Articulating Invariantism

Abstract Building on Nozick’s (2001) work, I provided a novel invariantist account of scientific objectivity: the Counterfactual Independence Account (Reutlinger 2024). Despite its virtues, this account needs to be articulated in a more nuanced manner – regarding its scope, content, and consequences. My goal in this paper is to develop such a more articulated and improved version of the Counterfactual Independence Account in two steps. First, I will discuss two instructive dissonances between Nozick’s version of invariantism and the Counterfactual Independence Account – dissonances concerning what concept of objectivity is addressed and how the key notion of invariance is characterized. Second, I will develop an argument for the claim that (epistemic) objectivity plays a productive role in scientific inference or, more precisely, that objective evidence is, in a sense to be specified, more evidence.