Abstract
The target of the impasse objection is any kind of scientific realism that bases its plausibility on the stable presence of some X in a sequence of theories. For instance, if X is a set of theoretical entities that remains stable even over some scientific revolutions, this may be taken as support for convergent scientific realism about entities. Likewise, if X is a similarly stable set of structures of theories, this may be taken as support for (convergent) structural realism. The impasse objection states that the conceded stability of X could also be due to the existence of an empirically extremely successful though ontologically significantly false theory. In this case, the inference from the stability of X to the probable reality of X would become invalid. The paper closes with a discussion of several counter-objections to the impasse objection.
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Notes
- 1.
There is another type of SR that Holger Lyre has dubbed the “French-Ladyman-type” approach to SR, contrasting it with the “Worrall-type” approach discussed above (Lyre 2010). The French-Ladyman approach applies SR directly to concrete physical theories instead of defending it at length by general arguments at a very abstract level.
- 2.
This is a situation that also occurs in the sciences. For instance, in the mid 1970s there was a variety of apparently different two-dimensional lattice models that agreed in their predictions of certain crucial thermodynamic properties. Therefore, these predictions appeared to be model independent and thus especially trustworthy. However, at a conference in 1977, the Australian physicist Rodney J. Baxter presented a model that showed that most of the current models were special cases of his own more general model (see Baxter 1977). Consequently, the confidence in the model-independency of the predictions due to their production by apparently different models immediately collapsed.
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Acknowledgements
I wish to especially thank Thomas Reydon for inspiring remarks on an earlier draft of this paper, but also Claus Beisbart, Matteo Collodel, Nils Hoppe, Simon Lohse, Holger Lyre, Eric Oberheim and an anonymous referee for insightful and constructive comments.
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Hoyningen-Huene, P. (2013). The Ultimate Argument Against Convergent Realism and Structural Realism: The Impasse Objection. In: Karakostas, V., Dieks, D. (eds) EPSA11 Perspectives and Foundational Problems in Philosophy of Science. The European Philosophy of Science Association Proceedings, vol 2. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-01306-0_11
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