This book comes to the rescue of scientific realism, showing that reports of its death have been greatly exaggerated. Philosophical realism holds that the aim of a particular discourse is to make true statements about its subject matter. Ilkka Niiniluoto surveys different kinds of realism in various areas of philosophy and then sets out his own critical realist philosophy of science.

The modern discussion on the concept of truthlikeness was started in 1960. In his influential Word and Object, W. V. O. Quine argued that Charles Peirce's definition of truth as the limit of inquiry is faulty for the reason that the notion 'nearer than' is only "defined for numbers and not for theories". In his contribution to the 1960 International Congress for Logic, Methodology, and Philosophy of Science at Stan­ ford, Karl Popper defended the opposite view by defining a compara­tive (...) notion of verisimilitude for theories. The concept of verisimilitude was originally introduced by the Ancient sceptics to moderate their radical thesis of the inaccessibility of truth. But soon verisimilitudo, indicating likeness to the truth, was confused with probabilitas, which expresses an opiniotative attitude weaker than full certainty. The idea of truthlikeness fell in disrepute also as a result of the careless, often confused and metaphysically loaded way in which many philosophers used - and still use - such concepts as 'degree of truth', 'approximate truth', 'partial truth', and 'approach to the truth'. Popper's great achievement was his insight that the criticism against truthlikeness - by those who urge that it is meaningless to speak about 'closeness to truth' - is more based on prejudice than argument. (shrink)

Reino Virtanen. CHAPITRE VII LA FIN D'UNE TRAJECTOIRE « Valéry est notre Lucrèce », écrivait Alain '. Mais où est La Nature des Choses de Valéry ? Il a nié en effet la possibilité d'une telle œuvre dans la France de son époque. Il disait ...

Scientific realists use the “no miracle argument” to show that the empirical and pragmatic success of science is an indicator of the ability of scientific theories to give true or truthlike representations of unobservable reality. While antirealists define scientific progress in terms of empirical success or practical problem-solving, realists characterize progress by using some truth-related criteria. This paper defends the definition of scientific progress as increasing truthlikeness or verisimilitude. Antirealists have tried to rebut realism with the “pessimistic metainduction”, but critical (...) realists turn this argument into an optimistic view about progressive science. (shrink)

According to the foundationalist picture, shared by many rationalists and positivist empiricists, science makes cognitive progress by accumulating justified truths. Fallibilists, who point out that complete certainty cannot be achieved in empirical science, can still argue that even successions of false theories may progress toward the truth. This proposal was supported by Karl Popper with his notion of truthlikeness or verisimilitude. Popper’s own technical definition failed, but the idea that scientific progress means increasing truthlikeness can be expressed by defining degrees (...) of truthlikeness in terms of similarities between states of affairs. This paper defends the verisimilitude approach against Alexander Bird who argues that the “semantic” definition is not sufficient to define progress, but the “epistemic” definition referring to justification and knowledge is more adequate. Here Bird ignores the crucial distinction between real progress and estimated progress, explicated by the difference between absolute degrees of truthlikeness and their evidence-relative expected values. Further, it is argued that Bird’s idea of returning to the cumulative model of growth requires an implausible trick of transforming past false theories into true ones. (shrink)

In a seminar with the title “Deduction and Induction in the Sciences”, it is intriguing to ask the following questions: Is there a third type of inference besides deduction and induction? Does this third type of inference play a significant role within scientific inquiry? A positive answer to both of these questions was advocated by Charles S. Peirce throughout his career, even though his opinions changed in important ways during the fifty years between 1865 and 1914. Peirce called the third (...) kind of inference “hypothesis”, “abduction”, or “retroduction”.1 In this paper, I shall follow Peirce’s steps in discussing abduction by analyzing its logical form , its role in science , and the grounds of its validity . We shall see that Peirce’s discussion is more insightful than many recent attempts to analyze abductive inference. Still, recently some progress has been made in the treatment of abduction within the Bayesian theory of epistemic probability and truth-approximation . The results of this work support the view of scientific realism: abduction or inference to the best explanation , combined with empirical and experimental testing of scientific theories, is the best method of seeking informative truths in science. (shrink)

