The Role of Justification in the Ordinary Concept of Scientific Progress

Mizrahi, Moti; Buckwalter, Wesley

doi:10.1007/s10838-014-9243-y

Cited by 17 publications

(13 citation statements)

References 16 publications

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“…As Dellsén (2018b) explains, "Unlike Bird's epistemic account, [the noetic account] does not require that scientists have justification for, or even belief in, the explanations or predictions they propose." By contrast, Mizrahi and Buckwalter (2014) conduct an empirical study of intuitive judgments about scientific progress and find that they are sensitive to (internal) justification. Moreover, Park (2017) criticizes the noetic account and argues in favor of an epistemic or knowledge-based account, along the lines of (E).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 98%

Conceptions of scientific progress in scientific practice: an empirical study

Mizrahi

2020

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The aim of this paper is to contribute to the debate over the nature of scientific progress in philosophy of science by taking a quantitative, corpus-based approach. By employing the methods of data science and corpus linguistics, the following philosophical accounts of scientific progress are tested empirically: the semantic account of scientific progress (i.e., scientific progress in terms of truth), the epistemic account of scientific progress (i.e., scientific progress in terms of knowledge), and the noetic account of scientific progress (i.e., scientific progress in terms of understanding). Overall, the results of this quantitative, corpus-based study lend some empirical support to the epistemic and the noetic accounts over the semantic account of scientific progress, for they suggest that practicing scientists use the terms 'knowledge' and 'understanding' significantly more often than the term 'truth' when they talk about the aims or goals of scientific research in their published works. But the results do not favor the epistemic account over the noetic account, or vice versa, for they reveal no significant differences between the frequency with which practicing scientists use the terms 'knowledge' and 'understanding' when they talk about the aims or goals of scientific research in their published works.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 98%

Conceptions of scientific progress in scientific practice: an empirical study

Mizrahi

2020

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“…Indeed, Bird argues against the truthlikeness account by invoking hypothetical cases in which scientists add a new true theory to their theoretical corpus (and so truthlikeness increases), but the new theory is not adequately supported by scientific evidence. Bird claims that our intuitive judgment in such cases is that there would be no progress, and there is some indication that this intuition is widely, albeit not universally, shared (Mizrahi & Buckwalter, ). To illustrate with Bird's main example, the French scientist Réné Blondlot believed in the existence of what he called “N‐rays” on the basis of subjective observations which were arguably known to be highly unreliable in the circumstances.…”

Section: Progress and Knowledgementioning

confidence: 99%

Scientific progress: Four accounts

Dellsén

2018

Philosophy Compass

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Scientists are constantly making observations, carrying out experiments, and analyzing empirical data. Meanwhile, scientific theories are routinely being adopted, revised, discarded, and replaced. But when are such changes to the content of science improvements on what came before? This is the question of scientific progress. One answer is that progress occurs when scientific theories "get closer to the truth," i.e., increase their degree of truthlikeness. A second answer is that progress consists in increasing theories' effectiveness for solving scientific problems. A third answer is that progress occurs when the stock of scientific knowledge accumulates. A fourth and final answer is that scientific progress consists in increasing scientific understanding, i.e., the capacity to correctly explain and reliably predict relevant phenomena. This paper compares and contrasts these four accounts of scientific progress, considers some of the most prominent arguments for and against each account, and briefly explores connections to different forms of scientific realism.

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“…Mizrahi and Buckwalter 2014). Rather, I take 'theoretical progress' to be a term of art in well-established philosophical debates about scientific realism and how scientific theorising relates to reality.…”

Section: An Intuition About Theoretical Progressmentioning

confidence: 99%

What is theoretical progress of science?

Saatsi

2016

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The epistemic conception of scientific progress equates progress with accumulation of scientific knowledge. I argue that the epistemic conception fails to fully capture scientific progress: theoretical progress, in particular, can transcend scientific knowledge in important ways. Sometimes theoretical progress can be a matter of new theories 'latching better onto unobservable reality' in a way that need not be a matter of new knowledge. Recognising this further dimension of theoretical progress is particularly significant for understanding scientific realism, since realism is naturally construed as the claim that science makes theoretical progress. Some prominent realist positions (regarding fundamental physics, in particular) are best understood in terms of commitment to theoretical progress that cannot be equated with accumulation of scientific knowledge.

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The Role of Justification in the Ordinary Concept of Scientific Progress

Cited by 17 publications

References 16 publications

Conceptions of scientific progress in scientific practice: an empirical study

Conceptions of scientific progress in scientific practice: an empirical study

Scientific progress: Four accounts

What is theoretical progress of science?

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