By following the arguments between Coenraad J. Temminck and fellow ornithologists Louis J.-P. Vieillot and Nicholas Vigors, this paper sketches, to a degree, the state of zoological classification and nomenclature between 1825 and 1840 in Europe. The discussions revolved around the problems caused by an unstable nomenclature, the different definitions of genera and species and the best method to achieve a natural system of classification. As more and more naturalists concerned with classifying and arranging the groups of birds joined these (...) discussions, a broad platform for debate emerged around the 1840s that gave a major impulse to the disciplines of taxonomy and systematics. Natural history ceased to be dominated by a few influential scientific authorities and became the scientific field where debate preceded agreement and, with it, progress. With this ‘democratization’ of natural history, Temminck's status significantly changed between 1815 and 1840. After that year, his own views on classification along with certain economical and political developments in The Netherlands led Temminck to abandon the arena of ornithology and therefore, to lose his scientific authority. (shrink)

By following the arguments between Coenraad J. Temminck and fellow ornithologists Louis J.-P. Vieillot and Nicholas Vigors, this paper sketches, to a degree, the state of zoological classification and nomenclature between 1825 and 1840 in Europe. The discussions revolved around the problems caused by an unstable nomenclature, the different definitions of genera and species and the best method to achieve a natural system of classification. As more and more naturalists concerned with classifying and arranging the groups of birds joined these (...) discussions, a broad platform for debate emerged around the 1840s that gave a major impulse to the disciplines of taxonomy and systematics. Natural history ceased to be dominated by a few influential scientific authorities and became the scientific field where debate preceded agreement and, with it, progress. With this ‘democratization’ of natural history, Temminck’s status significantly changed between 1815 and 1840. After that year, his own views on classification along with certain economical and political developments in The Netherlands led Temminck to abandon the arena of ornithology and therefore, to lose his scientific authority. (shrink)

The no miracles argument is one of the main arguments for scientific realism. Recently it has been alleged that the no miracles argument is fundamentally flawed because it commits the base rate fallacy. The allegation is based on the idea that the appeal of the no miracles argument arises from inappropriate neglect of the base rate of approximate truth among the relevant population of theories. However, the base rate fallacy allegation relies on an assumption of random sampling (...) of individuals from the population which cannot be made in the case of the no miracles argument. Therefore the base rate fallacy objection to the no miracles argument fails. I distinguish between a “local” and a “global” form of the no miracles argument. The base rate fallacy objection has been leveled at the local version. I argue that the global argument plays a key role in supporting a base-rate-fallacy-free formulation of the local version of the argument. (shrink)

I argue that a certain type of naturalist should not accept a prominent version of the no-miracles argument (NMA). First, scientists (usually) do not accept explanations whose explanans-statements neither generate novel predictions nor unify apparently disparate established claims. Second, scientific realism (as it appears in the NMA) is an explanans that makes no new predictions and fails to unify disparate established claims. Third, many proponents of the NMA explicitly adopt a naturalism that forbids philosophy of science from using any (...) methods not employed by science itself. Therefore, such naturalistic philosophers of science should not accept the version of scientific realism that appears in the NMA. (shrink)

This paper develops a probabilistic reconstruction of the No Miracles Argument in the debate between scientific realists and anti-realists. The goal of the paper is to clarify and to sharpen the NMA by means of a probabilistic formalization. In particular, we demonstrate that the persuasive force of the NMA depends on the particular disciplinary context where it is applied, and the stability of theories in that discipline. Assessments and critiques of "the" NMA, without reference to a particular context, are (...) misleading and should be relinquished. This result has repercussions for recent anti-realist arguments, such as the claim that the NMA commits the base rate fallacy. It also helps to explain the persistent disagreement between realists and anti-realists. (shrink)

The No-Miracles Argument has a natural representation as a probabilistic argument. As such, it commits the base-rate fallacy. In this article, I argue that a recent attempt to show that there is still a serviceable version that avoids the base-rate fallacy fails, and with it all realistic hope of resuscitating the argument.

