A Confrontation of Convergent Realism

Abstract

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Historical Inductions: New Cherries, Same Old Cherry-picking

“…In this paper, I have argued that Old Inductions over the history of science, like the one recently advanced by Vickers (2013), and New Inductions over the history of science, like the one advanced by Stanford (2006), are fallacious arguments. Such arguments from the history of science fail to pose a serious challenge to scientific realism (particularly the epistemic thesis of scientific realism or the divide et impera strategy) because they are based on unrepresentative (i.e., small and biased) samples.…”

“…In Section 2, I show that the Old Induction, even the one based on Vickers' (2013) new and improved list, is fallacious. In Section 3, I show that Stanford's (2006) New Induction is fallacious as well.…”

Explanation and Explanationism in Science and Metaphysics

“…Laudan 1981, Stanford 2006, Lyons 2006, Vickers 2013 Famous now-rejected ontological posits include: gravitational force, caloric, phlogiston, lumineferous ether, electromagnetic ether, circular inertia, miasma, vortices, vital forces, electron orbits, to name a few. To be fair, no explanationist has alleged that inference to the best explanation is a sure-fire method, even in science, but stressing the method's defeasibility is not a satisfactory response to the worry that the method has been demonstrably unreliable with respect to the reality of fundamental scientific posits.…”

Replacing recipe realism

“…2 Consider first Vickers (2013) who is concerned with particular derivations of successful predictions. What epistemic attitude should we adopt towards derivations of successful predictions, given that the history of science shows (in various ways) how successful predictions can be derived from clearly mistaken premises?…”