Historical Arguments Against Scientific Realism

Deployment Realism resists Laudan’s and Lyons’ objections to the “No Miracle Argument” by arguing that a hypothesis is most probably true when it is deployed essentially in a novel prediction. However, Lyons criticized Psillos’ criterion of essentiality, maintaining that Deployment Realism should be committed to all the actually deployed assumptions. But since many actually deployed assumptions proved false, he concludes that the No Miracle Argument and Deployment Realism fail. I reply that the essentiality condition is required by Occam’s razor. In (...) fact, there is a simpler formulation of essentiality which escapes Lyons’ criticisms and rescues the No Miracle Argument and Deployment Realism from their purported historical counterexamples: a hypothesis is essential when it has no proper parts (in Yablo’s sense) sufficient to derive the same prediction. Although essentiality so conceived cannot be detected prospectively, this is just natural, and it is not a problem but an advantage for Deployment Realism. (shrink)

This chapter examines the work in chemistry that led to the discovery of boron and explores the implications of this episode for the scientific realism debate. This episode begins with Lavoisier’s oxygen theory of acidity and his prediction that boracic acid contains oxygen and a hypothetical, combustible substance that he called the boracic radical. And it culminates in the work of Davy, Gay-Lussac, and Thénard, who used potassium to extract oxygen from boracic acid and thereby discovered boron. This episode constitutes (...) a novel predictive success of Lavoisier’s theory of acidity, which was not even approximately true. Selective realists attempt to accommodate such false-but-successful theories by showing that their success is due to the fact that they have approximately true parts. This episode poses a strong challenge to selective realism because the parts of Lavoisier’s theory that are responsible for its success are not even approximately true. (shrink)

Scientific realists claim we can justifiably believe that science is getting at the truth. But they have long faced historical challenges: various episodes across history appear to demonstrate that even strongly supported scientific theories can be overturned and left behind. In response, realists have developed new positions and arguments. As a result of specific challenges from the history of science, and realist responses, we find ourselves with an ever increasing data-set bearing on the (possible) relationship between science and truth. The (...) present volume introduces new historical cases impacting the debate, and advances the discussion of cases that have only very recently been introduced. At the same time, shifts in philosophical positions affect the very kind of case study that is relevant. Thus the historical work must proceed hand in hand with philosophical analysis of the different positions and arguments in play. It is with this in mind that the volume is divided into two sections, entitled “Historical cases for the debate,” and “Contemporary scientific realism”. All sides agree that historical cases are informative with regard to how, or whether, science connects with truth. Defying proclamations as early as the 1980s announcing the death knell of the scientific realism debate, here is that rare thing: a philosophical debate making steady and definite progress. Moreover, the progress it is making concerns one of humanity’s most profound and important questions: the relationship between science and truth, or, put more boldly, the epistemic relation between humankind and the reality in which we find ourselves. (shrink)

I’m grateful to Aleta Quinn and Studies in History and Philosophy of Science for hosting this book forum for my book, The Relativity of Theory (Springer, 2020). I’m also grateful to Margaret Greta Turnbull and Joseph Martin for their commentaries. In what follows, I address their comments as I understand them.

This book offers a close and rigorous examination of the arguments for and against scientific realism and introduces key positions in the scientific realism/antirealism debate, which is one of the central debates in contemporary philosophy of science. On the one hand, scientific realists argue that we have good reasons to believe that our best scientific theories are approximately true because, if they were not even approximately true, they would not be able to explain and predict natural phenomena with such impressive (...) accuracy. On the other hand, antirealists argue that the success of science does not warrant belief in the approximate truth of our best scientific theories. This is because the history of science is a graveyard of theories that were once successful but were later discarded. The author eventually settles on a middle ground position between scientific realism and antirealism called "relative realism.". (shrink)

