SCIENTIFIC REALISM AND THE ARGUMENT OF UNDERCONSIDERATION

Abstract

According to the realist philosopher Peter Lipton, scientists, while are developing hypotheses, not taking into account all possible alternatives for the explanation of a phenomenon. His ideia gave rise to a problem called the subconsideration argument: if not all possible hypotheses were developed, it could not be said that the hypothesis chosen as the best explanation of a phenomenon could be a true one. Lipton's reply was that the alternatives that were not considered collided with background knowledge, and this explains why they were not considered; that is: there is a difficulty in producing alternatives that is normal of science itself. Besides, for Lipton, the theory that emerges from the competition of alternatives can be considered the best explanation of a phenomenon and then scientific realism is the philosophical conception suitable to deal with disputes between hypotheses and also it is closest to scientific practice. The purpose of this paper is to show that the relationship established by Lipton between the difficulty of producing hypotheses and scientific realism isn’t a necessary relationship, since there are other conceptions (such as Larry Laudan’s conception of anomalous problems) that, despite to acknowledge the restriction in the production of hypotheses, cannot be considered realistic.