In this paper, I will show that the Miracle Argument is unsound if one assumes a certain form of transient underdetermination. For this aim, I will first discuss and formalize several variants of underdetermination, especially that of transient underdetermination, by means of measure theory. I will then formalize a popular and persuasive form of the Miracle Argument that is based on "use novelty". I will then proceed to the proof that the miracle argument is (...) unsound by means of a mathematical example. Finally, I will expose two hidden presuppositions of the Miracle Argument that make it so immensely though deceptively persuasive. (shrink)

According to an argument by Colin Howson, the no-miracles argument is contingent on committing the base-rate fallacy and is therefore bound to fail. We demonstrate that Howson’s argument only applies to one of two versions of the NMA. The other version, which resembles the form in which the argument was initially presented by Putnam and Boyd, remains unaffected by his line of reasoning. We provide a formal reconstruction of that version of the NMA and show that (...) it is valid. Finally, we demonstrate that the use of subjective priors is consistent with the realist implication of the NMA and show that a core worry with respect to the suggested form of the NMA can be dispelled. (shrink)

According to the no miracles argument, scientific realism provides the only satisfactory explanation of the predictive success of science. It is argued in the present article that a different explanatory strategy, based on the posit of strong limitations to the underdetermination of scientific theory building by the available empirical data, offers a more convincing understanding of scientific success.

The No-Miracles Argument (NMA) is often used to support scientific realism. We can formulate this argument as an inference to the best explanation this accusation of circularity by appealing to reliabilism, an externalist epistemology. In this paper I argue that this retreat fails. Reliabilism suffers from a potentially devastating difficulty known as the Generality Problem and attempts to solve this problem require adopting both epistemic and metaphysical assumptions regarding local scientific theories. Although the externalist can happily adopt the (...) former, if he adopts the latter then the Generality Problem arises again, but now at the level of scientific methodology. Answering this new version of the Generality Problem is impossible for the scientific realist without making the important further assumption that there exists the possibility of a unique rule of Doing this however would make the NMA viciously premise circular. (shrink)

Lipton contends that the no-miracle argument is illegitimate, because it fails to adduce new evidence beyond that cited by scientists for their theories. The debate on this issue between Lipton and Psillos has focussed on whether there is a construal of the no-miracle argument in relation to first-order scientific inferences that can yield new evidence. I move away from this focus without taking sides, and argue that the no-miracle argument, on its two popular interpretations, (...) is as legitimate, cogent, and useful an inductive argument for scientific realism as first-order scientific inferences to the best explanation even if it does not add to scientific evidence. (shrink)

According to the standard no miracles argument, science’s predictive success is best explained by the approximate truth of its theories. In contemporary science, however, machine learning systems, such as AlphaFold2, are also remarkably predictively successful. Thus, we might ask what best explains such successes. Might these AIs accurately represent critical aspects of their targets in the world? And if so, does a variant of the no miracles argument apply to these AIs? We argue for an affirmative answer to (...) these questions. We conclude that if the standard no miracles argument is sound, an AI-specific no miracles argument is also sound. (shrink)

One way to reconstruct the miracle argument for scientific realism is to regard it as a statistical inference: since it is exceedingly unlikely that a false theory makes successful predictions, while it is rather likely that an approximately true theory is predictively successful, it is reasonable to infer that a predictively successful theory is at least approximately true. This reconstruction has led to the objection that the argument embodies a base rate fallacy: by focusing on successful theories (...) one ignores the vast number of false theories some of which will be successful by mere chance.In this paper, I shall argue that the cogency of this objection depends on the explanandum of the miracle argument. It is cogent if what is to be explained is the success of a particular theory. If, however, the explanandum of the argument is the distribution of successful predictions among competing theories, the situation is different. Since the distribution of accidentally successful predictions is independent of the base rate, it is possible to assess the base rate by comparing this distribution to the empirically found distribution of successful predictions among competing theories. (shrink)

