The aim of this essay is to argue for a new version of ‘inference-to-the-best-explanation’ scientific realism, which I characterize as Best Theory Realism or ‘BTR’. On BTR, the realist needs only to embrace a commitment to the truth or approximate truth of the best theories in a field, those which are unique in satisfying the highest standards of empirical success in a mature field with many successful but falsified predecessors. I argue that taking our best theories to be true is (...) justified because it provides the best explanation of the predictive success of their predecessors and their own special success. Against standard and especially structural realism, I argue against the claim that the best explanations of the success of theories is provided by identifying their true components, such as structural relations between unobservable, which are preserved across theory change. In particular, I criticize Ladyman's and Carrier’s structural account of the success of phlogiston theory, and Worrall's well-known structural account of the success of Fresnel’s theory of light. I argue that these accounts tacitly assume the truth of our best theories, which in any case provides a better explanation of these theories’ success than the structural account. Structural realism is now defended as the only version of realism that is able to surmount the pessimistic meta-induction and the general problem that successful theories involve ontological claims concerning unobservable entities that are abandoned and falsified in theory-change. I argue that Best Theory Realism can overcome the pessimistic meta-induction and this general problem posed by theory-change. Our best theories possess a characteristic which sharply distinguishes them from their successful but false predecessors. Furthermore ‘inference-to-the-best-explanation’ confirmation can establish the truth of our best theories and thus trumps the pessimistic inductive reasoning which is supposed to show that even our best theories are most likely false in their claims concerning unobservable entities and processes. (shrink)

This paper develops a stronger version of ‘inference-to-the-best explanation’ scientific realism. I argue against three standard assumptions of current realists: realism is confirmed if it provides the best explanation of theories’ predictive success ; the realist claim that successful theories are always approximately true provides the best explanation of their success ; and realists are committed to giving the same sort of truth-based explanation of superseded theories’ success that they give to explain our best current theories’ success. On the positive (...) side, I argue that the confirmation of realism requires explaining theories’ explanatory success, not just their predictive success ; in turn this task requires a richer realist model of explanation that brings into the explanans both successful theories’ epistemic virtues and the standards governing these virtues, as well as truth; this richer realist model is further confirmed because it can better explain the success of theories in gaining wide acceptance among scientists; and the model is further supported because it is superior to ‘preservative realism ’ in providing a plausible rebuttal of the pessimistic meta-induction from the many past successful-but-false theories to the like- lihood that our best current theories are likewise false. (shrink)

This article attempts to develop a rational reconstruction of Kuhn's epistemological relativism which effectively defends it against an influential line of criticism in the work of Shapere and Scheffler. Against the latter's reading of Kuhn, it is argued (1) that it is the incommensurability of scientific problems, data, and standards, not that of scientific meanings which primarily grounds the relativism argument; and (2) that Kuhnian incommensurability is compatible with far greater epistemological continuity from one theory to another than is implied (...) by the criticisms in question. The reconstruction of Kuhn is then used to show that while it constitutes a provocative form of relativism, it can also plausibly account for the sense in which scientific development is rational, involves standards external to particular paradigms, and exhibits progress of a sort. Finally, the article attempts to develop an adequate critical perspective on Kuhn's relativism by distinguishing a ?short?run? from a ?long?run? relativism, and a relativism concerning scientific knowledge from one concerning scientific rationality in Kuhn; the challenge each poses to positi?vist philosophy of science is distinguished and separately evaluated. (shrink)

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. (shrink)

Against the well-known objection that in the history of science there are many theories that are successful but false, Psillos offers a three-pronged defense of scientific realism as the best explanation for the success of science. Focusing on these, I criticize Psillos’ defense, arguing that each prong is weakened when we recognize that according to realist rebuttals of the underdetermination argument and versions of empiricism, realists are committed to accounting for the explanatory success of theories, not their mere empirical adequacy (...) or instrumental reliability. I conclude by indicating how ‘explanationist’ realism might be recast to accommodate my arguments. (shrink)

