Pluralism and perspectivism

Abstract

AbstractThis chapter is dedicated to scientific pluralism. First, it deals with the risk of metaphysical inconsistency that some have seen as looming in the pluralist stance. Second, it reviews the role that perspectivism has been assigned so far in this literature on scientific pluralism, and its associated promises and problems. What kind of pluralism is at stake in the view known as scientific perspectivism? Section 3.1 charts the territory of contemporary versions of scientific pluralism. Section 3.2 discusses Kellert, Longino, and Waters’s ‘pluralist stance’ and the problem of inconsistent models associated with it. Two main varieties of scientific perspectivism and their respective arguments are presented in Section 3.3: Giere’s epistemological argument and Rueger–Teller’s methodological argument. The chapter analyses three perspectival answers to the problem of inconsistent models in Section 3.4. Their respective promises are assessed in Section 3.5 vis-à-vis some pressing objections raised by Morrison and Chakravartty. The chapter ends with Section 3.6, which lays out an argument for the problem of inconsistent models and deflates some of the premises behind this argument. It will be the task of the following chapters to offer a substantial positive role for perspectival pluralism in scientific modelling and associated knowledge production.