Online research in philosophy

The chief argument for scientific realism is the no-miracles argument, according to which the approximate truth of our current scientific theories can be inferred from their success through time. To date, anti-realist responses to the argument have been unconvincing, largely because of their anti-realistic presuppositions. In this paper, it is shown that realists cannot pre-emptively dismiss the problem of the underdetermination of theory by evidence, and that the no-miracles argument fails because it does nothing to dispel the threat posed by underdetermination, although it may be effective against other anti-realistic arguments.

The aim of this paper is to rebut two major criticisms of the No-Miracles Argument for Realism. The first comes from Musgrave (1988). The second comes from Colin Howson (2000). Interestingly enough, these criticisms are the mirror image of each other. Yet, they both point to the conclusion that NMA is fallacious. Musgrave’s misgiving against NMA is that if it is seen as an inference to the best explanation, it is deductively fallacious. Being a deductivist, he tries to correct it by turning it into a valid deductive argument. Howson’s misgiving against NMA is that if it is seen as an inference to the best explanation, it is inductively fallacious. Being a subjective Bayesian, he tries to correct it by turning it into a sound subjective Bayesian argument. I will argue that both criticisms are unwarranted.

1. I have argued in my (1999, chapter 4) that the no-miracles argument (NMA) should be seen as a grand IBE. The way I read it, NMA is a philosophical argument which aims to defend the reliability of scientific methodology in producing approximately true theories. More specifically, I took it that NMA is a two-part (or two-stage) argument. Here is its structure.

The No-Miracles Argument (NMA) is often used to support scientific realism. We can formulate this argument as an inference to the best explanation (IBE), but doing so leads to the worry that it is viciously circular. Realists have responded to this accusation of circularity by appealing to reliabilism, an externalist epistemology. In this paper I argue that this retreat fails. Reliabilism suffers from a potentially devastating difficulty known as the Generality Problem and attempts to solve this problem require adopting both epistemic and metaphysical assumptions regarding local scientific theories. Although the externalist can happily adopt the former, if he adopts the latter then the Generality Problem arises again, but now at the level of scientific methodology. Answering this new version of the Generality Problem is impossible for the scientific realist without making the important further assumption that there exists the possibility of a unique rule of IBE. Doing this however would make the NMA viciously premise circular.

Abstract: Laudan (1984) distinguishes between two senses of success for scientific theories: (i) that a particular theory is successful, and (ii) that the methods for picking out approximately true theories are successful. These two senses of success are reflected in two different ways that the no miracles argument for scientific realism (NMA) may be set out. First, I set out a (traditional) version of NMA that considers the success of particular theories. I then consider a more recent formulation of NMA (Psillos, 1999). This version of NMA is aimed at making us believe that our methods for picking out approximately true theories are reliable. I shall argue that the success of the latter argument is dependent on the success of the first. Therefore, even though Psillos presents a new formulation of NMA, the evidential support for it is no stronger than the evidential support for the original version.

1. I have argued in my (1999, chapter 4) that the no-miracles argument (NMA) should be seen as a grand IBE. The way I read it, NMA is a philosophical argument which aims to defend the reliability of scientific methodology in producing approximately true theories. More specifically, I took it that NMA is a two-part (or two-stage) argument. Here is its structure.

On the basis of Levin’s claim that truth is not a scientific explanatory factor, Michel Ghins argues that the “no miracle” argument (NMA) is not scientific, therefore scientific realism is not a scientific hypothesis, and naturalism is wrong. I argue that there are genuine senses of ‘scientific’ and ‘explanation’ in which truth can yield scientific explanations. Hence, the NMA can be considered scientific in the sense that it hinges on a scientific explanation, it follows a typically scientific inferential pattern (IBE), and it is based on an empirical fact (the success of science). Scientific realism, in turn, is scientific in the sense that it is supported both by a meta-level scientific argument (the NMA), and by first level scientific arguments through semantic ascent and generalization. However, both the NMA and scientific realism are not purely scientific, since they go beyond properly scientific concerns, and require additional philosophical reasoning. In turn, naturalism is correct in the sense that philosophy is continuous with science, partly based on it, and potentially equally well warranted. Beside denying the scientific nature of the NMA, Ghins raises some objections to its cogency , to which I reply in the final section.

According to the “no-miracles argument” (NMA), truth is the best explanation of the predictive-instrumental success of scientific theories. A standard objection against NMA is that it is viciously circular. In Scientific Realism: How Science Tracks Truth Stathis Psillos has claimed that the circularity objection can be met when NMA is supplemented with a reliabilist approach to justification. I will try to show, however, that scientific realists cannot take much comfort from this policy: if reliabilism makes no qualifications about the domain where inference to the best explanation is reliable, scientific realists flagrantly beg the question. A qualified version of reliabilism, on the other side, does not entitle us to infer the realist conclusion. I conclude, then, that Psillos’s proposal does not make any significant progress for scientific realism.

In this paper, I argue that the ultimate argument for Scientific Realism, also known as the No-Miracles Argument (NMA), ultimately fails as an abductive defence of Epistemic Scientific Realism (ESR), where (ESR) is the thesis that successful theories of mature sciences are approximately true. The NMA is supposed to be an Inference to the Best Explanation (IBE) that purports to explain the success of science. However, the explanation offered as the best explanation for success, namely (ESR), fails to yield independently testable predictions that alternative explanations for success do not yield. If this is correct, then there seems to be no good reason to prefer (ESR) over alternative explanations for success.

I argue that a certain type of naturalist should not accept a prominent version of the no‐miracles argument (NMA). First, scientists (usually) do not accept explanations whose explanans‐statements neither generate novel predictions nor unify apparently disparate established claims. Second, scientific realism (as it appears in the NMA) is an explanans that makes no new predictions and fails to unify disparate established claims. Third, many proponents of the NMA explicitly adopt a naturalism that forbids philosophy of science from using any methods not employed by science itself. Therefore, such naturalistic philosophers of science should not accept the version of scientific realism that appears in the NMA. *Received April 2007; revised November 2008. †To contact the author, please write to: Department of Philosophy, Hobart and William Smith Colleges, 300 Pulteney Street, Geneva, NY 14456; e‐mail: gfrost‐arnold@hws.edu.