Understanding scientific progress: the noetic account

Abstract

What is scientific progress? This paper advances an interpretation of this question, and an account that serves to answer it (thus interpreted). Roughly, the question is here understood to concern what type of cognitive change with respect to a topic X constitutes a scientific improvement (to a greater or lesser extent) with respect to X. The answer explored in the paper is that the requisite type of cognitive change occurs when scientific results are made publicly available so as to make it possible for anyone to increase their understanding of X. This account is briefly compared to two rival accounts of scientific progress, based respectively on increasing truthlikeness and accumulating knowledge, and is argued to be preferable to both.

Scientific Progress and Idealisation

“…Making progress researching cancer causes consists in obtaining a better understanding of them. 14 This account has been developed by Dellsén (2016Dellsén ( , 2018bDellsén ( , 2021) (see also Bangu, 2015).…”

“…To solve it, he adopts the non-difference maker view of idealisations developed by Strevens (2008Strevens ( , 2013Strevens ( , 2017. According to it, idealisations are compatible with factive reasoning as long as they "[...] indicate that certain factors make no difference to the phenomenon to be explained [...]" (Strevens 2017, 37)-or as Dellsén (2021) puts it, point to the absence of a dependence relation. For instance, assuming that a population can be arbitrarily large indicates that the precise population size is not explanatorily relevant.…”

The unexamined philosophy is not worth doing: An introduction to New Directions in Metaphilosophy

“…Sceptics often contrast philosophy with science. Few would doubt that science has in general been progressing for the past few centuries, though it is still under debate whether scientific progress should be characterised as accumulation of knowledge (Bird 2007), approximation of truth (Niiniluoto 2014), increased usefulness of practice (Shan 2019), or better understanding (Dellsén 2021). By contrast, it is not an easy task to defend the view that philosophy has progressed greatly.…”

“…whether scientific progress should be characterised as accumulation of knowledge (Bird 2007), approximation of truth (Niiniluoto 2014), increased usefulness of practice (Shan 2019), or better understanding (Dellsén 2021). By contrast, it is not an easy task to defend the view that philosophy has progressed greatly.…”

Thinking about Progress: From Science to Philosophy

“…A fourth and final account of scientific progress is the noetic account developed by Dellsén (2016, 2018a, forthcoming; 2015; Goebel, 2019; Potochnik, 2017). According to this account, making scientific progress with regard to some phenomenon amounts to gaining or improving our abilities to correctly explain or predict it.…”