Abstract |
I defend a realist commitment to the truth of our most empirically successful current scientific theories—on the ground that it provides the best explanation of their success and the success of their falsified predecessors. I argue that this Best Current Theory Realism (BCTR) is superior to preservative realism (PR) and the structural realism (SR). I show that PR and SR rest on the implausible assumption that the success of outdated theories requires the realist to hold that these theories possessed truthful components. PR is undone by the fact that past theories succeeded even though their ontological claims about unobservables are false. SR backpeddles to argue that the realist is only committed to the truth about the structure of relations implied by the outdated theory, in order to explain its success. I argue that the structural component of theories is too bare-bones thin to explain the predictive/explanatory success of outdated theories. I conclude that BCTR can meet these objections to PR and SR, and also overcome the pessimistic meta-induction
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Keywords | Preservative realism Structural realism Inference-to-the-best-explanation The empirical success of science Pessimistic meta-induction Best-current-theory realism |
Categories | (categorize this paper) |
ISBN(s) | |
DOI | 10.1007/s10838-011-9167-8 |
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References found in this work BETA
The Advancement of Science: Science Without Legend, Objectivity Without Illusions.Philip Kitcher - 1993 - Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.
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Citations of this work BETA
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On Treating Past and Present Scientific Theories Differently.Seungbae Park - 2017 - Kriterion - Journal of Philosophy 31 (1):63-76.
Eight Journals Over Eight Decades: A Computational Topic-Modeling Approach to Contemporary Philosophy of Science.Christophe Malaterre, Francis Lareau, Davide Pulizzotto & Jonathan St-Onge - 2020 - Synthese 199 (1-2):2883-2923.
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