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The argument from surprise

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Adrian Currie
Adrian Currie*
Affiliation:
CSER & CRASSH, Cambridge, UK
*
E-mail: [email protected]
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Abstract

I develop an account of productive surprise as an epistemic virtue of scientific investigations which does not turn on psychology alone. On my account, a scientific investigation is potentially productively surprising when (1) results can conflict with epistemic expectations, (2) those expectations pertain to a wide set of subjects. I argue that there are two sources of such surprise in science. One source, often identified with experiments, involves bringing our theoretical ideas in contact with new empirical observations. Another, often identified with simulations, involves articulating and bringing together different parts of our knowledge. Both experiments and simulations, then, can surprise.

Keywords

Simulationmodelsurpriseexperiment
Type
Articles
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 48 , Issue 5 , 2018 , pp. 639 - 661
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. 2018

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