David Harker | East Tennessee State University (original) (raw)

Papers by David Harker

In a recent paper McCain (forthcoming) argues that weak predictivism creates an important challen... more In a recent paper McCain (forthcoming) argues that weak predictivism creates an important challenge for external world scepticism. McCain regards weak predictivism as uncontroversial and assumes the thesis within his argument. There is a sense in which the predictivist literature supports his conviction that weak predictivism is uncontroversial. This absence of controversy, however, is a product of significant plasticity within the thesis, which renders McCain's argument worryingly vague. For McCain's argument to work he either needs a stronger version of weak predictivism than has been defended within the literature, or must commit to a more precise formulation of the thesis and argue that weak predictivism, so understood, creates the challenge to scepticism that he hopes to achieve. The difficulty with the former is that weak predictivism is not uncontroversial in the respect that McCain's argument would require. I consider the prospects of saving McCain's argument by committing to a particular version of weak predictivism, but find them unpromising for several reasons.

Inferences from scientific success to the approximate truth of successful theories remain central... more Inferences from scientific success to the approximate truth of successful theories remain central to the most influential arguments for scientific realism. Challenges to such inferences, however, based on radical discontinuities within the history of science, have motivated a distinctive style of revision to the original argument. Conceding the historical claim, selective realists argue that accompanying even the most revolutionary change is the retention of significant parts of replaced theories, and that a realist attitude towards the systematically retained constituents of our scientific theories can still be defended. Selective realists thereby hope to secure the argument from success against apparent historical counterexamples. Independently of that objective, historical considerations have inspired a further argument for selective realism, where evidence for the retention of parts of theories is itself offered as justification for adopting a realist attitude towards them. Given the nature of these arguments from success and from retention, a reasonable expectation is that they would complement and reinforce one another, but although several theses purport to provide such a synthesis the results are often unconvincing. In this paper I reconsider the realist's favoured type of scientific success, novel success, offer a revised interpretation of the concept, and argue that a significant consequence of reconfiguring the realist's argument from success accordingly is a greater potential for its unification with the argument from retention. 1 Musgrave (1988) argues that 'careful realists', at least since Whewell, have always intended the verification of novel predictions in discussions of scientific success. Worrall (1989b), , and Psillos (1999) each argue the importance of peculiarly novel success; many recent antirealist arguments also now pay particular attention to such results. 2 The most famous example of the antirealist challenge from the history of science is . Many interpret Laudan as defending a (pessimistic meta-) induction that implies our own theories are destined for replacement by new theories, radically incongruent with our own. Others (for example argue convincingly that Laudan should instead be understood as merely providing examples that at least appear to undermine the credibility of the realist's inference from success to approximate truth. On either interpretation historical considerations present the realist with a significant challenge.

The judgment that a given event is epistemically improbable is necessary but insufficient for us ... more The judgment that a given event is epistemically improbable is necessary but insufficient for us to conclude that the event is surprising. Paul Horwich has argued that surprising events are, in addition, more probable given alternative background assumptions that are not themselves extremely improbable. I argue that Horwich's definition fails to capture important features of surprises and offer an alternative definition that accords better with intuition. An important application of Horwich's analysis has arisen in discussions of fine-tuning arguments. In the second part of the paper I consider the implications for this argument of employing my definition of surprise. I argue that advocates of fine-tuning arguments are not justified in attaching significance to the fact that we are surprised by examples of finetuning.

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, a... more JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. This content downloaded from 104.239.165.

The most influential arguments for scientific realism remain centrally concerned with an inferenc... more The most influential arguments for scientific realism remain centrally concerned with an inference from scientific success to the approximate truth of successful theories. Recently, however, and in response to antirealists' objections from radical discontinuity within the history of science, the arguments have been refined. Rather than target entire theories, realists narrow their commitments to only certain parts of theories. Despite an initial plausibility, the selective realist strategy faces significant challenges. In this article, I outline four prerequisites for a successful selective realist defence and argue that adopting a comparative sense of success both satisfies those requirements and partially in consequence provides a more compelling, albeit more modest, realist thesis.

British Journal for The Philosophy of Science, 2008

Scientific theories are developed in response to a certain set of phenomena and subsequently eval... more Scientific theories are developed in response to a certain set of phenomena and subsequently evaluated, at least partially, in terms of the quality of fit between those same theories and appropriately distinctive phenomena.

