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    Carmelics

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    Home/Original/inverse
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    Inverse View

    It is not the case that Many empirically successful past scientific theories cannot be regarded as true or approximately true

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    Reasons For

    1 perspective
    Reason for
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    • 1.The history of science furnishes vast evidence of empirically successful theories that were later rejected
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    • 2.From subsequent perspectives, the unobservable terms of those rejected theories were judged not to refer
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    Reasons Against

    2 perspectives
    Reason against 1 of 2
    ?
    • 1.Laudan's 'pessimistic meta-induction' shows that predictive success systematically fails to track truth across scientific history.
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    • 2.Phlogiston, caloric, and the luminiferous ether all generated novel predictions yet referred to nothing real.
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    • 3.If empirical success were a reliable indicator of truth, we would not observe this recurring pattern of successful-but-false theories.
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    Reason against 2 of 2
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    • 1.van Fraassen's constructive empiricism demonstrates that empirical adequacy—saving the phenomena—is a weaker and more achievable goal than truth.
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    • 2.A theory can be empirically adequate across all observable domains while positing entirely fictitious unobservable structures.
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    • 3.Therefore, the empirical success of a theory underdetermines its truth, meaning success cannot license truth attributions to rejected theories.
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