Version Of Scientific Realism Research Articles

Whence Deep Realism for Everettian Quantum Mechanics?

`Shallow' and `deep' versions of scientific realism may be distinguished as follows: the shallow realist is satisfied with belief in the existence of the posits of our best scientific theories; by contrast, deep realists claim that realism can be legitimate only if such entities are described in metaphysical terms. We argue that this methodological discussion can be fruitfully applied in Everettian quantum mechanics, specifically on the debate concerning the existence of worlds and the recent dispute between Everettian actualism and quantum modal realism. After presenting what is involved in such dispute, we point to a dilemma for realists: either we don't have the available metaphysical tools to answer the deep realist's demands, and realism is not justified in this case, or such demands of metaphysical dressing are not mandatory for scientific realism, and deep versions of realism are not really required.

One table or two? scientific anti-realism and Husserl’s phenomenology

In this study I argue that Husserl’s phenomenology is compatible with a realistic interpretation of scientific theories. That said, I distinguish between the realistic interpretation of scientific theories and scientific realism. The former holds that the theoretical terms of a scientific theory are intended to refer, and that if we have good reason to believe that a scientific theory is true then we also have good reason to believe the entities it refers to exist. Scientific realism holds that the world as described by the physical sciences not only exists, it is the only world that exists—the world of everyday perceptual experience must be demoted to the status of a mere appearance. My case for the compatibility of Husserl’s phenomenology with a realistic interpretation of scientific theories is based on a distinction between scientific laws and scientific theories. I hold that Husserl’s instrumentalism, if one can call it that, is restricted to an interpretation of scientific laws; accordingly, his anti-realism is directed against the reification of ideal objects constructed in the course of the exact mathematical representation of scientific laws, not against the theoretical entities postulated in the explanation of those laws. At the end of the study I seek to allay the fear that if one adopts a realistic interpretation of scientific theories one is thereby committed to some version of scientific realism.

Научный реализм в истории античной философии

The article is devoted to the consideration of the possibility of applying the methodological principles of scientific realism in the history of ancient philosophy. The author shows that in its strong version, scientific realism is not an appropriate basis for historical research, since it involves minimizing the number of interpretations of philosophical material of the past. Another serious drawback of applying strong versions of scientific realism in the history of philosophy is their focus on the correspondent theory of truth. This theory does not fit the historian of philosophy, since she aims not only at creating a realistic picture of the past, but also at incorporating the philosophical ideas of the past into the modern context, therefore a coherent theory of truth is more likely to meet her objectives. After a brief review of the weak versions of realism (H. Putnam’s “internal realism”, S. Blackburn’s “quasi-realism” and “sensibility theory”), the author concludes that these kinds of realism are more suitable for the history of philosophy in general and for the history of ancient philosophy in particular. As a result, the author concludes that the historian of philosophy must take into account the objectivity and independence of the philosophical ideas of the past, and inevitably be guided by his own conceptual and terminological facilities in order to incorporate the ideas of the past into the modern philosophical context.

Talking About Models: The Inherent Constraints of Mathematics

In this article my primary intention is to engage in a discussion on the inherent constraints of models, taken as models of theories, that reaches beyond the epistemological level. Naturally the paper takes into account the ongoing debate between proponents of the syntactic and the semantic view of theories and that between proponents of the various versions of scientific realism, reaching down to the most fundamental, subjective level of discourse. In this approach, while allowing for a limited discussion of physical and positive science models, I am primarily focused on the structure and ontology of mathematical models, in particular Cohen’s forcing models and to a lesser extent Godel’s constructible universe, to the extent that these were designed to answer questions bearing on the scope, the capacity and ultimately the ontology of models themselves (e.g., the question of continuum), therefore influencing in one or the other way the status of models in general. This status, it is argued, is largely defined by the way models subsume a set-theoretical structure whose constraints, reducible to an extra-linguistic level of discourse, may implicitly condition the epistemic status of models as representations of axiomatic theories. In the last section I deal extensively with the inner constraints of theories (or of corresponding models for that matter) as subjectively originated in a less technical philosophically oriented discussion with certain prompts from phenomenology.

