Thomas Nickles

Pure consequentialists hold that all theoretical justification derives from testing the consequences of hypotheses, while generativists maintain that reasoning (some feature of) the hypothesis from we already know is an important form of justification. The strongest form of justification (they claim) is an idealized discovery argument. In the guise of H-D methodology, consequentialism is widely supposed to have defeated generativism during the 19th century. I argue that novel prediction fails to overcome the logical weakness of consequentialism or to render generative methodology superfluous. Specifically, Bayesian consequentialism is not an alternative to generativism but reduces to an instance of it.

The last forty years have produced a dramatic reversal in leading accounts of science. Once thought necessary to (explain) scientific progress, a rigid method of science is now widely considered impossible. Study of products yields to study of processes and practices, .unity gives way to diversity, generality to particularity, logic to luck, and final justification to heuristic scaffolding. I sketch the story, from Bacon and Descartes to the present, of the decline and fall of traditional scientific method, conceived as The Central Planning Bureau for Science or as Rationality Czar. I defend a deflationary account of method and of rational judgment,. with emphasis on heuristic appraisal and cognitive economy.