Original scientific paper

Scientific Antirealists Have Set Fire to Their Own Houses

Seungbae Park orcid.org/0000-0001-5421-9700 ; Division of General Studies - Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology, Ulsan, Republic of Korea

Abstract

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.

Keywords

Antirealism; argument from underconsideration; epistemic privilege; pessimistic inductions; realism

Hrčak ID:

187575

URI

https://hrcak.srce.hr/187575

Publication date:

15.6.2017.

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