P Kyle Stanford
Biographic Data
| ID | 1130860 |
|---|---|
| NAME | P Kyle Stanford |
| GIVEN NAMES | P Kyle |
| FAMILY NAME | Stanford |
| SIGNATURE | STANFORD P K |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of California, Irvine |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-2018-8576 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 16 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 78 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 16 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1995 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 6 |
‘…Or what’s a heaven for?’
The problem of unconceived alternatives poses a challenge to believing even our most successful scientific theories. Such theories are typically accepted because they explain the available evidence better than any known rival, but such ‘inference to the best explanation’ cannot reliably guide us to the truth unless the truth is among the set of possibilities we have considered. The problem of unconceived alternatives suggests that we have compell…
Unconceived alternatives and conservatism in science
Bending toward Justice
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
No Child Left Alone
In recent decades, Americans have adopted a parenting norm in which every child is expected to be under constant direct adult supervision. Parents who violate this norm by allowing their children to be alone, even for short periods of time, often face harsh criticism and even legal action. This is true despite the fact that children are much more likely to be hurt, for example, in car accidents. Why then do bystanders call 911 when they see child…
Catastrophism, Uniformitarianism, and a Scientific Realism Debate That Makes a Difference
Some scientific realists suggest that scientific communities have improved in their ability to discover alternative theoretical possibilities and that the problem of unconceived alternatives therefore poses a less significant threat to contemporary scientific communities than it did to their historical predecessors. I first argue that the most profound and fundamental historical transformations of the scientific enterprise have actually increased…
Deus Ex Machina
In this paper we critically examine and seek to extend Philip Kitcher’s Ethical Project to weave together a distinctive naturalistic conception of how ethics came to occupy the place it does in our lives and how the existing ethical project should be revised and extended into the future. Although we endorse his insight that ethical progress is better conceived of as the improvement of an existing state than an incremental approach towards a fixed…
Damn the Consequences
I contrast our own evidence for the hypothesis of organic fossil origins with that available in previous centuries, suggesting that the most powerful contemporary evidence consists in a form of projective support whose distinctive features are not well captured by familiar hypothetico-deductive, abductive, or even more recent and more technically sophisticated (e.g., Bayesian) accounts of scientific confirmation. I suggest that such accounts eith…
Grasping At Realist Straws
Scientific Realism, the Atomic Theory, and the Catch-All Hypothesis
Sherri Roush ([2005]) and I ([2001], [2006]) have each argued independently that the most significant challenge to scientific realism arises from our inability to consider the full range of serious alternatives to a given hypothesis we seek to test, but we diverge significantly concerning the range of cases in which this problem becomes acute. Here I argue against Roush's further suggestion that the atomic hypothesis represents a case in which sc…
Exceeding Our Grasp
The incredible achievements of modern scientific theories lead most of us to embrace scientific realism: the view that our best theories offer us at least roughly accurate descriptions of otherwise inaccessible parts of the world like genes, atoms, and the big bang. This book argues that careful attention to the history of scientific investigation invites a challenge to this view that is not well represented in contemporary debates about the natu…
Darwin's Pangenesis and the Problem of Unconceived Alternatives
In earlier work I have argued that the most substantial threat to scientific realism arises from the problem of unconceived alternatives: the repeated failure of past scientists and scientific communities to conceive of alternatives to extant scientific theories, even when such alternatives were both (1) well confirmed by the evidence available at the time and (2) sufficiently scientifically serious as to be later embraced by actual scientific co…
No Refuge for Realism
Realists have responded to challenges from the historical record of successful but ultimately rejected theories with what I call the selective confirmation strategy: arguing that only idle parts of past theories have been rejected, while truly success-generating features have been confirmed by further inquiry. I argue first, that this strategy is unconvincing without some prospectively applicable criterion of idleness for theoretical posits, and …
The Manifest Connection
exciting recent hume scholarship has challenged the traditional view that Hume's theory of meaning leads him to deny the very intelligibility or coherence of supposing that there are objective causal powers or intrinsic necessary connections between causally related entities. Influential recent interpretations have variously held that Hume himself accepted the existence of such powers and connections, that he was genuinely agnostic about them, or…
Refusing the Devil's Bargain
Advocates have sought to prove that underdetermination obtains because all theories have empirical equivalents. But algorithms for generating empirical equivalents simply exchange underdetermination for familiar philosophical chestnuts, while the few convincing examples of empirical equivalents will not support the desired sweeping conclusions. Nonetheless, underdetermination does not depend on empirical equivalents: our warrant for current theor…