In this essay, I criticize Laudan's view that methodological rules in science are best understood as hypothetical imperatives, for example, to realize cognitive aim A, follow method B. I criticize his idea that such rules are best evaluated by a naturalized philosophy of science which collects the empirical evidence bearing on the soundness of these rules. My claim is that this view yields a poor explanation of (1) the role of methodological rules in establishing the rationality of scientific practices, (2) (...) the debates scientists have over rival methodological rules, and (3) the reasons on the basis of which scientists actually embrace, challenge, or transform methodological rules. A better explanation is provided by treating at least some methodological rules as foundational standards of theory-appraisal which define the criteria of scientific truth, knowledge, evidence, proof, explanations, etc., for a certain tradition or community of scientific practice. Such standards are in turn grounded or challenged on the basis of their coherence or incoherence with a wider body of scientific judgments. This view leads away from a naturalized philosophy of science back to its more classical epistemological conception. (shrink)

This essay provides a critical examination of Rawls' (and Rawlsians') conception of self-respect, the social bases of self-respect, and the normative justification of equality in the social bases of self-respect. I defend a rival account of these notions and the normative ideals at stake in political liberalism and a theory of social justice. I make the following arguments: (1) I argue that it is unreasonable to take self-respect to be a primary social good, as Rawls and his interpreters characterize it; (...) (2) secondly, drawing on a distinction made by Darwall, I argue that recognition respect provides a far more suitable notion of respect for a theory of justice than Rawls' notion of appraisal respect; (3) thirdly, I argue that Rawls' treatment of self-respect and the social bases of self-respect as empirical conceptions should be rejected in favor of normative notions of a reasonable or justified self-respect and equality in reasonable social bases of self-respect; (4) I argue that Rawls' notions of political liberalism and public reason provide a way of grounding a notion of the reasonable social bases of self-respect in political ideals of the person implicit in modern economic institutions, and family relations, ignored by Rawlsians—but as central to reasonable social bases of self-respect and justice, as Rawlsians' ideal of persons as free and equal citizens. (shrink)

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In this essay, I critically evaluate the approaches to explaining the success of science in Kuhn and the works of inference-to-the-best-explanation scientific realists. Kuhn ’s challenge to realists, who invoke the truth of theories to explain their success, is two-fold. His paradigm-account of success confronts realists with the problem of theory change, and the historical fact of successful theories later rejected as false. Secondly, Kuhn ’s account of the success of science has no need to bring truth into the explanation. (...) In turn, I argue that weakness in Kuhn and the prevailing forms of scientific realism motivate a better account of realism which I characterize as ‘best current theory realism’ and defend against the pessimistic meta-induction and the problem of theory-change. This realism argues that the best explanation of the success of current and past scientific theories only requires the simple claim that our best current theories are true. Kuhn ’s account can explain how normal science succeeds but cannot account for why its problem solutions work where they do and why they fail for other puzzles. (shrink)

I argue that post-Kuhnian approaches to rational scientific change fail to appreciate several distinct philosophical requirements and relativist challenges that have been assumed to be, and may in fact be essential to any adequate conception of scientific rationality. These separate requirements and relativist challenges are clearly distinguished and motivated. My argument then focuses on Shapere's view that there are typically good reasons for scientific change. I argue: that contrary to his central aim, his account of good reasons ultimately presupposes the (...) requirement of universal standards of scientific reasoning; that the good reasons established by his account underdetermine the rationality of scientific change and allow that other changes would have been equally or even more rational; that as a result, Shapere's approach fails to meet what I characterize as the challenges of moderate, sociological, and cognitive relativism. (shrink)

