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Counterfactuals and Scientific Realism

Part of the New Directions in the Philosophy of Science Book Series

DOI: 10.1057/9781137271587

ISBN: 978-1-349-33906-8

Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan UK - Springer Journals

Oct 26, 2015

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Chapter 1Introduction

Shaffer, Michael J.

Pages: 1 –10

[In an important sense this book is a book about truth. It is about truth in the sciences. More specifically it is about truth and scientific explanation. We can begin to see that there are problems about truth in the sciences when we recognize that ‘truth’ is truth in a model, or truth in an...
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Chapter 2The Concept of Idealization

Shaffer, Michael J.

Pages: 11 –46

[We are finite beings who, from our very beginnings, have been faced — both individually and collectively — with the task of understanding a mammothly complex world. This task is by its very nature incredibly daunting. This is simply because we are relatively resource poor beings in the sense...
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Chapter 3The Ubiquity of Idealization and Its Logic

Shaffer, Michael J.

Pages: 47 –100

[There are three main goals that constitute the primary foci of this chapter. The first goal is to establish the groundwork of an argument for the claim that the presence of idealizing assumptions in physical theory is perfectly compatible with a suitably understood scientific realism. This goal...
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Chapter 4Epistemic Access, Confirmation, and Idealization

Shaffer, Michael J.

Pages: 101 –144

[Now that we have come to have some understanding of the analysis of the concept of idealization and its main logical features we can proceed to considering the conditions under which a given idealizing counterfactual should be rationally accepted, or confirmed. This is, of course, a matter of...
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Chapter 5Idealization, Inference to the Best Explanation, and Scientific Realism

Shaffer, Michael J.

Pages: 145 –193

[In this chapter we will finally make good on the promises made in Chapters 2 and 3. In effect it will be argued here that scientific realism can be saved from both of Cartwright’s idealization-based attacks. This goal will be achieved by showing specifically what is wrong with the argument from...

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