Among the most serious challenges to scientific realism are arguments for the underdetermination of theory by evidence. This paper defends a version of scientific realism against what is perhaps the most influential recent argument of this sort, viz. Kyle Stanford’s New Induction over the History of Science. An essential part of the defense consists in a probabilistic analysis of the slogan “ab...

This paper outlines a defense of scientific realism against the pessimistic meta-induction which appeals to the phenomenon of the exponential growth of science. Here, scientific realism is defined as the view that our current successful scientific theories are mostly approximately true, and pessimistic meta-induction is the argument that projects the occurrence of past refutations of successful...

This paper outlines a defense of scientific realism against the pessimistic meta-induction which appeals to the phenomenon of the exponential growth of science. Here, scientific realism is defined as the view that our current successful scientific theories are mostly approximately true, and pessimistic meta-induction is the argument that projects the occurrence of past refutations of successful...

‘Structural realism’ is a buzzword in the scientific realism debate. Various positions with diverse motivations fall under this label. A much advertised distinction is between epistemic and ontological forms of structuralism. This paper scrutinizes the alleged dichotomy between these two ‘alternatives’, and criticises the considerations that have been taken to motivate the ontic variety over th...

The aim of this paper is to revisit the phlogiston theory to see what can be learned from it about the relationship between scientific realism, approximate truth and successful reference. It is argued that phlogiston theory did to some extent correctly describe the causal or nomological structure of the world, and that some of its central terms can be regarded as referring. However, it is concl...

The notion of literal construal divides anti-realists into two kinds: the kind who say that science aims to be true when construed non-literally; and kind van Fraassen belongs to, who say that while theories should be literally construed, they don’t have to be true. The first kind of anti-realist might claim e.g. that the theory of phlogiston and the modern theory of combustion say the same thi...

In earlier work I have argued that the most substantial threat to scientific realism arises from the problem of unconceived alternatives: the repeated failure of past scientists and scientific communities to conceive of alternatives to extant scientific theories, even when such alternatives were both (1) well confirmed by the evidence available at the time and (2) sufficiently scientifically se...

The phenomenon of duality in string theory provides an example of the underdetermination of the theoretical scheme by all possible empirical data. Empirically equivalent theories which arise due to string dualities differ in essential characteristics like the dimension and the topological position of their elementary objects and the form and dimensionality of spacetime. The obvious ontological ...

The paper considers the two main challenges to scientific realism, stemming from confirmation holism and the underdetermination thesis as well as from semantic holism and the incommensurability thesis. Against the first challenge, it is argued that there are other criteria besides agreement with experience that enable a rational evaluation of competing theories. Against the second challenge, it...

The axiological tenet of scientific realism, ‘‘science seeks true theories,’’ is generally taken to rest on a corollary epistemological tenet, ‘‘we can justifiably believe that our successful theories achieve (or approximate) that aim.’’ While important debates have centered on, and have led to the refinement of, the epistemological tenet, the axiological tenet has suffered from neglect. I offe...