Day 2

09.00 - 10.00

Abductive Arguments for Ontological Realism 

Ilkka Niiniluoto  (University of Helsinki)

10.00 - 11.00

Mario Alai and the Quest for a Realist Scientific Realism

Alberto Cordero (CUNY)

Background

Until not long ago, taking a realist stance about a theory T came with demanding expectations: T had to be:

(1) taken as an integral whole (rather than a construct made of separable parts);

(2) postulate laws that are universal;

(3) describe its intended empirical domain truthfully in terms of T’s fundamental ontology;

(4) have central terms that successfully refer;

(5) be correct in most of its theoretical descriptions, and

(6) show linear epistemic progress relative to T’s predecessors.

From the 1960-s on, antirealist critics have seized on those expectations, particularly —e.g., Thomas Kuhn on 6; Bas van Fraassen on 2; Larry Laudan on 1, 3, 4, 5. The ensuing debates have led most philosophers of science to drop extreme positions in favor of middle-ground options. Many now endorse projects of “selective” realism. As a result, scientific realists are now less ambitious, more cautious, and closer to scientific practice.

Selective realists agree that scientific theories lack stability at the level of fundamental ontologies and that radical conceptual change is a recurrent scientific phenomenon. Yet, they note significant descriptive continuities exist between the grand theories of modern science and their successors. A false theory—they stress—may contain truthful parts, and indeed past successful theories have generally done so. Identifying those parts is the task of selective realism.

Selectivism has a long history in the philosophy of science. The current outlook sprang from responses to antirealist critiques by Thomas Kuhn, Bas van Fraassen, and Larry Laudan regarding empirical underdetermination and pessimistic inductions from the history of theories.

In the 1990s, “content realists” sought to link novel success to the content of theory parts thought crucial to the derivation of corroborated novel predictions and fruitful explanations. According to Philip Kitcher, in particular, a scientific theory is composed of theoretical constituents, some of which are “working posits” and others “idle posits.” Kitcher (1993) ’s formulation had issues, however. Identifying the working posits of a theory proved far from straightforward. As Lyons (2002) pointed out, credit had to be “attributed to all responsible constituents, including mere heuristics (such as mystical beliefs), weak analogies, mistaken calculations, logically invalid reasoning, etc.”  

Stathis Psillos (1999) upgraded the project of content realism with an account of reference in which the abandoned theoretical terms are regarded as successfully referring after all. Psillos presented a scientific theory as something composed of stable and unstable theoretical constituents; the stable posits are the ones “deployed” to predict phenomena. On this view, we should commit only to those hypotheses deployed “essentially” in deriving NPs. Psillos gives the following criterion for identifying essential posits (1999, 110), PC: a hypothesis H is deployed essentially in deriving a novel prediction NP if: (1) NP follows from H, together with other hypotheses OH at play and auxiliary assumptions AA, but not from OH and AA alone. (2) No other hypothesis H* is available which can do the same job as H.

Unfortunately, the proposed “Deployment Realism” (DR) criterion is problematic. Critics were quick to develop influential complaints, in particular:

(a) Condition (2) is too vague to be applicable: when would an alternative H* not be available?

(b) For practically any superseded account, retrospective projection of current theory quickly singles out parts that come out true relative to present science. But such retrospective analyses can be self-serving and too often reflect limitations of the human imagination rather than truth content (Kyle Stanford 2006, Hasok Chang 2003). 

(c) Stanford (2006) further complained that retrospective projection gives up the traditional realist goal of identifying the truthful parts of a theory while the theory is still alive. Fulfilling the prospective function, he urged, requires providing confirmational criteria capable of specifying which parts of a current theory are both likely to survive theory change and very probably true. Stanford demanded that selectivists identify the theory parts suitable for realism while the theory that posits them is still going.

(d) Asking the practicing scientists for clues about these questions seems of limited use for the highlighted tasks: cases like those of the ether of light show the great trouble even prominent scientists have in deciding whether certain posits are “optional” (Cordero, 2011).

Difficulties such as these forced selectivists to clarify and refine their project over the last two decades, particularly the notions of empirical success, theory-part, indispensability, and approximate truth.

