Pub Date : 2022-04-03DOI: 10.1080/02698595.2023.2208416
James Robert Brown, C. Misak
William (Bill) Newton-Smith was a renowned Canadian philosopher of science who spent his career largely in Oxford and then at the Central European University in Hungary. Newton-Smith was born in Orillia, Ontario and completed a B.A. in mathematics and philosophy at Queen’s University, Canada. In his second year as an undergraduate, he decided he was a logical positivist. In the interview for an exchange scholarship with St Andrews, in which he would be successful and at which he would spend his third year, the head of the Queen’s philosophy Department remarked that he had thought logical positivism was dead. With the confidence of youth Newton-Smith replied that the fact that it may not be popular was no reason to think it wasn’t true! During his year at St Andrews he fell under the spell of the later Wittgenstein. Upon graduating from Queen’s in 1966, he went to Cornell to do a PhD, as Norman Malcolm had photocopies of all of Wittgenstein’s unpublished works. Unimpressed with Malcolm, NewtonSmith transferred to the analytic philosopher Max Black. He thought Black a great supervisor, lively and clear—just the sort of teacher and mentor he would himself become. But NewtonSmith had already decided to transfer to Oxford. Black didn’t want him leaving Ithaca without a Cornell degree, so he secured funding for him to do an MA over the summer. Once at Oxford, Newton-Smith became a leading figure there. He finished his DPhil under the supervision of the logician Arthur Prior. In 1970 he was elected a Fellow of Balliol College. He was a pillar of the College and the University, taking on important administrative positions for both. He was a beloved undergraduate tutor, lecturer, and supervisor of an astounding number of DPhil theses. He could make logic fun and had a fine nose for what was a good (and bad!) argument in a student’s work. Newton-Smith made important contributions in several areas of philosophy, especially the nature of time and the general philosophy of science. Perhaps his two most important works are The Structure of Time (1980) and The Rationality of Science (1981). The latter appeared in the middle of the realism debate, a hot topic at any time but particularly so in the late 70s and early 80s. Even after four decades it stands up well and gives an excellent snapshot of his realistic approach to philosophy. Newton-Smith was a scientific realist; he had no qualms about the theoretical entities postulated by science, though he did have an interestingly radical solution to one problem that presses in on the realist. He was also a rationalist; he believed that science has clearly progressed and part of the philosopher’s job is to explain or make sense of that progress. As Newton-Smith saw it, there are a number of challenges which face the traditional rationalist, including: overcoming the problem of incommensurability (the same term could have different meanings in different theories); it must be shown that science does indeed have a goal
{"title":"William H. Newton-Smith (1943–2023)","authors":"James Robert Brown, C. Misak","doi":"10.1080/02698595.2023.2208416","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/02698595.2023.2208416","url":null,"abstract":"William (Bill) Newton-Smith was a renowned Canadian philosopher of science who spent his career largely in Oxford and then at the Central European University in Hungary. Newton-Smith was born in Orillia, Ontario and completed a B.A. in mathematics and philosophy at Queen’s University, Canada. In his second year as an undergraduate, he decided he was a logical positivist. In the interview for an exchange scholarship with St Andrews, in which he would be successful and at which he would spend his third year, the head of the Queen’s philosophy Department remarked that he had thought logical positivism was dead. With the confidence of youth Newton-Smith replied that the fact that it may not be popular was no reason to think it wasn’t true! During his year at St Andrews he fell under the spell of the later Wittgenstein. Upon graduating from Queen’s in 1966, he went to Cornell to do a PhD, as Norman Malcolm had photocopies of all of Wittgenstein’s unpublished works. Unimpressed with Malcolm, NewtonSmith transferred to the analytic philosopher Max Black. He thought Black a great supervisor, lively and clear—just the sort of teacher and mentor he would himself become. But NewtonSmith had already decided to transfer to Oxford. Black didn’t want him leaving Ithaca without a Cornell degree, so he secured funding for him to do an MA over the summer. Once at Oxford, Newton-Smith became a leading figure there. He finished his DPhil under the supervision of