Abstract
The scientific realism debates have been plagued by misrepresentations of both realist and empiricist positions, sometimes by their adherents as well as by their critics. When positions are presented as contraries, there must be an isolatable question to which each gives its answer, in opposition to the other. Since philosophy does not provide a way to answer factual questions about the world, that common question must be about the character of science and scientific practice, rather than about what there is. Once what is at issue has been clarified, realists and empiricists can cooperate on an inquiry into what science is, what the criteria of adequacy are in scientific practice, and what epistemic or doxastic attitudes toward scientific theories are within the bounds of reason. In this inquiry, the writings of Weyl , Glymour , and Suppe provide an excellent guide. Just what is scientific realism, and what are its contraries? Despite, or perhaps because of, the many formulations of such positions that are found in the literature, it is not as easy to answer this as it might seem.
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Notes
- 1.
In my usage of such terms as “exist” or “real” I follow Quine’s seminal article “On what there. is”. So ‘Xs exist’ and ‘Xs are real’ I understand as meaning simply that there are Xs.
- 2.
I owe this point and a list of references to substantiate it to Anjan Chakravartty. A dialogue between us on this topic will be forthcoming in the journal Spontaneous Generations.
- 3.
The assertion may be qualified, ranging from a minimal way by just inserting “approximately” to the extreme of limiting it to certain kinds of structural information. That does not affect the main point.
- 4.
The first time I argued this was in a reply to Hilary Putnam in Florence 1978: “secondo me, la razionalità è solo irrazionalità imbrigliata” (Piatelli Palmerini 1984, 110). I elaborated on this later in analogy with Justice Oliver Wendel Holmes’ distinction between Prussian law and Anglo-Saxon law (van Fraassen 1989, 171–172).
- 5.
Musgrave, this volume pp. 79–94. Originally presented at the Conference on “Scientific Realism: Objectivity and Truth in Science”, A Coruña, September 2015. The phrase in quotation marks is a quotation from van Fraassen 1980, 93, which explains why "even the anti-realist … will counsel the search for explanation”.
- 6.
Given how much Musgrave values explanation, the remainder of that page may interest him as well. The conceptual resources of the theory determine “the terms in which we shall seek explanations. If the acceptance is at all strong, it is exhibited in the person’s assumption of the role of explainer ….”.
- 7.
Dennis Dieks, “Realism and Objectivity in Quantum Mechanics”, presented at the Conference on “Scientific Realism: Objectivity and Truth in Science”, A Coruña, September 2015 pp. 295–314.
- 8.
What explanation is good for has hardly been touched by philosophers; in contrast there is an illuminating psychological study by Gopnik (1998).
- 9.
If T is only about observable phenomena and does not include postulation of unobservable entities, then T is true if and only if T is empirically adequate. Musgrave would presumably agree that the phenomena can sometimes be explained without postulating unobservable entities.
- 10.
Musgrave, this volume, Sect. 3.2.1. Italics in the original.
- 11.
Musgrave, this volume, Sect. 3.2.1. Italics in the original.
- 12.
In Musgrave’s terminology, as he emphasizes in this section, that “to accept H and to accept H as true are the same thing”. In my terminology, the word “accept” does not have this meaning (cf. van Fraassen 1980, 8; 12). What Musgrave calls the Truth-scheme I take to imply only that the hypothesis H and the hypothesis that H is true imply each other, that is, each is true if and only if the other is true.
- 13.
Schlick’s concept of truth as unique coordination influenced how Einstein as well as Reichenbach wrote about theory and experience. That concept is, in retrospect, not easy to understand, but we may tentatively take it as a version of what later came to be called the verification principle. Objections to that principle do not apply to Weyl’s conditions on an empirical theory, which are not presented as truth conditions (cf. Howard1984; Howard 1996, 126—127; van Fraassen 2008, 115—124.)
- 14.
This point has often appeared in the scientific and philosophical literature as demands to “operationalize” theoretical concepts, sometimes in polemics against rival theoretical approaches to a common domain–e.g. between advocates of the atomic theory and those advocating energetics, or between behaviorist and cognitive psychology. Such demands fell into disrepute among philosophers because they typically included the presumption that perfectly theory-neutral evidence could be had, or even that theoretical concepts could be reduced to operational ones. But at heart, and however imperfectly, those demands reflect norms operative in scientific practice.
- 15.
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van Fraassen, B.C. (2017). Misdirection and Misconception in the Scientific Realism Debates. In: Agazzi, E. (eds) Varieties of Scientific Realism. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-51608-0_5
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