The Justification of Abduction in the Context of the Debate over Scientific Realism: an Argumentative Approach

Abstract

The new perspectives on the nature of justifying practices brought by the development of a non-formal and non-deductivistic argumentation theory offer us the opportunity to revisit some central issues for the Philosophy of Science and revise our analysis of the typical ways to give, ask for and critically receive reasons in the Sciences. The use of the notions and distinctions developed by this theoretical framework help us clarify the rational structure of the scientific agents’ evidentiary discourse, which includes closely interrelated both argumentative and explanatory acts. This determines the centrality of a meta-explanatory argumentative scheme such is abduction. However, there is a philosophical debate that goes beyond the identification and comprehension of these rational structures and even beyond their assessment conducted by the participants in scientific discussions. This is the debate among philosophers regarding the epistemic justification of abduction, closely related to the different stances regarding the justifying possibilities of scientific realism. This paper revises different viewpoints on the justification of abduction, exposing their argumentative import and the way they govern the comprehension of particular abductive arguments.
  • Referencias
  • Cómo citar
  • Del mismo autor
  • Métricas
Álvarez, María (2010). Kinds of Reason. An Essay in the Philosophy of Action. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Álvarez, María (2016). Reasons for Action: Justification, Motivation, Explanation. En Edward N. Zalta (Ed.) The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2016 Edition),
URL = https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2016/entries/reasons-just-vs-expl/

Bermejo Luque, Lilian (2016). Modelo de Toulmin / Garantía / Respaldo / Reserva / Calificador. En Luis Vega y Paula Olmos (Eds.), Compendio de lógica, argumentación y retórica (pp. 408-410). Madrid: Trotta.

Cordero, Alberto (1997 [1991]). Las ideas evolucionistas y el naturalismo contemporáneo. En Sergio Martínez y León Olivé (Eds.), Epistemología evolucionista (pp. 185-219). México: Paidós.

Cordero, Alberto y Galparsoro, José Ignacio (eds.) (2013). Reflections on Naturalism. Boston: Sense Pub.

Diéguez Lucena, Antonio (1998). Realismo científico. Una introducción al debate actual en Filosofía de la Ciencia. Málaga: Universidad de Málaga.

Douven, Igor (2002). Testing Inference to the Best Explanation. Synthese, 130, 355-377.

Fraassen, Bas van (1989). Laws and Symmetry. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Hacking, Ian (1996 [1983]). Representar e intervenir, trad. de Sergio Martínez. México: Paidós.

Harman, Gilbert (1965). The Inference to the Best Explanation. Philosophical Review, 74, 88-95.

Iranzo, Valeriano (2007). Abduction and Inference to the Best Explanation. Theoria, 60, 339-346.

Iranzo, Valeriano (2008). El dilema del realismo experimental, Episteme NS 28(1), 59-88.

Lipton, Peter (1991). Inference to the Best Explanation. Londres: Routledge.

Lipton, Peter (1993). Is the best good enough? Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 93, 89-104

Marraud, Hubert (2013). ¿Es lógic@? Análisis y evaluación de argumentos. Madrid: Cátedra.

Marraud, Hubert (2017). Guia de Campo de Esquemas Argumentativos. Publicado on-line: https://www.academia.edu/

Olmos, Paula (2018). Narrative Reasons in Scientific Argument. En Steve Oswald y Didier Maillat (Eds.) Argumentation and Inference: Proceedings of the 2nd European Conference on Argumentation, Fribourg 2017, Vol. I (pp. 487-506). London: College Publications.

Olmos, Paula (en prensa). Un enfoque argumentativo sobre la abducción y sobre la ponderación de hipótesis explicativas. Theoria.

Pollock, John L. (1987). Defeasible Reasoning, Cognitive Science, 11, 481-518.

Toulmin, Stephen E. (2003 [1958]). The uses of argument. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Toulmin, Stephen E. (1961). Foresight and Understanding: An Enquiry into the Aims of Science. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Walton, Douglas, Reed, Chris y Macagno, Fabrizio (2008). Argumentation Schemes. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Woods, John (2016). “Reorienting the Logic of Abduction”. En L. Magnani y T. Bertolotti, eds., Springer Handbook of Model-Based Science. Dordrecht: Springer.
Olmos Gómez, P. (2018). The Justification of Abduction in the Context of the Debate over Scientific Realism: an Argumentative Approach. ArtefaCToS. Revista De Estudios Sobre La Ciencia Y La tecnología, 7(2), 35–57. https://doi.org/10.14201/art2018723557

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

Author Biography

Paula Olmos Gómez

,
Universidad Autónoma de Madrid
(Doctora en Filosofía por la UNED, 2008) es, desde 2014, Profesora Ayudante Doctor en el Departamento de Lingüística, Lenguas modernas, Lógica y filosofía de la ciencia, Teoría de la literatura y literatura comparada de la Universidad Autónoma de Madrid. Investiga preferentemente sobre cuestiones de teoría de la argumentación y su aplicación a la comprensión de las prácticas justificativas en la ciencia histórica y contemporánea. Sobre esas temáticas ha publicado y editado varios libros y artículos en revistas especializadas como Argumentation, Informal Logic, Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, Intellectual History Review o Theoria. En 2017 publicó, como editora, el volumen de ensayos Narration as Argument (Springer. Argumentation Series).
+