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Re-enchanting Realism in Debate with Kyle Stanford

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Abstract

In this article, against the background of a notion of ‘assembled’ truth, the evolutionary progressiveness of a theory is suggested as novel and promising explanation for the success of science. A new version of realism in science, referred to as ‘naturalised realism’ is outlined. Naturalised realism is ‘fallibilist’ in the unique sense that it captures and mimics the self-corrective core of scientific knowledge and its progress. It is argued that naturalised realism disarms Kyle Stanford’s anti-realist ‘new induction’ threats by showing that ‘explanationism’ and his ‘epistemic instrumentalism’ are just two positions among many on a constantly evolving continuum of options between instrumentalism and full-blown realism. In particular it is demonstrated that not only can naturalised realism redefine the terms of realist debate in such a way that no talk of miracles need enter the debate, but it also promises interesting defenses against inductive- and under-determination-based anti-realist arguments.

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Notes

  1. This idea is also found in belief revision of the AGM kind (e.g. Alchourron et al. 1985; Gärdenfors 1990), and perhaps even in some versions of semantic information theory (Shannon 1948; Carnap and Bar-Hillel 1952).

  2. This history is actually a history of theoretical-empirical interactions that have mutual impact on each other, but in what follows the focus is on how changes at the empirical level impact on the theoretical level.

  3. See also Putnam (1981) to understand the sentiments driving the naturalised realist’s non-representational notion of truth-as-reference.

  4. And so, perhaps all that can be said of truth is that it is sincere and accurate (viz. Williams 2002).

  5. ‘Assemblance’ meaning ‘the state of being gathered or collected’.

  6. Magnus (2006) offers an argument, based on aspects of the change from classical to relativistic mechanics, which concludes that instances of both transient under-determination and new induction are much more common place and perhaps natural in science than Stanford, at least on the face of it, seems to allow for—or is able to allow for, given his explanationist target.

  7. Think again of AGM belief revision.

  8. There is a lively debate on this issue which cannot be covered here—see for instance Laudan (1984), Ladyman and Ross (2007), Doppelt (2002), Chang (2003), Lyons (2006), Votsis (2005) and many others.

  9. The naturalised realist’s full account of reference cannot be unpacked here, but briefly, the argument is that the open-endedness of science in the context of referential continuity makes more sense if the emphasis is on the causal role an entity plays in virtue of an empirically adapted core causal description associated with the term denoting the entity.

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  1. Department of Philosophy, University of Pretoria, Private bag X20, Hatfield, Pretoria, 0028, South Africa

    Emma Ruttkamp-Bloem

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Ruttkamp-Bloem, E. Re-enchanting Realism in Debate with Kyle Stanford. J Gen Philos Sci 44, 201–224 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10838-013-9220-x

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