Abstract
John Norton’s argument that all formal theories of induction fail raises substantive questions about the philosophical analysis of scientific reasoning. What are the criteria of adequacy for theories of induction, explanation, or theory structure? Is more than one adequate theory possible? Using a generalized version of Norton’s argument, I demonstrate that the competition between formal and material theories in philosophy of science results from adhering to different criteria of adequacy. This situation encourages an interpretation of “formal” and “material” as indicators of divergent criteria that accompany different philosophical methodologies. I characterize another criterion of adequacy associated with material theories, the avoidance of imported problems, and conclude that one way to reconcile conflicting criteria is to adopt a pluralist stance toward theories of scientific reasoning.
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Notes
- 1.
Technically, both statements involve selection for and selection of claims. The suppressed (intuitive) premise is that the former should be true for evolutionary explanations and not the latter; there should be selection for catching flies, but only selection of buzzing black dots.
- 2.
Just as gemology has resources for distinguishing between green and grue with respect to emeralds.
- 3.
Psychological investigation shows that training with specific empirical content mitigates the effects of irrelevant disjuncts (Manning and Schreier-Pandal 1993).
- 4.
“Axiomatic examination represents an extremely useful probative tool, even if a discipline, in the final analysis, fails to submit completely to its strictures” (Wilson 2006, 126).
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Acknowledgments
I received a variety of helpful feedback on this material from the session participants at the European Philosophy of Science Association meeting in Amsterdam (October 2009). Ingo Brigandt, Ron Giere, John Norton, Greg Novack, Ken Waters, Bill Wimsatt, and an anonymous referee provided useful criticisms and suggestions on an earlier draft of the manuscript.
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Love, A.C. (2012). Formal and Material Theories in Philosophy of Science: A Methodological Interpretation. In: de Regt, H., Hartmann, S., Okasha, S. (eds) EPSA Philosophy of Science: Amsterdam 2009. The European Philosophy of Science Association Proceedings, vol 1. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-2404-4_16
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