Abstract
The no-miracles argument (NMA) is the main inference-to-the-best-explanation kind of argument for scientific realism, and the pessimistic (meta-) induction (PI) is considered a main, if not the main, challenge for a NMA-based scientific realism. Doppelt (2014) advocates a new kind of inference-to-the-best-explanation supported scientific realism that he labels Best Theory Realism (BTR, previously introduced in Doppelt 2007a, 2011). If successful in replacing standard selective realism as the best version of scientific realism, BTR would be particularly good since it is not committed to the partial truth of past theories and thereby it is immune to the antirealist strategy of finding cases of past, predictively successful theories with predictively essential components not retained by later theories. The goal of this paper is to raise doubts about Doppelt’s attempt and argue that, other benefits of his proposal notwithstanding, it fails. In section 1 I summarize the main tenets of standard, retentive selective realism relevant for the present discussion. In section 2 I show that Doppelt’s main arguments against retentive selective realism do not work. In section 3, I argue that the way BTR faces the challenge posed by the historical record that motivates PI is unsatisfactory and puts Doppelt into a fatal trilemma: either he is committed to two claims that are untenable together; or endorses an extremely implausible form of present-science chauvinism; or unjustifiably discriminates explanation against prediction in historical record. The conclusion is that BTR falls short of substituting standard retentive selective realism as the most plausible realist position, and that thereby the cases of past successful theories with predictively essential parts not retained by posterior theories are still a real problem for a plausible realist position.
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Notes
In the 2016 edition of the Dubrovnik Philosophy of Science Conference, one speaker explained that in a talk on scientific realism he gave to theoretical physicists most declared themselves antirealists, and when he asked why, the general answer was that today’s fundamental physical theories, despite their impressive predictive success, have too many problematic aspects to be taken “too seriously”. This is not the antirealist attitude that interests us here.
This is not the only possible reply. For a (critical) survey of possible antirealist replies, see e.g. Alai (2014a)
Lyons (2002) defends the view that PI works as a meta-modus tollens. Since noting in what follows hinges on the details of these interpretations, I will not enter into them here and will continue to refer to Laudan’s argument, as is usual in the literature, as pessimistic (meta-)induction.
Of course, since the NMA is a piece of abduction or inference to the best explanation, if we accept that abductive arguments (though ampliative) are a kind of a priori reasoning, then the conclusions of good abductive inferences are a priori justifiable when the premises themselves are a priori. This sense would quasi-apply to SR as a conclusion of the abductive NMA, “quasi” since NMA contains empirical, non-a priori premises (i.e. most scientific theories do novel successful observable predictions, and later theories more than earlier ones), but although non-a priori these premises are granted as uncontroversial by all parties in our debate. So, it might be defended that there is a sense in which the connection between “success” and “truth” could be taken as aiming to be a priori/conceptually/philosophically true. My point is just that any such sense must be compatible with the retentive claim being fallible. What would be self-undermining for realists is any construal of the retentive claim that made it a priori in a sense that implies infallibility. The whole value of NMA is precisely to claim a conceptual connection between success and truth without undermining the fallibility of SR.
SSR(iii) does not give direct evidence for (ii), but this does not mean that it does not serve to test it. As in any other hypothesis testing, we use an observable prediction (first part of iii) for testing an unobservable hypothesis (ii); in this case also with auxiliaries, which here are basically that truth explains empirical success (premise of NMA).
In the following, critical sections I’ll make extensive use of quotations in order to minimize the risk of misinterpreting Doppelt’s claims. Since Doppelt (2014) presents the most elaborated version and defense of BTR, I will focus on it. In discussing Doppelt’s account, my dialectic strategy will be to conceded to him as much as possible, to go always for the most charitable interpretation, and show that, even so, he does not succeed.
In Doppelt (2011), he explicitly charges this criticism to any realism that tries to overcome PI: “standard and structural IBE realists are driven by the need to overcome the pessimistic induction. There is a paradox for realists concerning this demand.” (310)
One might simply reply that falsification is always theory-relative, and that there is no contradiction in rejecting T form the viewpoint of T*, and later reject T* form the point of view of T** (I thank to an anonymous referee for this comment). This is correct, but in a sense of “falsification” that does not imply any consequence for the estimated truth-values, which is not the intended sense in Doppelt.
