Hostname: page-component-cb9f654ff-hn9fh Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-08-21T18:07:23.051Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Realism versus Instrumentalism in a New Statistical Framework

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Gregory M. Mikkelson
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

In this paper, I offer a new defense of scientific realism, tailored for the Akaikean paradigm of statistical hypothesis testing. After proposing definitions of verisimilitude and predictive success, I use computer simulations to show how the latter depends on the former, even in the kind of case featured in a recent argument for instrumentalism.

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 73 , Issue 4 , October 2006 , pp. 440 - 447
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

Footnotes

‡

Thanks to Mario Bunge, Malcolm Forster, Guido Marziali, Storrs McCall, Jeff Mikkelson, Jay Odenbaugh, Andrew Reisner, Elliott Sober, and two anonymous referees for helpful feedback on this paper.

References

Darwin, Charles (1859), On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection. London: John Murray.Google Scholar
Forster, Malcolm, and Sober, Elliott (1994), “How to Tell When Simpler, More Unified, or Less Ad Hoc Theories Will Provide More Accurate Predictions,” British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 45:1–35.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Griffiths, Thomas, and Klingener, David (1988), “On the Distribution of Greater Antillean Bats,” Biotropica 20:240–251.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hitchcock, Christopher, and Sober, Elliott (2004), “Prediction vs. Accommodation and the Risk of Overfitting,” British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 55:1–34.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Musgrave, Alan (1985), “Realism versus Constructive Empiricism,” in Churchland, Paul and Hooker, Clifford (eds.), Images of Science: Essays on Realism and Empiricism, with a Reply from Bas C. van Fraassen. Chicago: University of Chicago, 197–221.Google Scholar
Newton, Isaac ([1687] 1995), The Principia. Amherst: Prometheus.Google Scholar
Rosenzweig, Michael (1995), Species Diversity in Space and Time. New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sober, Elliott (1999), “Instrumentalism Revisited,” Critica 31:3–38.Google Scholar
Sober, Elliott (2002), “Instrumentalism, Parsimony, and the Akaike Framework,” Philosophy of Science 69:S112–S123.CrossRefGoogle Scholar