Carnap's conception of linguistic frameworks is widespread; however, it is not entirely clear nor consensual to pinpoint what is the influence of his stance within the traditional realist/anti-realist debate. In this paper, we place Carnap as a proponent of a scientific realist stance, by presenting what he called “linguistic realism”. Some possible criticisms are considered, and a case study is offered with wave function realism, a popular position in the philosophy of quantum mechanics.

The major argument against Ramsey-style epistemic structural realism is the model-theoretic refinement of Newman’s objection against Russell, presented in Ketland : 409–424, 2004), where a technical result is interpreted as showing that the Ramsey-sentence approach collapses into instrumentalism. This paper addresses some questions raised by the application of model theory to the scientific realism debate. Firstly, I will suggest three different formal semantics for the positions in the debate. Then, some technicalities of Ketland’s result will be scrutinized in light of (...) comments by Zahar and Demopoulos. Finally, I will formalize Ketland’s argument by means of an intensional operator and focus on one problematic premise. The conclusion is that, with some adjustments, the Ramsey-sentence approach can represent an intermediate position between realism and instrumentalism, but the term “structuralism” does not suit it well. (shrink)

This paper offers a pragmatist interpretation of Ian Hacking’s version of entity realism, and shows that such an interpretation enables the view to withstand a number of objections. Specifically, the paper shows Hacking’s rejection of a representationalist epistemology, which realist critics unjustifiably attribute to him, and shows his endorsement of a Deweyan pragmatist epistemology instead. If the interpretation is correct, the objections (a) that entity manipulation is theory-laden, (b) that the concept of home truths cannot do the work Hacking envisioned, (...) (c) that entity realism is a form of inference to the best explanation (IBE), (d) that some real entities aren’t manipulable, and (e) that some non-real entities are manipulable, lose much of their force. Objections (a), (b), and (c) rest on a metaepistemological misunderstanding, while objections (d) and (e) are addressed with (pragmatist) clarifications. This paper also offers a novel pragmatist argument for entity realism: the argument from technology. The argument from technology maintains that the reality of the entities that constitute our technologies is a precondition for those technologies’ meaningful use. In this case, entity realism remains a more viable perspective on science than is commonly acknowledged. (shrink)

It has become apparent that the debate between scientific realists and constructive empiricists has come to a stalemate. Neither view can reasonably claim to be the most rational philosophy of science, exclusively capable of making sense of all scientific activities. On one prominent analysis of the situation, whether we accept a realist or an anti-realist account of science actually seems to depend on which values we antecedently accept, rather than our commitment to “rationality” per se. Accordingly, several philosophers have attempted (...) to argue in favour of scientific realism or constructive empiricism by showing that one set of values is exclusively best, for anyone and everyone, and that the downstream choice of the philosophy of science which best serves those values is therefore best, for anyone and everyone. These efforts, however, seem to have failed. In response, I suggest that philosophers of science should suspend the effort to determine which philosophy of science is best for everyone, and instead begin investigating which philosophy of science is best for specific people, with specific values, in specific contexts. I illustrate how this might be done by briefly sketching a single case study from the history of science, which seems to show that different philosophies of science are better at motivating different forms of scientific practice. (shrink)

ABSTRACT The current debate on scientific realism is an entire universe. A general thesis can be put like follows: scientific activity attains a world that is independent of science itself. This “reaching out” can be thought of in terms of theoretical practices, such as the formulation of true theories, and/or experimental practices, such as the construction of suficiently accurate methods to (re)formulate and test what is said by the theories. By this latter route, the debate about scientific realism in the (...) philosophy of science meets the discussions in the philosophy of measurement, an autonomous research area that investigates measurement practices, their concepts, applications and assumptions. As the “realism” in the philosophy of science in general, there are multiple postures that can be characterized as “realistic” through their theorizations about scientific measurements. Stating which are the criteria and reasons why these positions claim to be realistic and in what they are distinct is a complex task. This article is an attempt to do that, without exhausting the discussion or the field. (shrink)

My target is the epistemological dimension of the realism debate. After establishing a stance voluntarist framework with a Jamesian background, drawing mostly on Wylie, Chakravarty, and van Fraassen, I argue that current voluntarists are too permissive. I show that especially various anti-realist stances but also some realist and selective realist stances block themselves from refutation by the history of science. I argue that such stances should be rejected. Finally, I propose that any disagreement that cannot be resolved by this strategy (...) frequently boils down to an epistemic value disagreement about balancing the truth-goal. (shrink)

This paper applied the philosophical theory of critical realism to the problem of evil. Using the method of critical analysis of related literature, the paper discovered, among other things, that e...

In this paper, I present the problem of scientific change as an explanatory problem, that is, as a philosophical problem concerning what logical forms of explanation we should employ in order to un...

It is quite unequivocal that Kuhn was committed to (some version of) naturalism; that he defended, especially in his later work, the autonomy of scientific rationality; and that he rejected the correspondence theory of truth, i.e., the traditional realistic conception of the world’s mind-independence. In this paper, I argue that these three philosophical perspectives form an uneasy triangle, for while it is possible to coherently defend each of them separately or two of them combined, holding all three leads to incoherence. (...) Hence, the only option is to reject one of them in a way that is both compatible with Kuhnian historiography and philosophically fruitful. My purpose in this paper is not exegetical. My ambition is to sketch a coherent philosophical framework which does justice to Kuhn’s historiographical model for scientific change and avoids the philosophical costs of relativism and anti-naturalism. In particular, I argue in favor of the following interconnected positions: (1) Given the role of anomalies in Kuhn’s historiographical model, the latter satisfies the two fundamental conditions for acknowledging the mind-independence of the world: the ‘irreducibility condition’ and the ‘objectivity condition’, (2) Kuhn’s rejection of the notion of an ‘Archimedean platform’ does not entail that the truth-value of beliefs doesn’t play a role in the explanation of their change, (3) Adopting scientific realism is the only way to defend the autonomy of scientific rationality within a naturalistic philosophical framework. However, adopting realism leads to a liberal rather than an eliminative version of naturalism. (shrink)