Inferência da única explicação e eliminação de hipóteses: Uma abordagem pragmática

Abstract

Among several debates in philosophy of science one of them concerns the status of eliminated hypotheses in theory choice processes. On the one hand, there is what is called inference to the only explanation, argued for by the realist philosopher Alexander Bird: when a theory choice that seek to explain an evidence takes a place, the best one is selected and, as the others were refuted, we have only one explanation of this evidence. On the other hand, anti-realist philosopher Kyle Stanford understands that in cases of theory choice, it is possible to eliminate some hypotheses in a premature way, so that some hypotheses would have been disregarded by the scientific community. Both proposals are exclusively epistemological; that is, they deal only with the relationship between hypotheses and empirical evidence. However, cases of theory choice can also be dealt with from a pragmatic approach, which takes into account not only the relationship between hypotheses and empirical evidence, but also the dynamics of the scientific community in which the only explanation is selected, and some hypotheses are eliminated.