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Predictive Similarity and the Success of Science: A Reply to Stanford

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 2022

Stathis Psillos
Stathis Psillos*
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy and History of Science, University of Athens
*
†Send reprint requests to the author, Department of Philosophy and History of Science, University of Athens, 37 John Kennedy Street, 16121 Athens, Greece; email: psillos@phs.uoa.gr.
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Abstract

P. Kyle Stanford (2000) attempts to offer a truth-linked explanation of the success of science which, he thinks, can be welcome to antirealists. He proposes an explanation of the success of a theory T1 in terms of its predictive similarity to the true theory T of the relevant domain. After raising some qualms about the supposed antirealist credentials of Stanford's account, I examine his explanatory story in some detail and show that it fails to offer a satisfactory explanation of the success of science.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 68 , Issue 3 , September 2001 , pp. 346 - 355
Copyright
Copyright © Philosophy of Science Association 2001

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Footnotes

‡

Many thanks to Kyle Stanford and two anonymous referees of Philosophy of Science for useful comments on an earlier version of this paper.

References

Kitcher, Philip (1993), The Advancement of Science. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Psillos, Stathis (1999), Scientific Realism: How Science Tracks Truth. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Smart, J.J.C. (1968), Between Science and Philosophy. New York: Random House.Google Scholar
Stanford, P. Kyle (2000), “An Antirealist Explanation of the Success of Science”, Philosophy of Science 67: 266–284.10.1086/392775CrossRefGoogle Scholar