the logician Arthur Prior. In 1970 he was elected a Fellow of Balliol College. He was a pillar of the College and the University, taking on important administrative positions for both. He was a beloved undergraduate tutor, lecturer, and supervisor of an astounding number of DPhil theses. He could make logic fun and had a fine nose for what was a good (and bad!) argument in a student’s work. Newton-Smith made important contributions in several areas of philosophy, especially the nature of time and the general philosophy of science. Perhaps his two most important works are The Structure of Time (1980) and The Rationality of Science (1981). The latter appeared in the middle of the realism debate, a hot topic at any time but particularly so in the late 70s and early 80s. Even after four decades it stands up well and gives an excellent snapshot of his realistic approach to philosophy. Newton-Smith was a scientific realist; he had no qualms about the theoretical entities postulated by science, though he did have an interestingly radical solution to one problem that presses in on the realist. He was also a rationalist; he believed that science has clearly progressed and part of the philosopher’s job is to explain or make sense of that progress. As Newton-Smith saw it, there are a number of challenges which face the traditional rationalist, including: overcoming the problem of incommensurability (the same term could have different meanings in different theories); it must be shown that science does indeed have a goal","PeriodicalId":44433,"journal":{"name":"International Studies in the Philosophy of Science","volume":"35 1","pages":"205 - 208"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46750888","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-04-03DOI: 10.1080/02698595.2022.2119492
E. Schliesser
This slender and very clearly written book challenges an influential view that seems to be supported by social and cognitive science: that outside domains where there is familiarity and effective feedback, people are by and large rather irrational. This irrationality is said to be hardwired in our cognition and, say, makes us receptive to demagogues and explains why many of us are scandalously politically ignorant. This popular view is supported not just by survey data, but also by large number of experiments that provide purported evidence for so-called rationality deficit models of human nature. By contrast, Neil Levy, argues that what he calls ‘bad beliefs’ are caused by ‘polluted’ epistemic environments in which the proper functioning of higher order evidence and cues is undermined or corroded. Often this epistemic pollution is the work of strategic (even manipulative) political agents. But cues are generally sources of information and, thus, reasons, not necessarily manipulation. In fact, they can be manipulated in virtue of the fact that they are treated as reasons or reliable sources. In order to make this position plausible, Levy offers a novel account of belief formation and its nature. In particular, many very important beliefs result from the (rational) practice of deference and are often largely off-loaded on the environment. Levy is especially interested in explaining the widespread existence of bad beliefs and drawing solutions from this explanation to prevent or undermine the prevalence of bad beliefs. The previous two paragraphs do not convey how the book is animated by great concern over unfolding human-induced climate change. Levy seems to hold that because the populace holds a number of bad beliefs ‘in defiance of the scientific authorities’, (xi) political decisionmakers are unwilling or unable to act on the dire warnings of climate science. There is, thus, a real urgency to Levy’s writing which is peppered with illustrations from recent political life. In what follows, I first explain what Levy means by ‘bad belief’. In order to facilitate discussion, I also introduce a further term, ‘authoritated belief’. I then provide a critical survey of each chapter followed by a discussion of Levy’s methodology. I conclude with reflections that put Levy’s project in a wider historical and methodological perspective. A bad belief
