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How About Bust? Factoring Explanatory Power Back into Theory Evaluation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 2022

Larry Laudan
Larry Laudan*
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy, National Autonomous University of Mexico
*
†Send reprint requests to the author, Calle de Tenaza, 23, San Javier, Guanajuato, GTO 36000, Mexico.
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Extract

1. Introduction. The papers by Hellman and Mayo offer up a rich menu of problems and proposed solutions, so there is much here for a friendly critic to fasten on. In order to bring a modicum of focus to my commentary, I shall limit my remarks to the Duhem problem and its radiations in epistemology and methodology. Both Mayo and Hellman claim to have solutions to that hoary old problem and they tout these solutions as key indicators of the explanatory power of their respective technical epistemologies, whether Bayesian or Neyman/Pearsonian. Like Mayo, I shall be arguing that the Bayesian treatment of Duhem's problem is no solution at all; that, indeed, it fails to grapple with the core challenges posed by the purported ambiguities of falsification. My response to Mayo's more detailed, and I think more right-headed, treatment of the Duhem problem will be more complex. While I believe that she is moving in the right direction in many respects, I think that she fails to see one key dimension of the Duhemian conundrum. Indeed, she risks solving not Duhem's problem but quite a different one. I shall gently try to encourage her to steer her way back towards the central task.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 64 , Issue 2 , June 1997 , pp. 306 - 316
Copyright
Copyright © 1997 by the Philosophy of Science Association

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References

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