In the process of scientific discovery, knowledge ampliation is pursued by means of non-deductive inferences. When ampliative reasoning is performed, probabilities cannot be assigned objectively. One of the reasons is that we face the problem of the unconceived alternatives: we are unable to explore the space of all the possible alternatives to a given hypothesis, because we do not know how this space is shaped. So, if we want to adequately account for the process of knowledge ampliation, we need to (...) develop an account of the process of scientific discovery which is not exclusively based on probability calculus. We argue that the analytic view of the method of science advocated by Cellucci is interestingly suited to this goal, since it rests on the concept of plausibility. In this perspective, in order to account for how probabilities are in fact assigned in uncertain contexts and knowledge ampliation is really pursued, we have to take into account plausibility-based considerations. (shrink)

La vida en el laboratorio. La construcción social de los hechos científicos (Latour y Woolgar, 1979) sostiene que los hechos y las entidades cuya existencia ha sido establecida por la ciencia no son descubrimientos sino “construcciones sociales” llevadas a cabo por los científicos mediante “versiones” o “explicaciones ordenadas” al establecer acuerdos (“cierres de controversias”). Se sostiene, siguiendo la terminología de la filosofía de la ciencia actual, que este argumento es una forma de antirrealismo científico lingüístico, tesis sustentada también por autores (...) como Richad Rorty, Nelson Goodman, Thomas Kuhn y Ludwik Fleck, que es inconsistente y que confunde niveles de lenguaje, porque al referirse metalingüísticamente a las teorías, “versiones” o descripciones científicas no diferencia entre cosas metafísicamente diferentes: la existencia (o la inexistencia) de una entidad o un hecho, y la creencia compartida o la descripción de la existencia (o la inexistencia) de esa entidad o ese hecho. Ello lo lleva a cometer el error categorial de atribuir características del lenguaje (como la de explicar o la de ser usado) a cosas que no son lingüísticas (como la naturaleza o un hecho). Si bien tanto la versión de Latour y Woolgar como las demás no diferencian entre que un conjunto de personas crean que existe lo que la ciencia afirma y las propias afirmaciones de la ciencia sobre lo que existe, ambas cosas ocurren en la realidad social, por lo que el argumento constructivista –tal como el de Goodman de que una constelación ha sido creada mediante una versión, el de Kuhn de que “los conceptos” “conforman el mundo al que se aplican” o el de que los hechos y las teorías no son categóricamente separables, el de Fleck de que la sífilis no existe independientemente de las representaciones lingüísticas de la medicina o el de Rorty de que el color de la piel de un dinosaurio depende de la descripción científica sobre él, por ejemplo-, en la medida en que niega la existencia independiente de esos hechos y entidades no es más que una forma actual de lo que se llamó idealismo metafísico, en la que no se considera como entidad primitiva las “ideas” o estados de conciencia sino hechos de sociedad humana como las afirmaciones y los significados científicos y las creencias que generan en las personas. (shrink)

Scientific realism and anti-realism are most frequently discussed as global theses: theses that apply equally well across the board to all the various sciences. Against this status quo I defend the localist alternative, a methodological stance on scientific realism that approaches debates on realism at the level of individual sciences, rather than at science itself. After identifying the localist view, I provide a number of arguments in its defense, drawing on the diversity and disunity found in the sciences, as well (...) as problems with other approaches (such as basing realism debates on the aim of science). I also show how the view is already at work, explicitly or implicitly, in the work of several philosophers of science. After meeting the objections that localism collapses either into globalism or hyperlocalism, I conclude by sketching what sorts of impacts localism can have in the philosophy of science. (shrink)

The Pessimistic Induction over the history of science argues that because most past theories considered empirically successful in their time turn out to be not even approximately true, most present ones probably aren’t approximately true either. But why did past scientists accept those incorrect theories? Kyle Stanford’s ‘Problem of Unconceived Alternatives’ is one answer to that question: scientists are bad at exhausting the space of plausible hypotheses to explain the evidence available to them. Here, I offer another answer, which I (...) call the ‘Problem of Misleading Evidence.’ I argue that this proposal is, in important respects, superior to Stanford’s. (shrink)

