Relativism and Our Warrant for Scientific Theories

Studies In History and Philosophy of Science Part …, 1988

2017

The epistemological status of scientific knowledge claims has been undermined by skepticism, in particular by universal skepticism. This thesis asserts that Bas C. van Fraassen’s empirical stance is akin to universal skepticism. This work also maintains that van Fraassen’s empirical stance does not lead to the conclusion that scientific knowledge claims are empirically adequate—especially those claims that resulted from the scientific method of inference to the best explanation (IBE). To illustrate why van Fraassen’s stance does not devalue scientific knowledge claims will be suggested via Peter Lipton’s understanding of IBE combined with Ernan McMullin’s epistemic values. By bridging McMullin’s values with Lipton’s version of IBE, we get a more robust version of IBE; as a result, scientific claims may display a cluster of epistemic virtues and values. Where scientific knowledge claims display a cluster of epistemic virtues and values, they are simply beyond being empirically adequate.

This paper revisits, from a new angle, some of the debates over the relativism of the "Sociology of Scientific Knowledge" (=SSK). The new angle is provided by recent work on relativism in epistemology and the philosophy of language. I defend three theses. First, SSK-relativism is not an instance of Paul Boghossian's well-known "template" for relativism. Second, SSK-relativism is therefore not directly threatened by arguments targeting this template position. And third, SSK-relativism is nevertheless in the vicinity of this template, and it offers at least sketches of arguments for distinctive and original relativist theses.

There are a number of debates that are relevant to questions concerning objectivity in science. One of the eldest, and still one of the most intensely fought, is the debate over epistemic relativism.-All forms of epistemic relativism commit themselves to the view that it is impossible to show in a neutral, non-question-begging, way that one " epistemic system " , that is, one interconnected set of epistemic standards, is epistemically superior to (all) others. I shall call this view " No-metajustification ". No-metajustification is commonly taken to deny the objectivity of standards. In this paper I shall discuss two currently popular attempts to attack " No-metajustification ". The first attempt attacks No-metajustification by challenging a particular strategy of arguing in its defence: this strategy involves the ancient Pyrrhonian " Problem of the Criterion ". The second attempt to refute No-metajustification targets its metaphysical underpinning: to wit, the claim that there are, or could be, several fundamentally different and irreconcilable epistemic systems. I shall call this assumption " Pluralism ". I shall address three questions with respect to these attempts to refute epistemic relativism by attacking No-metajustification: (i) Can the epistemic relativist rely on the Problem of the Criterion in support of No-metajustification? (ii) Is a combination of Chisholmian " particularism " (i.e. the insistence that we know lots of things) and epistemic naturalism an effective weapon against No-metajustification? And (iii) Is Pluralism a defensible assumption?

Studies In History and Philosophy of Science Part A, 1994

Silvia Tossut (2016) offers an insightful reply to my criticism (Dragos 2016) of Rolin (2008). I first recap the debate and address two of Tossut’s objections. I then concede to a third: in Dragos (2016) I mistake Rolin’s (2008) argument as a token of a more general argument I reject in a larger project. Now properly understood as a different sort of argument, I apply a criticism offered by de Ridder (2014) to Rolin’s (2008) argument. With considerations from Wray’s (2016) reply to Dragos (2016), I close by addressing a fourth objection from Tossut.

Inferences from scientific success to the approximate truth of successful theories remain central to the most influential arguments for scientific realism. Challenges to such inferences, however, based on radical discontinuities within the history of science, have motivated a distinctive style of revision to the original argument. Conceding the historical claim, selective realists argue that accompanying even the most revolutionary change is the retention of significant parts of replaced theories, and that a realist attitude towards the systematically retained constituents of our scientific theories can still be defended. Selective realists thereby hope to secure the argument from success against apparent historical counterexamples. Independently of that objective, historical considerations have inspired a further argument for selective realism, where evidence for the retention of parts of theories is itself offered as justification for adopting a realist attitude towards them. Given the nature of these arguments from success and from retention, a reasonable expectation is that they would complement and reinforce one another, but although several theses purport to provide such a synthesis the results are often unconvincing. In this paper I reconsider the realist's favoured type of scientific success, novel success, offer a revised interpretation of the concept, and argue that a significant consequence of reconfiguring the realist's argument from success accordingly is a greater potential for its unification with the argument from retention. 1 Musgrave (1988) argues that 'careful realists', at least since Whewell, have always intended the verification of novel predictions in discussions of scientific success. Worrall (1989b), , and Psillos (1999) each argue the importance of peculiarly novel success; many recent antirealist arguments also now pay particular attention to such results. 2 The most famous example of the antirealist challenge from the history of science is . Many interpret Laudan as defending a (pessimistic meta-) induction that implies our own theories are destined for replacement by new theories, radically incongruent with our own. Others (for example argue convincingly that Laudan should instead be understood as merely providing examples that at least appear to undermine the credibility of the realist's inference from success to approximate truth. On either interpretation historical considerations present the realist with a significant challenge.

Science and Technology Studies, 2019

The historicist approach to science has been accompanied by a culturalist one in the last decade or two. Epistemic localism added a horizontal axis to the existing vertical (historical) one thus science came to be presented in a coordinate system as a manifold of epistemic traditions. Taking the debate about the existence of the N-ray as an instructive example, I argue that the historical development of science creates disciplinary communities that impose unified epistemic standards on the communities scrutinizing the same aspects of reality. Accordingly, with the advent of such communities relativism became one-dimensional: science has developed into a historically changing culture that puts up a successful fight against epistemic diversity in its synchronous dimension. Keywords: epistemic systems, geographical turn, local epistemologies, N-ray, objectivity, relativism

Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective, 2020

Scientific realists claim that the best of successful rival theories is (approximately) true. Relative realists object that we cannot make the absolute judgment that a theory is successful, and that we can only make the relative judgment that it is more successful than its competitor. I argue that this objection is undermined by the cases in which empirical equivalents are successful. Relative realists invoke the argument from a bad lot to undermine scientific realism and to support relative realism. In response, I construct the argument from double spaces. It is similar to the argument from a bad lot, but threatens many philosophical inferences, including relative realists' inference from comparative success to comparative truth.