Off-campus access
Using PhilPapers from home?
Click here to configure this browser for off-campus access.
- Mark Newman, Ramsey-Sentence Realism as an Answer to the Pessimistic Meta-Induction.John Worrall recently provided an account of epistemic structural realism, which explains the success of science by arguing for the correct mathematical structure of our theories. He accounts for the historical failures of science by pointing to bloated ontological interpretations of theoretical terms. In this paper I argue that Worrall’s account suffers from five serious problems. I also show that Pierre Cruse and David Papineau have developed a rival structural realism that solves all of the problems faced by Worrall. This Ramsey-sentence realism is a significant advance in the debate, but still ultimately fails for its incomplete account of reference.
Discussion of Mark Newman, Ramsey-sentence realism as an answer to the pessimistic meta-induction
 Back
All discussions
Start a new thread
|
There are no threads in this forum |
Nothing in this forum yet.
Similar books and articles
The no-miracles argument for realism and the pessimistic meta-induction for anti-realism pull in opposite directions. Structural Realism---the position that the mathematical structure of mature science reflects reality---relieves this tension.
Reading list
| Discuss | Edit | Categorize | My bibliography
| Export citation | Scholar | At my library | Share & More ...
| | Scholar | At my library | Share & More ... Structural realism is an attempt to balance the competing demands of the No Miracles Argument and the Pessimistic Meta-Induction. In this paper I trace the development of the structuralist idea through the work of one of its leading advocates, John Worrall. I suggest that properly thought through what the structuralist is offering or should be offering is not an account of how to divide up a theory into two parts—structure and ontology—but (perhaps surprisingly) a certain kind of theory of meaning—semantic (...)
Reading list
| Discuss | Edit | Categorize | My bibliography | Export citation | Scholar | At my library | Share & More ...
| | Scholar | At my library | Share & More ... In this paper I argue that singularist approaches to solving the Pessimistic Induction, such as Structural Realism, are unacceptable, but that when a pluralist account of methodological principles is adopted this anti-realist argument can be dissolved. The proposed view is a contextual methodological pluralism in the tradition of Normative Naturalism, and is justified by appeal to meta-methodological principles that are themselves justified via an externalist epistemology. Not only does this view provide an answer to the Pessimistic Induction, it can also (...)
Reading list
| Discuss | Edit | Categorize | My bibliography | Export citation | Scholar | At my library | Share & More ...
| | Scholar | At my library | Share & More ... It is often thought that questions of reference are crucial in assessing scientific realism, construed as the view that successful theories are at least approximately true descriptions of the unobservable; realism is justified only if terms in empirically successful theories generally refer to genuinely existing entities or properties. In this paper this view is questioned. First, it is argued that there are good reasons to think that questions of realism are largely decided by convention and carry no epistemic significance. An (...)
Reading list
| Discuss | Edit | Categorize | My bibliography | Export citation | Other links: informaworld.com | Scholar | At my library | Share & More ...
| | Other links: informaworld.com | Scholar | At my library | Share & More ... Worrall ([1989]) argued that structural realism provides a ‘synthesis’ of the main pro-realist argument – the ‘No Miracles Argument’, and the main anti-realist argument – the ‘Pessimistic Induction’. More recently, however, it has been claimed (Howson [2000] and Lewis [2001], respectively) that each of these arguments is an instance of the same probabilistic fallacy – sometimes called the ‘base-rate fallacy’. If correct, this clearly seems to undermine structural realism and Magnus and Callender have indeed claimed that both arguments are fallacious (...)
Reading list
| Discuss | Edit | Categorize | My bibliography | Export citation | Other links: lse.ac.uk | Scholar | Share & More ...
| | Other links: lse.ac.uk | Scholar | Share & More ... Structural realism has been proposed as an epistemological position interpolating between realism and sceptical anti-realism about scientific theories. The structural realist who accepts a scientific theory Theta thinks that Theta is empirically correct, and furthermore is a realist about the ‘structural content’ of Theta. But what exactly is ‘structural content’? One proposal is that the ‘structural content’ of a scientific theory may be associated with its Ramsey sentence R(Theta). However, Demopoulos and Friedman argued, using ideas drawn from Newman’s earlier criticism (...)
Reading list
| Discuss | Edit | Categorize | My bibliography | Export citation | Scholar | Share & More ...
| | Scholar | Share & More ... Structural realism has been proposed as an epistemological position interpolating between realism and sceptical anti-realism about scientific theories. The structural realist who accepts a scientific theory thinks that is empirically correct, and furthermore is a realist about the ‘structural content’ of . But what exactly is ‘structural content’? One proposal is that the ‘structural content’ of a scientific theory may be associated with its Ramsey sentence (). However, Demopoulos and Friedman have argued, using ideas drawn from Newman's earlier criticism of (...)
Reading list
| Discuss | Edit | Categorize | My bibliography | Export citation | Scholar | At my library | Share & More ...
| | Scholar | At my library | Share & More ... Kyle Stanford starts his a recent book, Exceeding Our Grasp, with the claim that “the most powerful challenge to scientific realism has yet to be formulated” (2006: 9). He goes on to formulate what he takes to be that challenge, offering a version of the pessimistic meta-induction that includes elements from the underdetermination argument. I have previously labeled the meta-induction “the most powerful argument against scientific realism”. I did so because “it rests on plausible claims about the history of science”. (...)
Reading list
| Discuss | Edit | Categorize | My bibliography | Export citation | Scholar | Share & More ...
| | Scholar | Share & More ... This paper is a review of work on Newman's objection to epistemic structural realism (ESR). In Section 2, a brief statement of ESR is provided. In Section 3, Newman's objection and its recent variants are outlined. In Section 4, two responses that argue that the objection can be evaded by abandoning the Ramsey-sentence approach to ESR are considered. In Section 5, three responses that have been put forward specifically to rescue the Ramsey-sentence approach to ESR from the modern versions of (...)
Reading list
| Discuss | Edit | Categorize | My bibliography | Export citation | Scholar | At my library | Share & More ...
| | Scholar | At my library | Share & More ... Advocates of scientic realism typically respond to the challenge of the pessimistic meta-induction by turning to the history of science. The episode most frequently discussed is the shift from Fresnel's wave theory of light to Maxwell's electromagnetism. This particular history is taken to represent one of the hardest problems for the realist, for while it exhibits continuity on the empirical level, it simultaneously represents a dramatic shift in ontology. Thus, various authors have proposed methods for defeating the pessimistic meta-induction based (...)
Reading list
| Discuss | Edit | Categorize | My bibliography | Export citation | Scholar | Share & More ...
| | Scholar | Share & More ... 