The “No Miracle Argument” for scientific realism contends that the only plausible explanation for the predictive success of scientific theories is their truthlikeness, but doesn’t specify what ‘truthlikeness’ means. I argue that if we understand ‘truthlikeness’ in terms of Kullback-Leibler (KL) divergence, the resulting realist thesis (RKL) is a plausible explanation for science’s success. Still, RKL probably falls short of the realist’s ideal. I argue, however, that the strongest version of realism that the argument can plausibly establish (...) is RKL. The realist needs another argument for establishing a stronger realist thesis. (shrink)

Strong predictivism, the idea that novel predictions per se confirm theories more than accommodations, is based on a “no miracle” argument from novel predictions to the truth of theories (NMAT). Eric Barnes rejects both: he reconstructs the NMAT as seeking an explanation for the entailment relation between a theory and its novel consequences, and argues that it involves a fallacious application of Occam’s razor. However, he accepts a no miracle argument for the truth of background beliefs (...) (NMABB): scientists endorsed a successful theory because they were guided by largely true background beliefs. This in turn raises the probability that the theory is true; so Barnes embraces a form of weak predictivism, according to which predictions are only indirectly relevant to confirmation. To Barnes I reply that we should also explain how the successful theory was constructed, not just endorsed; background beliefs are not enough to explain success, scientific method must also be considered; Barnes can account for some measure of confirmation of our theories, but not for the practical certainty conferred to them by some astonishing predictions; true background beliefs and reliability by themselves cannot explain novel success, the truth of theories is also required. Hence, the NMAT is sound, and strong predictivism is right. In fact, Barnes misinterprets the NMAT, which does not involve Occam’s razor, takes as explanandum the building of a theory which turned out to predict surprising facts, and successfully concludes that the theory is true. This accounts for the practically certain confirmation of our most successful theories, in accordance with strong predictivism. (shrink)

The recent debate surrounding scientific realism has largely focused on the “no miracles” argument (NMA). Indeed, it seems that most contemporary realists and anti-realists have tied the case for realism to the adequacy of this argument. I argue that it is mistake for realists to let the debate be framed in this way. Realists would be well advised to abandon the NMA altogether and pursue an alternative strategy, which I call the “local strategy”.

Hume's essay ‘Of Miracles’ has been a focus of controversy ever since its publication. The challenge to Christian orthodoxy was only too evident, but the balance-of-probabilities criterion advanced by Hume for determining when testimony justifies belief in miracles has also been a subject of contention among philosophers. The temptation for those familiar with Bayesian methodology to show that Hume's criterion determines a corresponding balance-of-posterior probabilities in favour of miracles is understandable, but I will argue that their attempts fail. However, I (...) show that his criterion generates a valid form of the so-called No-Miracles Argument appealed to by modern realist philosophers, whose own presentation of it, despite their possession of the probabilistic machinery Hume himself lacked, is invalid. (shrink)

Although physical theories routinely posit absolute quantities, such as absolute position or intrinsic mass, it seems that only comparative quantities such as distance and mass ratio are observable. But even if there are in fact only distances and mass ratios, the success of absolutist theories means that the world looks just as if there are absolute positions and intrinsic masses. If comparativism is nevertheless true, there is a sense in which it is a cosmic conspiracy that the world looks just (...) as if there are absolute quantities: the comparative quantities satisfy certain relations that only absolutism can explain. I show that such cosmic conspiracies are a pervasive feature of comparativist theories. The argument is structurally similar to the well-known No Miracles Argument for scientific realism. Just as anti-realism cannot explain the empirical adequacy of our theories in general, so comparativism cannot explain the empirical adequacy of absolutist theories in particular. (shrink)

The chief argument for scientific realism is the no-miracles argument, according to which the approximate truth of our current scientific theories can be inferred from their success through time. To date, anti-realist responses to the argument have been unconvincing, largely because of their anti-realistic presuppositions. In this paper, it is shown that realists cannot pre-emptively dismiss the problem of the underdetermination of theory by evidence, and that the no-miracles argument fails because it does nothing to dispel (...) the threat posed by underdetermination, although it may be effective against other anti-realistic arguments. (shrink)