{"title":"Bad Beliefs: Why They Happen to Good People","authors":"E. Schliesser","doi":"10.1080/02698595.2022.2119492","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/02698595.2022.2119492","url":null,"abstract":"This slender and very clearly written book challenges an influential view that seems to be supported by social and cognitive science: that outside domains where there is familiarity and effective feedback, people are by and large rather irrational. This irrationality is said to be hardwired in our cognition and, say, makes us receptive to demagogues and explains why many of us are scandalously politically ignorant. This popular view is supported not just by survey data, but also by large number of experiments that provide purported evidence for so-called rationality deficit models of human nature. By contrast, Neil Levy, argues that what he calls ‘bad beliefs’ are caused by ‘polluted’ epistemic environments in which the proper functioning of higher order evidence and cues is undermined or corroded. Often this epistemic pollution is the work of strategic (even manipulative) political agents. But cues are generally sources of information and, thus, reasons, not necessarily manipulation. In fact, they can be manipulated in virtue of the fact that they are treated as reasons or reliable sources. In order to make this position plausible, Levy offers a novel account of belief formation and its nature. In particular, many very important beliefs result from the (rational) practice of deference and are often largely off-loaded on the environment. Levy is especially interested in explaining the widespread existence of bad beliefs and drawing solutions from this explanation to prevent or undermine the prevalence of bad beliefs. The previous two paragraphs do not convey how the book is animated by great concern over unfolding human-induced climate change. Levy seems to hold that because the populace holds a number of bad beliefs ‘in defiance of the scientific authorities’, (xi) political decisionmakers are unwilling or unable to act on the dire warnings of climate science. There is, thus, a real urgency to Levy’s writing which is peppered with illustrations from recent political life. In what follows, I first explain what Levy means by ‘bad belief’. In order to facilitate discussion, I also introduce a further term, ‘authoritated belief’. I then provide a critical survey of each chapter followed by a discussion of Levy’s methodology. I conclude with reflections that put Levy’s project in a wider historical and methodological perspective. A bad belief","PeriodicalId":44433,"journal":{"name":"International Studies in the Philosophy of Science","volume":"35 1","pages":"189 - 203"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43000150","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-01-02DOI: 10.1080/02698595.2022.2123099
M. Collodel
ABSTRACT This paper introduces and reproduces a document from Feyerabend’s Nachlass including: (i) Feyerabend’s 1967 tentative translation into English of an original German typescript reporting the lecture notes of an academic course on magnetic monopoles delivered by physicist Felix Ehrenhaft (1879-1952) at the University of Vienna in the 1947 summer semester; and (ii) Feyerabend’s memoir focusing on Ehrenhaft in postwar Vienna. In addition to making available to a larger audience Ehrenhaft’s lectures on a highly controversial topic, the publication of Feyerabend’s typescript offers the opportunity to reconsider, delve deeper into and cast a brighter light on a rather neglected aspect in the growing literature on Feyerabend’s thought: the significance of Ehrenhaft for the development of Feyerabend’s intellectual biography.
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Pub Date : 2022-01-02DOI: 10.1080/02698595.2022.2067811
Daniel Kuby, Patrick Fraser
ABSTRACT In 1957, Feyerabend delivered a paper titled ‘On the Quantum-Theory of Measurement’ at the Colston Research Symposium in Bristol to sketch a completion of von Neumann's measurement scheme without collapse, using only unitary quantum dynamics and well-motivated statistical assumptions about macroscopic quantum systems. Feyerabend's paper has been recognised as an early contribution to quantum measurement, anticipating certain aspects of decoherence. Our paper reassesses the physical and philosophical content of Feyerabend's contribution, detailing the technical steps as well as its overall philosophical motivations and consequences. Summarising our results, Feyerabend interpreted collapse as a positivist assumption in quantum mechanics leading to a strict distinction between the uninterpreted formalism of unitary evolution in quantum mechanics and the classically interpreted observational language describing post-measurement outcomes. Thus Feyerabend took the no-collapse completion of the von Neumann measurement scheme to show the dispensability of the positivist assumption, leading the way to a realistic interpretation of quantum theory. We note, however, that there are substantial problems with his account of measurement that bring into question its viability as a legitimate foil to the orthodox view. We further argue that his dissatisfaction with the von Neumann measurement scheme is indicative of early views on theoretical pluralism.
