December 4, 2024 | 5:00PM – 7:00PM

Dodd Hall 247 & Zoom

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Join us on Wednesday, December 4, 2024 in Dodd Hall 247 for a talk by Foad Dizadji-Bahmani, Cal State LA, as part of the History, Philosophy, and Science of Science (HPASS) speaker series.

Truth, Approximate Truth, and the Pessimistic Meta-Induction

The scientific realism debate is a longstanding one in the philosophy of science. One of the most important arguments in the anti-realist’s armory is the Pessimistic Meta-Induction (PMI). As is well known, PMI purportedly shows that the history of science undermines realism. PMI has two guises: an inductive argument for the conclusion that current scientific theories are not true (PMIi) or a reductio ad absurdum against the idea that one can take the empirical and predictive success of a theory as reason to think that it is true (PMIr). I argue that once attention is paid to the logical difference between truth (which is categorical) and approximate truth (which is a matter of degree) it can be shown that the argument, in each guise, is fallacious. Specifically, heeding this distinction, it can be shown, first, that PMIi is either conceptually incoherent or self-defeating, and second that PMIr is not sound. These results do not, in and of themselves, vindicate scientific realism. In order to do so, the realist must, inter alia, further develop and defend the notion of approximate truth by recourse to which her position is formulated. In the last part of the paper, I give an outline of a proposal to that end.

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