The modern history of verisimilitude can be divided into three periods. The first began in 1960, when Karl Popper proposed his qualitative definition of what it is for one theory to be more truthlike than another theory, and lasted until 1974, when David Miller and Pavel Trichý published their refutation of Popper's definition. The second period started immediately with the attempt to explicate truthlikeness by means of relations of similarity or resemblance between states of affairs (or their linguistic representations); the (...) work within this similarity approach was summarized in the books of Graham Oddie [1986] and Ilkka Niiniluoto [1987]. During the subsequent third period, studies in verisimilitude have been actively continued, and interesting results and applications have been achieved, but not many dramatic novelties. While it is now obsolete to claim that truthlikeness with reasonable properties cannot be defined at all, there is still a lot of controversy about the best and least arbitrary approach to doing this. (shrink)

Our review essay contributes to the long-standing and vibrant discussion in science and technology studies (STS) on methods, methodologies, and theory–method relationships. We aim to improve the reflexivity of research by unpacking the often implicit assumptions that imbue research conduct and by offering practical tools through which STS researchers can recognize their research designs and think through them in a new way. To achieve these aims, we analyze different compositions of theories, methods, and empirics in three different STS approaches—actor–network theory, (...) the biography of artifacts and practices, and ethnomethodology—by employing the concept of a theory–methods package (TMP). A selection of theoretical cornerstone texts and case studies in infrastructure research from each tradition serves as our material. Our findings point, first, to differences between the TMPs of the reviewed approaches and to the internal diversity of theory–method relationships in each approach. Second, we found some intriguing similarities between the approaches and discuss potential complementarities of their theory–method fits. (shrink)

Recently the role of customary local institutions in the conservation of biological diversity has become a topic of widespread interest. In this paper the conservation value of one such institution, traditionally protected forest, is studied with regard to its ecological representativity and institutional persistence. On the basis of a case study from Mozambique the paper concludes that traditionally protected forests do have a practical conservation value, especially as fire refuges and in the preservation of metapopulations of endangered species. However, it (...) is also important to recall their spiritual aspect, which is crucial for their continuing appreciation and upholding. Even though customary institutions are still strong in the study area, they are subject to power struggles at both local and national levels. In the present context of political transition, any outside interventions regarding such local institutions as sacred forests, which have high symbolic value, should be considered carefully. (shrink)

Charles S. Peirce argued that, besides deduction and induction, there is a third mode of inference which he called " hypothesis " or " abduction." He characterized abduction as reasoning " from effect to cause," and as " the operation of adopting an explanatory hypothesis." Peirce ' s ideas about abduction, which are related also to historically earlier accounts of heuristic reasoning, have been seen as providing a logic of scientific discovery. Alternatively, abduction is interpreted as giving reasons for pursuing (...) a hypothesis. Inference to the best explanation has also been regarded as an important mode of justification, both in everyday life, detective stories, and science. In particular, scientific realism has been defended by an abductive nomiracle argument, while the critics of realism have attempted to show that this appeal to abduction is question - begging, circular, or incoherent. This paper approaches these issues by distinguishing weaker and stronger forms of abduction, and by showing how these types of inferences can be given Peircean and Bayesian probabilistic reconstructions. (shrink)

The use of idealized scientific theories in explanations of empirical facts and regularities is problematic in two ways: they don’t satisfy the condition that the explanans is true, and they may fail to entail the explanandum. An attempt to deal with the latter problem was proposed by Hempel and Popper with their notion of approximate explanation. A more systematic perspective on idealized explanations was developed with the method of idealization and concretization by the Poznan school in the 1970s. If idealizational (...) laws are treated as counterfactual conditionals, they can be true or truthlike, and the concretizations of such laws may increase their degree of truthlikeness. By replacing Hempel’s truth requirement with the condition that an explanatory theory is truthlike one can distinguish several important types of approximate, corrective, and contrastive explanations by idealized theories. The conclusions have important consequences for the debates about scientific realism and anti-realism. (shrink)

Ethnomethodology has been torn between scientific and "radical" aspirations insofar as it moves discoursive practices from resources to the topic of the study. Scientific ethnomethodology, such as conversation analysis, studies discoursive praxis as its topic and resource. Standard scientific criteria are accepted to assess the merits of its findings. "Radical" ethnomethodology addresses mundane reasoning exclusively as its topic without recourse to standardized science. I will show that insofar as "radical" ethnomethodology succeeds in bracketing everyday resources, it loses its phenomenon with (...) the very technical skills it uses for this task. This reconsideration enables the development of ethnomethodological social science. Key Words: conversation analysis • discoursive praxis • ethnomethodology • radical ethnomethodology • social studies of science. (shrink)

