No Miracles Argument

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In 2007 James Ladyman and Don Ross published Every Thing Must Go: Metaphysics Naturalized, an attempt to synthesize Ladyman’s ‘Ontic Structural Realism’ and Ross’s ‘Rainforest Realism’ into a unified metaphysics applicable to science from physics to economics. Beginning with a blistering polemic against what they call ‘neo-scholastic metaphysics’, Ladyman and Ross argue for an approach to metaphysics which goes far beyond the vague science-friendliness characteristic of so much of contemporary soi-disant naturalism in favour of an unabashedly ‘scientistic’ stance. Dispensing with the habitual ontology of ‘little things and microbangings’ which continues to hold sway in contemporary ‘pseudo-naturalist philosophy’, Every Thing Must Go provides the case for a radically naturalistic metaphysics capable of taking on board the most counterintuitive findings of modern physics without impugning the epistemic credentials of the special sciences. In our interview, Ladyman discusses the reasons for his exasperation with philosophers who persist in doing metaphysics as if modern science had never happened, provides a robust defence of ‘the scientistic stance’, and explains how the position developed in Every Thing Must Go provides a heuristic framework for the unification of the sciences via a dialectical synthesis of the strengths of both realism and empiricism.

To begin with I distinguish various kinds of realism, especially commonsense, scientific and metaphysical realism. I then argue that all of them can be supported by explanationist arguments, among which I distinguish abduction, inference to the best explanation, and various forms of " no miracle " argument. Some of these arguments are based on first level explananda (empirical regularities and scientific phenomena), others on meta-level explananda (the success of science). Some are scientific inferences, some are philosophical. The " no miracle argument " is a meta-level philosophical argument, but some of its forms can be derived by equivalent transformations from first-level scientific arguments, so naturalists claimed that it is a scientific argument. While granting its scientific bases, however, I argue that it is distinctly philosophical, and philosophy is distinct, even if continuous with science. The no miracle argument is usually taken to explain scientific success by postulating the truth of theories, but both this explanandum and this explanans are found to be problematic. Instead, I take as explanandum the success of scientists in finding theories with unexpected predictions, and as explanans (so as conclusion of the argument) the actual finding of partially true theories, through reliable scientific method, thanks to the simplicity, uniformity and rationality of nature. Moreover, I claim that these explanations are not available to the various forms of idealism. Hence, while scientific and metaphysical realism are logically independent of each other, one can hardly support scientific realism by the " no miracle " without also accepting metaphysical realism.

Most philosophers who advocate Scientific Realism (SR) endorse also Modal Realism (MR), i.e., assume commitments with objective modality. However, the precise relationship between these positions has been scarcely explored. In this paper I argue that there is an indirect implication from SR to MR. Although the basic thesis of SR does not imply MR, both the main argument for SR and the best realist theory of reference do imply modal commitments.

Predictivists use the no miracle argument to argue that ‘‘novel’’ predictions are decisive evidence for theories, while mere accommodation of ‘‘old’’ data cannot confirm to a significant degree. But deductivists claim that since confirmation is a logical theory-data relationship, predicted data cannot confirm more than merely deduced data, and cite historical cases in which known data confirmed theories quite strongly. On the other hand, the advantage of prediction over accommodation is needed by scientific realists to resist Laudan’s criticisms of the no miracle argument. So, if the deductivists are right, the most powerful argument for realism collapses. There seems to be an inescapable contradiction between these prima facie plausible arguments of predictivists and deductivists; but this puzzle can be solved by understanding what exactly counts as novelty, if novel predictions must support the no miracle argument, i.e., if they must be explainable only by the truth of theories. Taking my cues from the use-novelty tradition, I argue that (1) the predicted data must not be used essentially in building the theory or choosing the auxiliary assumptions. This is possible if the theory and its auxiliary assumptions are plausible independently of the predicted data, and I analyze the consequences of this requirement in terms of best explanation of diverse bodies of data. Moreover, the predicted data must be (2) a priori improbable, and (3) heterogeneous to the essentially used data. My proposed notion of novelty, therefore, is not historical, but functional. Hence, deductivists are right that confirmation is independent of time and of historical contingencies such as if the theorist knew a datum, used it, or intended to accommodate it. Predictivists, however, are right that not all consequences confirm equally, and confirmation is not purely a logical theory-data relation, as it crucially involves background epistemic conditions and the notion of best explanation. Conditions (1)–(3) make the difference between prediction and accommodation, and account for the confirming power of theoretical virtues such as non ad-hocness, non-fudging, non-overfitting, independence and consilience. I thus show that functional novelty (a) avoids the deductivist objections to predictivism, (b) is a gradual notion, in accordance with the common intuition that confirmation comes in degrees, and (c) supports the no miracle argument, so vindicating scientific realism.

Apparently, neither the appeal to approximate truth nor to novel predictions can rescue the “no miracle” argument from Laudan’s criticisms. For Lyons (2002) there are historical counterexamples even to the weakened “deployment” realism: novel predictions supposedly derived from false claims. But if so, those successes would seem unexplainable, even by Lyons’ “modest surrealism”. In fact, I argue, some of those predictions were enough probable (either a priori or in the light of available evidence) to be guessed, and others were not essentially derived from false claims. Hence, a claim can be assumed to be true if it is actually crucial in deriving a prediction which is novel in a suitably specified sense.