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Pub Date : 2022-01-02DOI: 10.1080/02698595.2022.2193369
Jamie Shaw, M. Stuart
In a reference letter for Feyerabend’s application to UC Berkeley, Carl Hempel writes that ‘Mr. Feyerabend combines a forceful and penetrating analytic mind with a remarkably thorough training and high competence in theoretical physics and mathematics’ (Collodel and Oberheim, unpublished, 80). Similarly, Rudolf Carnap says of Feyerabend that he ‘knows both the physics and the philosophy thoroughly, and he is particularly well versed in the fundamental logical and epistemological problems of physics’ (83). These remarks echo a sentiment widely accepted amongst Feyerabend’s colleagues that his knowledge of physics was at an extremely high level. Feyerabend’s acumen in physics goes back to his youth, when, at the age of 13, he was offered a position as an observer at the Swiss Institute for Solar Research after building his own telescope (Feyerabend 1995, 27). It is unsurprising, therefore, that physics played an important and long-lasting role in Feyerabend’s work. More specifically, Feyerabend’s early work contains several papers engaging with technical and general issues in physics, mostly quantum mechanics. Here, he provided analyses of Bohr’s complementarity and its relationship to positivism, von Neumann’s no-go proof, Bohm’s philosophy of physics, the measurement problem, the relationship between physics and philosophy, hidden-variable theories and theoretical pluralism, and the use of threevalued logic in quantum mechanics (to name just a few topics). These continued to play important roles in his work of the 1970s, although now they appeared alongside more historical examples, such as Galileo’s work on the rotation of the earth in Against Method. While scholarship on Feyerabend’s philosophy has been burgeoning, especially over the past 10 years or so, comparatively little research has delved into his work in the philosophy of physics. This special issue seeks to ameliorate that gap. The hope is to better understand Feyerabend’s philosophy of physics, its historical impact and reception, and discern what fruits Feyerabend’s philosophy of physics may still bear. This special issue comes in two parts. Here, we introduce only the first half, which contains four contributions, touching upon different aspects of Feyerabend’s philosophy of physics. It begins with Flavio Del Santo’s paper, ‘Beyond method: the diatribe between Feyerabend and Popper over the foundations of quantum mechanics.’ Here, Del Santo looks at the relationship between Feyerabend and his mentor and eventual philosophical enemy, Karl Popper with fresh eyes. Specifically, Del Santo provides a new explanation for the fracture between Feyerabend and Popper by looking at their recently published correspondence (Collodel and Oberheim 2020) and focusing on the personal nature of their relationship. Del Santo shows how Feyerabend’s growing ‘resentment’ toward his authoritarian father-figure and Popper’s growing frustration with Feyerabend centred on disagreements concerning quantum mec
在费耶阿本德申请加州大学伯克利分校的推荐信中，亨普尔(Carl Hempel)写道。费耶阿本德在理论物理和数学方面接受过非常全面的训练，并具有很强的分析能力”(Collodel和Oberheim，未发表，1980)。同样，鲁道夫·卡尔纳普评价费耶阿本德说他“对物理学和哲学都了如指掌，尤其精通物理学的基本逻辑和认识论问题”(83)。这些言论呼应了费耶阿本德的同事们普遍接受的观点，即他的物理知识处于极高的水平。费耶阿本德在物理学上的敏锐可以追溯到他年轻时，13岁时，他在建造了自己的望远镜后，被瑞士太阳研究所提供了一个观察员的职位(费耶阿本德1995,27)。因此，物理学在费耶阿本德的工作中发挥了重要而持久的作用也就不足为奇了。更具体地说，费耶阿本德的早期工作包括几篇涉及物理学技术和一般问题的论文，主要是量子力学。在这里，他分析了玻尔的互补性及其与实证主义的关系、冯·诺伊曼的“不去证明”、玻姆的物理哲学、测量问题、物理与哲学的关系、隐变量理论和理论多元主义，以及在量子力学中使用三值逻辑(仅举几个主题)。这些在他20世纪70年代的作品中继续扮演着重要的角色，尽管现在它们与更多的历史例子一起出现，比如伽利略在《反方法》中关于地球自转的研究。虽然关于费耶阿本德哲学的学术研究一直在蓬勃发展，尤其是在过去10年左右的时间里，但对他在物理学哲学方面的工作进行深入研究的研究相对较少。本期特刊试图缩小这一差距。希望能更好地理解费耶阿本德的物理哲学，它的历史影响和接受，并辨别费耶阿本德的物理哲学可能仍然有什么成果。本期特刊分为两部分。在这里，我们只介绍前半部分，其中包含四个贡献，涉及费耶阿本德物理哲学的不同方面。它从弗拉维奥·德尔桑托的论文《超越方法:费耶阿本德和波普尔在量子力学基础上的争论》开始。在这里，德尔·桑托以全新的视角审视了费耶阿本德和他的导师、最终的哲学敌人卡尔·波普尔之间的关系。具体来说，Del Santo通过查看他们最近发表的通信(Collodel and Oberheim 2020)并关注他们关系的个人性质，为Feyerabend和Popper之间的破裂提供了一个新的解释。德尔桑托展示了费耶阿本德对他的专制父亲形象日益增长的“怨恨”，以及波普尔对费耶阿本德日益增长的失望，这些都集中在关于量子力学的分歧上:如何解释它，如何批评它，以及如何教授它。德尔桑托的论文中有很多有趣的细节，从有趣到令人心碎，我们不禁要问，如果没有这样的冲突，科学哲学是否会失去一些东西。Matteo Collodel的论文，“Ehrenhaft的磁单极子实验:重新考虑feyerabendehrenhaft连接”，展示了一份新发现的文件，来自
