Abstract
As emphasized by Larry Laudan in developing the notion of non-refuting anomalies (Laudan 1977; Nola and Sankey 2000), traditional analyses of empirical adequacy have not paid enough attention to the fact that the latter does not only depend on a theory’s empirical consequences being true but also on them corresponding to the most salient phenomena in its domain of application. The purpose of this paper is to elucidate the notion of non-refuting anomaly. To this end, I critically examine Laudan’s account and provide a criterion to determine when a non-refuting anomaly can be ascribed to the applicative domain of a theory. Unless this latter issue is clarified, no proper sense can be made of non-refuting anomalies, and no argument could be opposed to those cases where an arbitrary restriction in a theory’s domain of application dramatically reduces the possibilities for its empirical scrutiny. In arguing for the importance of this notion, I show how several semanticist resources can help to reveal its crucial implications, not only for theory evaluation, but also for understanding the nature of a theory’s applicative domain.
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Notes
It must be pointed out that there is a close connection between Laudan’s notion of non-refuting anomaly and Kuipers’ notion of a neutral individual fact for a theory (Kuipers 2000, 115–117). In putting forward his comparative HD-evaluation of theories, he distinguishes between positive (confirmatory) facts, negative (disconfirmatory) facts, and neutral facts, that is, neither positive nor negative ones. Although including this third kind of fact makes his account of theory success more fine-grained than the traditional ones, no further implications are examined regarding the philosophical significance of such notion.
It may be worthwhile to briefly recall Kuhn’s notion of anomaly, since some of Laudan’s points were already suggested by the former, who nevertheless failed to fully realize about their consequences for the traditional conception of evidential support. The general notion of anomaly introduced by Kuhn corresponds to those problems or phenomena that a theory cannot accommodate and that do not fit the theoretical expectations (1962/1970, 58). Both refuting and non-refuting anomalies fall under the above general notion. Finally, Kuhn, as opposed to Laudan, does not regard it as necessary, for an anomaly to be recognized as such, that some rival has been able to solve it. On the contrary, he emphasizes how it is the previous awareness of an anomaly what initiates the process of theory modification or theory change (1962/1970, 62).
Cf. Laudan 1977, 29 (also n. 15). Consequently, Laudan equates what has been called “Kuhn’s losses” (Kuhn 1962/1970, 107–108) with certain instances of non-refuting anomalies, namely, those in which the successor theory provides no explanation for phenomena that the previous theory successfully covered.
Just to be clear, the argument here is not that every phenomenon should count as a problem or be eventually explained. Some phenomena may indeed be regarded as merely contingent and therefore remain unexplained even in a novel theoretical framework. Furthermore, the contingent nature of some phenomena may be found out after some attempts have been made at explaining them. For example, Kepler explained the ratio between the radii of the planets in terms of Platonic bodies, while today we believe those values to be contingent. Again, it is important to notice that, unlike non-refuting anomalies, these contingent phenomena usually lack the features of similarity and/or close causal connection to paradigmatic applications of the theory.
Interestingly, these ideas concerning salience, as well as the corresponding constraints on non-refuting anomalies, are in tune with Krips’ traditionalist view on how to explain the cognitive relevance of such anomalies. After analyzing the very same example discussed above, he concludes that their cognitive relevance could be determined by applying the following abductive pattern of argument: “(P1): The only way to explain e, given B, is by assuming/rejecting h. (P2): B is the total relevant “background knowledge,” and includes e. (C): (probably) h/¬h” (Krips 1980, 604). Thus, according to Krips, non-refuting anomalies prompt the formulation of new hypotheses that would confer high probability to the former and, conversely, diminish the probability of those hypotheses incompatible with the new ones. In a similar abductive vein, I have argued for the possibility of establishing when an event e represents a non-refuting anomaly for a theory T. Regardless of whether e resembles T’s intended applications, there should be a causal connection between e and such intended applications, so that any highly probable causal explanation of e would involve the latter. Sometimes, the new hypothesis would be compatible with T, sometimes otherwise.
