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  1. An A Priori Refutation of the Classical Pessimistic Induction.Patrick Cronin - forthcoming - Erkenntnis.
    According to the Classical Pessimistic Induction (CPI), otherwise positive features like predictive and explanatory success actually cast doubt on theories that display them. After all, they negatively correlate with truth. From this historical track record, it is inferred that current best theories are probably not (even approximately) true. The CPI is often wielded against realists about science, but others like Hume (1757), Pareto (1935), and Hájek (2007) extend it to philosophical theories more generally. In this paper, I unveil a priori (...)
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  2. The Preservation of Thickly Detectable Structure: A Case Study in Gravity.Jared Hanson-Park - 2024 - European Journal for Philosophy of Science 14 (2):1-25.
    Structural realists claim that structure is preserved across instances of radical theory change, and that this preservation provides an argument in favor of realism about structure. In this paper, I use the shift from Newtonian gravity to Einstein’s general relativity as a case study for structural preservation, and I demonstrate that two prominent views of structural preservation fail to provide a solid basis for realism about structure. The case study demonstrates that (i) structural realists must be epistemically precise about the (...)
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  3. Challenges facing physiologists and the scientific enterprise in a post-truth world.Elena Popa - 2024 - In Faadiel Essop (ed.), Truth Unveiled: Navigating Science and Society in an Era of Doubt. Elsevier. pp. 37-61.
    Post-truth politics comes forward as a challenge to the credibility of science through its association with skepticism and denialism about scientific approaches and findings. While debates over the nature of facts and the social character of scientific knowledge have mainly taken place in an academic setting, the current concerns about science skepticism have connected them to wider social issues. This chapter will examine this question with the focus on biomedical and physiological sciences and cast doubt on the claim that particular (...)
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  4. A deductive variation on the no miracles argument.Luke Golemon & Abraham Graber - 2023 - Synthese 201 (81):1-26.
    The traditional No-Miracles Argument (TNMA) asserts that the novel predictive success of science would be a miracle, and thus too implausible to believe, if successful theories were not at least approximately true. The TNMA has come under fire in multiple ways, challenging each of its premises and its general argumentative structure. While the TNMA relies on explaining novel predictive success via the truth of the theories, we put forth a deductive version of the No-Miracles argument (DNMA) that avoids inference to (...)
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  5. Empirical tests of scientific realism: A quantitative framework.James W. McAllister - 2023 - Metaphilosophy 54 (4):507-522.
    The scientific realism debate in philosophy of science raises some intriguing methodological issues. Scientific realism posits a link between a scientific theory's observational and referential success. This opens the possibility of testing the thesis empirically, by searching for evidence of such a link in the record of theories put forward in the history of science. Many realist philosophers working today propose case study methodology as a way of carrying out such a test. This article argues that a qualitative method such (...)
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  6. Beyond Hempel: Reframing the Debate about Scientific Explanation.Fons Dewulf - 2022 - Philosophy of Science 89 (3):585-603.
    I argue that Carl Hempel’s pioneering work on scientific explanation introduced an assumption that Hempel never motivated, namely, that explanation is an aim of science. Ever since, it has remained largely unquestioned in analytic philosophy of science. By expanding the historical scope of the debate on explanation to philosophers from the first half of the twentieth century, I show that the debate should include a critical reflection on Hempel’s assumption. This reflection includes two problems: how to motivate one’s position on (...)
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  7. The proof of the pudding: Yafeng Shan: Doing integrated history and philosophy of science: a case study of the origin of genetics. Cham: Springer, 2020. ix + 197 pp, €84.79 PB, €67.40 e-book. [REVIEW]Charles H. Pence - 2022 - Metascience 31 (2):179-181.
  8. Scientific Realism and Blocking Strategies.Raimund Pils - 2022 - International Studies in the Philosophy of Science 36 (1):1-17.
    My target is the epistemological dimension of the realism debate. After establishing a stance voluntarist framework with a Jamesian background, drawing mostly on Wylie, Chakravarty, and van Fraassen, I argue that current voluntarists are too permissive. I show that especially various anti-realist stances but also some realist and selective realist stances block themselves from refutation by the history of science. I argue that such stances should be rejected. Finally, I propose that any disagreement that cannot be resolved by this strategy (...)
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  9. The Historical Challenge to Realism and Essential Deployment.Mario Alai - 2021 - In Timothy D. Lyons & Peter Vickers (eds.), Contemporary Scientific Realism: The Challenge From the History of Science. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
    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 (...)
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  10. The historical challenge to realism and essential deployment.Mario Alai - 2021 - In Timothy D. Lyons & Peter Vickers (eds.), Contemporary Scientific Realism: The Challenge From the History of Science. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
    The notion of a hypothesis being deployed essentially in the derivation of a novel prediction plays a key role in the deployment realist reply to Laudan’s and Lyon’s attacks to the No Miracle Argument. However Lyons criticized Psillos’ criterion of essentiality, urging deployment realists to abandon this requirement altogether and accept as true all the assumptions actually deployed in novel predictions. But since many false assumptions were actually deployed in novel predictions, he concludes that the “no miracle argument” and deployment (...)
