Wang-Yen Lee

Lipton contends that the no-miracle argument is illegitimate, because it fails to adduce new evidence beyond that cited by scientists for their theories. The debate on this issue between Lipton and Psillos has focussed on whether there is a construal of the no-miracle argument in relation to first-order scientific inferences that can yield new evidence. I move away from this focus without taking sides, and argue that the no-miracle argument, on its two popular interpretations, is as legitimate, cogent, and useful an inductive argument for scientific realism as first-order scientific inferences to the best explanation even if it does not add to scientific evidence

Hitchock and Sober contend that in some circumstances a predicting theory has epistemic advantage over an accommodating one because the former’s predictive success indicates that the theory has been produced by a method which balances simplicity and fit, whilst the latter’s accommodative success does not give us reason to think that such a balance has been achieved. This is a version of weak predictivism. My purpose in this paper is to examine the extent to which and the circumstances in which their argument, if sound, is applicable to actual science. I first show that even if we grant that their general argument for weak predictivism is sound, it does not give us good reason to think that the kind of epistemic advantage they claim prediction has over accommodation obtains in interesting scientific cases. Setting aside this difficulty, I go on to investigate the circumstances in actual science in which that advantage obtains. I first reject the suggestion that the scenarios in which scientists have limited understanding of a theory or data or their relations are those in which the predictive success of a theory has epistemic advantage by arguing that these are likely to be circumstances in which we have no good reason to think that successful prediction has occurred. I then suggest that the said epistemic advantage obtains when there exists a dispute about the relative simplicity of rival theories.

Although the efficacy of pharmacotherapy for tobacco dependence has been previously demonstrated, there is substantial variability among individuals in treatment response. We performed a systems-based candidate gene study of 1295 single nucleotide polymorphisms in 58 genes within the neuronal nicotinic receptor and dopamine systems to investigate their role in smoking cessation in a bupropion placebo-controlled randomized clinical trial. Putative functional variants were supplemented with tagSNPs within each gene. We used global tests of main effects and treatment interactions, adjusting the P-values for multiple correlated tests. An SNP in the 3′ UTR region of the β2 nicotinic acetylcholine receptor subunit has an impact on abstinence rates at the end of treatment and after a 6-month follow-up period. This latter P-value is also significant with adjustment for the number of genes tested. Independent of treatment at 6-month follow-up, individuals carrying the minor allele have substantially decreased the odds of quitting. Effect of estimates indicate that the treatment is more effective for individuals with the wild-type compared with individuals carrying the minor allele, although this difference is only suggestive. Furthermore, this SNP demonstrated a role in the time to relapse and an impact on withdrawal symptoms at target quit date. Overall, while our results indicate strong evidence for CHRNB2 in ability to quit smoking, these results require replication in an independent sample. © 2008 The Author.

Pragmatic theological realism (PTR) urges us to take up the realist aim of theology or the goal of truth although we have good reason to think that the goal can neither be attained nor approximated. Rescher contends that pursuing an unreachable goal can be rational on pragmatic grounds so long as pursuing the unreachable goal yields indirect benefits. I have blocked this attempt at providing a pragmatic justification for the realist aim of PTR on precisely the same pragmatic grounds: since there is a competing alternative to PTR and the alternative can provide whatever indirect benefits PTR can offer while being less risky than it is, prudential reasoning favours the alternative to PTR. This undermines the pragmatic case for the realist aim of theology since the instrumentalist alternative does not aim at the truth.

According to Hitchcock and Sober’s argument from overfitting for weak predictivism, the fact that a theory accurately predicts a portion of its data is evidence that it has been formulated by balancing simplicity and goodness-of-fit rather than overfitting data. The core argument consists of two likelihood inequalities. In this paper I show that there is a surprising accommodation-friendly implication in their argument, and contend that it is beset by a substantial difficulty, namely, there is no good reason to think that their second likelihood inequality is true

In Alvin Plantinga’s Evolutionary Argument against Naturalism (EAAN), he contends that someone who holds both naturalism (N) and evolution (E) acquires an undefeated defeater for her belief that ‘human cognitive faculties are reliable’ (R) and as a result an undefeated defeater for everything else she believes when she comes to realise that P(R/N&E) is low or inscrutable. I argue for two theses in this essay. First, when a naturalist-evolutionist comes to think that P(R/N&E) is inscrutable, that does not constitute an undefeated defeater for her belief that R if her original grounds for believing R are something other than an assessment of P(R/N&E). Second, even if she acquires an undefeated defeater for her belief that R when she comes to think that P(R/N&E) is inscrutable, it does not follow that she has a defeater for all her other beliefs. The main contribution lies in my response to Plantinga’s attempt to resist my second thesis.

Pragmatic Scientific Realism (PSR) urges us to take up the realist aim or the goal of truth although we have good reason to think that the goal can neither be attained nor approximated. While Newton-Smith thinks that pursuing what we know we cannot achieve is clearly irrational, Rescher disagrees and contends that pursuing an unreachable goal can be rational on pragmatic grounds—if in pursuing the unreachable goal one can get indirect benefits. I have blocked this attempt at providing a pragmatic justification for the realist aim of PSR on precisely the same pragmatic grounds—since there is a competing alternative to PSR, and the alternative can provide whatever indirect benefits PSR can offer while being less risky than it is, prudential reasoning favours the alternative to PSR. This undermines the pragmatic case for the realist aim of science since the instrumentalist alternative does not aim at the truth.