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Inductions, Red Herrings, And The Best Explanation For The Mixed Record Of Science, P.D. Magnus
Inductions, Red Herrings, And The Best Explanation For The Mixed Record Of Science, P.D. Magnus
Philosophy Faculty Scholarship
Kyle Stanford has recently claimed to offer a new challenge to scientific realism. Taking his inspiration from the familiar Pessimistic Induction (PI), Stanford proposes a New Induction (NI). Contra Anjan Chakravartty’s suggestion that the NI is a ‘red herring’, I argue that it reveals something deep and important about science. The Problem of Unconceived Alternatives, which lies at the heart of the NI, yields a richer anti-realism than the PI. It explains why science falls short when it falls short, and so it might figure in the most coherent account of scientific practice. However, this best account will be antirealist …
The Identical Rivals Response To Underdetermination, P.D. Magnus, Greg Frost-Arnold
The Identical Rivals Response To Underdetermination, P.D. Magnus, Greg Frost-Arnold
Philosophy Faculty Scholarship
The underdetermination of theory by data obtains when, inescapably, evidence is insufficient to allow scientists to decide responsibly between rival theories. One response to would-be underdetermination is to deny that the rival theories are distinct theories at all, insisting instead that they are just different formulations of the same underlying theory; we call this the identical rivals response. An argument adapted from John Norton suggests that the response is presumptively always appropriate, while another from Larry Laudan and Jarrett Leplin suggests that the response is never appropriate. Arguments from Einstein for the special and general theories of relativity may …