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  11. We think, they thought : a critique of the pessimistic meta-meta induction.Ludwig Fahrbach - 2021 - In Timothy D. Lyons & Peter Vickers (eds.), Contemporary Scientific Realism: The Challenge From the History of Science. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
    Scientific realism, the view that our current successful theories are probably approximately true, is challenged by the pessimistic meta-induction, PMI, according to which many successful theories in the past of science were refuted later on. Realists often respond to the PMI by pointing out that sci-ence has improved a lot since the times of the past refuted theories, and these improvements block the PMI and save realism. Antirealists reply that past realists could have said the same thing, namely that science (...)
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  12. What Can the Discovery of Boron Tell Us About the Scientific Realism Debate?Jonathon Hricko - 2021 - In Timothy D. Lyons & Peter Vickers (eds.), Contemporary Scientific Realism: The Challenge From the History of Science. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
    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 (...)
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  13. What can the discovery of boron tell us about the scientific realism debate?Jonathon Hricko - 2021 - In Timothy D. Lyons & Peter Vickers (eds.), Contemporary Scientific Realism: The Challenge From the History of Science. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
  14. We Think, They Thought: A Critique of the Pessimistic Meta-Meta Induction.Fahrbach Ludwig - 2021 - In Timothy D. Lyons & Peter Vickers (eds.), Contemporary Scientific Realism: The Challenge From the History of Science. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. pp. 283-310.
    Scientific realism, the view that our current successful theories are probably approximately true, is challenged by the pessimistic meta-induction, PMI, according to which many successful theories in the past of science were refuted later on. Realists often respond to the PMI by pointing out that sci-ence has improved a lot since the times of the past refuted theories, and these improvements block the PMI and save realism. Antirealists reply that past realists could have said the same thing, namely that science (...)
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  15. Contemporary Scientific Realism: The Challenge From the History of Science.Timothy D. Lyons & Peter Vickers (eds.) - 2021 - New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
    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 (...)
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  16. Theoretical Continuity, Approximate Truth, and the Pessimistic Meta-Induction.Dana Tulodziecki - 2021 - In Timothy D. Lyons & Peter Vickers (eds.), Contemporary Scientific Realism: The Challenge From the History of Science. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. pp. 11-32.
  17. The Relativity of Theory: Key Positions and Arguments in the Contemporary Scientific Realism/Antirealism Debate.Moti Mizrahi - 2020 - Cham, Switzerland: Springer.
    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 (...)
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  18. The Pursuit of Knowledge and the Problem of the Unconceived Alternatives.Fabio Sterpetti & Marta Bertolaso - 2020 - Topoi 39 (4):881-892.
    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 (...)
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  19. Still resisting: replies to my critics.K. Brad Wray - 2020 - Metascience 29 (1):33-40.
    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.
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  20. Antirrealismo científico constructivista, lenguaje y realidad social.Sergio Aramburu - 2019 - Scientia in Verba Magazine 4:118-151.
    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 (...)
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  21. Going local: a defense of methodological localism about scientific realism.Jamin Asay - 2019 - Synthese 196 (2):587-609.
    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 (...)
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  22. How to be a Historically Motivated Anti-Realist: The Problem of Misleading Evidence.Greg Frost-Arnold - 2019 - Philosophy of Science 86 (5):906-917.
    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 (...)
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  23. Should a historically motivated anti-realist be a Stanfordite?Greg Frost-Arnold - 2019 - Synthese 196:535-551.
    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. (...)
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  24. An Absurd Consequence of Stanford’s New Induction Over the History of Science: A Reply to Sterpetti.Moti Mizrahi - 2019 - Axiomathes 29 (5):515-527.
    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 (...)
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  25. Correction to: An Absurd Consequence of Stanford’s New Induction Over the History of Science: A Reply to Sterpetti.Moti Mizrahi - 2019 - Axiomathes 29 (5):529-529.
    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.
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  26. The Coherence of Evolutionary Theory with Its Neighboring Theories.Seungbae Park - 2019 - Acta Biotheoretica 67 (2):87-102.
    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, (...)
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  27. In Defense of Realism and Selectivism from Lyons’s Objections.Seungbae Park - 2019 - Foundations of Science 24 (4):605-615.
    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 (...)
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  28. Scientific Realism and the Future Development of Science.Seungbae Park - 2019 - Diametros 60:61-71.
    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 (...)
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  29. Should Scientists Embrace Scientific Realism or Antirealism?Seungbae Park - 2019 - Philosophical Forum 50 (1):147-158.
    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.
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  30. Localism vs. Individualism for the Scientific Realism Debate.Seungbae Park - 2019 - Philosophical Papers 48 (3):359-377.
