How to Be a Historically Motivated Antirealist: The Problem of Misleading Evidence

Abstract

The Pessimistic Induction over the history of science argues that because most past theories judged empirically successful in their time are not even approximately true, most present ones probably are not approximately true either. But why did past scientists accept those incorrect theories? Kyle Stanford’s Problem of Unconceived Alternatives is one answer to that question: scientists are bad at exhausting the space of plausible hypotheses to explain the available evidence. Here, I offer another answer: the Problem of Misleading Evidence. I argue that this proposal enjoys some advantages over Stanford’s, although both are probably needed to explain the historical record.