Suppose one believes that the historical record of discarded scientific theories provides good evidence against scientific realism. Should one adopt Kyle Stanford’s specific version of this view, based on the Problem of Unconceived Alternatives? I present reasons for answering this question in the negative. In particular, Stanford’s challenge cannot use many of the prima facie strongest pieces of historical evidence against realism, namely: superseded theories whose successors were explicitly conceived, and superseded theories that were not the result of elimination-of-alternatives inferences. (...) Attempts to accommodate and within Stanford’s framework are incompatible with other commitments Stanford holds, such as anti-realism being piecemeal instead of global. As separate lines of criticism, I argue that there are problems with Stanford’s claim that the PUA is the most important challenge to realism, and with his view of instrumentalist theory endorsement. (shrink)

In this paper, I respond to Sterpetti’s attempt to defend Kyle P. Stanford’s Problem of Unconceived Alternatives and his New Induction over the History of Science from my reductio argument outlined in Mizrahi :59–68, 2016a). I discuss what I take to be the ways in which Sterpetti has misconstrued my argument against Stanford’s NIS, in particular, that it is a reductio, not a dilemma, as Sterpetti erroneously thinks. I argue that antirealists who endorse Stanford’s NIS still face an absurd consequence (...) of this argument, namely, that they should not believe their own brand of scientific antirealism. (shrink)

In the Introduction section, 6th point under the paragraph “Given the parallels between Stanford’s PUA and the PUO, and those between Stanford’s NIS and the NIP, I have sketched the following reductio against Stanford’s NIS (Mizrahi 2016a, pp. 63–64):….. should read as -/- (6) Scientific antirealism is a philosophical theory.

Localism is the view that the unit of evaluation in the scientific realism debate is a single scientific discipline, sub-discipline, or claim, whereas individualism is the view that the unit of evaluation is a single scientific theory. Localism is compatible, while individualism is not, with a local pessimistic induction and a local selective induction. Asay (2016) presents several arguments to support localism and undercut globalism, according to which the unit of evaluation is the set of all scientific disciplines. I argue (...) that some of his arguments clash with localism as well as with globalism and support individualism, and that individualism goes hand in hand, while localism does not, with the basic rule of how to evaluate an argument. (shrink)

Evolutionary theory coheres with its neighboring theories, such as the theory of plate tectonics, molecular biology, electromagnetic theory, and the germ theory of disease. These neighboring theories were previously unconceived, but they were later conceived, and then they cohered with evolutionary theory. Since evolutionary theory has been strengthened by its several neighboring theories that were previously unconceived, it will be strengthened by infinitely many hitherto unconceived neighboring theories. This argument for evolutionary theory echoes the problem of unconceived alternatives. Ironically, however, (...) the former recommends that we take the realist attitude toward evolutionary theory, while the latter recommends that we take the antirealist attitude toward it. (shrink)

Localism is the view that the unit of evaluation in the scientific realism debate is a single scientific discipline, sub-discipline, or claim, whereas individualism is the view that the unit of evaluation is a single scientific theory. Localism is compatible, while individualism is not, with a local pessimistic induction and a local selective induction. Asay presents several arguments to support localism and undercut globalism, according to which the unit of evaluation is the set of all scientific disciplines. I argue that (...) some of his arguments clash with localism as well as with globalism and support individualism, and that individualism goes hand in hand, while localism does not, with the basic rule of how to evaluate an argument. (shrink)

The problem of unconceived alternatives can be undermined, regardless of whether the possibility space of alternatives is bounded or unbounded. If it is bounded, pessimists need to justify their assumption that the probability that scientists have not yet eliminated enough false alternatives is higher than the probability that scientists have already eliminated enough false alternatives. If it is unbounded, pessimists need to justify their assumption that the probability that scientists have not yet moved from the possibility space of false alternatives (...) to the possibility space of true alternatives is higher than the probability that scientists have already moved from the former to the latter space. (shrink)

Nickles (2016, 2017, forthcoming) raises many original objections against scientific realism. One of them holds that scientific realism originates from the end of history illusion. I reply that this objection is self-defeating and commits the genetic fallacy. Another objection is that it is unknowable whether our descendants will regard our current mature theories as true or false. I reply that this objection entails skepticism about induction, leading to skepticism about the world, which is inconsistent with the appeal to the end (...) of history illusion. Finally, I argue that we have an inductive rationale for thinking that our descendants will regard our current mature theories as true. (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)

If scientists embrace scientific realism, they can use a scientific theory to explain and predict observables and unobservables. If, however, they embrace scientific antirealism, they cannot use a scientific theory to explain observables and unobservables, and cannot use a scientific theory to predict unobservables. Given that explanation and prediction are means to make scientific progress, scientists can make more scientific progress, if they embrace scientific realism than if they embrace scientific antirealism.