Currently one of the most plausible versions of scientific realism is “Deployment” (or “Partial”, or “Conservative”) Realism, based on various contributions in the recent literature (especially Kitcher 1993), and worked out as a unitary account in Psillos (1999). According to this version we can believe that theories are at least partly true (because that is the best
explanation for their predictive success—especially novel predictions), and discarded theories which had novel predictive success had nonetheless some true parts: those necessary to derive their novel predictions. In fact, it has been argued that the partial truth of theories (including the discarded ones) is the only non-miraculous explanation of their success.
According to Doppelt (2005, 2007) this account cannot withstand the antirealist objections based on the “pessimistic meta-induction” and Laudan’s historical counterexamples. Moreover, it is incomplete, as it purports to explain the predictive success of theories, but overlooks the necessity of also explaining their explanatory success. Accordingly, he
proposes a new version of realism, presented as the best explanation for both predictive and explanatory success, and committed only to the truth of the best current theories, not that of the discarded ones (Doppelt 2007, 2011, 2013, 2014).
I have argued elsewhere (Alai 2016a) that Doppelt’s “Best Theory Realism” is not really a viable option, for it can explain neither the success of past theories nor their failures; moreover, it is rather implausible, and actually the easiest prey of the pessimistic meta-induction argument. Here instead I argue for the following claims: (a) Doppelt has not shown that Deployment Realism as it stands cannot solve the problems raised by the
history of science; (b) explaining explanatory success does not add much to the explanation of novel predictive success; (c) Doppelt is right that truth is not a sufficient explanans, but for different reasons than he thinks, and this does not refute Deployment Realism, but helps to detail it better. In a more explicit formulation, the realist Inference to the Best Explanation (IBE) concludes not only that theories are true, but also that the scientific method and scientists are reliable, nature is orderly and simple, and background
theories are approximately true.

realism (MR). On the other hand, authors like Schlick, Carnap and Putnam held forms of
scientific realism coupled with metaphysical antirealism (and this has analogies in Kant).
So we might ask: do scientific realists really need MR? or is MR already implied by SR,
so that SR is actually incompatible with metaphysical antirealism? And if MR must really
be added to SR, why is that so? And which additional arguments scientific realists need to
support it? After reviewing and classifying a number of different kinds of realisms, metaphysical
and not, I answer that SR and MR are logically independent of each other, so that
there is no logical inconsistency in holding SR while rejecting MR. However, I argue that
the “no miracle” argument (NMA) not only is the “ultimate” argument for SR, but by the
same token it also supports MR. Therefore one cannot effectively defend SR without also
subscribing to MR, but this can be done at no additional argumentative cost. I show this by
discussing not only the standard version of the NMA, but also three more versions which
are not usually considered as such in the literature.

The explanatory defense of scientific realism is motivated by science’s success. By contrast, local realists claim that scientific realism must be justified contextually, by considering individually the scientific evidence relevant to assess each theory. I propose that both approaches can be harmonized by appealing to a particularist epistemology. The characterization of local realism as a form of particularism allows us to re-evaluate its relation to the explanatory defense. Local realists reject the explanatory defense as incompatible with the localist stance, but according to particularism, our attribution of knowledge to particular cases is made prima facie, in a way open to the refinement of our epistemic norms. The function of epistemic criteria is not to demonstrate that we have knowledge, but rather to reveal its epistemic nature. One can formulate epistemological criteria by inspecting particular instances of knowledge. And one can evaluate the adequacy of his criteria by adjusting them to his cognitive life in a process of reflective equilibrium. And this is precisely what the explanatory defense of realism does. In this thesis, I develop a particularist defense of scientific realism, showing how a realist stance can be reasonably sustained in the face of the main anti-realist arguments: the pessimistic meta-induction; the problem of unconceived alternatives; and the argument from underdetermination of theory by data.

O argumento do milagre afirma que o realismo científico é a melhor explicação para o sucesso da ciência: teorias científicas são bem-sucedidas porque são verdadeiras, e cientistas são bem-sucedidos em encontrar teorias verdadeiras porque se baseiam em normas metodológicas confiáveis. A tese da incomensurabilidade metodológica afirma que teorias científicas não são escolhidas através de um algoritmo neutro de normas epistêmicas. Isso revela uma lacuna na explicação realista: normas epistêmicas confiáveis não são suficientes para conduzir a escolhas de teorias verdadeiras, pois tais escolhas também são determinadas por outros fatores além de normas epistêmicas. A introdução de fatores adicionais como subdeterminando a escolha de teorias engendrou argumentos relativistas e antirrealistas contra o realismo. A explicação realista pode ser reabilitada se postular que os cientistas possuem autoridade epistêmica para aprimorar as normas metodológicas da ciência, sendo aptos a tomar decisões autônomas em vez de regidas por regras.