Rawlsian liberalism is best understood and defended on the basis of a concrete but widely shared ideal of the person as a rational agent capable of normative self?determination in the proper political and economic conditions. In Rawls? recent works, this neo?Kantian ideal of free moral personality is no longer understood as a requirement of rational or moral agency as such, but is a concrete historical ideal or meta?value presupposed by the living tradition of liberal?democratic judgment and practice, which reason can (...) recover through a critical reflection upon this tradition. Read in this way, Rawls? theory of social justice articulates a quite powerful, rational, concrete, historical, and social dimension of modern political identity, which the critics of liberalism cannot plausibly deny. But there are other rival, powerful bourgeois?individualist and patriarchal ideals of personhood, equally rooted in modern political judgments and practices, which Rawlsian liberalism ignores, and which taken together generate the social tensions, instabilities, and conflicts of social justice characteristic of modern liberal?democratic society. Rawlsian theory and liberal political thought requires but essentially lacks a conception of moral reason adequate to comprehend and mediate these normative incoherences built into modern Western political identity. A larger more adequate paradigm of moral reason and political theory is required to overcome these deficiencies. (shrink)

I examine Carrier’s and Ladyman’s structural realist explanation of the predictive success of phlogiston chemistry. On their account, it succeeds because phlogiston chemists grasped that there is some common unobservable structure of relations underlying combustion, calcification, and respiration. I argue that this SR account depends on assuming the truth of current chemical theory of oxidation and reduction, which provides a better explanation of the success of phlogiston theory than SR provides. I defend an alternative version of inference-to-the-best-explanation scientific realism which (...) I call ‘Best Current Theory Realism’ and argue that it can answer the pessimistic meta-induction. (shrink)

This essay critically examines thenon-essentialist and anti-deterministicphilosophy of technology developed in the workof Andrew Feenberg. As I interpret the work,Feenberg achieves an important``demystification'''' of technology. His analysispeels away the facade of ironclad efficiency,rationality, and necessity that permeates ourexperience of technology. Through theoreticalargument and rich examples, he illuminated thecontingent interests, values, meanings, andvoices that are built into specifictechnologies, often by experts. He shows howtechnology is transformed by lay actors whochallenge its design on behalf of a wideragenda of interests, values, meanings andvoices. (...) My critique focuses on Feenberg''sattempt to argue from his demystification oftechnology to the full democratization of alltechnical design and decision-making. I arguethat Feenberg''s framework lacks the ethicalresources required both to (1) justify thedemocratization of technical decisions, andmore basically, (2) to determine when laychallenges to technology do and when theydon''t, advance democratic ideals, and why. Itrace these problems to ethical inadequacies inhis notions of interests, democratization, andan alternative modernity. A sub-theme of myargument is that our society''s Lockeanmorality of property rights and market freedomsposes fundamental ethical objections to hisphilosophy of technology with which it isill-equipped to deal. (shrink)

These books make significant contributions to contemporary realism. Psillos’s book presents an excellent overview of the central components of current scientific realism, the main challenges to it, and the most promising strategies for defending it. It is a work of remarkable clarity, synthesis, and argumentative rigor. Psillos’s realism is committed to three claims: Scientific theories make irreducible assertions about unobservable entities which are literally true or false ; In the case of mature, successful theories, their success provides good reason for (...) taking their assertions about unobservables to be true, or approximately so ; and What makes scientific theories true or false is the mind-independent natural-kind structure of reality. (shrink)

Siegel argues that the Kuhnian relativism presented in ?Kuhn's Epistemological Relativism? fails because it neglects the possibility of rational choice in science between rival paradigms? own incommensurable standards on the basis of ?paradigm?neutral external standards?. In reply, it is argued (1) that Siegel has given no reason to believe that there are such external standards in science, (2) that the mere ?possibility? of such standards in scientific debate is not sufficient to vitiate Kuhn's relativism, (3) that the actual existence of (...) rational debate concerning the internal standards of rival paradigms does not entail (as Siegel claims) the existence of ?paradigm?neutral external standards?, and finally (4) that Kuhn's relativism concerning standards in science does not lead (as Siegel claims) to a ?reductio? which undermines the philosophical standards implicit in Kuhn's argument. (shrink)