Lyons (2016, 2017, 2018) formulates Laudan’s (1981) historical objection to scientific realism as a modus tollens. I present a better formulation of Laudan’s objection, and then argue that Lyons’s formulation is supererogatory. Lyons rejects scientific realism (Putnam, 1975) on the grounds that some successful past theories were (completely) false. I reply that scientific realism is not the categorical hypothesis that all successful scientific theories are (approximately) true, but rather the statistical hypothesis that most successful scientific theories are (approximately) true. Lyons (...) rejects selectivism (Kitcher, 1993; Psillos, 1999) on the grounds that some working assumptions were (completely) false in the history of science. I reply that selectivists would say not that all working assumptions are (approximately) true, but rather that most working assumptions are (approximately) true. (shrink)

The absolute pessimistic induction states that earlier theories, although successful, were abandoned, so current theories, although successful, will also be abandoned. By contrast, the relative pessimistic induction states that earlier theories, although superior to their predecessors, were discarded, so current theories, although superior to earlier theories, will also be discarded. Some pessimists would have us believe that the relative pessimistic induction avoids empirical progressivism. I argue, however, that it has the same problem as the absolute pessimistic induction, viz., either its (...) premise is implausible or its conclusion does not probably follow from its premise. (shrink)

Kyle Stanford claims we have historical evidence that there likely are plausible unconceived alternatives in fundamental domains of science, and thus evidence that our best theories in these domains are probably false. Accordingly, we should adopt a form of instrumentalism. Elsewhere, I have argued that in fact we do not have historical evidence for the existence of plausible unconceived alternatives in particular domains of science, and that the main challenge to scientific realism is rather to provide evidence that there are (...) likely not plausible unconceived alternatives. In the present paper, I contend that we may come to have such evidence in the long run of science. I then investigate the epistemic consequences of the claim that we presently do not have evidence for or against the existence of plausible unconceived alternatives, but that in the future we may come to have evidence against the existence of plausible unconceived alternatives. I argue there are prima facie reasons to endorse a form of voluntarism in this situation according to which scientists and others may rationally be more optimistic or more pessimistic about the truth of our best theories, on the grounds that the widespread acceptance of an obligation to be an instrumentalist threatens to disrupt the proper functioning of science, in part because the domain of application of the problem of unconceived alternatives is unclear. (shrink)

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.

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)

After decades of intense debate over the old pessimistic induction (Laudan, 1977; Putnam, 1978), it has now become clear that it has at least the following four problems. First, it overlooks the fact that present theories are more successful than past theories. Second, it commits the fallacy of biased statistics. Third, it erroneously groups together past theories from different fields of science. Four, it misses the fact that some theoretical components of past theories were preserved. I argue that these four (...) problems entitle us to construct what I call the grand pessimistic induction that since the old pessimistic induction has infinitely many hidden problems, the new pessimistic induction (Stanford, 2006) also has infinitely many hidden problems. (shrink)

Scientific antirealism, the view that successful theories are empirically adequate, is untenable in light of the problem of unobserved anomalies that since past scientists could not observe the anomalies that caused the replacement of past theories with present theories, present scientists also cannot observe the anomalies that will cause the replacement of present theories with future theories. There are several moves that antirealists would be tempted to make to get around the problem of unobserved anomalies. All of them, however, are (...) problematic. (shrink)

Sample (2015) argues that scientists ought not to believe that their theories are true because they cannot fulfill the epistemic obligation to take the diachronic perspective on their theories. I reply that Sample’s argument imposes an inordinately heavy epistemic obligation on scientists, and that it spells doom not only for scientific theories but also for observational beliefs and philosophical ideas that Samples endorses. I also delineate what I take to be a reasonable epistemic obligation for scientists. In sum, philosophers ought (...) to impose on scientists only an epistemic standard that they are willing to impose on themselves. (shrink)

Indispensablists contend that accepting scientific realism while rejecting mathematical realism involves a double standard. I refute this contention by developing an enhanced version of scientific realism, which I call interactive realism. It holds that interactively successful theories are typically approximately true, and that the interactive unobservable entities posited by them are likely to exist. It is immune to the pessimistic induction while mathematical realism is susceptible to it.

