1

PHILOSOPHY 233 PART (A) – EPISTEMOLOGY

EPISTEMOLOGY 1 – EPISTEMIC PRESSURES ON SCIENTIFIC

REALISM

Epistemology is the study of the conditions under which a subject’s beliefs count as
knowledge. The central traditional view on this matter is that a belief counts as knowledge iff
(read ‘if and only if’) it is both justified and true. This is the ‘tripartite’ or ‘JTB’ account of
knowledge:

S knows that p iff S has a justified true belief that p.

(where the right hand side is treated as prior in order of explanation to the left).

If we accept the initial JTB analysis, the problem of explaining what it is to know that p
breaks down into three components:
1 Explain what belief is. (Can we have beliefs we don’t have the linguistic sophistication to express? Do
you count as believing the logical consequences of things that you believe?)
2 Explain what justification is. (Is justification for believing p always a matter of having a good argument
for p? Can justification for believing that q contribute to justification for believing that p if justification for
believing that p also contributes to justification for believing that q?)
3 Explain what truth is. (…)

We’ll say more about 1, 2, and 3 over the next few weeks. But today we’re going to provide
some general setting for our impending epistemological adventures by asking the following
question: How do epistemological pressures impact on our conception of the status of
scientific theories?

1 Realism vs. anti-realism about the status of scientific theories

Realism and anti-realism about scientific theories are rival views of what it takes for a
scientific theory to be correct.

Realism about scientific theories (scientific realism) is the view that a scientific theory is
correct iff the entities it posits really exist and really have the properties the theory assigns
them, and the phenomena the theory seeks to explain really do unfold the way they do
because of these entities behaving in the ways the theory describes. (For example, if you are a
scientific realist, you will think that the particle model of light is correct iff there really are particles which have
the properties the theory lays down, and light really does behave the way it does because of the interactions the
theory predicts between these particles and the environment.)

Anti-realism about scientific theories (scientific anti-realism) is the view that the standards of
correctness for a scientific theory are exhausted by factors to do with the accuracy with which
it predicts the phenomena we can actually observe.

If the truth of a statement is understood as a correspondence between what the statement says
and what the world is like, scientific anti-realism involves denial that the correctness of a
scientific theory requires the truth of the theory’s constituent statements. But some scientific
anti-realists reject this view of truth.
 2

Let’s pick up an important definition as we’re going past:

Definition: the ‘correspondence theory of truth’ is the view that a statement (or a sentence or a
belief) is true iff it corresponds to the facts.

Given this definition, we can distinguish two varieties of scientific anti-realism:

i) Anti-realism with denial of the correspondence theory of truth Someone taking this kind
of view maintains that the correctness of a scientific theory requires the truth of its constituent
statements, but denies that truth requires correspondence with some truth-making fact.

QUESTION – IF TRUTH ISN’T CORRESPONDENCE WITH THE FACTS, WHAT IS IT?

Here are two possible answers:

Alternatives to the correspondence theory of truth

The coherence theory: p is true (relative to Verificationism: p is true (relative to our
background body of beliefs B) iff adding p means of proof) iff p is provable by these
to B raises B’s overall coherence (and/or means.
subtracting p from B would reduce B’s
overall coherence). ‘Intuitionism’ in the philosophy of mathematics is
verificationism about mathematical truth. (We’ll
‘Pragmatism’ is an historically important version of look at this view in Part (C) of the course.)
the coherence theory according to which B is the
body of beliefs that would be arrived at by an ideally
rational enquirer at the end of science.

Feeding these views into our characterization of the first kind of anti-realism, we get the
following:

Coherentist anti-realism: the correctness of a scientific theory requires the coherence of its
constituent statements.

Verificationist anti-realism: the correctness of a scientific theory requires that all of its
constituent statements be proven (or provably provable).

ii) Anti-realism with acceptance of the correspondence theory of truth, but denial that the
correctness of a scientific theory requires the truth of its constituent statements. The best-
known view of this kind is constructive empiricism (van Fraassen’s view). This is the view
that
a) statements of what is observed by us, or what would be observed by us if we were in the
right place at the right time, are correct iff they are true; and
b) a scientific theory is correct iff it generates right predictions as to which of these statements
are true in an appropriately economical way.

So we have the following views on the table:

 3

Views of the
correctness conditions
for scientific theories

Realism - the theory's Anti-realism - the

constituent statements theory's consituent
must be true, and truth is statements need not
correspondence with the correspond with any
facts facts

With denial of the With acceptance of the

correspondence theory correspondence theory
of truth of truth
- coherentism Constructive
-verificationism empiricism

2 Arguing for realism

The central traditional argument for scientific realism is the argument from the success of
science (the ‘no miracles’ argument):

1 Our best scientific theories are profoundly successful. They match past and current
observations; they accurately predict future observations; they enable us to make extremely
reliable and sophisticated causal interventions in the world.

2 By far the best explanation for this success is scientific realism.

So
3 Scientific realism should be accepted.

Philosophical tools 1 – Inference to the best explanation

An inference to the best explanation (also called an abductive argument) is an argument of form

X; the best explanation for X is Y; therefore Y.

QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER IN THINKING ABOUT WHETHER THIS ARGUMENT WORKS:

a) Should 1 be accepted? (After all, the history of science is littered with failed theories that
seemed successful at the time.)
b) Should 2 be accepted? (See §3 below).
c) Even if 1 and 2 should be accepted, what about 3? (Suppose that there are two candidate
explanations for some phenomenon. Neither is particularly good, but one is quite a bit better
than the other. Does it follow that the ‘less bad’ explanation should be accepted?)

3 Arguing for constructive empiricism

Definition A theory is ‘empirically adequate’ iff its predictions match past and potential
observations.
 4

1 Consider rival theories T and T*, introduced to explain some observable phenomenon P. T
is couched in standard realistic language and T* says that T is empirically adequate. (So T says
thinks like ‘The closing of the switch completes the circuit allowing electrons to flow…’; T* says things that
approximate to ‘The hypothesis that closing the switch completes the circuit allowing electrons to flow (etc.)
predicts what is (or would be) observed.’)

2 T is logically stronger than T*. That is,

- there are possible circumstances that are rightly described by T* but not by T. (These are all
the circumstances where P-observations follow the pattern that they do in the actual world,
but the T-description of the underlying explanation for this pattern does not match reality).
- this does not hold the other way around (any circumstance rightly described by T is rightly
described by T*).

3 If we have only a priori justification to go on – justification that can be acquired

independently of empirical evidence – a logically weaker claim should always be preferred to
a logically stronger one. (This is because there are more possible circumstances where the logically weaker
claim is true, so the probability of the truth of the logically weaker claim is higher.)

So
4 A priori grounds favour T* over T.

But
5 Since T and T* predict the same patterns in P-observations, empirical justification provides
no grounds to choose between them.

And
6 Potential a priori justification and potential empirical justification exhaust the possibilities
with respect to justification for choosing between T and T*.

So
7 If we are looking at which theory we have justification for believing, we find (a) no
justification for believing T, and (b) what justification there is pointing towards T*.

However
8 In practice, T is much less cumbersome to use than T*: there are practical grounds for
working with T rather than T*.

So
9 On practical grounds, we should carry on using T, but we should be aware that the reasons
for using T are neutral with respect to whether T is true.