Anti-realist Position Research Articles

Deconstruction, Anti–Realism and Philosophy of Science—an interview with Christopher Norris

In this interview, Christopher Norris discusses a wide range of issues having to do with postmodernism, deconstruction and other controversial topics of debate within present–day philosophy and critical theory. More specifically he challenges the view of deconstruction as just another offshoot of the broader postmodernist trend in cultural studies and the social sciences. Norris puts the case for deconstruction as continuing the ‘unfinished project of modernity’ and—in particular—for Derrida’s work as sustaining the values of enlightened critical reason in various spheres of thought from epistemology to ethics, sociology and politics. Along the way he addresses a number of questions that have lately been raised with particular urgency for teachers and educationalists, among them the revival of creationist doctrine and the idea of scientific knowledge as a social, cultural, or discursive construct. In this context he addresses the ‘science wars’ or the debate between those who uphold the values of scientific reason, progress and truth, and those (like the ‘strong’ sociologists of knowledge) who would reject such values as merely the expression of a dominant ideological consensus. Norris also discusses the emergence of anti–realism as a strongly marked trend within recent analytic philosophy, one that denies the existence of objective (‘recognition–transcendent’) truths in mathematics, the physical sciences, history and other disciplines. Thus statements are thought of as possessing a truth–value just insofar as we possess some adequate proof–procedure or some means of finding them out through empirical or other methods of enquiry. Norris offers a range of arguments against this anti–realist position and brings out its convergence with various postmodernist lines of thought. Through a running commentary on Derrida’s work in relation to these developments he shows how deconstruction has been misconstrued by sociologists, cultural critics and educational theorists whose understanding has often been based on a limited acquaintance with the primary texts. Above all Norris calls for a renewed engagement with the philosophic discourse of modernity and a willingness to challenge postmodern scepticism and value–relativism in a spirit of open–minded critical debate.

Fictionalism about Fictional Characters

Despite protestations to the contrary, philosophers have always been renowned for espousing theories that do violence to common-sense opinion. In the last twenty years or so there has been a growing number of philosophers keen to follow in this tradition. According to these philosophers, if a story of pure fiction tells us that an individual exists, then there really is such an individual. According to these realists about fictional characters, 'Scarlett O'Hara,' 'Charlie Brown,' 'Batman,' 'Superman,' 'Tweedledum' and 'Tweedledee' are not denotationless terms, but names that really refer. What is truly surprising about this situation is that almost no one has inveighed against this unfortunate realist tendency. My aim here will be to challenge this new orthodoxy, and to defend an anti-realist position against the arguments proffered by the realist.

Confirmation theory and indispensability

In this paper I examine Quine's indispensability argument, with particular emphasis on what is meant by 'indispensable'. I show that confirmation theory plays a crucial role in answering this question and that once indispensability is understood in this light, Quine's argument is seen to be a serious stumbling block for any scientific realist wishing to maintain an anti-realist position with regard to mathematical entities.

Agnosticism meets Bayesianism

As a result, your credal state cannot really be modeled by a single probability function at all. A better model is provided by a set of such probability functions - what van Fraassen (1990) has called a representor. Each function in your representor agrees with your opinion as far as it goes, but then goes further, precisifying that opinion in some permissible way. (This can be thought of as analogous to the supervaluational approach to vagueness.) According to van Fraassen, your explicit judgments determine which precisifications get admitted into your representor. For example, if you judge that the Democrats are at least as likely to win as not, then for each probability function p that gives 0.5 < p(Democrats win) < 1, and that is consistent with all your other such judgments, p is in your representor. In his highly influential Laws and Symmetry, van Fraassen advocates (a version of) Bayesianism, and also constructive empiricism, an anti-realist position regarding scientific theories according to which 'acceptance of a theory [that postulates unobservables] involves a certain amount of agnosticism, or suspension of belief' (1989: 193). He is thus naturally led to ask whether Bayesianism has the resources to represent agnosticism, and he argues that it does. More than that, he gives an analysis:1 agnosticism is 1 He does not explicitly say that he is giving an analysis of agnosticism, nor explicitly state the analysis, but it is apparent from context that this is exactly what he has in mind. Furthermore, van Fraassen agrees that this is indeed the case (personal

Reconciling Discursive and Materialist Perspectives on Health and Illness

This paper examines the feasibility of developing `material-discursive' approaches suitable for studying the reciprocal interactions between the sociolinguistic and physical aspects of health and illness. The term `discursive' is used in the broadest possible sense, to refer to a mode of description characterized by awareness of the socially constructed and linguistically mediated nature of human experience. Similarly, the term `material' is extended to embrace any non-reductionist account of physical being which appears compatible with a discursive outlook. The obstacles to a material-discursive approach are discussed, with particular reference to the debate between researchers who conduct traditional quantitative and experimental research within the `biopsychosocial' framework and those who advocate a radical anti-realist position and qualitative research. A variety of material-discursive perspectives are explored, ranging from consideration of the physical origins and manifestations of linguistic meaning and socio-cultural processes, to analysis of the consonance between social constructionism, phenomenology and James Gibson's ecological psychology.