On Gerard Doppelt’s Scientific Realism

The thesis of the historical-hermeneutic nature of the inter-theoretical reduction between successive theories is an important truth element of Doppelt’s Best Current Theories Realism, according to which we can draw on our best current theories to explain, in retrospect, what the outdated theories got right or wrong. But in order to defend Doppelt’s realism by continuing along this path and, at the same time, accept the element of truth contained in the No Miracle Argument, it is necessary to understand both theses from the point of view of the asymmetry between, on the one hand, the truth of past theories-which we can already ascertain from the point of view of the theories themselves-and, on the other hand, their false claims (i.e., the claims that mark the limits of the theory), which can only be justified from the point of view of the accepted theories at the present time. Both Doppelt and his critics have ignored this distinction, which expresses a kind of non-Popperian asymmetry between the confirmation and falsification of scientific theories: while confirmation does not necessarily occur with a backward glance, the discovery of falsification of earlier theories can only be discovered from the standpoint of a more recent theory and, ultimately, from the theories considered successful at the historical moment in which we find ourselves.