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Informationen zum Autor Dorit A. Ganson is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Oberlin College. Klappentext Ganson offers new hope in this work for the defense of scientific realism by undermining powerful anti-realist objections and advocating an abandonment of naturalist and externalist strategies. Zusammenfassung This text offers new hope for the defence of scientific realism by undermining powerful anti-realist objections and advocating an abandonment of naturalist and externalist strategies. Inhaltsverzeichnis Preface; 1. Introduction; I. Explanationism; I.i The Debate About Realism and the Constraints of Rationality; I.ii Versions of Explanationism/Realism; I.iii Externalist vs. Internalist Explanationist Approaches to Defending Realism; II. Miller's Internalist Explanationism; II.i Introducing Topic-Specific Truisms; II.ii The Role of Truisms in the Explanationist Defense of Realism; II.iii Why Truisms are Independent Marks of Rationality; III.iv Unfinished Business in Miller's Program; 2. Acausal Models of Explanation; II.i Hume's Legacy and the Deductive-Nomological Model; II.ii From the Inductive-Statistical Model to the Statistical Relevance Approach; III. The Statistical Relevance Model of Explanation; III.i An Outline of the Model and some Refinements; III.ii The Requirement of Objective Homogeneity; III.iii Salmon's Acausal Criteria for Admissible Selection Rules and Ensuing Problems; III.iv Difficulties in the Identification of Causal Relevance with Statistical Relevance; 3. Van Fraassen's Arguments Against Inference to the Best Explanation; I. Van Fraassen's Constructive Empiricism; II. Building a Case Against Explanationism: The Short Arguments; II.i The Scientific Image; II.ii Laws and Symmetry; III. The Bayesian Peter Objection; III.i Van Fraassen's Dutch Book Argument; III.ii Flaws in the Argument; III.iii Reconciling Explanationism with Bayes' Theorem; 4. Van Fraassen's Dutch Books; I. A Philosophical Application of the Probability Calculus: Using Dutch Book Arguments to Derive Rationality Constraints; II. The Principle of Reflection; III. The Temporally Extended Principle of Reflection; IV. A Prohibition Against Assigning A Probability Value to some Special Conditional Propositions; 5. Varieties of Explanationism and Fine's Critique; I. Smart's Wouldn't It be a Miracle? Argument; II. Boyd's Arguments for Realism; II.i Boyd's Inference to the Best Explanation; II.ii Rival Explanans and Explanandum; II.iii The Circularity Objection and the Realist Package; III. Naturalized vs. Non-naturalized Realism; 6. The Transcendental Road to Realism; I. Fine's Criticisms of Miller's Realism; II. The True Source of Unreasonable Doubt; III. Why Taking on Isn't Good Enough; IV. Salvaging Realism about Molecules; Appendix; I. The Ralist Account of Broad Empirical Scope (and its Bayesian Justification); II. Van Fraassen's UnBayesian Rejection of Broad Scope as an Epistemically Relevant Virtue; Works Cited; Index...
