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Choosing the realist framework

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Abstract

There has been an empiricist tradition in the core of Logical Positivism/Empiricism, starting with Moritz Schlick and ending in Herbert Feigl (via Hans Reichenbach), according to which the world of empiricism need not be a barren place devoid of all the explanatory entities posited by scientific theories. The aim of this paper is to articulate this tradition and to explore ways in which its key elements can find a place in the contemporary debate over scientific realism. It presents a way empiricism can go for scientific realism without metaphysical anxiety, by developing an indispensability argument for the adoption of the realist framework. This argument, unlike current realist arguments, has a pragmatic ring to it: there is no ultimate argument for the adoption of the realist framework.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Philosophy and History of Science, University of Athens, Panepistimioupolis (University Campus), 15771, Athens, Greece

    Stathis Psillos

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  1. Stathis Psillos
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Correspondence to Stathis Psillos.

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Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the Annual Conference of the British Society for the Philosophy of Science, Bristol, July 2007; the Centre for Logic and Philosophy of Science, University of Ghent, December 2007; and the Workshop ‘Theoretical Frameworks and Empirical Underdetermination, University of Düsseldorf, April 2008. A number of friends and colleagues have helped me with incisive comments and criticism; here is an incomplete list of them: Dirk Batens, Steven French, Michael Friedman, Michel Ghins, James Ladyman, Robert Nola, David Papineau, Juha Saatsi, Gerhard Schurz, Ioannis Votsis, Erik Weber and John Worrall. Many thanks to all (as well as to an anonymous referee for Synthese).

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Psillos, S. Choosing the realist framework. Synthese 180, 301–316 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-009-9606-9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-009-9606-9

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