This book examines the philosophical conception of abductive reasoning as developed by Charles S. Peirce, the founder of American pragmatism. It explores the historical and systematic connections of Peirce's original ideas and debates about their interpretations. Abduction is understood in a broad sense which covers the discovery and pursuit of hypotheses and inference to the best explanation. The analysis presents fresh insights into this notion of reasoning, which derives from effects to causes or from surprising observations to explanatory theories. The (...) author outlines some logical and AI approaches to abduction as well as studies various kinds of inverse problems in astronomy, physics, medicine, biology, and human sciences to provide examples of retroductions and abductions. The discussion covers also everyday examples with the implication of this notion in detective stories, one of Peirce’s own favorite themes. The author uses Bayesian probabilities to argue that explanatory abduction is a method of confirmation. He uses his own account of truth approximation to reformulate abduction as inference which leads to the truthlikeness of its conclusion. This allows a powerful abductive defense of scientific realism. This up-to-date survey and defense of the Peircean view of abduction may very well help researchers, students, and philosophers better understand the logic of truth-seeking. (shrink)

In a recent article [4], Fred I. Dretske has proposed a new analysis of natural laws. Dretske rejects the more or less standard view which says that laws are universal truths with a special function or status in science. As an alternative account, he suggests that laws are expressed by singular statements describing the relationship between universal properties and magnitudes: the statement It is a law that F's are G's3.is to be analysed as F-ness ↦ G-ness.I shall argue, however, that (...) Dretske's reasons for rejecting the standard account are not conclusive. Moreover, his own proposal seems to be either inadequate or reducible to that version of the standard account which takes laws to be nomically necessary generalizations. (shrink)

Conceptual change and its connection to the development of new seien tific theories has reeently beeome an intensively discussed topic in philo sophieal literature. Even if the inductive aspects related to conceptual change have already been discussed to some extent, there has so far existed no systematic treatment of inductive change due to conceptual enrichment. This is what we attempt to accomplish in this work, al though most of our technical results are restricted to the framework of monadic languages. We (...) extend Hintikka's system of inductive logic to apply to situations in which new concepts are introduced to the original language. By interpreting them as theoretica1 concepts, it is possible to discuss a number of currently debated philosophical and methodological problems which have previously escaped systematic and exact treatment. For instance, the role which seientific theories employing theoretical con cepts may play within inductive inference can be studied within this framework. From the viewpoint of seientific realism, sueh a study gives outlines for a theory of what we call hypothetico-induetive inference. Some parts of this work which are based on Hintikka's system of in ductive logic are fairly technical. However, no previous knowledge of this system is required, but, in general, acquaintance with the basic ideas of elementary logic and probability theory is suffieient. This work is part of a project, originated by Professors Jaakko Hintikka and Raimo Tuomela, concerning the role of theoretical concepts in science. (shrink)

In 1958, to refute the argument known as the theoretician's dilemma, Hempel suggested that theoretical terms might be logically indispensable for inductive systematization of observational statements. This thesis, in some form or another, has later been supported by Scheffler, Lehrer, and Tuomela, and opposed by Bohnert, Hooker, Stegmüller, and Cornman. In this paper, a critical survey of this discussion is given. Several different putative definitions of the crucial notion inductive systematization achieved by a theory are discussed by reference to the (...) properties of inductive inference. The consequences of the following differences between deductive and inductive inference are emphasized: the lack of simple transitivity properties (even in a modified sense) of inductive inference, and the failure of the inductive analogue of the converse of The Deduction Theorem. The main conclusions are: (i) Hempel's original thesis may very well be right but his argument for it is unsatisfactory, (ii) theoretical terms can be logically indispensable for a non-Hempelian kind of inductive systematization, relative to both Craigian and Ramseyan elimination, (iii) Lehrer's attempt to prove the indispensability of theoretical terms for inductive-probabilistic systematization is, as a modification of Hempelian kind of inductive-deterministic systematization, unsatisfactory, and (iv) there does not seem to be much hope of escaping the conclusion (ii), if it is true, by extending the Craigian replacement programme along the lines suggested by Cornman. (shrink)

