The No Alternatives Argument

Convincing scientific theories are often hard to find, especially when empirical evidence is scarce (e.g., in particle physics). Once scientists have found a theory, they often believe that there are not many distinct alternatives to it. Is this belief justified? We model how the failure to find a feasible alternative can increase the degree of belief in a scientific theory—in other words, we establish the validity of the No Alternatives Argument and the possibility of non-empirical theory confirmation from a Bayesian point of view. Then we evaluate scope and limits of this argument (e.g., by calculating the degree of confirmation it provides) and relate it to other argument forms such as Inference to the Best Explanation (IBE) or “There is No Alternative” (TINA).

Psychology, Idea Technology, and Ideology

Scientific development leads to a technology of ideas–idea technology–no less than it leads to a technology of objects But idea technology can have insidious effects that the technology of objects does not First, ideas can suffuse through a culture before people notice they are there And second, ideas can have profound effects even when they are false–when they are nothing more than ideology These effects can arise because sometimes when people act on the basis of ideology, they inadvertently arrange the very conditions that bring reality into correspondence with the ideology This potential effect of ideology is discussed in connection with the behavioral psychology of Skinner and the claim by Herrnstein and Murray that intelligence is, for all practical purposes, unmodifiable I suggest that, in general, psychologists must be on the lookout for positive feedback loops between theory and practice that contribute to theory confirmation and thus mislead psychologists into interpreting historically and culturally contingent truths as universal ones