Alan Musgrave

Alan Musgrave (born c.1940) is a New Zealand Philosopher. He was the Chair of the Philosophy Department at the University of Otago from 1970 to 2005. [cite web|url=http://www.otago.ac.nz/philosophy/Staff/alan_musgrave.html|title=Otago Philosophy - Alan Musgrave|publisher=University of Otago|accessdate=2008-06-30]

His chief interest is in Epistemology (Theory of Knowledge), History and Philosophy of Science, especially the Philosophy of Biology. The largest part of his career has been dedicated to the study of Charles Darwin. Throughout his career he has defended scientific realism and scientific rationalism, and it often considered their chief contemporary defender. Metaphysically speaking, Musgrave can be considered a nominalist; he argues for a position he specifically calls Pleonastic Platonism. This position basically claims that confusions within our language gives rise to Platonic entities. Pleonastic is a term with Greek roots meaning "excessive". Many of his works exhibit influence from Sir Karl Popper - his teacher as an undergraduate and postgraduate at the London School of Economics. He also shared an office with fellow philosopher Imre Lakatos while he was in London.

His form of Rationalism is subject, he admits, to circularity; but, he insists, it is better (even if only slightly better) than Poppers' Rationalism, which admits to irrationalism. However, his form of Scientific Realism is much stronger. His position does not assert that science is correct, only that we may reasonably accept certain parts of it to be correct. Electrons, for example, may not exist; but that does not mean we should not believe in them. His main criterion for believing in a scientific theory is that it generates 'novel predictions.' He is one of the few philosophers of science, on either side of the debate, to stress the distinction between novel predictions and regular predictions. A novel prediction is one that was not used in the construction of a theory, but that nevertheless follows from it. If a scientific theory makes an accurate prediction about something unknown (as opposed to a known regularity), then the theory must either be true, or the accurate 'novel' prediction was miraculously guessed. This argument had previously been applied to all scientific predictions, by many philosophers of science (the most famous, perhaps, being Hillary Putman, who coined the phrase 'Realism is the only philosophy that doesn't make science a miracle'); but Professor Musgrave is in a smaller group by stressing that the argument can only succeed if applied solely to novel predictions.

Because he makes a distinction about knowing for certain that a theory is right, and reasonably believing that a theory is right, he evades many classical objections to Realism. He stresses the distinction between the two types of arguments below:

A Variant of Traditional Realism

# If a scientific theory 'X' generates novel predictions, then theory 'X' is true.
# Scientific theory 'X' generates novel predictions.
#Therefore, scientific theory 'X' is true.

and...

Musgrave's Realism

# If a scientific theory 'X' generates novel predictions, then it is reasonable to believe that theory 'X' is true.
# Scientific theory 'X' generates novel predictions.
# Therefore, it is reasonable to believe that scientific theory 'X' is true.

In the latter argument, though premise 1) is still controversial, it is considerably less so than premise 1) of the former argument. He argues for the latter premises 1) with such things as the Miracle Argument and novel predictions (above). In this way, he does away with many sceptical objections about Realism: he is no more wrong to believe in a theory's truth than an Instrumentalist is to believe in a theory's usefulness. Both philosophers have the same chance of being wrong; and, with Scientific Realism, Musgrave also receives an explanation of events that the Instrumentalist does not have. He often says "Instrumentalists say the name of the game is 'saving the phenomena,'" but he sees no reason that it should not be 'explaining the phenomena.' And, with his version of Scientific Realism, he can have explanation without losing anything to the Instrumentalist. One reply is that his position is self-contratictory, that "Musgrave realism" depends on an observer to believe 'X' and therefore idealist or instrumental. This, however, confuses his position, as no-one is required to believe 'X' in order for it to be reasonable for that person to believe 'X'. Also, even if a person were required to believe 'X' in order for it to be reasonable to believe 'X,' it would not follow that the truth of 'X' is dependent on that belief, which is what would be required for it to be idealist.Musgrave's arguments are presented in his book 'Essays on Realism and Rationalism,' in which he also attacks the most prominent Anti-Realist views, including those of Nancy Cartwright and those of Bas Van Fraassen.

References