A (Fatal) Trilemma for best theory realism

The no-miracles argument (NMA) is the main inference-to-the-best-explanation kind of argument for scientific realism, and the pessimistic (meta-) induction (PI) is considered a main, if not the main, challenge for a NMA-based scientific realism. Doppelt (2014) advocates a new kind of inference-to-the-best-explanation supported scientific realism that he labels Best Theory Realism (BTR, previously introduced in Doppelt 2007a, 2011). If successful in replacing standard selective realism as the best version of scientific realism, BTR would be particularly good since it is not committed to the partial truth of past theories and thereby it is immune to the antirealist strategy of finding cases of past, predictively successful theories with predictively essential components not retained by later theories. The goal of this paper is to raise doubts about Doppelt’s attempt and argue that, other benefits of his proposal notwithstanding, it fails. In section 1 I summarize the main tenets of standard, retentive selective realism relevant for the present discussion. In section 2 I show that Doppelt’s main arguments against retentive selective realism do not work. In section 3, I argue that the way BTR faces the challenge posed by the historical record that motivates PI is unsatisfactory and puts Doppelt into a fatal trilemma: either he is committed to two claims that are untenable together; or endorses an extremely implausible form of present-science chauvinism; or unjustifiably discriminates explanation against prediction in historical record. The conclusion is that BTR falls short of substituting standard retentive selective realism as the most plausible realist position, and that thereby the cases of past successful theories with predictively essential parts not retained by posterior theories are still a real problem for a plausible realist position.

Semirealism, Concrete Structures and Theory Change

After a presentation of some relevant aspects of Chakravartty’s semirealism (A Metaphysics for scientific realism. Knowing the unobservable. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2007), this paper addresses two difficulties that appear to be inherent to important components of his proposed metaphysics for scientific realism. First, if particulars and laws are concrete structures, namely actual groupings of causal properties as the semirealist contends, the relation between particulars and laws becomes also a relation between particulars with some annoying consequences. This worry—and some others—are resolved if laws are taken to be statements and particulars are construed not only as groupings of properties, but things that contain a non-conceptual ingredient which can be given in perceptual awareness. Second, on the semirealist’s view of particulars it becomes difficult to defend an epistemological version of scientific realism according to which we have good reasons to believe that the same things are referred to despite the fact that successive theories may attribute different properties to them.

Causal Warrant for Realism about Particle Physics

While scientific realism generally assumes that successful scientific explana- tions yield information about reality, realists also have to admit that not all information acquired in this way is equally well warranted. Some versions of scientific realism do this by saying that explanatory posits with which we have established some kind of causal contact are better warranted than those that merely appear in theoretical hypotheses. I first explicate this distinction by considering some general criteria that permit us to distinguish causal warrant from theoretical warrant. I then apply these criteria to a specific case from particle physics, claiming that scientific realism has to incorporate the distinction between causal and theoretical warrant if it is to be an adequate stance in the philosophy of particle physics.

Adam Smith's 'History of Astronomy' and view of science

This paper aims to clarify Adam Smith's view of science that has been found in his capacity as a historian or philosopher of science. It is shown that Smith assesses scientific activities as seeking to uncover underlying or hidden causal mechanisms at the real level that link together patterns and regularities at the empirical level of the world. He deals largely with such dimensions of science in his essays on natural sciences--particularly in his 'History of Astronomy'. Importantly, Smith applied a version of inference to the best explanation to evaluate possible competing hypotheses for the progress of scientific knowledge. This, and some related concepts help us to view Smith, who comes closer to a critical realist perspective as a modern version of scientific realism, in which a realist ontology is coupled to a form of epistemological dualism (a robust relativist epistemology). Copyright The Author 2012. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Cambridge Political Economy Society. All rights reserved., Oxford University Press.

Theory Status, Inductive Realism, and Approximate Truth: No Miracles, No Charades

The concept of approximate truth plays a prominent role in most versions of scientific realism. However, adequately conceptualizing ‘approximate truth’ has proved challenging. This article argues that the goal of articulating the concept of approximate truth can be advanced by first investigating the processes by which science accords theories the status of accepted or rejected. Accordingly, this article uses a path diagram model as a visual heuristic for the purpose of showing the processes in science that are involved in determining a theory's status. This ‘inductive realist’ model of theory status then serves as a starting point for explicating an inductive realist view of approximate truth that, it is argued, can explain instances of the success of science, but does not (1) require science's theories to be strictly true in any world or (2) require a metric for measuring how close an approximately true theory is to some strictly true theory. To show the advantages of the inductive realist approach to approximate truth, an example of a major success story of science, the successful eradication of smallpox, is reviewed and then explained.

