Schindler Samuel
Stud Hist Philos Sci. 2014 Mar;45:62-9. doi: 10.1016/j.shpsa.2013.10.007.
Predictivism is the view that successful predictions of "novel" evidence carry more confirmational weight than accommodations of already known evidence. Novelty, in this context, has traditionally been conceived of as temporal novelty. However temporal predictivism has been criticized for lacking a rationale: why should the time order of theory and evidence matter? Instead, it has been proposed, novelty should be construed in terms of use-novelty, according to which evidence is novel if it was not used in the construction of a theory. Only if evidence is use-novel can it fully support the theory entailing it. As I point out in this paper, the writings of the most influential proponent of use-novelty contain a weaker and a stronger version of use-novelty. However both versions, I argue, are problematic. With regard to the appraisal of Mendeleev' periodic table, the most contentious historical case in the predictivism debate, I argue that temporal predictivism is indeed supported, although in ways not previously appreciated. On the basis of this case, I argue for a form of so-called symptomatic predictivism according to which temporally novel predictions carry more confirmational weight only insofar as they reveal the theory's presumed coherence of facts as real.
预测主义是这样一种观点，即对“新颖”证据的成功预测比容纳已知证据具有更大的确证分量。在这种背景下，新颖性传统上被理解为时间上的新颖性。然而，时间预测主义因缺乏理论依据而受到批评：为什么理论和证据的时间顺序会重要呢？相反，有人提出，新颖性应该根据使用新颖性来解释，据此，如果证据在理论构建过程中未被使用，那么它就是新颖的。只有当证据是使用新颖的，它才能充分支持蕴含它的理论。正如我在本文中指出的，使用新颖性最有影响力的支持者的著作包含了一个较弱版本和一个较强版本的使用新颖性。然而，我认为这两个版本都存在问题。关于门捷列夫元素周期表这一预测主义辩论中最具争议的历史案例的评价，我认为时间预测主义确实得到了支持，尽管是以以前未被认识到的方式。基于这个案例，我主张一种所谓的症状预测主义，根据这种观点，只有当时间上新颖的预测揭示了理论假定的事实连贯性是真实的时候，它们才具有更大的确证分量。