Realistic proposals acknowledge their limitations. One of the most attractive current projects in the suggested direction is to make selective realism more “realistic” and tenable. Here I call “realistic” a proposal that seeks to see things as they are and deal with them sensibly. The present paper discusses this quest within the contemporary realism project, with emphasis on prominent contributions by Mario Alai.

Alai’s contributions to turning selective realism into a more realistic and tenable project are apparent throughout his work, especially in his reactions to the critique of DR. Over the last decade, he has produced what I would describe as a hermeneutical exegesis of the project proposed in Psillos (1999), articulating how deployment should be understood if we are to give DR its most favorable reading (Alai 2014a, 2014b, 2016, 2017, 2021). 

Some Key Contributions by Mario Alai

My discussion will concentrate on six timely themes addressed by Alai in the noted references as part of his efforts to generalize and revise Psillos’ CR.

1. Timothy Lyons rejection of DR

I will emphasize Alai’s rational generalization and revision of Psillos’ criterion for DR selection of posits for realist commitment. The topic here is Lyons’s critique of the essentiality requirement and his view that DR ultimately fails. Alai proposes an improved criterion that escapes Lyon’s criticisms. He generalizes and revises Psillos’ condition (2) with (2’): “There is no other hypothesis H* which is a proper part of H (hence weaker) which together with other hypotheses and auxiliary assumptions entails NP.

2. Empirical success as an indicator of truth-content.

From the days of Newton on, numerous philosophers have hailed the epistemological significance of novel prediction, effectively pointing to direct paths to the No Miracles Argument conclusion. In the last half a century, complementary appeals to the epistemological significance of novel predictions have been prominent, for example, in Ronald Giere’s perspectival approach (1979, 2006), Penelope Maddy (2007), and Alai (2014a, 2016). We thus get Thesis Rº: A hypothesis’s empirical success and fertility strongly indicate that at least some of the theoretical contents it assumes are approximately true. In Alai’s reformed version of DR, hypothesis H is very probably true if it was essential to deriving a novel prediction. My commentary will center on his examination of the connection between H’s essentiality and truth in DR.

3. Truth content.

Alai’s (2021) analysis starts from the claim that the probability of a false premise H leading to a corroborated prediction corresponds to the random value for the epistemic situation. He argues that once a risky novel prediction NP derived from H is corroborated, we know that, short of miracles, there is some truth in H. This, he urges, is enough to refute the claims that both past and present theories are completely false. Crucially—Alai points out—a false H may yield a risky NP only if it is partly true (has a true part H* from which NP can be derived). If so, however, H is inessential to NP’s derivation—the essential role being played by H*, according to PC (2’).

4. Explicating the idea of “theory part”

Alai takes a hypothesis H* to be a proper part of H iff its content is part of the content of H but does not exhaust it. His mereological analysis follows S. Yablo (2014) on the critical notions of theory part, proper part, and subject matter.

5. Fallibilism:

Like most critics of DR, Alai agrees that essentiality cannot be detected prospectively: He denies, however, that essentiality needs to be claimed prospectively for DR, arguing that the components of discarded theories which were essentially involved in NPs are most probably true. When a NP is derived from an assumption H, there may be an assumption H* which is a proper part of H and sufficient to derive NP. However, given some received metaphysical assumptions, H may appear to be conceptually entailed by H* (Cordero 2011, Vickers 2016), making scientists falsely believe that H is indispensable to NP. Later on, scientists may learn to disentangle the concepts at play, as with light and the ether posit.  

6. Confutation of antirealist counterexamples

Alai cogently confutes historical counterexamples to DR influentially invoked by Lyons et al. (2014 and 2021), showing that either the decried hypotheses were not false, or the predictions not true or not risky, or the hypotheses in question were not deployed essentially. A good exemplar of Alai’s treatment is the discussion of Kepler’s theory.

The above considerations lead me to conclude that Alai’s critical revision of DR makes the project of selective realism more realistic and tenable. My presentation ends with a short discussion of some applications of Alai’s approach to ongoing projects of functional realism, particularly in Cordero (2016, 2017, 2019).

