Epistemic justification in the context of pursuit: a coherentist approach

The aim of this paper is to offer an account of epistemic justification suitable for the context of theory pursuit, that is, for the context in which new scientific ideas, possibly incompatible with the already established theories, emerge and are pursued by scientists. We will frame our account par...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Synthese (Dordrecht) 2014-09, Vol.191 (13), p.3111-3141
Main Authors: Seselja, Dunja, Straßer, Christian
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Atomic theory
Coherence theory
Coherentism
Context
Continental drift
Education
Empiricism
Epistemic justification
Epistemology
Heuristics
Logic
Metaphysics
Philosophy
Philosophy of Language
Philosophy of Science
Physical theory
Research methods
Theology
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:The aim of this paper is to offer an account of epistemic justification suitable for the context of theory pursuit, that is, for the context in which new scientific ideas, possibly incompatible with the already established theories, emerge and are pursued by scientists. We will frame our account paradigmatically on the basis of one of the influential systems of epistemic justification: Laurence Bonjour's coherence theory of justification. The idea underlying our approach is to develop a set of criteria which indicate that the pursued system is promising of contributing to the epistemic goal of robustness of scientific knowledge and of developing into a candidate for acceptance. In order to realize this we will (a) adjust the scope of Bonjour's standards—consistency, inferential density, and explanatory power, and (b) complement them by the requirement of a programmatic character. In this way we allow for the evaluation of the "potential coherence" of the given epistemic system.
ISSN:0039-7857
1573-0964
DOI:10.1007/s11229-014-0476-4