In a recent paper McCain (forthcoming) argues that weak predictivism creates an important challen... more In a recent paper McCain (forthcoming) argues that weak predictivism creates an important challenge for external world scepticism. McCain regards weak predictivism as uncontroversial and assumes the thesis within his argument. There is a sense in which the predictivist literature supports his conviction that weak predictivism is uncontroversial. This absence of controversy, however, is a product of significant plasticity within the thesis, which renders McCain's argument worryingly vague. For McCain's argument to work he either needs a stronger version of weak predictivism than has been defended within the literature, or must commit to a more precise formulation of the thesis and argue that weak predictivism, so understood, creates the challenge to scepticism that he hopes to achieve. The difficulty with the former is that weak predictivism is not uncontroversial in the respect that McCain's argument would require. I consider the prospects of saving McCain's argument by committing to a particular version of weak predictivism, but find them unpromising for several reasons.

Inferences from scientific success to the approximate truth of successful theories remain central... more Inferences from scientific success to the approximate truth of successful theories remain central to the most influential arguments for scientific realism. Challenges to such inferences, however, based on radical discontinuities within the history of science, have motivated a distinctive style of revision to the original argument. Conceding the historical claim, selective realists argue that accompanying even the most revolutionary change is the retention of significant parts of replaced theories, and that a realist attitude towards the systematically retained constituents of our scientific theories can still be defended. Selective realists thereby hope to secure the argument from success against apparent historical counterexamples. Independently of that objective, historical considerations have inspired a further argument for selective realism, where evidence for the retention of parts of theories is itself offered as justification for adopting a realist attitude towards them. Given the nature of these arguments from success and from retention, a reasonable expectation is that they would complement and reinforce one another, but although several theses purport to provide such a synthesis the results are often unconvincing. In this paper I reconsider the realist's favoured type of scientific success, novel success, offer a revised interpretation of the concept, and argue that a significant consequence of reconfiguring the realist's argument from success accordingly is a greater potential for its unification with the argument from retention. 1 Musgrave (1988) argues that 'careful realists', at least since Whewell, have always intended the verification of novel predictions in discussions of scientific success. Worrall (1989b), , and Psillos (1999) each argue the importance of peculiarly novel success; many recent antirealist arguments also now pay particular attention to such results. 2 The most famous example of the antirealist challenge from the history of science is . Many interpret Laudan as defending a (pessimistic meta-) induction that implies our own theories are destined for replacement by new theories, radically incongruent with our own. Others (for example argue convincingly that Laudan should instead be understood as merely providing examples that at least appear to undermine the credibility of the realist's inference from success to approximate truth. On either interpretation historical considerations present the realist with a significant challenge.

The judgment that a given event is epistemically improbable is necessary but insufficient for us ... more The judgment that a given event is epistemically improbable is necessary but insufficient for us to conclude that the event is surprising. Paul Horwich has argued that surprising events are, in addition, more probable given alternative background assumptions that are not themselves extremely improbable. I argue that Horwich's definition fails to capture important features of surprises and offer an alternative definition that accords better with intuition. An important application of Horwich's analysis has arisen in discussions of fine-tuning arguments. In the second part of the paper I consider the implications for this argument of employing my definition of surprise. I argue that advocates of fine-tuning arguments are not justified in attaching significance to the fact that we are surprised by examples of finetuning.

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, a... more JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. This content downloaded from 104.239.165.

The most influential arguments for scientific realism remain centrally concerned with an inferenc... more The most influential arguments for scientific realism remain centrally concerned with an inference from scientific success to the approximate truth of successful theories. Recently, however, and in response to antirealists' objections from radical discontinuity within the history of science, the arguments have been refined. Rather than target entire theories, realists narrow their commitments to only certain parts of theories. Despite an initial plausibility, the selective realist strategy faces significant challenges. In this article, I outline four prerequisites for a successful selective realist defence and argue that adopting a comparative sense of success both satisfies those requirements and partially in consequence provides a more compelling, albeit more modest, realist thesis.

British Journal for The Philosophy of Science, 2008

Scientific theories are developed in response to a certain set of phenomena and subsequently eval... more Scientific theories are developed in response to a certain set of phenomena and subsequently evaluated, at least partially, in terms of the quality of fit between those same theories and appropriately distinctive phenomena.