Schoonen Tom
Centre for Advanced Studies in Humanities "Human Abilities", Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Charlottestraße 81, 10969 Berlin, Germany.
Synthese. 2022;200(1):39. doi: 10.1007/s11229-022-03488-2. Epub 2022 Feb 24.
Recently, interest has surged in similarity-based epistemologies of possibility. However, it has been pointed out that the notion of 'relevant similarity' is not properly developed in this literature. In this paper, I look at the research done in the field of analogical reasoning, where we find that one of the most promising ways of capturing relevance in similarity reasoning is by relying on the predictive analogy similarity relation. This takes relevant similarity to be based on shared properties that have structural relations to the property of interest. I argue that if we base our epistemology of possibility on similarity reasoning on the predictive analogy similarity relation, we require prior knowledge of the specifics of these structural relations. I discuss a number of possible responses to this on behalf of the similarity theorists given their methodological approach to the epistemology of modality more generally. They could either opt for making explicit the metaphysics underlying these structural relations, in which case they need to spell out how we can come to know these relations. Or they could opt for developing a theory that explains why we do not need to have explicit knowledge of these structural relations; for example by suggesting that we make use of epistemic shortcuts.
最近，基于相似性的可能性认识论受到了广泛关注。然而，有人指出，“相关相似性”的概念在该文献中并未得到充分发展。在本文中，我考察了类比推理领域的研究，我们发现，在相似性推理中捕捉相关性最有前景的方法之一是依赖预测性类比相似关系。这使得相关相似性基于与感兴趣的属性具有结构关系的共享属性。我认为，如果我们基于预测性类比相似关系的相似性推理来构建可能性认识论，我们需要事先了解这些结构关系的具体情况。考虑到相似性理论家对模态认识论更一般的方法论方法，我代表他们讨论了一些可能的回应。他们可以选择明确这些结构关系背后的形而上学，在这种情况下，他们需要阐明我们如何能够了解这些关系。或者他们可以选择发展一种理论，解释为什么我们不需要明确了解这些结构关系；例如，通过暗示我们利用认知捷径。
