Concluding

pp. 290-361

in: Mario Bunge, Scientific research II, Berlin, Springer, 1967

Abstract

Civilized man is a conjecture making animal: he does not stop inventing and trying hypotheses and jumping to bold "conclusions' about their worth. The scientific attitude is not to forbid such jumps but to keep them under control. In this, the last chapter, we shall investigate how such a control is exerted and we shall see that it is severely limited: there are no fool-proof criteria for jumping to the right "conclusions' unless these are conclusions proper, i.e. deductive consequences of some set of premises. The problem of nondeductive scientific inference is a hard one if only because of the gap between ideas and the facts they are supposed to represent: indeed, how shall we judge whether an idea "fits' its referent? Furthermore, if the idea happens to be a hypothesis, how can we compare it with empirical evidence if the two do not share the same concepts and are consequently couched in different languages ? Even the most elementary procedures whereby we test our ideas concerning facts involve grave and hardly solved philosophical problems, such as the problem of truth and the problem of scientific inference — i.e. the problem of ascribing truth values to scientific ideas. The purpose of this chapter is to examine those procedures and to uncover the underlying philosophy.