An Internal Answer to the Experimenters’ Regress through the Analysis of the Semantics of Experimental Results and Their Representational Content

Calibrating Chromatography: How Tswett Broke the Experimenters’ Regress

“…Before describing Tswett's response to Marchlewski in detail, we consider and reject an alternative way of trying to break the Experimenters' Regress by appealing to what is sometimes called a theory of the instrument. We argue that such a theory was 12 Recent papers by Feest (2016) and Zuppone (2017) suggest that the two forms of the Experimenters' Regress are conflated in Collins but in fact have different targets, as well as different structures. 13 Zuppone (2017) argues that as a general rule, the regress form is subordinate to the vicious circle form (which she calls "general reciprocity").…”

“…We argue that such a theory was 12 Recent papers by Feest (2016) and Zuppone (2017) suggest that the two forms of the Experimenters' Regress are conflated in Collins but in fact have different targets, as well as different structures. 13 Zuppone (2017) argues that as a general rule, the regress form is subordinate to the vicious circle form (which she calls "general reciprocity"). 14 We think the vicious circle form of the Experimenters' Regress is essentially a version of a very general puzzle in epistemology that Chisholm (1982) calls the problem of the criterion.…”