The pessimistic induction (PI) plays an important role in the contemporary realism/anti-realism debate in philosophy of science. But there is some disagreement about the structure and aim of the argument. And a number of scholars have noted that there is more than one type of PI in the philosophical literature. I review four different versions of the PI. I aim to show that PIs have been appealed to by philosophers of science for a variety of reasons. Even some realists have appealed to a PI. My goal is to advance our understanding of (1) what the various PIs can teach us about science and (2) the threat posed by PIs to scientific realism.
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K. Brad Wray (2015) studied this question.
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