Scientific progress: Four accounts

Dellsén, Finnur

doi:10.1111/phc3.12525

Cited by 32 publications

(19 citation statements)

References 33 publications

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“…Although such changes would clearly be improvements in a general sense, the debate about scientific progress concerns a narrower class of changes that Niiniluoto labels ‘cognitive’. Dellsén ( 2018 , p. 2) characterizes these as having “to do with improvement in our theories, hypotheses, or other representations of the world, rather than other improvements of or within science”.…”

Section: The Question Of Scientific Progressmentioning

confidence: 99%

Understanding scientific progress: the noetic account

Dellsén

2021

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What is scientific progress? This paper advances an interpretation of this question, and an account that serves to answer it (thus interpreted). Roughly, the question is here understood to concern what type of cognitive change with respect to a topic X constitutes a scientific improvement (to a greater or lesser extent) with respect to X. The answer explored in the paper is that the requisite type of cognitive change occurs when scientific results are made publicly available so as to make it possible for anyone to increase their understanding of X. This account is briefly compared to two rival accounts of scientific progress, based respectively on increasing truthlikeness and accumulating knowledge, and is argued to be preferable to both.

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Section: The Question Of Scientific Progressmentioning

confidence: 99%

Understanding scientific progress: the noetic account

Dellsén

2021

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“…Obviously, to say that a problem is solved is to say that it has a solution. This is also one of the four accounts of scientific progress identified in Dellsén's (2018b) survey of philosophical accounts of scientific progress. According to Dellsén (2018b, p. 2), "Each account places its own distinctive type of cognitive achievement at the heart of scientific progress-truthlikeness, problem-solving, knowledge, or understanding.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 94%

What Is the Basic Unit of Scientific Progress? A Quantitative, Corpus-Based Study

Mizrahi

2022

J Gen Philos Sci

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This paper presents the results of an empirical study following up on Mizrahi (2020a). Using the same methods of text mining and corpus analysis used by Mizrahi (2020a), we test empirically a philosophical account of scientific progress that Mizrahi (2020a) left out of his empirical study, namely, the so-called functional-internalist account of scientific progress according to which the aim or goal or scientific research is to solve problems. In general, our results do not lend much empirical evidence in support of the problem-solving model of scientific progress over the other philosophical accounts of scientific progress (namely, the epistemic, noetic, and semantic accounts of scientific progress) tested in Mizrahi (2020a) and in this follow-up study. Of all the subjects in the JSTOR database we have tested in this study, however, Mathematics is an interesting exception as far as the problem-solving model of scientific progress is concerned. For, in Mathematics alone, we have found that there is significantly more talk of the aims and/or goals of research in terms of solutions than in terms of truth, knowledge, or understanding.

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“…It ought to come as some surprise then, that in several recent papers, Dellsén (2016Dellsén ( , 2017Dellsén ( , 2018 has put forward a third realist account of SP, which does away with the notion of justification all together. According to this noetic account, science progresses when understanding increases, that is, when scientists grasp how to correctly explain or predict more aspects of the world that they did before (Dellsén, 2016).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The principal difference being 'whether proposing new explanations or making new predictions could itself constitute progress, even when there is no change in the theories with which one would explain and predict' (2018: p. 10). WhileRowbottom (2015) has argued that the semantic view cannot accommodate such progress,Dellsén (2016Dellsén ( , 2018 believes that his own account can. 12 Severing the truth or justification connections are not the only options available in distancing understanding from standard accounts of knowledge.…”

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confidence: 99%

Understanding and scientific progress: lessons from epistemology

Emmerson

2022

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Contemporary debate surrounding the nature of scientific progress has focused upon the precise role played by justification, with two realist accounts having dominated proceedings. Recently, however, a third realist account has been put forward, one which offers no role for justification at all. According to Finnur Dellsén’s (Stud Hist Philos Sci Part A 56:72–83, 2016) noetic account, science progresses when understanding increases, that is, when scientists grasp how to correctly explain or predict more aspects of the world that they could before. In this paper, we argue that the noetic account is severely undermotivated. Dellsén provides three examples intended to show that understanding can increase absent the justification required for true belief to constitute knowledge. However, we demonstrate that a lack of clarity in each case allows for two contrasting interpretations, neither of which serves its intended purpose. On the first, the agent involved lacks both knowledge and understanding; and, on the second, the agent involved successfully gains both knowledge and understanding. While neither interpretation supports Dellsén’s claim that understanding can be prised apart from knowledge, we argue that, in general, agents in such cases ought to be attributed neither knowledge nor understanding. Given that the separability of knowledge and understanding is a necessary component of the noetic account, we conclude that there is little support for the idea that science progresses through increasing understanding rather than the accumulation of knowledge.

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Scientific progress: Four accounts

Cited by 32 publications

References 33 publications

Understanding scientific progress: the noetic account

Understanding scientific progress: the noetic account

What Is the Basic Unit of Scientific Progress? A Quantitative, Corpus-Based Study

Understanding and scientific progress: lessons from epistemology

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