Lakatos's challenge? : Auxiliary hypotheses and non-monotonous inference
Författare
Summary, in English
Gerhard Schurz [2001, Journal for General Philosophy of Science, 32, 65-107] has proposed to reconstruct auxiliary hypothesis addition, e.g., postulation of Neptune to immunize Newtonian mechanics, with concepts from non-monotonous inference to avoid the retention of false predictions that are among the consequence-set of the deductive model. However, the non-monotonous reconstruction retains the observational premise that is indeed rejected in the deductive model. Hence, his proposal fails to do justice to Lakatos' core-belt model, therefore fails to meet what Schurz coined "Lakatos' challenge". It is argued that Lakatos's distinction between core and belt of a research program is not mapable onto premise-set and consequence-set and that Schurz's understanding of a ceteris paribus clause as a transfinite list of (absent) interfering factors is problematic. I propose a simple reading of Lakatos's use of the term ceteris paribus clause and motivate why the term hypothesis addition, despite not being interpretable literally, came to be entrenched. "It is not that we propose a theory and Nature may shout NO; rather we propose a maze of theories and Nature may shout INCONSISTENT." Lakatos (1978, p. 45).
Avdelning/ar
Publiceringsår
2006-10
Språk
Engelska
Sidor
405-415
Publikation/Tidskrift/Serie
Journal for General Philosophy of Science
Volym
37
Issue
2
Dokumenttyp
Artikel i tidskrift
Förlag
Springer
Ämne
- Philosophy
Nyckelord
- Auxiliary hypothesis
- Ceteris paribus clause
- Deductive theory reconstruction
- Non-monotonous reasoning
- Theory immunization
Status
Published
ISBN/ISSN/Övrigt
- ISSN: 0925-4560