moral Twin Earth (MTE) challenge: The Common Functional Role strategy (CFR). I argue that CFR is open to a revenge problem. MTE-cases allegedly show that two linguistic communities can be in genuine disagreement even when they are regulated by distinct families of properties. CFR provides a way to reconcile the intuition that the two communities are in genuine disagreement with the claim that the use of moral terms by both communities (...) is causally regulated by different families of properties. This is done by identifying a functional role that those families of properties both fulfill. Still, even if CFR is successful, its proponents need to face a serious revenge problem. Roughly, it could be that the families of properties that regulate each community are equally perfect realizers of the relevant higher-order functional state. I suggest that the proponent of CFR faces a dilemma: either CFR has controversial implications about first-order moral theory, or CFR needs to be coupled with substantive and parochial empirical/metaphysical assumptions to avoid those implications. (shrink)

Most commonly, the scientific realism debate is seen as dividing those who do and do not think that the striking empirical and practical successes of at least our best scientific theories indicate with high probability that those theories are ‘approximately true’. But I want to suggest that this characterization of the debate has far outlived its usefulness. Not only does it obscure the central differences between two profoundly different types of contemporary scientific realist, but even more importantly it serves to (...) disguise the most substantial points of actual disagreement between these two kinds of realists and those who instead think the historical record of scientific inquiry itself reveals that such realism is untenable in either form. (shrink)