This paper studies the interplay between two notions which are important for the project of defending scientific realism: abduction and truthlikeness. The main focus is the generalization of abduction to cases where the conclusion states that the best theory is truthlike or approximately true. After reconstructing the recent proposals of Theo Kuipers within the framework of monadic predicate logic, I apply my own notion of truthlikeness. It turns out that a theory with higher truthlikeness does not always have greater empirical (...) success than its less truthlike rivals. It is further shown that the notion of expected truthlikeness provides a fallible link from the approximate explanatory success of a theory to its truthlikeness. This treatment can be applied also in cases where even the best potential theory is an idealization that is known to be false. (shrink)

The aim of the study was to report the results of a systematically conducted literature review of empirical studies about healthcare organizations’ ethics and management or leadership issues. Electronic databases MEDLINE and CINAHL yielded 909 citations. After a two stage application of the inclusion and exclusion criteria 56 full-text articles were included in the review. No large research programs were identified. Most of the studies were in acute hospital settings from the 1990s onwards. The studies focused on ethical challenges, dilemmas (...) in practice, employee moral distress and ethical climates or environments. Study samples typically consisted of healthcare practitioners, operational, executive and strategic managers. Data collection was mainly by questionnaires or interviews and most of the studies were descriptive, correlational and cross-sectional. There is need to develop conceptual clarity and a theoretical framework around the subject of organizational ethics and the breadth of the contexts and scope of the research needs to be increased. (shrink)

In the general problem of verisimilitude, we try to define the distance of a statement from a target, which is an informative truth about some domain of investigation. For example, the target can be a state description, a structure description, or a constituent of a first-order language. In the problem of legisimilitude, the target is a deterministic or universal law, which can be expressed by a nomic constituent or a quantitative function involving the operators of physical necessity and possibility. The (...) special case of legisimilitude, where the target is a probabilistic law, has been discussed by Roger Rosenkrantz and Ilkka Niiniluoto. Their basic proposal is to measure the distance between two probabilistic laws by the Kullback–Leibler notion of divergence, which is a semimetric on the space of probability measures. This idea can be applied to probabilistic laws of coexistence and laws of succession, and the examples may involve discrete or continuous state spaces. In this paper, these earlier studies are elaborated in four directions. First, even though deterministic laws are limiting cases of probabilistic laws, the target-sensitivity of truthlikeness measures implies that the legisimilitude of probabilistic laws is not easily reducible to the deterministic case. Secondly, the Jensen-Shannon divergence is applied to mixed probabilistic laws which entail some universal laws. Thirdly, a new class of distance measures between probability distributions is proposed, so that their horizontal differences are taken into account in addition to vertical ones. Fourthly, a solution is given for the epistemic problem of estimating degrees of probabilistic legisimilitude on the basis of empirical evidence. (shrink)

L. J. Cohen [1] has recently argued that there is an important concept which is not adequately captured by the recent theories of truthlikeness. Cohen points out that, instead of truth about the actual world, much of science pursues \physically necessary truth", and he concludes that \it is legisimilitude that much of science seeks, not verisimilitude". This point is well made, since the earlier accounts of truthlikeness have not paid attention to the important distinction between lawlike and accidental generalizations.

The concept of verisimilitude is an indispensable tool for the fallibilist and realist epistemology. Part of the argument for this thesis consists in the important applications of this notion within the history and philosophy of science. But perhaps the harder part is to convince a sceptical reader of the existence of this concept. A general programme for defining and estimating degrees of truthlikeness for various kinds of scientific statements is outlined in some detail. Ten years after Miller's and Tichy's refutation (...) of Popper's attempted definition, this paper reviews recent developments and debates, and concludes that the treatment the Popperian problem with Carnapian logical tools leads to a new synthesis which turns out to formally contain Levi's theory of epistemic utilities as a special case. (shrink)

The notion of truthlikeness or verisimilitude has been a topic of intensive discussion ever since the definition proposed by Karl Popper was refuted in 1974. This paper gives an analysis of old and new debates about this notion. There is a fairly large agreement about the truthlikeness ordering of conjunctive theories, but the main rival approaches differ especially about false disjunctive theories. Continuing the debate between Niiniluoto’s min-sum measure and Schurz’s relevant consequence measure, the paper also gives a critical assessment (...) of Oddie’s new defense of the average measure and Kuipers’ refined definition of truth approximation. (shrink)