Atelier LAGON (Rennes) – Chrysi Malouchou Kanellopoulou

Le laboratoire de recherche CAPHI (site de Rennes) annonce la tenue d’une conférence de Chrysi Malouchou Kanellopoulou (Post-doctorante, UFR de Philosophie à l’Université de Rennes), dans le cadre de l’atelier LAGON (Langage et Ontologie):

Countering pessimism: from traditional realist approaches to consensus
le vendredi 26 juin de 16H00 à 17H30 en salle Ortigues (Bâtiment 32B, Campus Beaulieu à Rennes)

Abstract :
The history of science is the source of longstanding pessimistic worries regarding the (at least approximate) truth of our present scientific theories, as there are countless examples of past theories that were empirically successful but that were later abandoned and are now considered false. Won’t our present scientific beliefs undergo the same fate? How could we know? In the traditional scientific realism debate, this question is typically answered by investigating into the kinds of empirical successes that could be sufficient to warrant belief in the (at least approximate) truth of a theory (or of some of its parts). But this traditional way of responding to the pessimistic challenge from the history of science has recently come under attack, on several fronts. In light of the limitations of the traditional realist approach, Vickers (2023) suggests an alternative strategy to tackle the pessimistic challenge from the history of science. He argues that we can know that a scientific claim is true and future-proof (that is, will remain in science forever), if there is a strong international scientific consensus on this claim. In this talk, I will attempt to answer the following questions: can Vickers’ consensus-based approach effectively dismantle the pessimistic worries? If so, what is the remaining utility of the traditional realist approaches in countering pessimism?

Le LAGON, historiquement, entend être un lieu d’échange et de discussion des problématiques les plus actuelles dans les différents domaines de la philosophie analytique (logique, philosophie des sciences, du langage, de l’esprit, métaphysique).

Contact : antonios.papaioannou@univ-rennes.fr