Can Scientific Theories be Warranted?
Paper Deborah Mayo aims to give an account of scientific knowledge which captures the way in which it can be warranted by appeal to the results of severe experimental tests. Her notion of a severe test is a very demanding one. An hypothesis passes a severe test only if it fits the result of that test and would have a low probability of passing the test if it were false. Inferences to severely tested hypotheses have a low probability of being erroneous. The demand that hypotheses be warranted by the results of severe tests that conform to Mayo’s construal of them is a very stringent one. Nevertheless, she insists that experimental practice has the resources to meet the demand in a way that enables scientific hypotheses to be defended from skeptical challenges stemmimg from the underdetermination of theories by evidence, the theory-dependence of experiment and the incommensurability of rival theories. This paper casts doubt on the assumption that scientific theories that are an indispens