Contemporary theories of justice frequently suppose that a legitimate state does not coerce people to comply with values or principles that they could reasonably reject. This ideal of legitimacy is thought to imply neutrality on the good: The State should not coerce people to comply with controversial conceptions of the good (which people could reasonably reject). As Ronald Dworkin puts the point, the government's policies should “be neutral on the question of the good life, or of what gives value to (...) life." Liberal neutrality is sometimes described as a generalization of policies of religious tolerance: Just as the state should be neutral with respect to religious questions, so too the state should be neutral with respect to questions about the good life.". (shrink)

This essay explores Joel Feinberg's conception of liberalism and the moral limits of the criminal law. Feinberg identifies liberty with the absence of law. He defends a strong liberal presumption against law, except where it is necessary to prevent wrongful harm or offense to others. Drawing on Rawlsian, Marxian, and feminist standpoints, I argue that there are injuries to individual liberty rooted not in law, but in civil society. Against Feinberg, I defend a richer account of liberalism and liberty, linking (...) them to human dignity, and a more positive role for law. Feinberg justifies liberty as an instrumental welfare?interest, valuable in virtue of the way it serves the individual's ulterior goals. Drawing on the example of racism and civil rights, I argue that the value of equal liberty stems from its social role in constituting persons? sense of their own worth and dignity. Against Feinberg, I claim that liberty's value is grounded in a shared historical ideal of personhood, not in the individual's goals or desires. Feinberg also links liberalism with an extreme anti?paternalist position, on which individuals should be at liberty to alienate their very own right of personal autonomy. Drawing on the examples of slavery and drug addiction, I argue against this liberty, and the conception of liberalism and paternalism in Feinberg which leads to it. A liberalism founded upon an ideal of human dignity allows, even requires, a use of law to prevent persons from destroying the very conditions of their own autonomy and dignity. (shrink)

These books make significant contributions to contemporary realism. Psillos’s book presents an excellent overview of the central components of current scientific realism, the main challenges to it, and the most promising strategies for defending it. It is a work of remarkable clarity, synthesis, and argumentative rigor. Psillos’s realism is committed to three claims: Scientific theories make irreducible assertions about unobservable entities which are literally true or false ; In the case of mature, successful theories, their success provides good reason for (...) taking their assertions about unobservables to be true, or approximately so ; and What makes scientific theories true or false is the mind-independent natural-kind structure of reality. (shrink)

These books make significant contributions to contemporary realism. Psillos’s book presents an excellent overview of the central components of current scientific realism, the main challenges to it, and the most promising strategies for defending it. It is a work of remarkable clarity, synthesis, and argumentative rigor. Psillos’s realism is committed to three claims: Scientific theories make irreducible assertions about unobservable entities which are literally true or false ; In the case of mature, successful theories, their success provides good reason for (...) taking their assertions about unobservables to be true, or approximately so ; and What makes scientific theories true or false is the mind-independent natural-kind structure of reality. (shrink)

This paper constitutes a thoroughgoing critique of Rorty's interesting attempt to characterize the mental and its elimination within materialism in terms of the incorrigibility of mental reports. I elucidate, criticize, and improve the concept of incorrigibility his position requires. Then I argue: that although mental-state reports are as corrigible as physical reports, this reflects contingent matters which do not affect the boundary of the mental and the physical; that even if the familiar paradigm mental-event reports are incorrigible, there are mental (...) events for which our language does not provide descriptions plausibly considered as incorrigible; even the familiar mental-event reports are not incorrigible which I show through examples that explain how and why persons maintain false beliefs about their most simple sensations, thoughts, indeed anything, I then suggest that Rorty’s conception of the triumph of materialism is simplistic and inadequate in a number of respects. Finally, I attempt to show how difficult if not impossible it is to define or eliminate the mental without presupposing it; in trying to get the barest sense of Rorty's materialist world, the mental forces itself into our mind at every turn. (shrink)