Structural correspondence between theories and convergence to truth

This paper utilizes a logical correspondence theorem (which has been proved elsewhere) for the justification of weak conceptions of scientific realism and convergence to truth which do not presuppose Putnam’s no-miracles-argument (NMA). After presenting arguments against the reliability of the unrestricted NMA in Sect. 1, the correspondence theorem is explained in Sect. 2. In Sect. 3, historical illustrations of the correspondence theorem are given, and its ontological consequences are worked out. Based on the transitivity of the concept of correspondence, a correspondence-based notion of convergence to truth is developed in Sect. 4. In the final Sect. 5 it is argued that the correspondence theorem together with the assumption of ‘minimal realism’ yields a justification of a weak version of scientific realism, which is then compared to metaphysical realism and to instrumentalism.

Validity in Psychological Testing and Scientific Realism

Recent work in the conceptual foundations of psychometrics has concerned the question of validity. Borsboom and colleagues have challenged what they claim is the dominant theory of validity, that of Samuel Messick. In this paper I present Borsboom et al.’s concept of validity as a property of measurement instruments as well as Messick’s concept of validity as a property of interpretive inferences. I then relate their concepts of validity to scientific realism in the philosophy of science. I argue that there can be valid psychometric tests, in Borsboom et al.’s sense, only if some version of scientific realism is true. I argue that in Borsboom et al.’s and Messick’s approaches to validity, one finds the essential ingredients for a realist philosophy of science in psychological assessment. Borsboom et al. contribute semantic and ontological components while Messick provides the methodological tools for constructing an epistemology of psychological measurement. Though Borsboom et al. present their approach as an alternative to Messick’s, these two approaches to validity are potentially complementary.

To Believe in Belief

Take the following version of scientific realism: we have good reason to believe that (some of the) current scientific theories tell us something specific about the underlying, i.e. unobservable, structures of the world, for instance that there are electrons with a certain electric charge, or that there are viruses that cause certain diseases. Popper, the rationalist, would not have adhered to the proposed formulation of scientific realism in terms of the rationality of existential beliefs concerning unobservables. Popper did not believe in belief. According to Van Fraassen, the empiricist, one may yet have a rational existential belief concerning unobservables, given a liberal notion of rationality of belief. In this paper I will investigate to what extent a reassessment of both Popper’s rejection of the rationality of belief and Van Fraassen’s reformulation of the rationality of belief, points towards a new and pragmatist dissolution of the ‘problem of scientific realism’.

A Critique of Localized Realism

In an attempt to avert Laudan's pessimistic induction, Kitcher, Worrall and Psillos introduce a narrower version of scientific realism. According to this version, which can be referred to as “localized realism,” realists need not accept every component in a successful theory. They are supposed only to accept those components that led to the theory's empirical success. Consequently, realists can avoid believing in dubious entities like the caloric and ether. This paper examines and critiques localized realism. It also scrutinizes Psillos's historical study of the caloric theory of heat, which is intended to support localized realism.

Is Pickering's ”Pragmatic Realism” Viable?

In his book The Mangle of Practice and in other writings, Andrew Pickering purports to resolve the question of scientific realism by recasting the debate in terms of his own view “pragmatic” or “performative” realism. This view is informed by a constructivist view of scientific practice. Therefore it is characterised by Pickering as a species of anti-realism that claims to take due account of the both the objective and pragmatic aspects of certain versions of scientific realism. This paper analyses Pickering's claims to have resolved the debate and examines the merits and limitations of his proposed replacement. I show that insofar as Pickering conceives scientific practice as eschewing any position concerning the correspondence of theoretical concepts with nature (either for or against), his position can be compared in several respects to Fine's much discussed alternative to realism, NOA (the Natural Ontological Attitude). I contend that Pickering's proposed “performative realism” is no more successful at resolving the scientific realism question in than is NOA.