In his 1988 paper, Nickles argues that the consequentialist model of scientific justification should be combined with Laudan’s generative model, since the second points to theoretical changes that fall outside the standard conditionalization, which depends on background knowledge remaining fixed (1988, 10). Although in a different context such as the field of mathematics, Lakatos introduces a notion similar to Laudan’s non-refuting anomalies, namely, that of heuristic falsifiers. He explains that, unlike logical falsifiers, which show that a theory as such is false (inconsistent), heuristic falsifiers merely show that a theory does not explain properly what it set out to explain—it is a false theory of the informal domain in question. Still, when Lakatos claims that “the crucial role of heuristic refutations is to shift problems to more important ones, to stimulate the development of theoretical frameworks with more content” (Lakatos, 1967/1978, 40), he is emphasizing only one side of the issue, leaving completely out of the discussion the question as to how to ascribe a certain domain of application to a theory.
This point is noted by Grobler as he discusses the transient nature of Kuhn’s losses: “What I mean is that Kuhn’s “losses” can be regained just like something pawned. There was nothing in the oxygen theory which precluded a future explanation of the metallic luster of metals within a more developed version of the theory or within some other theory which would be compatible with the oxygen theory. A similar pattern can be observed in connection with the replacement of Cartesian physics with Newtonian physics. There were “losses” of the vortex theory’s explanation of the coplanarity of the planet’s orbits, which was regained by the theory of the evolution of the solar system added to Newton’s theory” (2000, 65–66).
These three inequalities are the acceleration of the Moon, the long inequality of Jupiter and Saturn, and the decrease in the obliquity of the ecliptic (Brush 1996, 17). In showing their cyclical rather than secular character, Laplace strengthens the view that the Solar System constitutes a highly stable system.
Grammatical peculiarities have been kept from the original source.
The very fact that Laplace’ solution depends on using the conceptual resources of Newton’s theory suggests that the former amounts to a specialized version of the latter. In structuralist terms: Laplace’s conception can be understood as a specialized theory element of the corresponding net of Newtonian Mechanics.
In what follows, functions r and µ, as well as the non-functional relation M, although also applicable to any other celestial body, are applied only in their corresponding restrictions to the subdomain A included in B.
If we regard NEB as a specialized theory element within the net of Newtonian mechanics, and also assume the structuralist view that the distinction between theoretical and non-theoretical concepts refers to entire theory-nets, then every Newtonian-theoretical concept would be also NEB-theoretical. This, however, does not alter the main point that is being emphasized, viz., that, without NEB’s conceptual additions to the Newtonian framework, the latter did not have the necessary Newtonian theoretical concepts to explain the non-refuting anomalies, despite having the necessary Newtonian non-theoretical concepts to describe them.
By stressing the importance of evidence quality as the driving force in the career of geological theories, Laudan opposes the popular view put forward by Gould (1977), which implied that the initial rejection of drift theory was due to a lack of an adequate mechanism to move continents through a static ocean floor (Laudan 1978, 229–232).
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Acknowledgements
I am thankful to Otàvio Bueno and José Díez for helpful comments on earlier versions of this paper. Thanks also to the participants in the 8th and 9th editions of the Latin American Conference on Structuralist Metatheory (Mexico DF 2012, Barcelona 2014), where I had the chance to get a valuable feedback on different aspects of this work. My gratitude algo goes to Emad Ali Khan for correcting my English. This research was financially supported by the research projects “Pragmatics as the Driving Force Behind the Study of Semantic Flexibility: Conversational Contexts and Theoretical Contexts” (FFI2012-33881, Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness) and “Models and Theories in Physical, Biological, and Social Sciences” (PICT-2014-1741, ANPCyT, Argentina).
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Caamaño-Alegre, M. Making Sense of Non-refuting Anomalies. J Gen Philos Sci 49, 261–282 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10838-018-9409-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10838-018-9409-0