Abstract
Scientific realism driven by inference to the best explanation (IBE) takes empirically confirmed objects to exist, independent, pace empiricism, of whether those objects are observable or not. This kind of realism, it has been claimed, does not need probabilistic reasoning to justify the claim that these objects exist. But I show that there are scientific contexts in which a non-probabilistic IBE-driven realism leads to a puzzle. Since IBE can be applied in scientific contexts in which empirical confirmation has not yet been reached, realists will in these contexts be committed to the existence of empirically unconfirmed objects. As a consequence of such commitments, because they lack probabilistic features, the possible empirical confirmation of those objects is epistemically redundant with respect to realism.
Highlights
The explanationist version of scientific realism typically invokes inference to the best explanation (IBE) as a means to justify realism regarding unobservable objects which are indispensable for the predictive success of a theory
The idea is to safeguard the connection between explanation and truth from the anti-realist meta-inductive argument that many predictively successful theories have turned out to be false, providing reason to doubt the truth of currently held predictively successful theories. This IBE-driven realism has typically been applied to contexts in which the unobservable objects of dispute enjoys some degree of empirical confirmation
This consequence might on its own merit caution given the constitutive theses of scientific realism, but there is a far more serious implication of this fact: the eventual empirical confirmation of dark matter in the future would have no epistemic effect on the realist commitment
Summary
The explanationist version of scientific realism typically invokes inference to the best explanation (IBE) as a means to justify realism regarding unobservable objects which are indispensable for the predictive success of a theory. The existence of those indispensable unobservables, it claims, is the best explanation for the theory’s predictive success. The idea is to safeguard the connection between explanation and truth from the anti-realist meta-inductive argument that many predictively successful theories have turned out to be false, providing reason to doubt the truth of currently held predictively successful theories This IBE-driven realism has typically been applied to contexts in which the unobservable objects of dispute enjoys some degree of empirical confirmation. This shows that the epistemic commitments of IBE-driven realism reaches beyond the boundary of empirical confirmation This consequence might on its own merit caution given the constitutive theses of scientific realism, but there is a far more serious implication of this fact: the eventual empirical confirmation of dark matter in the future would have no epistemic effect on the realist commitment. I argue that these considerations provide good reason for realists to look at probabilistic versions of explanatory reasoning, an end to which I offer a tentative suggestion in the form of meta-empirical confirmation
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