Accepting Our Best Scientific Theories

Filosofija. Sociologija 26 (3):218-227 (2015)
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Abstract

Dawes (2013) claims that we ought not to believe but to accept our best scientific theories. To accept them means to employ them as premises in our reasoning with the goal of attaining knowledge about unobservables. I reply that if we do not believe our best scientific theories, we cannot gain knowledge about unobservables, our opponents might dismiss the predictions derived from them, and we cannot use them to explain phenomena. We commit an unethical speech act when we explain a phenomenon in terms of a theory we do not believe.

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Seungbae Park
Ulsan National Institute Of Science And Technology

Citations of this work

Does Scientific Progress Consist in Increasing Knowledge or Understanding?Seungbae Park - 2017 - Journal for General Philosophy of Science / Zeitschrift für Allgemeine Wissenschaftstheorie 48 (4):569-579.
Optimistic Realism over Selectivism.Seungbae Park - 2019 - Kriterion - Journal of Philosophy 33 (1):89-106.
Approximate Truth vs. Empirical Adequacy.Seungbae Park - 2014 - Epistemologia 37 (1):106-118.

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Ontological relativity and other essays.Willard Van Orman Quine (ed.) - 1969 - New York: Columbia University Press.
Laws and symmetry.Bas C. Van Fraassen - 1989 - New York: Oxford University Press.
The origin of species.Charles Darwin - 1859 - New York: Norton. Edited by Philip Appleman.
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Laws and Symmetry.Bas C. Van Fraassen - 1989 - Revue Philosophique de la France Et de l'Etranger 182 (3):327-329.

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