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Hacking's Experimental Realism: An Untenable Middle Ground

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 2022

Richard Reiner  and
Robert Pierson
Richard Reiner
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy York University
Robert Pierson
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy York University
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Abstract

As Laudan and Fine show, and Boyd concedes, the attempt to infer the truth of scientific realism from the fact that it putatively provides the best explanation of the instrumental success of science is circular, since what is to be shown is precisely the legitimacy of such abductive inferences. Hacking's “experimental argument for scientific realism about entities” is one of the few arguments for scientific realism that purports to avoid this circularity. We argue that Hacking's argument is as dependent on inference to the best explanation (IBE), and therefore as weak, as the other realist arguments.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 62 , Issue 1 , March 1995 , pp. 60 - 69
Copyright
Copyright © Philosophy of Science Association 1995

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Footnotes

†

We are grateful to Joseph Agassi, Carolyn L. Burke, J. N. Hattiangadi, Kathleen Miller, and an anonymous reviewer for Philosophy of Science for helpful comments and criticisms, and to the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada for fellowship support during the writing of this paper.

‡

Send reprint requests to Richard Reiner, Department of Philosophy, S424 Ross, York University, 4700 Keele St., North York, Ontario, Canada M3J 1P3.

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