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  1. Probability and Evidence.Paul Horwich - 1982 - Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
    In this influential study of central issues in the philosophy of science, Paul Horwich elaborates on an important conception of probability, diagnosing the failure of previous attempts to resolve these issues as stemming from a too-rigid conception of belief. Adopting a Bayesian strategy, he argues for a probabilistic approach, yielding a more complete understanding of the characteristics of scientific reasoning and methodology. Presented in a fresh twenty-first-century series livery, and including a specially commissioned preface written by Colin Howson, illuminating its (...)
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  • (1 other version)Historical inductions, Old and New.Juha Saatsi - 2019 - Synthese 196 (10):3979-3993.
    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.
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  • 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 (...)
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  • The probabilistic no miracles argument.Jan Sprenger - 2016 - European Journal for Philosophy of Science 6 (2):173-189.
    This paper develops a probabilistic reconstruction of the No Miracles Argument in the debate between scientific realists and anti-realists. The goal of the paper is to clarify and to sharpen the NMA by means of a probabilistic formalization. In particular, we demonstrate that the persuasive force of the NMA depends on the particular disciplinary context where it is applied, and the stability of theories in that discipline. Assessments and critiques of "the" NMA, without reference to a particular context, are misleading (...)
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  • Theory Change and Degrees of Success.Ludwig Fahrbach - 2011 - Philosophy of Science 78 (5):1283-1292.
    Scientific realism is the position that success of a scientific theory licenses an inference to its approximate truth. The argument from pessimistic meta-induction maintains that this inference is undermined due to the existence of theories from the history of science that were successful, but false. I aim to counter pessimistic meta-induction and defend scientific realism. To do this, I adopt a notion of success that admits of degrees, and show that our current best theories enjoy far higher degrees of success (...)
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  • (2 other versions)The Advancement of Science: Science without Legend, Objectivity without Illusions.Philip Kitcher - 1994 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 45 (3):929-932.
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  • (3 other versions)Science, Truth, and Democracy.A. Bird - 2003 - Mind 112 (448):746-749.
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  • (1 other version)A Confutation of Convergent Realism.Larry Laudan - 2001 - In Yuri Balashov & Alexander Rosenberg (eds.), Philosophy of Science: Contemporary Readings. New York: Routledge. pp. 211.
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  • An antirealist explanation of the success of science.P. Kyle Stanford - 2000 - Philosophy of Science 67 (2):266-284.
    I develop an account of predictive similarity that allows even Antirealists who accept a correspondence conception of truth to answer the Realist demand (recently given sophisticated reformulations by Musgrave and Leplin) to explain the success of particular scientific theories by appeal to some intrinsic feature of those theories (notwithstanding the failure of past efforts by van Fraassen, Fine, and Laudan). I conclude by arguing that we have no reason to find truth a better (i.e., more plausible) explanation of a theory's (...)
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  • What is scientific progress?Alexander Bird - 2007 - Noûs 41 (1):64–89.
    I argue that scientific progress is precisely the accumulation of scientific knowledge.
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  • (1 other version)What is theoretical progress of science?Juha Saatsi - 2019 - Synthese 196 (2):611-631.
    The epistemic conception of scientific progress equates progress with accumulation of scientific knowledge. I argue that the epistemic conception fails to fully capture scientific progress: theoretical progress, in particular, can transcend scientific knowledge in important ways. Sometimes theoretical progress can be a matter of new theories ‘latching better onto unobservable reality’ in a way that need not be a matter of new knowledge. Recognising this further dimension of theoretical progress is particularly significant for understanding scientific realism, since realism is naturally (...)
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  • Expanding Our Grasp: Causal Knowledge and the Problem of Unconceived Alternatives.Matthias Egg - 2016 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 67 (1):115-141.
    I argue that scientific realism, insofar as it is only committed to those scientific posits of which we have causal knowledge, is immune to Kyle Stanford’s argument from unconceived alternatives. This causal strategy is shown not to repeat the shortcomings of previous realist responses to Stanford’s argument. Furthermore, I show that the notion of causal knowledge underlying it can be made sufficiently precise by means of conceptual tools recently introduced into the debate on scientific realism. Finally, I apply this strategy (...)
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  • (1 other version)Why The Pessimistic Induction Is A Fallacy.Peter J. Lewis - 2001 - Synthese 129 (3):371-380.
    Putnam and Laudan separately argue that the falsity of past scientific theories gives us reason to doubt the truth of current theories. Their arguments have been highly influential, and have generated a significant literature over the past couple of decades. Most of this literature attempts to defend scientific realism by attacking the historical evidence on which the premises of the relevant argument are based. However, I argue that both Putnam's and Laudan's arguments are fallacious, and hence attacking their premises is (...)