The fact that many scientific models are idealised, and therefore incorporate known falsehoods, seems to undermine the idea that science aims at truth. Various authors have proposed different solutions to this problem: they have claimed that idealisations are harmless because models can be "de-idealised", that the function of idealisations is to isolate explanatory relevant factors, or that idealised models still convey veridical modal information. I argue that even if these strategies succeed in making idealisations compatible with theoretical truth, a deeper (...) problem remains: the fact that idealisations improve the explanatory power of models contradicts the main argument for scientific realism, which is based on the idea that explanatory virtues are truth-conducive. There does not seem to be any simple solution to this problem. (shrink)

In this paper I investigate Hilary Putnam’s conception of scientific realism by examining the so-called “no miracles argument.” According to a widespread reconstruction of his thought, Putnam has been moving from scientific realism, through internal realism to natural realism of common sense. Nonetheless, I show that, in fact, the American philosopher has always been a scientific realist. This notion needs however to be made clearer, because Putnam tends to move constantly on the razor’s edge between metaphysical realism and anti-realism. (...) I argue that Putnam’s mature conception of scientific realism can be thought of as “open realism,” insofar as it is the result of the combination of the acceptable intuitions of metaphysical realism, with conceptual relativity, natural realism and pragmatism. (shrink)

The historical debate of scientific realism portrays a monumental sign of science-a way of critiquing philosophy. At first sight, this centrepiece of scientific realism could line up against the no-miracles argument and the pessimistic meta-induction because, by means of the no-miracles assumption, fundamental theories in science would be the fine manifestation of reality as well as are most likely to be the truth. Nonetheless, a means to an end of the pessimistic meta-induction arguably states the anti-realistic position-since scientific speculations (...) are not always plausible to be the ultimate truth vis-à-vis mature hypotheses of science in history. By and large, I have herein put forward a systemic meaning for realism: an inspection of unseen objects in the world, which are broken free from the human mind. However, I will demonstrate the no-miracles argument in the vicinity of realism, whilst the pessimistic meta-induction lies towards anti-realism. In the bargain, I will examine structural realism in response to this scientific dichotomy. Briefly, this research article is, apparently, bound-up with a very limited account of relevancies; ergo, it would be recommended to further research on this controversy. (shrink)

Predictivists use the no miracle argument to argue that “novel” predictions are decisive evidence for theories, while mere accommodation of “old” data cannot confirm to a significant degree. But deductivists claim that since confirmation is a logical theory-data relationship, predicted data cannot confirm more than merely deduced data, and cite historical cases in which known data confirmed theories quite strongly. On the other hand, the advantage of prediction over accommodation is needed by scientific realists to resist Laudan’s criticisms (...) of the no miracle argument. So, if the deductivists are right, the most powerful argument for realism collapses. There seems to be an inescapable contradiction between these prima facie plausible arguments of predictivists and deductivists; but this puzzle can be solved by understanding what exactly counts as novelty, if novel predictions must support the no miracle argument, i.e., if they must be explainable only by the truth of theories. Taking my cues from the use-novelty tradition, I argue that (1) the predicted data must not be used essentially in building the theory or choosing the auxiliary assumptions. This is possible if the theory and its auxiliary assumptions are plausible independently of the predicted data, and I analyze the consequences of this requirement in terms of best explanation of diverse bodies of data. Moreover, the predicted data must be (2) a priori improbable, and (3) heterogeneous to the essentially used data. My proposed notion of novelty, therefore, is not historical, but functional. Hence, deductivists are right that confirmation is independent of time and of historical contingencies such as if the theorist knew a datum, used it, or intended to accommodate it. Predictivists, however, are right that not all consequences confirm equally, and confirmation is not purely a logical theory-data relation, as it crucially involves background epistemic conditions and the notion of best explanation. Conditions (1)–(3) make the difference between prediction and accommodation, and account for the confirming power of theoretical virtues such as non ad-hocness, non-fudging, non-overfitting, independence and consilience. I thus show that functional novelty (a) avoids the deductivist objections to predictivism, (b) is a gradual notion, in accordance with the common intuition that confirmation comes in degrees, and (c) supports the no miracle argument, so vindicating scientific realism. (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)

J. D. Trout has recently developed a new defense of scientific realism, a new version of the No Miracles Argument. I critically evaluate Trout’s novel defense of realism. I argue that Trout’s argument for scientific realism and the related explanation for the success of science are self-defeating. In the process of arguing against the traditional realist strategies for explaining the success of science, he inadvertently undermines his own argument.

