Pessimistic Inductions
So a nice example of “the pessimistic induction” is from Larry Laudan’s “A Confutation of Convergent Realism.” Briefly, it claims that the history of science is a pretty sad story in terms of scientific theories getting it right about what exists (because most (all?) theories in the history of science are strictly false on subsequent theories) and this repeated past failure should make us skeptical that current scientific theories refer to real entities.
Now, whether or not it is a fallacy – as Peter Lewis (apparently falsely) claims – the argument form itself is kind of interesting. Let’s just call an argument which infers from repeated past failures to current (and perhaps future) skepticism of success a “pessimistic induction.” As Errol and Adam might recognize, Timothy Williamson makes a somewhat similar pessimistic induction (although he doesn’t call it this) in Knowledge and its Limits regarding an analysis of knowledge in terms of truth, belief and any other condition(s). This partly motivates his claim that no such analysis is possible – knowledge instead is semantically unanalyzeable. John Norton, in “Causation as Folk Science,” makes another pessimistic induction on our past failures at explicating any adequate notion of causation. This motivates his seemingly correct relegation of (scientific) causation to the status of a folk science without any “fundamental” reality not derivative from acausal scientific theories (much as newtonian gravitational force can be recovered from general relatavity although gravity is not a newtonian force in general relativity).
I’m sure there are many other such examples of a “pessimistic induction” out there, even if the one against scientific realism is the one that is associated with the actual phrase. So, this leads to some different questions. First, what degree of support should such arguments lend to their conclusion? Presumably they cannot be decisive or else the history of philosophy should probably lead us to abandon philosophical inquiry about any given topic. But in terms of establishing the burden of proof (for instance), they seem like they work. Second, what other examples of such “pessimistic inductions” can everyone think of? Any particularly good ones? Finally, if anyone has read those articles or Knowledge and its Limits did you think the pessimistic inductions that were employed in them worked for their respective aims?
The Laudan article is from Philosophy of Science, Vol. 48, No. 1 (Mar., 1981), pp. 19-49. The Peter Lewis article is from Synthese 129, pp. 371-380, 2001. The Norton article is from Philosophers Imprint, Vol. 3, No. 4 (Nov., 2003) and is available here
~ by jordandelange on June 25, 2007.
Posted in Metaphilosophy, Philosophy of Science, Posts by Jordan Delange
Jordan,
Thanks for discussing this interesting topic – it’s one of the only parts of my philosophy of science course that I didn’t repress.
I agree with you that pessimistic inductions, while perhaps not decisive arguments, do seem to shift the burden of proof to the “optimistic” side to show why the science is more likely to be correct in its current state than in past incorrect states. In particular, the namesake pessimistic induction (concerning scientific realism) directly challenges the “triumphalist” view of science – the notion that the history of science has run in a linear and progressive fashion toward the current corpus of knowledge of the natural world, the epitome of scientific achievement. How could anyone hold such an over-inflated opinion of human scientific advancement upon recognizing that the basic premise behind the pessimistic induction (past failures) is undoubtedly true?
The only other example I can come up with of a pessimistic induction is concerning ethics. I have come across a few philosophy students who shun the whole practice of ethics, claiming that people never have – and never will – come to agreement concerning ethical systems or what is the right thing to do in any particular situation. Some forms of cultural relativism might even invoke the pessimistic induction, encouraging us to abandon all hope of bridging cultural barriers in ethics. Proponents of objective ethical systems are like scientific realists, holding that there are facts of the matter to be had and that our best philosophical practices should seek to uncover them.
Pam,
Hey, thanks for commenting. Ya, it is a nice argument that seems to be a pretty clear-cut reason not to hold to any “triumphalist” view of the history of science as a linear sequence of accretions and subtractions converging on or progressing towards the truth.
Your ethics example is interesting, although is it really true that there is less agreement in ethics than there is in, say, epistemology or metaphysics? As for the comparison between people who think there are objective ethical systems and people who are scientific realists, I think that might very well track what people in philosophy think.