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 (...) the no-miracles argument as a positive argument for scientific realism. (shrink)

Moti Mizrahi has argued that Thomas Kuhn does not have a good argument for the incommensurability of successive scientific paradigms. With Rouse, Andersen, and others, I defend a view on which Kuhn primarily was trying to explain scientific practice in Structure. Kuhn, like Hilary Putnam, incorporated sociological and psychological methods into his history of science. On Kuhn’s account, the education and initiation of scientists into a research tradition is a key element in scientific training and in his explanation of incommensurability (...) between research paradigms. The first part of this paper will explain and defend my reading of Kuhn. The second part will probe the extent to which Kuhn’s account can be supported, and the extent to which it rests on shaky premises. That investigation will center on Moti Mizrahi’s project, which aims to transform the Kuhnian account of science and of its history. While I do defend a modified kind of incommensurability, I agree that the strongest version of Kuhn’s account is steadfastly local and focused on the practice of science. (shrink)

Many realists argue that present scientific theories will not follow the fate of past scientific theories because the former are more successful than the latter. Critics object that realists need to show that present theories have reached the level of success that warrants their truth. I reply that the special theory of relativity has been repeatedly reinforced by unconceived scientific methods, so it will be reinforced by infinitely many unconceived scientific methods. This argument for the special theory of relativity overcomes (...) the critics’ objection, and has advantages over the no-miracle argument and the selective induction for it. (shrink)

In this book K. Brad Wray provides a comprehensive survey of the arguments against scientific realism. In addition to presenting logical considerations that undermine the realists' inferences to the likely truth or approximate truth of our theories, he provides a thorough assessment of the evidence from the history of science. He also examines grounds for a defence of anti-realism, including an anti-realist explanation for the success of our current theories, an account of why false theories can be empirically successful, and (...) an explanation for why we should expect radical changes of theory in the future. His arguments are supported and illustrated by cases from the history of science, including a sustained study of the Copernican Revolution, and a study of the revolution in early twentieth century chemistry, when chemists came to classify elements by their atomic number rather than by their atomic weight. (shrink)

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.

Case studies of science concerning the interpretation of specific theories and the nature of theory change over time are often presented as evidence for or against forms of selective realism: versions of scientific realism that advocate belief in connection with certain components of theories as opposed to their content as a whole. I consider the question of how probative case studies can be in this sphere, focusing on two prominent examples of selectivity: explanationist realism, which identifies realist commitment with components (...) of theories that are putatively required to explain their empirical success; and entity realism, which identifies realist commitment with certain putatively causally efficacious entities. I argue that while case studies are essential to debates about these positions, they are not compelling in the way that their intended use suggests. Regarding explanationism, concerns about the “neutrality” of historical evidence are ultimately indefeasible. Regarding entity realism, arguments for and against naturally dissolve into disputes about the reference of theoretical terms which are insulated from the details of cases. I conclude by suggesting that the morals of this discussion extend to other forms of selective realism, namely structural realism and semirealism. (shrink)

Among the most serious challenges to scientific realism are arguments for the underdetermination of theory by evidence. This paper defends a version of scientific realism against what is perhaps the most influential recent argument of this sort, viz. Kyle Stanford’s New Induction over the History of Science. An essential part of the defense consists in a probabilistic analysis of the slogan “absence of evidence is not evidence of absence”. On this basis it is argued that the likelihood of a theory (...) being underdetermined depends crucially on social and historical factors, such as the structure of scientific communities and the time that has passed since the theory first became accepted. This is then shown to serve as the epistemological foundation for a version of scientific realism which avoids Stanford’s New Induction in a principled and non-question-begging way. (shrink)