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  • What you don’t know can’t hurt you: realism and the unconceived.Anjan Chakravartty - 2008 - Philosophical Studies 137 (1):149-158.
    Two of the most potent challenges faced by scientific realism are the underdetermination of theories by data, and the pessimistic induction based on theories previously held to be true, but subsequently acknowledged as false. Recently, Stanford (2006, Exceeding our grasp: Science, history, and the problem of unconceived alternatives. Oxford: Oxford University Press) has formulated what he calls the problem of unconceived alternatives: a version of the underdetermination thesis combined with a historical argument of the same form as the pessimistic induction. (...)
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  • Are Unconceived Alternatives a Problem for Scientific Realism?Michael Devitt - 2011 - Journal for General Philosophy of Science / Zeitschrift für Allgemeine Wissenschaftstheorie 42 (2):285-293.
    Stanford, in Exceeding Our Grasp , presents a powerful version of the pessimistic meta-induction. He claims that theories typically have empirically inequivalent but nonetheless well-confirmed, serious alternatives which are unconceived. This claim should be uncontroversial. But it alone is no threat to scientific realism. The threat comes from Stanford’s further crucial claim, supported by historical examples, that a theory’s unconceived alternatives are “radically distinct” from it; there is no “continuity”. A standard realist reply to the meta-induction is that past failures (...)
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  • Meaning and the Moral Sciences.Kent Bach - 1979 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 40 (1):137-139.
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  • (4 other versions)Probability and Evidence.Paul Horwich - 1982 - Tijdschrift Voor Filosofie 47 (4):687-688.
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  • (1 other version)Structural Realism: The Best of Both Worlds?John Worrall - 1989 - Dialectica 43 (1-2):99-124.
    SummaryenThe main argument for scientific realism is that our present theories in science are so successful empirically that they can't have got that way by chance - instead they must somehow have latched onto the blueprint of the universe. The main argument against scientific realism is that there have been enormously successful theories which were once accepted but are now regarded as false. The central question addressed in this paper is whether there is some reasonable way to have the best (...)
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  • (1 other version)Representing and Intervening: Introductory Topics in the Philosophy of Natural Science.Jarrett Leplin - 1985 - Philosophy of Science 52 (2):314-315.
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  • (2 other versions)The Advancement of Science: Science without Legend, Objectivity without Illusions.John Dupre & Philip Kitcher - 1995 - Philosophical Review 104 (1):147.
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  • (4 other versions)Probability and Evidence.Paul Horwich - 1985 - Erkenntnis 23 (2):213-219.
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  • Catastrophism, Uniformitarianism, and a Scientific Realism Debate That Makes a Difference.P. Kyle Stanford - 2015 - Philosophy of Science 82 (5):867-878.
    Some scientific realists suggest that scientific communities have improved in their ability to discover alternative theoretical possibilities and that the problem of unconceived alternatives therefore poses a less significant threat to contemporary scientific communities than it did to their historical predecessors. I first argue that the most profound and fundamental historical transformations of the scientific enterprise have actually increased rather than decreased our vulnerability to the problem. I then argue that whether we are troubled by even the prospect of increasing (...)
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  • (3 other versions)Tracking Track Records.Peter Lipton & John Worrall - 2000 - Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 74:179-235.
    [Peter Lipton] From a reliabilist point of view, our inferential practices make us into instruments for determining the truth value of hypotheses where, like all instruments, reliability is a central virtue. I apply this perspective to second-order inductions, the inductive assessments of inductive practices. Such assessments are extremely common, for example whenever we test the reliability of our instruments or our informants. Nevertheless, the inductive assessment of induction has had a bad name ever since David Hume maintained that any attempt (...)
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  • Recurrent transient underdetermination and the glass half full. [REVIEW]Peter Godfrey-Smith - 2008 - Philosophical Studies 137 (1):141 - 148.
    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.
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  • Bayesian Perspectives on the Discovery of the Higgs Particle.Richard Dawid - 2017 - Synthese 194 (2):377-394.
    It is argued that the high degree of trust in the Higgs particle before its discovery raises the question of a Bayesian perspective on data analysis in high energy physics in an interesting way that differs from other suggestions regarding the deployment of Bayesian strategies in the field.
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  • (1 other version)Realism: Deconstructing the Debate.Simon Blackburn - 2003 - Ratio 15 (2):111-133.
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  • (2 other versions)The Advancement of Science: Science without Legend, Objectivity without Illusions.Philip Kitcher - 1996 - Erkenntnis 44 (3):379-395.
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