I reconstruct the discovery of the Higgs boson by the ATLAS collaboration at CERN as the application of a series of inferences from effects to causes. I show to what extent such diagnostic causal inferences can be based on well established knowledge gained in previous experiments. To this extent, causal reasoning can be used to infer the existence of entities, rather than just causal relationships between them. The resulting account relies on the principle of causality, attributes only a heuristic role (...) to the theory’s predictions, and shows how, and to what extent, data selection can be used to exclude alternative causes, even “unconceived” ones. (shrink)

The partial structures program of da Costa, French and others offers a unified framework within which to handle a wide range of issues central to contemporary philosophy of science. I argue that the program is inadequately equipped to account for simple cases where idealizations are used to construct abstract, mathematical models of physical systems. These problems show that da Costa and French have not overcome the objections raised by Cartwright and Suárez to using model‐theoretic techniques in the philosophy of science. (...) However, my concerns arise independently of the more controversial assumptions that Cartwright and Suárez have employed. (shrink)

No presente trabalho procurarei expor dois desafios antirrealistas ancorados na história da ciência, que Stanford apelidou respectivamente de ‘antiga’ e ‘nova indução pessimista’. Argumentarei que existe uma solução realista já disponível a ambos os desafios pessimistas: o realismo experimental, inicialmente proposto por Hacking e Cartwritght, segundo o qual é possível comprometer-se com entidades teóricas com as quais desenvolvemos interações causais e com as quais produzimos fenômenos controlados, sem que tal compromisso se estenda às teorias mesmas. Tomarei como parâmetro não propriamente (...) os argumentos de Hacking e Cartwright que sofrem inúmeras críticas, mas uma formulação sofisticada do realismo experimental proposta por Egg. (shrink)

Although scientific realism is the default position in the life sciences, philosophical accounts of realism are geared towards physics and run into trouble when applied to fields such as biology or neuroscience. In this paper, I formulate a new robustness-based version of entity realism, and show that it provides a plausible account of realism for the life sciences that is also continuous with scientific practice. It is based on the idea that if there are several independent ways of measuring, detecting (...) or deriving something, then we are justified in believing that it is real. I also consider several possible objections to robustness-based entity realism, discuss its relationship to ontic structural realism, and show how it has the potential to provide a novel response to the pessimistic induction argument. (shrink)

While scientific realism generally assumes that successful scientific explanations yield information about reality, realists also have to admit that not all information acquired in this way is equally well warranted. Some versions of scientific realism do this by saying that explanatory posits with which we have established some kind of causal contact are better warranted than those that merely appear in theoretical hypotheses. I first explicate this distinction by considering some general criteria that permit us to distinguish causal warrant from (...) theoretical warrant. I then apply these criteria to a specific case from particle physics, claiming that scientific realism has to incorporate the distinction between causal and theoretical warrant if it is to be an adequate stance in the philosophy of particle physics. (shrink)

This paper's purpose is to set forth the conditions of explanation in the domain of formal modelling of social action. Explanation is defined as an adequate account of the underlying factors bringing about a phenomenon. The modelling of a social phenomenon can claim explanatory value in this sense if the following two conditions are fulfilled. (1) The generative mechanisms involved translate the effects of real factors abstracted from their phenomenal context, not those of purely ideal ones. (2) The explanatory hypotheses, (...) which account for the effects of explanatory factors, and the purely descriptive hypotheses, which introduce conceptual simplifications and summarise complex secondary mechanisms, are relatively independent from each other with regard to the phenomenon represented. This condition subjects the model to testing by alternatives through the development of purely descriptive hypotheses in the sense of explanatory or analytical realism. (shrink)

In this chapter I investigate the prospects of integrated history and philosophy of science, by examining how philosophical issues raised by “hidden entities”, entities that are not accessible to unmediated observation, can enrich the historical investigation of their careers. Conversely, I suggest that the history of those entities has important lessons to teach to the philosophy of science. Hidden entities have played a crucial role in the development of the natural sciences. Despite their centrality to past scientific practice, however, several (...) of them (e.g., phlogiston, caloric, and the ether) turned out to be fictitious. For this reason, they have figured prominently in recent debates on scientific realism. The issues I explore in this paper are entangled with those debates. I argue that our understanding of hidden entities and their role in experimental practice can be enhanced by adopting an integrated historical-cum-philosophical approach. On the one hand, philosophical reflection on the reality of those entities has a lot to gain by examining historically how they were ntroduced and investigated. On the other hand, the historical reconstruction of the careers of those entities may profit from philosophical reflection on their existence. (shrink)