According to a defense of scientific realism known as the “divide et impera move”, mature scientific theories enjoying predictive success are partially true. This paper investigates a paradigmatic historical case: the prediction, based on Fresnel’s wave theory of light, that a bright spot should figure in the shadow of a disc. Two different derivations of this prediction have been given by both Poisson and Fresnel. I argue that the details of these derivations highlight two problems of indispensability arguments, which state (...) that only the indispensable constituents of this success are worthy of belief and retained through theory-change. The first problem is that, contrary to a common claim, Fresnel’s integrals are not needed to predict the bright spot phenomenon. The second problem is that the hypotheses shared by to these two derivations include problematic idealizations. I claim that this example leads us to be skeptical about which aspects of our current theories are worthy of belief. (shrink)

Scientific realists argue that present theories are more successful than past theories, so present theories will not be superseded by alternatives, even though past theories were superseded by alternatives. Alai (2016) objects that although present theories are more successful than past theories, they will be replaced by future theories, just as past theories were replaced by present theories. He contends, however, that past theories were partly true, and that present theories are largely true. I argue that Alai’s discrimination between past (...) and present theories is subject to his own criticism against realists’ discriminations between past and present theories, and also subject to other criticisms that philosophers have raised against scientific realism and pessimism. (shrink)

Scientific antirealists run the argument from underconsideration against scientific realism. I argue that the argument from underconsideration backfires on antirealists’ positive philosophical theories, such as the contextual theory of explanation (van Fraassen, 1980), the English model of rationality (van Fraassen, 1989), the evolutionary explanation of the success of science (Wray, 2008; 2012), and explanatory idealism (Khalifa, 2013). Antirealists strengthen the argument from underconsideration with the pessimistic induction against current scientific theories. In response, I construct a pessimistic induction against antirealists that (...) since antirealists generated problematic philosophical theories in the past, they must be generating problematic philosophical theories now. (shrink)

The pessimistic induction is built upon the uniformity principle that the future resembles the past. In daily scientific activities, however, scientists sometimes rely on what I call the disuniformity principle that the future differs from the past. They do not give up their research projects despite the repeated failures. They believe that they will succeed although they failed repeatedly, and as a result they achieve what they intended to achieve. Given that the disuniformity principle is useful in certain cases in (...) science, we might reasonably use it to infer that present theories are true unlike past theories. Hence, pessimists have the burden to show that our prediction about the fate of present theories is more likely to be true if we use the uniformity principle than if we use the disuniformity principle. (shrink)

The no-miracles argument (Putnam, 1975) holds that science is successful because successful theories are (approximately) true. Frost-Arnold (2010) objects that this argument is unacceptable because it generates neither new predictions nor unifications. It is similar to the unacceptable explanation that opium puts people to sleep because it has a dormative virtue. I reply that on close examination, realism explains not only why some theories are successful but also why successful theories exist in current science. Therefore, it unifies the disparate phenomena.

Saatsi’s minimal realism holds that science makes theoretical progress. It is designed to get around the pessimistic induction, to fall between scientific realism and instrumentalism, and to explain the success of scientific theories. I raise the following two objections to it. First, it is not clear whether minimal realism lies between realism and instrumentalism, given that minimal realism does not entail instrumentalism. Second, it is not clear whether minimal realism can explain the success of scientific theories, given that it is (...) doubtful that theoretical progress makes success likely. In addition to raising these two objections, I develop and criticize a new position that truly falls between realism and instrumentalism. (shrink)