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Pub Date : 2022-01-02DOI: 10.1080/02698595.2022.2075687
R. Kent
ABSTRACT In 1966, Paul Feyerabend published a short essay on the relation between dialectical materialist philosophy and Niels Bohr’s quantum theory, in which he develops several provocative ideas about the relations between science, ideology and society. I use Feyerabend’s essay to construct an account of his ‘Dadaist’ philosophical methodology. I argue that Dadaism is an ironic form of intellectual seriousness, such that the Dadaist is prepared to take any idea or practice seriously as a potentially valuable contribution to collective human thought and action (despite any diverging personal convictions), especially if they find such engagement to be lacking in their local culture. I identify a weakness in Feyerabend’s formulation of Dadaism, so far as it is conceived as a matter of individual epistemic character and thus fails to account for the role of the social structure of intellectual activity. This weakness can be remedied by supplementing philosophical Dadaism with descriptions of the kinds of institutions and incentive structures that might cultivate its constitutive epistemic dispositions.
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Pub Date : 2022-01-02DOI: 10.1080/02698595.2022.2158430
P. Feyerabend
The following lectures contain a report onnewexperimentalwork in thefieldofmagnetism. In the year 1942, after many years of research Ehrenhaft could finally make the following pronouncement: the universe contains not only electric currents but also magnetic currents. What, now, is a magnetic current? The idea of a current is taken from electricity and so are other concepts which we shall use in these lectures.
{"title":"Single Magnetic Northpoles and Southpoles and Their Importance for Science","authors":"P. Feyerabend","doi":"10.1080/02698595.2022.2158430","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/02698595.2022.2158430","url":null,"abstract":"The following lectures contain a report onnewexperimentalwork in thefieldofmagnetism. In the year 1942, after many years of research Ehrenhaft could finally make the following pronouncement: the universe contains not only electric currents but also magnetic currents. What, now, is a magnetic current? The idea of a current is taken from electricity and so are other concepts which we shall use in these lectures.","PeriodicalId":44433,"journal":{"name":"International Studies in the Philosophy of Science","volume":"35 1","pages":"95 - 117"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47582253","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-10-02DOI: 10.1080/02698595.2022.2084705
J. Díez, Albert Solé
ABSTRACT In this paper, we examine possible formalisations of the riskiness condition for hypothesis testing. First, we informally introduce derivability and riskiness as testing conditions together with the corresponding arguments for refutation and confirmation. Then, we distinguish two different senses of confirmation and focus our discussion on one of them with the aid of a historical example. In the remaining sections, we offer a brief overview of the main references to the risky condition in the literature and scrutinise different options for formally capturing riskiness; we show why none of them works. We conclude with some remarks about the relation between derivability and riskiness and claim that riskiness essentially involves a contextual, pragmatic component that eludes a complete formal reconstruction.
