Vickers, P. (2019) 'Towards a realistic success-to-truth inference for scientific realism.', Synthese., 196 (2). pp. 571-585.
Abstract
A success-to-truth inference has always been at the heart of scientific realist positions. But all attempts to articulate the inference have met with very significant challenges. This paper reconstructs the evolution of this inference, and brings together a number of qualifications in an attempt to articulate a contemporary (‘local’) success-to-truth inference which is realistic. I argue that this contemporary version of the inference has a chance, at least, of overcoming the historical challenges which have been proffered to date (and without moving all the way to structural realism). However, there is a price to pay: the developments which help the realist answer the historical challenges also serve to increase the number of non-historical challenges.
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Full text: | (VoR) Version of Record Available under License - Creative Commons Attribution. Download PDF (Advance online version) (313Kb) |
| Full text: | (VoR) Version of Record Available under License - Creative Commons Attribution. Download PDF (412Kb) |
| Status: | Peer-reviewed |
| Publisher Web site: | https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-016-1150-9 |
| Publisher statement: | © The Author(s) 2016 Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. |
| Date accepted: | 25 June 2016 |
| Date deposited: | 12 August 2016 |
| Date of first online publication: | 08 July 2016 |
| Date first made open access: | No date available |
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