SCIENTIFIC REALISM AND METAPHYSICS

Abstract

The tendency to take scientific realism to be a richer metaphysical view than it ought to be stems from the fact that there are two ways in which we can conceive of reality. The first is to conceive of reality as comprising all facts and the other is to conceive of it as comprising all and only fundamental facts. I argue that scientific realism should be committed to the factualist view of reality and not, in the first instance, to the fundamentalist. An anti-fundamentalist conception of reality acts as a constraint on scientific realism, but it is a further and (conceptually) separate issue whether or not a scientific realist should come to adopt a fundamentalist view of reality. I argue that scientific realism is independent of physicalism and non-Humeanism and that the concept of truth is required for a sensible understanding of the metaphysical commitments of scientific realism.