An Antirealist Explanation of the Success of Science
I develop an account of predictive similarity that allows even Antirealists who accept a correspondence conception of truth to answer the Realist demand (recently given sophisticated reformulations by Musgrave and Leplin) to explain the success of particular scientific theories by appeal to some intrinsic feature of those theories (notwithstanding the failure of past efforts by van Fraassen, Fine, and Laudan). I conclude by arguing that we have n…
For Pluralism and Against Realism About Species
I argue for accepting a pluralist approach to species, while rejecting the realism about species espoused by P. Kitcher and a number of other philosophers of biology. I develop an alternative view of species concepts as divisions of organisms into groups for study which are relative to the systematic explanatory interests of biologists at a particular time. I also show how this conception resolves a number of difficult puzzles which plague the ap…
Refusing the Devil's Bargain
Advocates have sought to prove that underdetermination obtains because all theories have empirical equivalents. But algorithms for generating empirical equivalents simply exchange underdetermination for familiar philosophical chestnuts, while the few convincing examples of empirical equivalents will not support the desired sweeping conclusions. Nonetheless, underdetermination does not depend on empirical equivalents: our warrant for current theor…
No Refuge for Realism
Realists have responded to challenges from the historical record of successful but ultimately rejected theories with what I call the selective confirmation strategy: arguing that only idle parts of past theories have been rejected, while truly success-generating features have been confirmed by further inquiry. I argue first, that this strategy is unconvincing without some prospectively applicable criterion of idleness for theoretical posits, and …
An Antirealist Explanation of the Success of Science
I develop an account of predictive similarity that allows even Antirealists who accept a correspondence conception of truth to answer the Realist demand (recently given sophisticated reformulations by Musgrave and Leplin) to explain the success of particular scientific theories by appeal to some intrinsic feature of those theories (notwithstanding the failure of past efforts by van Fraassen, Fine, and Laudan). I conclude by arguing that we have n…
For Pluralism and Against Realism About Species
I argue for accepting a pluralist approach to species, while rejecting the realism about species espoused by P. Kitcher and a number of other philosophers of biology. I develop an alternative view of species concepts as divisions of organisms into groups for study which are relative to the systematic explanatory interests of biologists at a particular time. I also show how this conception resolves a number of difficult puzzles which plague the ap…
Damn the Consequences
I contrast our own evidence for the hypothesis of organic fossil origins with that available in previous centuries, suggesting that the most powerful contemporary evidence consists in a form of projective support whose distinctive features are not well captured by familiar hypothetico-deductive, abductive, or even more recent and more technically sophisticated (e.g., Bayesian) accounts of scientific confirmation. I suggest that such accounts eith…
Scientific Realism, the Atomic Theory, and the Catch-All Hypothesis
Sherri Roush ([2005]) and I ([2001], [2006]) have each argued independently that the most significant challenge to scientific realism arises from our inability to consider the full range of serious alternatives to a given hypothesis we seek to test, but we diverge significantly concerning the range of cases in which this problem becomes acute. Here I argue against Roush's further suggestion that the atomic hypothesis represents a case in which sc…
Catastrophism, Uniformitarianism, and a Scientific Realism Debate That Makes a Difference
Some scientific realists suggest that scientific communities have improved in their ability to discover alternative theoretical possibilities and that the problem of unconceived alternatives therefore poses a less significant threat to contemporary scientific communities than it did to their historical predecessors. I first argue that the most profound and fundamental historical transformations of the scientific enterprise have actually increased…
The Manifest Connection
exciting recent hume scholarship has challenged the traditional view that Hume's theory of meaning leads him to deny the very intelligibility or coherence of supposing that there are objective causal powers or intrinsic necessary connections between causally related entities. Influential recent interpretations have variously held that Hume himself accepted the existence of such powers and connections, that he was genuinely agnostic about them, or…
Darwin's Pangenesis and the Problem of Unconceived Alternatives
In earlier work I have argued that the most substantial threat to scientific realism arises from the problem of unconceived alternatives: the repeated failure of past scientists and scientific communities to conceive of alternatives to extant scientific theories, even when such alternatives were both (1) well confirmed by the evidence available at the time and (2) sufficiently scientifically serious as to be later embraced by actual scientific co…
For Pluralism and Against Realism About Species
I argue for accepting a pluralist approach to species, while rejecting the realism about species espoused by P. Kitcher and a number of other philosophers of biology. I develop an alternative view of species concepts as divisions of organisms into groups for study which are relative to the systematic explanatory interests of biologists at a particular time. I also show how this conception resolves a number of difficult puzzles which plague the ap…
An Antirealist Explanation of the Success of Science
