Scientific Antirealists Have Set Fire to Their Own Houses
Scientific antirealists run the argument from underconsideration against scientific realism. I argue that the argument from underconsideration backfires on antirealists’ positive philosophical theories, such as the contextual theory of explanation (van Fraassen, 1980), the English model of rational...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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Society for the Advancement of Philosophy
2017-01-01
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| Series: | Prolegomena |
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| Online Access: | http://hrcak.srce.hr/file/276516 |
| Summary: | Scientific antirealists run the argument from underconsideration against
scientific realism. I argue that the argument from underconsideration backfires on antirealists’ positive philosophical theories, such as the contextual theory of explanation (van Fraassen, 1980), the English model of rationality (van Fraassen, 1989), the evolutionary explanation of the success of science (Wray, 2008, 2012), and explanatory idealism (Khalifa, 2013). Antirealists strengthen the argument from underconsideration with the pessimistic induction against current scientific theories. In response, I construct a pessimistic induction against antirealists that since antirealists generated problematic philosophical theories in the past, they must be generating problematic philosophical theories now. |
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| ISSN: | 1333-4395 1846-0593 |