Theory flexibility and inconsistency in science

Synthese, 2014

2019

Although logical empiricism is now mostly decried, their naturalist claim that a theory’s content can be read off from its structure, with no philosophical considerations needed, still supports many strategies to escape cases of underdetermination. The appeal to theoretical equivalence or to theoretical virtues, for instance, assume that there is a neutral standpoint from which the structure of the theories can be analyzed, the physically relevant separated from the superfluous, and a comparison made between their theoretical content and virtues. In my dissertation, I argue that the methodological principle underlying these strategies, according to which theories with no superfluous structure should be preferred, is unpractical, for what constitutes relevant structure is determined by epistemic considerations about the aim of scientific theories. In chapter 2, I analyze the claim that theories with ordinary bosons and fermions are theoretically equivalent to theories with exotic ‘pa...

2015

The semantic approach to scientific representation is now long established as a favourite amongst philosophers of science. One of the foremost strains of this approach—the model-theoretic approach (MTA)—is to represent scientific theories as families of models, all of which satisfy or 'make true ' a given set of constraints. However some authors (Brown 2002, Frisch 2005) have criticised the approach on the grounds that certain scientific theories are logically inconsistent, and there can be no models of an inconsistent set of constraints. Thus it would seem that the MTA fails to represent inconsistent scientific theories at all, and this raises concerns about the way it represents in general. In a series of papers (1990, 1993, 1995) and a recent book (2003) da Costa and French have developed a variant of the MTA approach which they call 'partial structures', and which they claim can accommodate inconsistent theories. I assess this claim, looking to two theories w...

It has recently been argued by Davey (2014) that inconsistency is never tolerated in science, but only discretely isolated. But when talking about inconsistencies in science, not much attention has been paid to the inconsistencies between theory and observation. Here I will argue that inconsistency toleration actually takes place in science, and that when we examine actual inconsistent theories, inconsistencies between theory and observation look anything but homogeneous. I will argue, appealing to certain properties of empirical theories, especially holism, that at least two sub-types of inconsistencies regarding theory and observation can be distinguished: those that satisfy a criterion of observational independence and those that do not.

In this work we study the nature of informal inconsistencies in physics, focusing mainly on the foundations of quantum theory, and appealing to the concept of quasi-truth. We defend a pluralistic view of the philosophy of science, grounded on the possibility of the existence of inconsistencies, and on the notion of quasi-truth. Here, we treat only the 'classical aspects' of the subject, leaving for a forthcoming paper the 'non-classical' part. Thus, despite in the opening section we consider a rather wide category of inconsistencies, not all of them take part of the final discussion.

2001

We put forward the hypothesis that there exist three basic attitudes towards inconsistencies within world views: (1) The inconsistency is tolerated temporarily and is viewed as an expression of a temporary lack of knowledge due to an incomplete or wrong theory. The resolution of the inconsistency is believed to be inherent to the improvement of the theory. This improvement ultimately resolves the contradiction and therefore we call this attitude the 'regularising' attitude; (2) The inconsistency is tolerated and both contradicting elements in the theory are retained. This attitude integrates the inconsistency and leads to a paraconsistent calculus; therefore we will call it the paraconsistent attitude. (3) In the third attitude, both elements of inconsistency are considered to be false and the 'real situation' is considered something different that can not be described by the theory constructively. This indicates the incompleteness of the theory, and leads us to a paracomplete calculus; therefore we call it the paracomplete attitude. We illustrate these three attitudes by means of two 'paradoxical' situations in quantum mechanics, the wave-particle duality and the situation of non locality.

2009

Abstract In this work, the first of a series, we study the nature of informal inconsistency in physics, focusing mainly on the foundations of quantum theory, and appealing to the concept of quasi-truth. We defend a pluralistic view of the philosophy of science, grounded on the existence of inconsistencies and on quasi-truth. Here, we treat only the 'classical aspects' of the subject, leaving for a forthcoming paper the 'non-classical'part.

Philosophy of Science, 2005

Two views of scientific theories dominated the philosophy of science during the twentieth century, the syntactic view of the logical empiricists and the semantic view of their successors. I show that neither view is adequate to provide a proper understanding of the connections that exist between theories at different times. I outline a new approach, a hybrid of the two, that provides the right structural connection between earlier and later theories, and that takes due account of the importance of the mathematical models of a theory (the semantic component) and of the various distinct formulations that pick out these models (the syntactic component). Discussions of the generic features of theories in the sciences tend to focus on their predictive capacities. Sometimes an eye is turned toward what they predict, and sometimes toward what they rule out. This is to be expected since much of the business of science seems to be about determining what will happen, when, and under what circumstances. Also, not unreasonably, we judge our theories by how well their predictions correspond to subsequent states of the world. At the same time, theories are supposed to be aids to the understanding, used to explain and make intelligible worldly phenomena-and discussion often focuses on this aspect of theories (see , 1989, and van Fraassen 1989). In addition to these two aspects of scientific theories, in debates about *

New Realism in the World Age, Alejandro Rojas (ed.), Madrid: Apeiron, 2021

In this paper I focus on the two main challenges of realism in the contemporary philosophy of science: Inter-Theoretical Incompatibility and Ontological Instability. Inter-theoretical incompatibility is a recurring fact in the history of science, thus the image that scientific realism presents of science as a practice that progresses linearly and imperturbably towards the truth, cannot be true. Incompatibility, which affects fundamental postulates and/or basic theoretical entities, makes it impossible for competing theoretical theories and/or models to be compared according to their verisimilitude with each other, since, taken as literal descriptions, they deny mutually. The existence of inter-theoretical incompatibilities refutes convergent scientific realism. Moreover, it is an unquestionable historical fact that many theoretical entities are abandoned with scientific development. That is, science is ontologically unstable. The amount of super-symmetric entities postulated by contemporary theoretical physics, which experimentation has shown to be non-existent, is an excellent example of the ontological instability of physics. This is an important challenge that scientific realism must face: The theoretical terms of scientific theories do not refer empirically in a necessary way. Hence my conclusion in favour of a pragmatic and instrumentalist position, according to which the important thing is not what entities really exist, but how we can take advantage of science for our best cognitive relationship with, and intervention in, the World.

Foundations of Science, 1998

ABSTRACT. We put forward the hypothesis that there exist three basic attitudes towards inconsistencies within world views: (1) The inconsistency is tolerated temporarily and is viewed as an expression of a temporary lack of knowledge due to an incomplete or wrong theory. The resolution of ...