Some Difficulties for the Problem of Unconceived Alternatives

Ruhmkorff, Samuel

doi:10.1086/662273

Cited by 25 publications

(14 citation statements)

References 8 publications

(3 reference statements)

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“…The New Induction states that we should project the existence of "unconceived alternatives" to accepted theories from past to present. The New Induction adds a number of novel and interesting considerations to the realism debate, but it arguably ends in stalemate as well (Kukla 2010, Ruhmkorff 2011. What is more, I think it can be countered with the material presented in this paper, as I will briefly indicate below.…”

Section: Two Premisesmentioning

confidence: 81%

Scientific revolutions and the explosion of scientific evidence

Fahrbach

2016

Synthese

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Scientific realism, the position that successful theories are likely to be approximately true, is threatened by the pessimistic induction according to which the history of science is full of successful, but false theories. I aim to defend scientific realism against the pessimistic induction. My main thesis is that our current best theories each enjoy a very high degree of predictive success, far higher than was enjoyed by any of the refuted theories. I support this thesis by showing that both the amount, and quality, of scientific evidence has increased enormously in the recent past, resulting in a big boost of success for the best theories.

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Section: Two Premisesmentioning

confidence: 81%

Scientific revolutions and the explosion of scientific evidence

Fahrbach

2016

Synthese

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“…Many philosophers of science (Papineau, 1996;Chakravartty, 2008;Khalifa, 2010;Devitt, 2011;Ruhmkorff, 2011;Ruttkamp-Bloem, 2013;Wray, 2013;Doppelt, 2014;Mizrahi, 2016;Nickles, 2017) are interested in whether successful theories are true, in whether they are empirically adequate, and in whether the theoretical entities posited by them exist. This section explores what axiological realism says with respect to these issues, and argues that despite its name, axiological realism is a variant of scientific antirealism.…”

Section: Variants Of Scientific Antirealismmentioning

confidence: 99%

Critiques of Axiological Realism and Surrealism

Park

2019

Acta Anal

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Lyons's (2003Lyons's ( , 2018 axiological realism holds that science pursues true theories. I object that despite its name, it is a variant of scientific antirealism, and is susceptible to all the problems with scientific antirealism. Lyons (2003, 2018) also advances a variant of surrealism as an alternative to the realist explanation for success. I object that it does not give rise to understanding because it is an ad hoc explanans and because it gives a conditional explanation. Lyons might use axiological realism to account for the success of a theory. I object that some alternative axiological explanations are better than the axiological realist explanation, and that the axiological realist explanation is teleological. Finally, I argue that Putnam's realist position is more elegant than Lyons's.

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“…This is because the scientific community is simply much larger now than it was in the past (Fahrbach 2011), and because later scientists have had more time for their increasingly robust scientific traditions to uncover alternatives (Ruhmkorff 2011). But notice that these developments have been accompanied by other developments that might well have the opposite effect: It is at least plausible that the contemporary mechanisms of research funding lead to a decrease in the investigation of fundamentally distinct alternatives to dominant theories (Stanford 2006, 132).…”

Section: The Induction From Past To Presentmentioning

confidence: 99%

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

Egg

2016

The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science

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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.

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Some Difficulties for the Problem of Unconceived Alternatives

Cited by 25 publications

References 8 publications

Scientific revolutions and the explosion of scientific evidence

Scientific revolutions and the explosion of scientific evidence

Critiques of Axiological Realism and Surrealism

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

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