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David Papineau on Scientific Realism

Philosophy Bites

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The Pessimistic Matter Induction Argument

There is a right answer. It's just we haven't quite worked out how to find out the crucial experiment which will decide it. And when we do that, science moves on. We get rid of one of the theories. Trouble is that then you've got this pattern of rejecting theories over and over again. Each theory is set up to be knocked down. So maybe we should turn to the second argument. If in truth, past theories ought to turn out to be false, then it would be foolish to feel that somehow if our theories are the same, those must be true.

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