Suppositional Reasoning in Scientific Explanations

Dissertation, Columbia University (2005)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

To suppose X means to pretend to change one's belief for the sake of the argument to include X. How to do so is a decision problem: of the many ways to modify one's beliefs to include X, one should choose the one that best fits with one's epistemic goals. I examine the role of suppositional reasoning in the evaluation of purported scientific explanations of various sorts, based on Hempel and Oppenheim's deductive-nomological and inductive-statistical explanations. First, I present for each type of explanation the suppositional reasoning conditions it must satisfy. For example, the dipping of blue litmus paper in acid explains why it turned red only if, when one supposes that the litmus paper was not dipped in acid, one must also give up the belief that it turned red. Second, I argue that a specific decision making method should be used to determine how one is to change one's beliefs for the sake of the argument in each case. Third, I evaluate in detail whether purported explanations, both intuitively explanatory and intuitively non-explanatory satisfy these conditions. Fourth, I show that the suppositional reasoning conditions for explanations, when evaluated correctly, systematically solve the many counterexamples to the original Hempel-Oppenheim model

Links

PhilArchive



    Upload a copy of this work     Papers currently archived: 90,616

External links

  • This entry has no external links. Add one.
Setup an account with your affiliations in order to access resources via your University's proxy server

Through your library

Similar books and articles

Analytics

Added to PP
2015-02-07

Downloads
0

6 months
0

Historical graph of downloads

Sorry, there are not enough data points to plot this chart.
How can I increase my downloads?

Citations of this work

No citations found.

Add more citations

References found in this work

No references found.

Add more references