11.00 - 11.30

Coffee Break

11.30 - 12.30

Brains in a Vat: Proofs, Choices, Possibilities, and Impossibilities 

Massimo Dell'Utri (University of Sassari)

Among the topics Mario has addressed in his career, there is the hypothesis of the brains in a vat (BIVs)—the scenario that all human beings do not live the life they think they live but are just brains kept alive in a vat of nutrients. The hypothesis was discussed by several authors in the 1980s, and famously, in 1981 Hilary Putnam presented a proof aimed at demonstrating the impossibility of this scenario—more precisely, of the self-refuting character of the statement “We are BIVs”. Putnam’s proof has been deeply analysed to date, an analysis to which Mario has contributed important criticisms. Following Mario, I will distinguish among the many aspects in which the BIVs hypothesis can be approached—neurophysiological, sceptical, epistemological, metaphysical, semantical etc.— and, in particular, try to identify the significance of Putnam’s proof.

12.30 - 13.30

Scientific Change and Truth

Flavia Marcacci (Pontifical Lateran University)

History of science and scientific revolutions have suggested many case studies to develop philosophical discussions about the nature of scientific knowledge. Issues such as the shape of planetary orbits, the structure of the atom, and the concept of heat have been the battleground between realists and anti-realists.  Currently, the tendency is to look into historical cases for confirmation or rebuttal of philosophical stances. In particular, the justification of scientific change is challenging to assess. This paper briefly shows how Scientific Realism views Scientific Change. This view is then compared with the ideas arose around the historicist turn in the Philosophy of science (the so-called "Battle of the Big Systems"). Three different levels of interaction between historical and theoretical analysis will emerge from that comparison:

• micro-historical level (development of particular problems in the history of science);

• meso-historical level (situatedness of scientific categories);

• macro-historical level (relationship between scientific knowledge and truth).

Finally, the paper raises the question of whether a history of science without historiography can exist and, based on that answer, how specific problems should be reformulated.

13.30 - 14.30

Lunch Break

14.30 - 15.30

Systems of Relations in Realism 

Tiziana Migliore (University of Urbino)

The morphological pertinences of reality and the phenomenological mediation needed to meet and tell it.

15.30 - 16.30

TBA

Fabio Minazzi (University of Insubria)

16.30 - 17.00

Coffee Break

17.00 - 18.00

Scepticism, Explanationism, and Epistemic Closure 

Giorgio Volpe  (University of Bologna)

 In a delightful little book on several varieties of philosophical scepticism, Mario Alai writes that relevant alternatives and contextualist answers to the challenge of the external world sceptic represent a ‘significant step forward’ in the vindication of our epistemic achievements, insofar as they make it possible to reconcile the claim that we possess much ordinary knowledge about our surroundings with the concession that we lack knowledge of such anti-sceptical propositions as that we are not being massively deceived by an evil demon or a team of malevolent super-psychologists. However, far from being satisfied with such a conciliatory outcome, Alai goes on to face the sceptic’s challenge head on, carefully crafting an explanationist strategy aimed at showing that we are justified to believe to a degree that is adequate for knowledge even such anti-sceptical propositions. In this paper, I do not discuss his attempt to provide a probabilistic vindication of the anti-sceptical use of Inference to the Best Explanation, nor do I pause to evaluate the prospects for explanationist strategies generally, focussing instead on some structural aspects of Alai’s proposal. I discuss the relationship between conciliatory and explanationist anti-sceptical strategies, relate them to different accounts of the structure of epistemic justification, and explore the options that an explanationist can take on the issue of the deductive closure of knowledge and epistemic justification.

18.00 - 19.00

Understanding and Realism

Federica Malfatti  (University of Innsbruck)

In this talk, I will bring together two debates that have had too little connection to each other in the literature so far: the scientific realism vs. antirealism debate in the philosophy of science and the factivism vs. antifactivism debate about understanding in epistemology. Scientific realism, roughly, is the view that successful science tracks the truth about reality, even about those domains that are not accessible to our senses. Antirealism, on the other hand, denies that the success of science should be

interpreted as a sign of (theoretical) truth. Factivism about understanding is the view that the epistemic state of understanding requires truth; in other words: when we rightfully claim that S understands P, what S holds true about P is (roughly) correct. Antifactivism, on the other hand, is the view that understanding is possible even without truth, i.e., that understanding answers to an adequacy condition different and weaker than truth. I will connect these two debates by formulating a trilemma any philosopher theorizing about understanding and sympathizing with factivism is

confronted with. I’ll then show that Mario Alai’s work on scientific realism provides us

with excellent instruments to make our way out of the trilemma.