Expanding Our Grasp: Causal Knowledge and the Problem of Unconceived Alternatives

Abstract

I argue that scientific realism, insofar as it is only committed to those scientific posits of which we have causal knowledge, is immune to Kyle Stanford's argument from unconceived alternatives. This causal strategy (previously introduced, but not worked out in detail, by Anjan Chakravartty) is shown not to repeat the shortcomings of previous realist responses to Stanford's argument. Furthermore, I show that the notion of causal knowledge underlying it can be made sufficiently precise by means of conceptual tools recently introduced into the debate on scientific realism. Finally, I apply this strategy to the case of Jean Perrin's experimental work on the atomic hypothesis, disputing Stanford's claim that the problem of unconceived alternatives invalidates a realist interpretation of this historical episode.

Robust realism for the life sciences

“…This antirealist approach to causal explanation also seems to be supported by the history of science: The caloric fluid appeared in widely accepted causal generalizations in the 19 th century, but we now know that it doesn't exist (Hitchcock 1992;Radder 2012, 109). The connection between causal explanation and scientific realism remains a controversial issue and also defenses of causation-based arguments for realism are found in the literature (Egg 2012(Egg , 2016Suarez 2008), but what 7 is clear is that Cartwright's argument in its original form is not compelling (see also Clarke (2001) and Hitchcock (1992) for more discussion).…”

“…In this paper, I will formulate a new version of ER, and based on an example from science, show that this version has resources to answer all the objections raised against original ER. What makes this account novel and attractive in comparison to original ER and other forms of realism inspired by it (Chakravartty 2007;Egg 2012Egg , 2016Suarez 2008) is that it moves beyond causal motivations for realism, and is based on the notion of robustness instead. Roughly, the idea is that if there are many independent ways of measuring or detecting an entity, we are highly justified in believing that the entity is real.…”

“…If the reasoning in the previous paragraph holds, and properties are attributed to entities based on the best available scientific theories, then scientific change also results in changes in the properties attributed. This seems to be supported by history of science: Whereas the electron as an entity has withstood several scientific 2 Suarez (2008) and Egg (2012Egg ( , 2016 defend entity realism by arguing that, when the right conditions are satisfied, causal explanation does give warrant for believing that the cause is real. This strategy is interesting, but I will not discuss it in detail here, as it leads to a form of entity realism that is not well suited for accounting for scientific realism in the life sciences -see section 4 for more.…”

“…This problem does not threaten RER, which does not appeal to any special features of causal explanation, in contrast to the original ER (and later versions such as Egg (2012Egg ( , 2016 and Suarez (2008)). In RER, the fact that an entity or a property appears in a causal generalization can contribute to its robustness, but just as one possible factor among many others.…”

Going local: a defense of methodological localism about scientific realism

“…Magnus argues that Stanford's argument is most effective when deployed locally. See also Egg (2016). experiment. Natural (experimental) science is a matter not of saving phenomena but of creating phenomena […].…”