Proponents of the no-miracles argument contend that scientific realism is “the only philosophy that doesn’t make the success of science a miracle.” Bas van Fraassen argued, however, that the success of our best theories can be explained in Darwinian terms—by the fact they are survivors of a winnowing process in which unsuccessful theories are rejected. Critics of this selectionist explanation complain that while it may account for the fact we have chosen successful theories, it does not explain why (...) any particular one of those theories succeeds. Against this I defend the claim that if selectionists manage to account for the former, they have no burden to account for the latter; the success of any particular one of our best theories might as well be an extraordinary coincidence. I refer to this enhanced selectionist reply as “coincidentalism” and argue that it is a serious but underappreciated response to the no-miracles argument. More generally, I argue the considerations raised in favor of this response show that versions of the no-miracles argument focusing on the success of particular theories are misguided. (shrink)

Howson famously argues that the no-miracles argument, stating that the success of science indicates the approximate truth of scientific theories, is a base rate fallacy: it neglects the possibility of an overall low rate of true scientific theories. Recently a number of authors has suggested that the corresponding probabilistic reconstruction is unjust, as it concerns only the success of one isolated theory. Dawid and Hartmann, in particular, suggest to use the frequency of success in some field of research \ (...) to infer a probability of truth for a new theory from \. I here shed doubts on the justification of this and similar moves and suggest a way to directly bound the probability of truth. As I will demonstrate, my bound can become incompatible with the assumption specific testing and Dawid and Hartmann’s estimate for success. (shrink)

On the basis of Levin’s claim that truth is not a scientific explanatory factor, Michel Ghins argues that the “no miracle” argument (NMA) is not scientific, therefore scientific realism is not a scientific hypothesis, and naturalism is wrong. I argue that there are genuine senses of ‘scientific’ and ‘explanation’ in which truth can yield scientific explanations. Hence, the NMA can be considered scientific in the sense that it hinges on a scientific explanation, it follows a typically scientific inferential (...) pattern (IBE), and it is based on an empirical fact (the success of science). Scientific realism, in turn, is scientific in the sense that it is supported both by a meta-level scientific argument (the NMA), and by first level scientific arguments through semantic ascent and generalization. However, both the NMA and scientific realism are not purely scientific, since they go beyond properly scientific concerns, and require additional philosophical reasoning. In turn, naturalism is correct in the sense that philosophy is continuous with science, partly based on it, and potentially equally well warranted. Beside denying the scientific nature of the NMA, Ghins raises some objections to its cogency , to which I reply in the final section. (shrink)

One of the arguments advanced in favor of scientific realism is the 'miracle argument'. It says that for the anti-realist the predictive success of science appears as an utter miracle. This argument indeed has some prima facie plausibility, provided that it is sharpened by construing "predictive success" as prediction of previously unknown laws and the occurrence of a consilience of inductions. Still, the history of science teaches us that it is possible to arrive at predictive success (...) in this sense by employing radically non-referring theoretical mechanisms. The 'miracle argument' is thus unsound. Rather, the capacity of a theory to generate predictive success can be traced back to its "classificativity correspondence.". (shrink)

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 the best explanation entirely. Instead, a relatively simple empirical framework and a probabilistic analysis can accomplish the ambitious goals of the TNMA while entirely sidestepping its problems. This close-but-distinct argument has many independent strengths and comparatively few weaknesses. Indeed, objections tailored specifically to the DNMA reveal surprising insights into how exactly NMAs are neither circular nor question-begging, as has been widely speculated. (shrink)

