A general insight of 20th-century philosophy of science is that the acceptance of a scientific theory is grounded, not merely on a theory’s relation to data, but on its status as having no, or being superior to its, competitors. I explore the ways in which scientific realists might be thought to utilise this insight, have in fact utilised it, and can legitimately utilise it. In more detail, I p...

The no-miracles argument and the pessimistic induction are arguably the main considerations for and against scientific realism. Recently these arguments have been accused of embodying a familiar, seductive fallacy. In each case, we are tricked by a base rate fallacy, one much-discussed in the psychological literature. In this paper we consider this accusation and use it as an explanation for wh...

Scientific realism involves two key claims. First, science aims primarily at truth. Second, we can justifiably believe that our successful scientific theories achieve, or at least approximate, this aim. The contemporary scientific realism debate turns on the acceptability of these claims. To acquire a more robust picture of scientific realism, let us identify some of the related theses on which...

Successful individuals were frequently found to be overly optimistic. These Þnding are puzzling, as one could expect that realists would perform best in the long run. We show, however, that in a large class of strategic interactions of either cooperation or competition, the equilibrium payoffs of optimists may be higher than those of realists. This is because the very fact of being optimistic c...

In social science (and beyond of course), disagreement and debate are ubiquitous. Within IR there was for example the interparadigm debate and, more recently, the controversy between positivists and critical realists. Scholars commonly feel they need to take stance in these discussions, but often lack understanding of the exact nature of the disagreement they are having. For what exactly is at ...

This response outlines points of agreement and disagreement with the argument put forward by Carlson Peters. I argue that their provocation is largely correct in identifying Journalism Studies’ disciplinary blinders. However, see these blinders less rooted industry assumptions, as they contend, than a larger array assumptions which we do well to reflect on. conclude solution one decentering jou...

(118 articles) cognition (426 articles) behaviour (152 articles) neuroscience Articles on similar topics can be found in the following collections Email alerting service here right-hand corner of the article or click Receive free email alerts when new articles cite this article-sign up in the box at the top