I use a pre-analytical notion of approximation, in whatever explication that selective realists and Doppelt might agree; nothing in what follows hinges on which is the best analysis of it.
Of course we generate a contradiction if we take (as non-selective SR) past theories to be, not partially but completely radically false; this is simply a specific case (i.e. T* = X* thus Y*=∅) of the just mentioned condition that what strongly falsifies a previous theory will itself be strongly falsified in the future. The same applies to PI if it defends that past theories are completely radically false.
Well, cheating from the future in the cases in which the superseded theories are past and the superseding ones are present (or also past)
Thanks to an anonymous reviewer for this suggestion.
Alai (2016, section 7) replies Doppelt’s charge in a different manner, namely denying that for accepting the falsity of past theories one must rely on the acceptance of the current theories. I think this might be right, but is controversial. My reply grants this, questioned by Alai, assumption to Doppelt (at least for the sake of the argument) and shows that even granting him that his criticism is unsound.
Doppelt also challenges structural realists’ star example, namely Fresnel equations, claiming that in order to take such equations as going beyond observable regularities, one must rely on Maxwell theory, our best current theory (2014, 281). I think his criticism here is controversial, but nothing in our discussion hinges on this particular example; even if he were not right in this particular case, his criticisms to other cases such as the phlogiston case apply.
See Carman and Díez (2015) for a similar argument applied to the case of ancient astronomy.
For a detailed analyses, and realist reply, of this and other Doppelt’s criticism see Alai (2014b).
Although this is true, and it is also true that the condition of explanatoriness is often not explicitly mentioned in the debate when talking of predictively successful theories, it is actually generally assumed and implicit in the notion of maturity.
This is compatible with the also historical fact that sometimes the new theory is taken for a while as explanantorily problematic as a consequence of entering into conflict with some dominant assumptions; for instance Newton’s theory was questioned for its action at a distance was at odds with the dominant Cartesian action by contact principle (this is an additional reason for taking the QM case qum granu salis).
Alai 2016 (published after this paper was written) makes a similar criticism, although if I understand him well, I elaborate the point in a slightly different manner.
This part was included after Alai (2016) was published.
On this reading, vacuous BTR would be merely claiming the truth of the best possible theory.
Doppelt claims that there is a sense in which BTR “can be extended” to make predictions, namely the prediction that –on the assumption of its truth- “current theory’s failures will eventually become successes, or shown to be something other than its failures” (2011, 312). This intriguing claim does not make BTR testable against existing historical record or any future data about theory replacement and presence/absence of partial preservation. Until he does not specify how one may test such claim with specific historical (past, present or future) data, BTR may still be considered a merely testimonial, untestable form of realism. Remember that this is so upon my less committed interpretation, for, as was already made explicit, on Alai’s interpretation Doppelt obviously makes one: no new better theory will ever come out (an extremely implausible prediction).
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Acknowledgements
Research for this work has been supported by the research projects FFI2012-37354 and FFI2016-76799-P, Spanish Ministry of Science adn Innovation. I want to thank Mario Alai, Anjan Chakravartty, Carl Hoefer, Paul Humphreys, Ulises Moulines, Albert Sole, Bas van Fraassen and two anonymous reviewers for comments and criticisms to earlier versions of this paper. This paper independently makes some criticisms against BTR also made by Alai (2016), published after the first version of this paper was written; in this final version I mention the relevant coincidences in footnotes. Though partially coincident, I take this paper as complementing Alai’s: in some common criticisms we emphasize different aspects; and more importantly, I reply Doppelt’s charge of inconsistency against pessimistic induction (and the Selective Realism that assumes the relevant part of the pessimistic induction) in a totally different manner; I elaborate differently the criticism of inconsistency against Doppelt and the reply to his defense giving a different interpretation of current Doppelt’s position in a crucial point; and I make two new criticisms (Alai also makes some others that I take as correct but that I do not mention).
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Díez, J. A (Fatal) Trilemma for best theory realism. Euro Jnl Phil Sci 8, 271–291 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13194-017-0185-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13194-017-0185-1