On The Involvement Of I B E
—-
How is IBE used? Colyvan argues that “inference to the best explanation is a special case of an indispensability argument.” In the lead up to making this claim he argues that in general an indispensability argument is neutral with regard to the purpose for which indispensability is claimed. So IBE is an indispensability argument where the purpose is specified to be explanation. — {[blue But Lipton says that explanatory considerations are merely a guide to inference. ]}
Thus, it seems that scientific realist who argue for their position on the back of an IBE-based argument cannot just reject the indispensability argument as invalid for to do so would be to put their scientific realist conclusions in jeopardy.
So what is the purpose specified in the Quine-Putnam indispensability argument? In Colyvan’s standard formulation, it is the formulation of our best scientific scientific theories. However, as I have discussed elsewhere (see On Field Scientific Theory And Practice), I believe there is at least one other purpose that needs to be considered: carrying out our best scientific practice.
—-
Various Approaches - Should first note that we don’t ever need to deal with the general, purpose-neutral indispensability argument. Undoubtedly there are going to be contexts and purposes for which one would want to accept this as a persuasive form of reasoning. What we need to deal with here rather are the two possible purposes that may be “plugged in” to form the Quine-Putnam argument and any possible relation they have to the purpose of explanation. - Generally I think the link between the purposes of Quine-Putnam and the purposes of IBE can be argued against by exploiting the fact that mathematical entities are generally considered to be causally inert coupling this with Lipton’s argument against a conception of explanation that doesn’t involve causation (see Lipton I B E Ch 2 Explanation). — So we definitely do not get Quine-Putnam as a consequence of asserting the truth of IBE-based scientific realism. — If necessary we can bring in Lipton’s point that IBE is not indispensability here. This argument might play the same role on a relatively small scale as the naturalism arguments will on a larger scale when we get to them. - Another point to note here is that Baker (online notes to come) points out that Colyvan endorses explanatory power as a theoretical virtue. So while there is not a valid move from IBE-realism to Quine-Putnam, perhaps there is a move in the opposite direction? — This is seems to be a large problem for Colyvan here, for if he does want to invoke explanatory considerations it seems that he actually wants to run a form of IBE argument himself. However, if he does, then he needs to overcome the objections of Lipton mentioned above (either that or assert that mathematical entities are not causally inert). — There is also a good point regarding Lewis and some sort of causally-based “semantic ladder” in one of Price’s papers that may come in handy here. - If I am able to show that Quine-Putnam is a form of IBE, then it is also vulnerable to the general arguments against IBE-realism. — cf. van Fraassen, Yablo, Price, Carnap
—-
Further Work - Need to unpack the “scientific theory” purpose a bit more in order to see if it actually does involve explanation. — I suspect that there is nothing that is actually indispensable to the formulation of a scientific theory, we can always find other ways of saying things (cf. Field here). Indispensabilty considerations come into only when one is concerned with scientific practice (and this is where explanatory considerations come into play).
—-