Abstract
Marc Alspector-Kelly claims that Bas van Fraassen’s primary challenge to the scientific realist is for the realist to find a way to justify the use of some mode of inference that takes him from the world of observables to knowledge of the world of unobservables without thereby abandoning empiricism. It is argued that any effort to justify such an “inferential wand” must appeal either to synthetic a priori or synthetic a posteriori knowledge. This disjunction turns into a dilemma for the empirically-minded realist as either disjunct leads to unwanted consequences. In this paper, I split the horns of this dilemma by arguing that the realist can justify one particular such mode of inference – abduction – without committing himself to rationalism. The realist may justify this mode of inference by appealing to the analytic a priori axioms of the probability calculus. I show that Peter Lipton’s tripartite defense of abduction constitutes such a method of justification.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
M. Alspector-Kelly (2004) ArticleTitle‘Seeing the Unobservable: Van Fraassen and the Limits of Experience’ Synthese 140 331–353 Occurrence Handle10.1023/B:SYNT.0000031323.19904.45
P. Lipton (2001) ‘Is Explanation a Guide to Inference?’ Giora Hon Sam S. Rakover (Eds) Explanation: Theoretical Approaches and Applications Kluwer Academic Publishers New York 93–120
P. Lipton (2004) Inference to the Best Explanation EditionNumber2 Routledge New York
T. McGrew (2003) ArticleTitle‘Confirmation, Heuristics, and Explanatory Reasoning’ British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 54 553–567 Occurrence Handle10.1093/bjps/54.4.553
W.C. Myrvold (2003) ArticleTitle‘A Bayesian Account of the Virtue of Unification’ Philosophy of Science 70 399–423 Occurrence Handle10.1086/375475
E. Sober (2003) ‘Two Uses of Unification’ Friedrich Stadler (Eds) The Vienna Circle and Logical Empiricism: Re-evaluation and Future Perspectives Kluwer Academic Publishers New York 205–216 Occurrence Handle10.1007/0-306-48214-2_17
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Schupbach, J.N. Must the Scientific Realist be a Rationalist?. Synthese 154, 329–334 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-005-3490-8
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-005-3490-8