Luca Tambolo

Bio: Luca Tambolo is an academic researcher from University of Trieste. The author has contributed to research in topics: Scientific realism & Scientific progress. The author has an hindex of 4, co-authored 9 publications receiving 78 citations.

Progress as Approximation to the Truth: A Defence of the Verisimilitudinarian Approach

Abstract: In this paper we provide a compact presentation of the verisimilitudinarian approach to scientific progress (VS, for short) and defend it against the sustained attack recently mounted by Alexander Bird (2007). Advocated by such authors as Ilkka Niiniluoto and Theo Kuipers, VS is the view that progress can be explained in terms of the increasing verisimilitude (or, equivalently, truthlikeness, or approximation to the truth) of scientific theories. According to Bird, VS overlooks the central issue of the appropriate grounding of scientific beliefs in the evidence, and it is therefore unable (a) to reconstruct in a satisfactory way some hypothetical cases of scientific progress, and (b) to provide an explanation of the aversion to falsity that characterizes scientific practice. We rebut both of these criticisms and argue that they reveal a misunderstanding of some key concepts underlying VS.

Pliability and resistance: Feyerabendian insights into sophisticated realism

Abstract: In this paper we focus on two claims, put forward by Feyerabend in his later writings (especially in Conquest of Abundance, 1999a), which constitute the metaphysical core of his view of scientific inquiry. The first, that we call the pliability thesis, is the claim that the world can be described by indefinitely many conceptual systems, none of them enjoying a privileged status. The second, that we call the resistance thesis, is the claim that the pliability of the world is limited, i.e., not all the different conceptual systems that can be used to describe the world will be equally successful: the world offers resistance to some attempts to describe it. We show that, in spite of the later Feyerabend’s notorious antirealist leanings, the pliability thesis is fully compatible with a robustly realist view of science, and we suggest that, surprisingly, Feyerabend’s insights concerning the limited pliability of the world turn out to be those of a potential ally of sophisticated versions of scientific realism.

Counterfactual Histories of Science and the Contingency Thesis

Abstract: Within the debate on the inevitability versus contingency of science for which Hacking’s writings (The social construction of what? Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1999; Philos Sci 67:S58–S71; 2000) have provided the basic terminology, the devising of counterfactual histories of science is widely assumed by champions of the contingency thesis to be an effective way to challenge the inevitability thesis. However, relatively little attention has been devoted to the problem of how to defend counterfactual history of science against the criticism that it is too speculative an endeavor to be worth bothering with—the same critique traditionally levelled against the use of counterfactuals in general history. In this paper, we review the defense of counterfactuals put forward by their advocates within general history. According to such defense—which emphasizes the essential role of counterfactuals within explanations—good counterfactual scenarios need to exhibit the right kind of plausibility, characterized as continuity between said scenarios and what historians know about the world. As our discussion shows, the same requirement needs to be satisfied by good counterfactual histories of science. However, as we mention in the concluding part of the paper, there is at least one concern raised by counterfactual history of science as used to support the contingency thesis for which the defense based on the plausibility of the counterfactual scenarios does not seem to offer easy solutions.

Against Method: Outline of an Anarchistic Theory of Knowledge

Abstract: (1977). Against Method: Outline of an Anarchistic Theory of Knowledge. Journal of Economic Issues: Vol. 11, No. 4, pp. 897-899.

Replies to my critics

Abstract: and Charles Mills on my Hypatia paper. Together, they raise several related questions about the status of value judgments and the roles they might legitimately play in scientific inquiry. Two common concerns relate to the proper scope of the legitimate use of value judgments in science, and whether there are significant differences between value judgments and factual judgments with respect to their revisability. Let me take up these common questions first. With respect to scope, Mills offers the narrowest view, suggesting that value judgments play roles only at the margins of science. Clough, true to her Quinean commitments, which hold that factual judgments and value judgments are part of a seamless whole in the web of belief, offers the most expansive view, allowing no principled barriers between facts and values anywhere. Janack agrees that insofar as I subscribe to Quinean holism, there is no genuine problem of scope, because scientific inquiry is not clearly delineated from ordinary inquiry, which already incorporates value judgments. Instead of speaking of science and ethics as distinct, self-contained realms, she suggests we consider the enormous variety of methods and concerns among the different sciences. Values may be more relevant to some of these sciences than to others. Alcoff similarly suggests a highly contextualized view, leaving open the question of where values might play a role in science. I largely agree with the contextualists here: there is not much we can say about the role of value judgments in science across-the-board (where science is defined here as the collection of disciplined and systematic modes of inquiry into the particular subjects that we dub " the sciences "). Whether value judgments play a legitimate epistemic role in any particular realm of inquiry depends on examining it at a more fine-grained level than the artificial science/ethics dichotomy offers. Nevertheless, we can say a little more about scope than simply " we have to look and see whether value judgments help here. " All inquiry is directed toward answering a question. Where the question is value-laden— for example, when it asks about the impact of some practice on human well-being—successful inquiry will need to engage assumptions concerning well-being. If we make false assumptions about the constituents of well-being, then no matter how empirically accurate our conclusions are at a descriptive level, we will have failed to answer our question adequately.