Justification Of Scientific Realism By Inference To The Best Explanation

So far seventies and eighties on the twentieth century, controversy of scientific realism and anti-realism has been widely concerned by the circles of philosophy of science, many well-known philosophers have been involved in this controversy. The paper firstly has made an objective elaboration on theoretical demands of scientific realism, and then it cleaned up all kinds of models realism to research approach and made a constructive classification. Being based on the semantic level, this paper has distinguished referential realism and truth Realism, briefly examined these two types of realism to justification ways, and has asserted a position for scientific realism in the semantic level. Then the article has described three problems which were proposed by anti-realist: Pessimistic Meta-induction Thesis, Duhem-Quine Thesis and Incommensurability Thesis. On this background, the article has selected doing a justification for the referential realism, and has provided a new comprehension on reality, further has junction of referential realism and inference to the best explanation--Causal relation on the A priori approach.The second section firstly has introduced a major force --inference to the best explanation which has raised during the past ten years and which has provided a justification for scientific realism, and has focused on the best explanation reasoning version and three defense suggestion which had been provided by Lipton:Same Path, No Divide Argument, Transfer of Support Argument and Synergistic Argument. But when Lipton had been justified scientific realism, he had adopted a weaken strategy of the original inference to the best explanation due to escaping violent attack on anti-realism, therefore he had made his own trapped in a neutral philosophical position, he had would been not reached the purpose of justification. That Lipton had suffered "excessive guarding and having no method of offence and would to lose the territory of philosophy' plight. Lipton's defense approaches have been concerned a deeper problem--When the empirical philosophy approaches had been solved the basic problems of science, they had would face a problem about who will warrant scientific rationality and necessity. In fact, what Lipton had solved is a Kantian Problem:Scientific rationality is possible? This is still a new answer to Causal-Induction problem which was launched by Hume. However, as answering to this question, if someone will stand a empirical approaches position, then they will be eventually also in the mud, Mill is an example. If you intend to solve this problem, a priori philosophical approaches are relatively better choice.The third section of this paper firstly has introduced two important theoretical resources. One is the theory of World Picture or Life Form which had been proposed in Wittgenstein's later philosophy, we can see this theory as default reason of inference to the best explanation, and in fact it is often mentioned background theory in the scientific proposition system which has a regulative role for the research activities on scientific theory and theory change. Another is the current research on abductive logic, which can be seen as a technical support. Finally, paper has provided a new model of inference to the best explanation. This model has pointed out a holistic and circular evolution approach which under a priori true background theory supporting, has a function to choose new explanatory hypothesis or theory for the development of scientific theory. Scientific research, through continuous, complexity practicing access to their own background theory before we could have orderly the collection and obstinacy of observe data, then we could organize and analyze complex and more empirical data for formation of specific scientific problems; then we could try to make multiple sets of explanatory hypotheses, at this moment, we could combine our own background theory with the obtained hypothesis in order to logical reasoning, might be get some empirical data which could be public observed. Of course, if there are constantly new empirical phenomena emerge, then it is to test the explanatory power of the selected hypothesis once again, thus the hypothesis of having the strongest explanatory power is what we should choose, it is also the winner of inference to the best explanation, then it is a scientific theory. The scientific theory of proposing the best explanation could offer the successful interpretation for the phenomena in the observed field, and of which theoretical propositions containing unobservable entities or processes has been verified in the observed experiment designed, we would have no reason to believe that such a theory is not credible, and then in other words, the theoretical term of this theory should be referential and the theoretical entity or process which were contained by the theory is exists. Based on this we could say that the new inference to the best explanation has proposed supporting justification for scientific realism.