This paper aims to evaluate thechallenges posed to traditional ethical theoryby the ethics of feminism, multiculturalism,and environmentalism. I argue that JamesSterba, in his Three Challenges to Ethics,provides a distorted assessment by trying toassimilate feminism, multiculturalism, andenvironmentalism into traditional utilitarian,virtue, and Kantian/Rawlsian ethics – which hethus seeks to rescue from their alleged``biases.'''' In the cases of feminism andmulticulturalism, I provide an alternativeaccount on which these new critical discourseschallenge the whole paradigm or conception ofethical inquiry embodied in the tradition.They embrace different questions, (...) goals, toolsof analysis, and wider audiences, typicallyignored or marginalized by traditionalethicists.I illustrate my argument through briefinterpretations of writers such as Susan Okin,Catharine Mackinnon, Sandra Bartky, JohnStoltenberg, Richard Wasserstrom, AnthonyAppiah, Charles Mills, Will Kymlicka, CharlesTaylor, and Martha Nussbaum. In many of thesecases, I suggest that they provide us with newways of being ethicists.In the case of environmentalism, I defend amore conservative and negative assessment.Sterba embraces authors such as Peter Singer,Tom Regan, and Paul Taylor in order to advancean environmentalist ethic of ``speciesequality/impartiality'''' and ``biocentricpluralism.'''' Here I argue that the traditionalKantian/Rawlsian ethics – which Sterba hopesto accommodate – actually provides compellingmoral reasons for rejecting his principles of``species impartiality'''' and biocentricpluralism. Moreover, Rawlsian ethics canprovide a more coherent, consistent, andplausible account of environmental issues thanSterba''s brand of environmental ethics. Iargue that in practice, his ethics concedeswhat it denies in theory – namely, the specialvalue which inheres in human beings.As such, environmental ethics, unlike feminismand multiculturalism, poses very little in theway of a credible challenge or alternative totraditional ethics. (shrink)

In this article, I argue that Gadamer's hermeneutics of historical tradition does not imply a conservative stance on ethical and political issues. My essay seeks to show that Gadamer's philosophy leaves ample room for normative criticism, objectivity, and theories of justice at odds with conventional common sense. I critically examine Walzer's Spheres of Justice, reading it as an attempt to obtain a normative account of justice based on a hermeneutical framework of interpretation. I make several criticisms of Walzer's method and (...) results, which I use to develop my own critical model for interpreting, criticizing, and revising traditional understandings, and common sense meanings. My conclusion is that we need to extend Gadamer's philosophy, in order to identify the ways that established traditions of understanding and common sense can result from, or produce, inconsistency, irrationality, hermeneutical incoherence, and meaningless deprivations or suffering. This essay thus seeks to develop an influential continental philosophy in a direction that makes fruitful contact with Anglo-American theories of justice, and normativity. (shrink)

In recent work, Rawls, Nozick, and the ?democratic?socialist? theory of Markovi? and Gould, attempt to ground rival models of just economic relations on the basis of conflicting interpretations of human freedom. Beginning with a philosophical conception of humans as essentially free beings, each derives a different system of basic rights and freedoms: (1) the familiar democratic civil and political rights of citizenship in the West (Rawls); (2) the classical bourgeois market freedoms ? ?life, liberty, and property? (Nozick); and (3) democratic (...) socialist rights of self?management of the work?place (Gould and Markovi?). I argue that each of these theorists implicitly assumes a different but ungrounded ?social paradigm of human agency? concerning the particular forms of human choice which are singled out as most important for a free, human life. None of these theories contains the methodological resources for showing why the forms of human agency it ?emancipates? are more important than the forms it suppresses or ignores. In order to overcome this impasse and provide a way of evaluating such rival paradigms of free agency, I elaborate a methodology based on the idea that a free society must provide its members with ?equality in the social bases of self?respect?. I use this methodology to argue that all three of the above conceptions are blind to problems of human agency, freedom, and dignity posed by the modern phenomena of welfare dependency, unemployment, and a self?stultifying division of labor. (shrink)