Explanationist Defense of Scientific Realism

Dorit A. Ganson is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Oberlin College.

• 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