I develop an account of predictive similarity that allows even Antirealists who accept a correspondence conception of truth to answer the Realist demand (recently given sophisticated reformulations by Musgrave and Leplin) to explain the success of particular scientific theories by appeal to some intrinsic feature of those theories (notwithstanding the failure of past efforts by van Fraassen, Fine, and Laudan). I conclude by arguing that we have n…
Refusing the Devil's Bargain
Advocates have sought to prove that underdetermination obtains because all theories have empirical equivalents. But algorithms for generating empirical equivalents simply exchange underdetermination for familiar philosophical chestnuts, while the few convincing examples of empirical equivalents will not support the desired sweeping conclusions. Nonetheless, underdetermination does not depend on empirical equivalents: our warrant for current theor…
The Manifest Connection
exciting recent hume scholarship has challenged the traditional view that Hume's theory of meaning leads him to deny the very intelligibility or coherence of supposing that there are objective causal powers or intrinsic necessary connections between causally related entities. Influential recent interpretations have variously held that Hume himself accepted the existence of such powers and connections, that he was genuinely agnostic about them, or…
No Refuge for Realism
Realists have responded to challenges from the historical record of successful but ultimately rejected theories with what I call the selective confirmation strategy: arguing that only idle parts of past theories have been rejected, while truly success-generating features have been confirmed by further inquiry. I argue first, that this strategy is unconvincing without some prospectively applicable criterion of idleness for theoretical posits, and …
Exceeding Our Grasp
The incredible achievements of modern scientific theories lead most of us to embrace scientific realism: the view that our best theories offer us at least roughly accurate descriptions of otherwise inaccessible parts of the world like genes, atoms, and the big bang. This book argues that careful attention to the history of scientific investigation invites a challenge to this view that is not well represented in contemporary debates about the natu…
Darwin's Pangenesis and the Problem of Unconceived Alternatives
In earlier work I have argued that the most substantial threat to scientific realism arises from the problem of unconceived alternatives: the repeated failure of past scientists and scientific communities to conceive of alternatives to extant scientific theories, even when such alternatives were both (1) well confirmed by the evidence available at the time and (2) sufficiently scientifically serious as to be later embraced by actual scientific co…
Grasping At Realist Straws
Scientific Realism, the Atomic Theory, and the Catch-All Hypothesis
Sherri Roush ([2005]) and I ([2001], [2006]) have each argued independently that the most significant challenge to scientific realism arises from our inability to consider the full range of serious alternatives to a given hypothesis we seek to test, but we diverge significantly concerning the range of cases in which this problem becomes acute. Here I argue against Roush's further suggestion that the atomic hypothesis represents a case in which sc…
Damn the Consequences
I contrast our own evidence for the hypothesis of organic fossil origins with that available in previous centuries, suggesting that the most powerful contemporary evidence consists in a form of projective support whose distinctive features are not well captured by familiar hypothetico-deductive, abductive, or even more recent and more technically sophisticated (e.g., Bayesian) accounts of scientific confirmation. I suggest that such accounts eith…
Deus Ex Machina
In this paper we critically examine and seek to extend Philip Kitcher’s Ethical Project to weave together a distinctive naturalistic conception of how ethics came to occupy the place it does in our lives and how the existing ethical project should be revised and extended into the future. Although we endorse his insight that ethical progress is better conceived of as the improvement of an existing state than an incremental approach towards a fixed…
Catastrophism, Uniformitarianism, and a Scientific Realism Debate That Makes a Difference
Some scientific realists suggest that scientific communities have improved in their ability to discover alternative theoretical possibilities and that the problem of unconceived alternatives therefore poses a less significant threat to contemporary scientific communities than it did to their historical predecessors. I first argue that the most profound and fundamental historical transformations of the scientific enterprise have actually increased…
No Child Left Alone
In recent decades, Americans have adopted a parenting norm in which every child is expected to be under constant direct adult supervision. Parents who violate this norm by allowing their children to be alone, even for short periods of time, often face harsh criticism and even legal action. This is true despite the fact that children are much more likely to be hurt, for example, in car accidents. Why then do bystanders call 911 when they see child…
Bending toward Justice
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Unconceived alternatives and conservatism in science
‘…Or what’s a heaven for?’
The problem of unconceived alternatives poses a challenge to believing even our most successful scientific theories. Such theories are typically accepted because they explain the available evidence better than any known rival, but such ‘inference to the best explanation’ cannot reliably guide us to the truth unless the truth is among the set of possibilities we have considered. The problem of unconceived alternatives suggests that we have compell…
Epistemology (13 works) · Philosophy (12 works) · Philosophy and History of Science (11 works) · Sociology (8 works) · Computer Science (7 works) · Law (7 works) · Political science (7 works) · Philosophy of science (6 works) · Realism (6 works) · Science and Climate Studies (4 works)