{"title":"On the Elusive Formalisation of the Risky Condition for Hypothesis Testing","authors":"J. Díez, Albert Solé","doi":"10.1080/02698595.2022.2084705","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/02698595.2022.2084705","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT In this paper, we examine possible formalisations of the riskiness condition for hypothesis testing. First, we informally introduce derivability and riskiness as testing conditions together with the corresponding arguments for refutation and confirmation. Then, we distinguish two different senses of confirmation and focus our discussion on one of them with the aid of a historical example. In the remaining sections, we offer a brief overview of the main references to the risky condition in the literature and scrutinise different options for formally capturing riskiness; we show why none of them works. We conclude with some remarks about the relation between derivability and riskiness and claim that riskiness essentially involves a contextual, pragmatic component that eludes a complete formal reconstruction.","PeriodicalId":44433,"journal":{"name":"International Studies in the Philosophy of Science","volume":"34 1","pages":"199 - 219"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2021-10-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41612712","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-10-02DOI: 10.1080/02698595.2022.2113627
K. Wray
ABSTRACT Shech (2022) offers a critical assessment of my defense of anti-realism, developed in Resisting Scientific Realism. Induction and inductive inferences play a central role in Shech’s critical analysis of my defense of realism. I argue that Shech’s criticisms that relate to induction and inductive inference are problematic, and do not constitute a threat to my defense of anti-realism. Contrary to what Shech claims, the anti-realist does not need to explain why inductive inferences are successful. That is not part of contemporary realism/anti-realism debate. Further, such a demand fails to recognise that some anti-realists do not put much stock in induction.
{"title":"Induction, Rationality, and the Realism/Anti-realism Debate: A Reply to Shech","authors":"K. Wray","doi":"10.1080/02698595.2022.2113627","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/02698595.2022.2113627","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Shech (2022) offers a critical assessment of my defense of anti-realism, developed in Resisting Scientific Realism. Induction and inductive inferences play a central role in Shech’s critical analysis of my defense of realism. I argue that Shech’s criticisms that relate to induction and inductive inference are problematic, and do not constitute a threat to my defense of anti-realism. Contrary to what Shech claims, the anti-realist does not need to explain why inductive inferences are successful. That is not part of contemporary realism/anti-realism debate. Further, such a demand fails to recognise that some anti-realists do not put much stock in induction.","PeriodicalId":44433,"journal":{"name":"International Studies in the Philosophy of Science","volume":"34 1","pages":"243 - 247"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2021-10-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49274246","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-10-02DOI: 10.1080/02698595.2022.2092824
E. Shech
ABSTRACT In his recent 2018 book, Resisting Scientific Realism, K. Brad Wray provides a detailed, full-fledged defense of anti-realism about science. In this paper, I argue against the two main claims that constitute Wray’s positive and novel argument for his position, viz., his suggested Darwinian-selectionist explanation of the success of science and his skepticism about unobservables based on radical theory change. My goal is not wholly negative though. Instead, I aim to identify the type of work that an anti-realist like Wray would need to undertake in order to further substantiate their position, viz., taking a stance on inductive inference and support, and the type of realist and anti-realist positions that seem viable.
{"title":"Darwinian-Selectionist Explanation, Radical Theory Change, and the Observable-Unobservable Dichotomy","authors":"E. Shech","doi":"10.1080/02698595.2022.2092824","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/02698595.2022.2092824","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT In his recent 2018 book, Resisting Scientific Realism, K. Brad Wray provides a detailed, full-fledged defense of anti-realism about science. In this paper, I argue against the two main claims that constitute Wray’s positive and novel argument for his position, viz., his suggested Darwinian-selectionist explanation of the success of science and his skepticism about unobservables based on radical theory change. My goal is not wholly negative though. Instead, I aim to identify the type of work that an anti-realist like Wray would need to undertake in order to further substantiate their position, viz., taking a stance on inductive inference and support, and the type of realist and anti-realist positions that seem viable.","PeriodicalId":44433,"journal":{"name":"International Studies in the Philosophy of Science","volume":"34 1","pages":"221 - 241"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2021-10-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45613301","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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