Contingent Causal Warrant
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Monday, 9 January 1:00 - 2:30pm
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CONTINGENCY AND DISSENT IN SCIENCE
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Methods for the Evaluation of Policy Interventions Seminar
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Mauricio Suárez
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Complutense University, Madrid
On a purely epistemic understanding of experimental realism, manipulation affords a particularly robust kind of causal warrant, which is - like any other warrant - defeasible. I look into the historically well-documented cases of phlogiston and the ether to argue that causal warrant has also been historically contingent. I conclude that a minimally epistemic version of experimental realism that places contingent and defeasible causal warrant at its core is not only coherent, but provides an adequate and plausible epistemology for science.