    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 (...)
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  31. The Absolute and Relative Pessimistic Inductions.Seungbae Park - 2019 - Problemos 95:94-104.
    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 (...)
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  32. New Objections to the Problem of Unconceived Alternatives.Seungbae Park - 2019 - Filosofia Unisinos 20 (2):138-145.
    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 (...)
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  33. Optimistic Realism over Selectivism.Seungbae Park - 2019 - Kriterion - Journal of Philosophy 33 (1):89-106.
    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 (...)
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  34. Unconceived alternatives and the cathedral problem.Samuel Ruhmkorff - 2019 - Synthese 196 (10):3933-3945.
    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 (...)
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  35. (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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  36. How (not) to think about theory-change in epidemiology.Dana Tulodziecki - 2019 - Synthese 198 (Suppl 10):2569-2588.
    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 (...)
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  37. Discarded theories: the role of changing interests.K. Brad Wray - 2019 - Synthese 196 (2):553-569.
    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 (...)
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  38. How Deployment Realism withstands Doppelt's Criticisms.Mario Alai - 2018 - Spontaneous Generations 9 (1):122-135.
    Gerald Doppelt claims that Deployment Realism cannot withstand the antirealist objections based on the “pessimistic meta-induction” and Laudan’s historical counterexamples. Moreover it is incomplete, as it purports to explain the predictive success of theories, but overlooks the necessity to explain also their explanatory success. Accordingly, he proposes a new version of realism, presented as the best explanation of both predictive and explanatory success, and committed only to the truth of best current theories, not of the discarded ones. Elsewhere I criticized (...)
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  39. In Defense of the Epistemic Imperative.Seungbae Park - 2018 - Axiomathes 28 (4):435-446.
    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 (...)
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  40. The Grand Pessimistic Induction.Seungbae Park - 2018 - Review of Contemporary Philosophy 17:7-19.
    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 (...)
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  41. Rejecting Mathematical Realism while Accepting Interactive Realism.Seungbae Park - 2018 - Analysis and Metaphysics 17:7-21.
    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.
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  42. The Problem of Unobserved Anomalies.Seungbae Park - 2018 - Filosofija. Sociologija 29 (1):4-12.
    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 (...)
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  43. The Anti-Induction for Scientific Realism.Seungbae Park - 2018 - Grazer Philosophische Studien 95 (3):329-342.
    In contemporary philosophy of science, the no-miracles argument and the pessimistic induction are regarded as the strongest arguments for and against scientific realism, respectively. In this paper, I construct a new argument for scientific realism which I call the anti-induction for scientific realism. It holds that, since past theories were false, present theories are true. I provide an example from the history of science to show that anti-inductions sometimes work in science. The anti-induction for scientific realism has several advantages over (...)
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  44. Larry Laudan’s Typology for Historical Methodology and the Historical and Experimental Turns in Philosophy of Science.Jutta Schickore - 2018 - Hopos: The Journal of the International Society for the History of Philosophy of Science 8 (1):87-107.
    Today, Larry Laudan is known predominantly for his work on the pessimistic metainduction and for his discussion of science and values. This essay examines a less familiar part of Laudan’s work, his typology of historical methodologies from the late 1970s. My aim is to elucidate Laudan’s typology and to examine one of the types in more depth, namely, the “pragmatic, symbiotic” model of historical methodology. Laudan expounded the model in the essays that eventually became his 1981 book Science and Hypothesis. (...)
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  45. Justifying the Special Theory of Relativity with Unconceived Methods.Park Seungbae - 2018 - Axiomathes 28 (1):53-62.
    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 (...)
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  46. A Critical Introduction to Scientific Realism, by Paul Dicken : London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2016, pp. vii + 214, £28.99. [REVIEW]K. Brad Wray - 2018 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 96 (1):205-206.
  47. The Relevance of Evidence from the History of Science in the Contemporary Realism/Anti-realism Debate.K. Brad Wray - 2018 - Spontaneous Generations 9 (1):143-145.
    It is widely assumed that it is the anti-realist who stakes his case on evidence from the history of science. I argue that realists have failed to recognize the need to collect evidence from the history of science to support their methodological claims, and anti-realists do not rely on evidence from the history of science to the extent that many suggest.
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  48. Resisting Scientific Realism.K. Brad Wray - 2018 - Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
    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 (...)
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  49. Case Studies, Selective Realism, and Historical Evidence.Anjan Chakravartty - 2017 - In Michela Massimi, Jan-Willem Romeijn & Gerhard Schurz (eds.), EPSA15 Selected Papers: The 5th conference of the European Philosophy of Science Association in Düsseldorf. Cham: Springer. pp. 13-23.
    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 (...)
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  50. Realism and the absence of rivals.Finnur Dellsén - 2017 - Synthese 194 (7):2427-2446.
    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 (...)
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