Department of Philosophy, University of Haifa, Israel; The Interdisciplinary Center (IDC) Herzliya, Israel.
Stud Hist Philos Sci. 2021 Aug;88:41-49. doi: 10.1016/j.shpsa.2021.05.002. Epub 2021 May 23.
This paper analyzes the experiment presented in 2019 by the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) Collaboration that unveiled the first image of the supermassive black hole at the center of galaxy M87. The intended aim of the paper is to assess whether the EHT Collaboration has made an "inference to the best explanation" (IBE) to conclude that the data effectively confirm the hypothesis that the object at the center of M87 is in fact a supermassive Kerr rotating black hole. I demonstrate that the EHT Collaboration has applied an IBE. It is shown that the hypothesis that at the center of M87 there is a supermassive Kerr rotating black hole was already the best explanation at the time in which the 2017 EHT experiment was conducted. My analysis is intertwined with considerations on realist and empiricist interpretations of IBE, which are used to assess whether the conclusion that the object at the center of M87 is a Kerr rotating black hole implies holding a realist commitment with respect to such object.
本文分析了 2019 年事件视界望远镜（EHT）合作组织所进行的实验，该实验揭示了星系 M87 中心超大质量黑洞的首张图像。本文的目的是评估 EHT 合作组织是否进行了“最佳解释推断”（IBE），以得出结论，即数据有效地证实了该假设，即 M87 中心的物体实际上是一个超大质量 Kerr 旋转黑洞。我证明了 EHT 合作组织已经应用了 IBE。结果表明，在 2017 年进行 EHT 实验时，M87 中心存在超大质量 Kerr 旋转黑洞的假设已经是最佳解释。我的分析与 IBE 的现实主义和经验主义解释交织在一起，这些解释用于评估 M87 中心物体是 Kerr 旋转黑洞的结论是否意味着对该物体持有现实主义承诺。