There are certain explanations that scientists do not accept, even though such explanations do not conflict with observation, logic, or other scientific theories. I argue that a common version of the no-miracles argument (NMA) for scientific realism relies upon just such an explanation. First, scientists (usually) do not accept explanations whose explanans neither generates novel predictions nor unifies apparently disparate phenomena. Second, scientific realism (as it appears in the NMA) is an explanans that makes no new predictions, and fails (...) to unify disparate phenomena. Third, Psillos, Boyd, and other proponents of the NMA explicitly adopt a naturalism that forbids philosophy of science from using any methods not employed by science itself. Therefore, such naturalistic philosophers of science should not accept the version of scientific realism that appears in the NMA. [Publication note: This text is for a talk at the 2008 PSA convention. An expanded version of the talk was later published as a regular article in Philosophy of Science (2010).]. (shrink)

Many formulations of scientific realism (SR) include some commitment to metaphysical realism (MR). On the other hand, authors like Schlick, Carnap and Putnam held forms of scientific realism coupled with metaphysical antirealism (and this has analogies in Kant). So we might ask: do scientific realists really need MR? or is MR already implied by SR, so that SR is actually incompatible with metaphysical antirealism? And if MR must really be added to SR, why is that so? And which additional arguments (...) scientific realists need to support it? After reviewing and classifying a number of different kinds of realisms, metaphysical and not, I answer that SR and MR are logically independent of each other, so that there is no logical inconsistency in holding SR while rejecting MR. However, I argue that the “no miracle” argument (NMA) not only is the “ultimate” argument for SR, but by the same token it also supports MR. Therefore one cannot effectively defend SR without also subscribing to MR, but this can be done at no additional argumentative cost. I show this by discussing not only the standard version of the NMA, but also three more versions which are not usually considered as such in the literature. (shrink)

I vindicate Hume’s argument against belief in miracle reports against a prevalent objection. Hume has us balance the probability of a miracle’s occurrence against the probability of its being falsely attested to, and argues that the latter must inevitably be the greater; thus, reason requires us to reject any miracle report. The "flaw" in this reasoning, according to Butler and many others, is that it proves too much--it counsels us to never believe historians, newspaper reports of (...) lottery results, and so on; and this is clearly absurd. I show that this objection is misguided: far from providing counterexamples to Hume’s "balancing principle", as I call it, these cases actually confirm it, as some simple calculations of probabilities show. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction Goal and Scope of the Argument The Concept of a Miracle Textual Assumptions Background Facts: Death and Burial The Salient Facts: W, D, and P Probabilistic Cumulative Case Arguments: Nature and Structure The Testimony of the Women: Bayes Factor Analysis The Testimony of the Disciples: Bayes Factor Analysis The Conversion of Paul: Bayes Factor Analysis The Collective Force of the Salient Facts Independence Hume's Maxim and Worldview Worries Plantinga's Principle of Dwindling Probabilities (...) Knavery, Folly, and the Love of Wonder Conclusion References. (shrink)

The late John L. Mackie, formerly of University College, Oxford.

What thesis is Hume trying to establish in his essay “On Miracles” and does he succeed? John Earman’s answer to the latter question is clearly conveyed by the title of his new book. Earman uses a Bayesian representation of the problem to make his case. For Earman, this mode of analysis is both perspicuous and nonanachronistic, in that probability reasoning was central to the 18th century debate about miracles in particular and testimony in general. Indeed, one of Hume’s most interesting (...) antagonists, Richard Price, was the person to whom Thomas Bayes entrusted his now-famous essay for posthumous publication. For Earman, Price is the proper Bayesian, while Hume’s essay provides only “rhetoric and schein geld”. Earman’s tone is consistently prosecutorial and sometimes snide; he says that his animus is not so much against Hume himself as against those who smugly invoke Hume’s essay as definitively settling the matter. This tone should not deter potential readers who are convinced that Hume’s essay contains something of value. Earman’s book is interesting and provocative in multiple ways—it places Hume’s essay in its historical setting, it offers an insightful close reading of the text, and it shows how the resources of Bayesianism can be powerfully put to work. Besides Earman’s own essay, the volume also contains Hume’s essay and relevant work by others, including Locke, Spinoza, Samuel Clarke, Price, Laplace, and Babbage. The book would be an excellent choice for an advanced undergraduate or graduate seminar. (shrink)