Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-75dct Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-06-08T03:29:22.890Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

On the Nature and Norms of Theoretical Commitment

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 2022

Paul Horwich
Paul Horwich*
Affiliation:
Department of Linguistics and Philosophy, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

It is not uncommon for philosophers to maintain that one is obliged to believe nothing beyond the observable consequences of a successful scientific theory. This doctrine is variously known as instrumentalism, fictionalism, constructive empiricism, theoretical skepticism and the philosophy of “as if”. The purpose of the present paper is to subject such forms of scientific antirealism to a two-pronged critique. In the first place it is argued that there is no genuine difference between believing a theory and being disposed to use it to make predictions, design experiments, and so on; so traditional instrumentalism is incoherent. In the second place, a retrenched position is considered in which theoretical belief would be tolerated but said to be justified on merely pragmatic, and not epistemic, grounds. In criticizing this point of view it is shown that the onus of proof rests on anyone who maintains it; furthermore, the only possible rationale for it (which is based on underdetermination of theory by data) is described, and various deficiencies in this argument are exposed.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 58 , Issue 1 , March 1991 , pp. 1 - 14
Copyright
Copyright © 1991 The Philosophy of Science Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

†

The first version of this paper was delivered to the Conference on Realism at Northwestern University in May, 1984. I would like to thank the participants in the subsequent discussion, and also Ned Block, Josh Cohen and Marcus Giaquinto for their valuable comments and criticism.

References

Boyd, R. (1979), “Metaphor and Theory Change: What is ‘Metaphor’ a Metaphor For?”, in A. Ortony (ed.), Metaphor and Thought. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, pp. 356–408.Google Scholar
Boyd, R. (1981), “Scientific Realism and Naturalistic Epistemology”, in P. D. Asquith and R. N. Giere (eds.), PSA 1980, vol. 2. East Lansing: Philosophy of Science Association, pp. 613–662.Google Scholar
Cartwright, N. (1983), How the Laws of Physics Lie. Oxford: Clarendon Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Duhem, P. ([1906] 1954), The Aim and Structure of Physical Theory. Reprint. Translated by P. P. Wiener. Originally published as La Théorie Physique: Son Objet, et sa Structure (Paris: Marcel Rivière & Cie). Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Field, H. (1982), Science Without Numbers: A Defence of Nominalism. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Fine, A. (1984), “The Natural Ontological Attitude”, in J. Leplin (ed.), Scientific Realism. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, pp. 83–107.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Horwich, P. G. (1982a), Probability and Evidence. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Horwich, P. G. (1982b), “Three Forms of Realism”, Synthese 51: 181–201.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Horwich, P. G. (1986), “A Defence of Conventionalism”, in G. MacDonald and C. Wright (eds.), Fact, Science and Morality: Essays on A. J. Ayer's Language, Truth, and Logic. New York: Blackwell, pp. 163–187.Google Scholar
Horwich, P. G. (1990), Truth. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Loar, B. (1981), Mind and Meaning. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Popper, K. (1962), Conjectures and Refutations; The Growth of Scientific Knowledge. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Putnam, H. (1978), Meaning and the Moral Sciences. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.Google Scholar
Quine, W. V. (1981), “Empirical Content”, in Theories and Things. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, pp. 24–30.Google Scholar
Smart, J. J. C. (1968), Between Science and Philosophy. New York: Random House.Google Scholar
Vaihinger, H. ([1911] 1949), The Philosophy of ‘As If’; A System of the Theoretical, Practical and Religious Fictions of Mankind. Reprint. Translated by C. K. Ogden. Originally published as Die Philosophie des Als-Ob (Berlin: n.p.). London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.Google Scholar
van Fraassen, B. (1980), The Scientific Image. Oxford: Clarendon Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
van Fraassen, B. (1985), “Empiricism in the Philosophy of Science”, in P. M. Churchland and C. A. Hooker (eds.), Images of Science: Essays on Realism and Empiricism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, pp. 245–308.Google Scholar