Kotarbiński As A Scientific Realist

Tadeusz Kotarbinski is widely recognized as a major philosopher of theLvov–Warsaw school. His reism, which is a contribution to semantics andontology, is still discussed and debated, and his most original creation, praxiology,has grown into an entire research field. However, Kotarbinski's philosophy ofscience has not received much attention by later commentators. This paper attemptsto correct this situation by considering the hypothesis that Kotarbinski succeededalready in 1929 in formulating a position that can be regarded as an early version ofscientific realism. Unlike most other ``scientific philosophers'' before the mid-thirties,he was able to combine ontological realism (by defending a form of physicalism andnominalism) and semantical realism (by defending the classical correspondence theoryof truth). He was also a critical epistemological realist. Further, in spite of theinstrumentalist flavour of his reductionist programme in eliminating terms apparentlyreferring to abstract entities, Kotarbinski accepted theories as statements with truth values and theoretical entities as long as they can be understood as physical bodies.

Deflationary Metaphysics and the Natures of Maps

“Scientific theories are maps of the natural world.” This metaphor is often used as part of a deflationary argument for a weak but relatively global version of scientific realism, a version that recognizes the place of conventions, goals, and contingencies in scientific representations, while maintaining that they are typically true in a clear and literal sense. By examining, in a naturalistic way, some relationships between maps and what they map, we question the scope and value of realist construals of maps—and by extension of scientific representations. Deflationary philosophy of science requires more variegated stances.

HILARY PUTNAM AND IMMANUEL KANT: TWO 'INTERNAL REALISTS'?

Since 1976 Hilary Putnam has drawn parallels between his `internal',`pragmatic', `natural' or `common-sense' realism and Kant's transcendentalidealism. Putnam reads Kant as rejecting the then current metaphysicalpicture with its in-built assumptions of a unique, mind-independent world,and truth understood as correspondence between the mind and that ready-madeworld. Putnam reads Kant as overcoming the false dichotomies inherent inthat picture and even finds some glimmerings of conceptual relativity inKant's proposed solution. Furthermore, Putnam reads Kant as overcoming thepernicious scientific realist distinction between primary and secondaryqualities, between things that really exist and their projections, adistinction that haunts modern philosophy. Putnam's revitalisation of Kantis not just of historical interest, but challenges contemporary versions ofscientific realism. Furthermore, Putnam has highlighted themes which havenot received the attention they deserve in Kantian exegesis, namely, theproblematic role of primary and secondary qualities in Kant's empiricalrealism, and the extent of Kant's commitment to conceptual pluralism.However, I argue that Putnam's qualified allegiance to Kant exposes him tosome of the same metaphysical problems that affected Kant, namely, thefamiliar problem of postulating an absolute reality (Ding an sich), while atthe same time disavowing the meaningfulness of so doing. In conclusion Isuggest that Putnam might consider Hegel's attempts to solve this problem inKant as a way of furthering his own natural realism.

From observability to manipulability: Extending the inductive arguments for realism

In recent years there have been several attempts to construct inductive arguments for some version of scientific realism. Neither the characteristics of what would count as inductive evidence nor the conclusion to be inferred have been specified in ways that escape sceptical criticism. By introducing the pragmatic criterion of manipulative efficacy for a good theory and by sharpening the specification of the necessary inductive principle, the viability of a mutually supporting pair of argument forms are defended. It is shown that by the use of these forms, taken together, a sequence of inductive arguments could be constructed, given suitable cases histories to serve as evidence. It also shown that the best inductive argument for the most daring realist claim is the weakest when compared with similarly structured arguments for less daring claims.

Scientific Realism and Naturalistic Epistemology

By “scientific realism” philosophers ordinarily mean the doctrine that non-observational terms in scientific theories should typically be interpreted as putative referring expressions, and that when the semantics of theories is understood that way (“realistically“), scientific theories embody the sorts of propositions whose (approximate) truth can be confirmed by the ordinary experimental methods which scientists employ. There are as many possible versions of scientific realism as there are possible accounts of how “theoretical terms” refer and of how the actual methods of science function to produce knowledge.What I will do in this paper is to explore the consequences of one such version of scientific realism, a version which embodies the implicatures as well as the implications of the realist slogan that reality is prior to thought.