The pessimistic induction over scientific theories holds that present theories will be overthrown as were past theories. The pessimistic induction over scientists holds that present scientists cannot conceive of future theories just as past scientists could not conceive of present theories. The pessimistic induction over realists :4321–4330, 2013) holds that present realists are wrong about present theories just as past realists were wrong about past theories. The pessimistic induction over antirealist theories :3–21, 2014) holds that the latest antirealist explanation of (...) the success of science :891–901, 2003) has hidden problems just as its eight predecessors did. In this paper, I criticize the pessimistic inductions over scientific theories, scientists, and realists, introduce a pessimistic induction over antirealist theories, and then construct two new pessimistic inductions. One is a pessimistic induction over antirealists according to which the author of the latest antirealist proposal cannot see hidden problems with his proposal just as his antirealist predecessors could not see hidden problems with their proposals. The other is the pessimistic induction over pessimists according to which since past pessimists have been wrong about their present scientific theories from the early twentieth century to the early twenty-first century, future pessimists will also be wrong about their present scientific theories from the early twenty-first century to the early twenty-second century. (shrink)

The contemporary debate between scientific realism and anti-realism is conditioned by a polarity between two opposing arguments: the realist’s success argument and the anti-realist’s pessimistic induction. This polarity has skewed the debate away from the problem that lies at the source of the debate. From a realist point of view, the historical approach to the philosophy of science which came to the fore in the 1960s gave rise to an unsatisfactory conception of scientific progress. One of the main motivations for (...) the scientific realist appeal to the success of science was the need to provide a substantive account of the progress of science as an increase of knowledge about the same entities as those referred to by earlier theories in the history of science. But the idea that a substantive conception of progress requires continuity of reference has faded from the contemporary debate. In this paper, I revisit the historical movement in the philosophy of science in an attempt to resuscitate the original agenda of the debate about scientific realism. I also briefly outline the way in which the realist should employ the theory of reference as the basis for a robust account of scientific progress which will satisfy realist requirements. (shrink)

Structural realists claim that we should endorse only what our scientific theories say about the structure of the unobservable world. But according to Newman’s Objection, the structural realist’s claims about unobservables are trivially true. In recent years, several theorists have offered responses to Newman’s Objection. But a common complaint is that these responses “give up the spirit” of the structural realist position. In this paper, I will argue that the simplest way to respond to Newman’s Objection is to return to (...) one of the standard motivations for adopting structural realism in the first place: the No Miracles Argument. Far from betraying the spirit of structural realism, the solution I present is available to any theorist who endorses this argument. (shrink)

In this paper, I examine the transition from zymotic views of disease to germ views in Britain in the mid-1800s. I argue that neither realist nor anti-realist accounts of theory-change can account for this case, because both rely on a well-defined notion of theory, which, as the paper will show, is inapplicable in this instance. After outlining the zymotic theory of disease, I show that, even though it hardly had anything in common with the germ theory, it was highly successful. (...) However, despite this success, it is not possible to identify stable elements that were carried over to the germ theory; thus, realists cannot account for the shift from one to the other. Anti-realists, however, don’t do much better: their focus tends to be on (radical) discontinuities across theories, yet the zymotic case does not exemplify this, either. Instead, there is a slow and complex evolution from zymotic to germ views, during which various zymotic elements are assimilated into the germ theory, until, eventually, none of the zymotic theory’s original elements are left. (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)

The pessimistic induction and the problem of underdetermination in the philosophy of science have a rich history. In their recent incarnation as the problem of unconceived alternatives, most fully articulated by Kyle Stanford (2010) in Exceeding Our Grasp, the induction is more specific and underdetermination is construed more epistemically than is typical…The problem is not that there are empirically equivalent alternatives, that is, alternative between which no empirical evidence could ever distinguish. The problem is that multiple radically different alternative that (...) are empirically inequivalent might be equally well-confirmed by current evidence, and we might fail to even conceive one or more of those alternatives… In “Of German Tanks and Scientific Theories: Estimating the Number of Unconceived Alternatives,” Burkay Ozturk (2016) challenges Stanford on a distinct front. By applying a method of statistical estimation to scientific alternatives, Ozturk argues that the possibility space within which the alternatives are located allows for probable knowledge. The particular frequentist estimation method Ozturk employs requires that we assume the alternative pool is finite, which seems to be both false and wildly implausible. At first glance. I argue in this comment that Ozturk’s postulate of finitude is actually defensible in circumstances that might actually hold for ordinary scientific contexts. (shrink)