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How to be a scientific realist (if at all): a study of partial realism

Dissertation, London School of Economics (2012)

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  1. The Anatomy of Science.Gilbert N. Lewis - 1928 - Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale 35 (2):12-13.
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  • Ramsey sentences, structural realism and trivial realization.Pierre Cruse - 2005 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 36 (3):557-576.
    Several recent authors identify structural realism about scientific theories with the claim that the content of a scientific theory is expressible using its Ramsey sentence. Many of these authors have also argued that so understood, the view collapses into empiricist anti-realism, since an argument originally proposed by Max Newman in a review of Bertrand Russell’s The analysis of matter demonstrates that Ramsey sentences are trivially satisfied, and cannot make any significant claims about unobservables. In this paper I argue against both (...)
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  • Substance and Function & Einstein’s Theory of Relativity.Ernst Cassirer - 1923 - Mineola, N.Y.: Dover Publications. Edited by Ernst Cassirer.
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  • Scientific Realism and the Pessimistic Meta-Modus Tollens.Timothy D. Lyons - 2010 - In S. Clarke & T. D. Lyons (eds.), Recent Themes in the Philosophy of Science: Scientific Realism and Commonsense. Dordrecht: Springer. pp. 63-90.
    Broadly speaking, the contemporary scientific realist is concerned to justify belief in what we might call theoretical truth, which includes truth based on ampliative inference and truth about unobservables. Many, if not most, contemporary realists say scientific realism should be treated as ‘an overarching scientific hypothesis’ (Putnam 1978, p. 18). In its most basic form, the realist hypothesis states that theories enjoying general predictive success are true. This hypothesis becomes a hypothesis to be tested. To justify our belief in the (...)
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  • The Scientific Image.William Demopoulos & Bas C. van Fraassen - 1982 - Philosophical Review 91 (4):603.
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  • Bertrand Russell's the analysis of matter: Its historical context and contemporary interest.William Demopoulos & Michael Friedman - 1985 - Philosophy of Science 52 (4):621-639.
    The Analysis of Matter is perhaps best known for marking Russell's rejection of phenomenalism and his development of a variety of Lockean representationalism–-Russell's causal theory of perception. This occupies Part 2 of the work. Part 1, which is certainly less well known, contains many observations on twentieth-century physics. Unfortunately, Russell's discussion of relativity and the foundations of physical geometry is carried out in apparent ignorance of Reichenbach's and Carnap's investigations in the same period. The issue of conventionalism in its then (...)
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  • Reference failure and scientific realism: A response to the meta-induction.D. Cummiskey - 1992 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 43 (1):21-40.
    Pure causal theories of reference cannot account for cases of theoretical term reference failure and do not capture the scientific point of introducing new theoretical terminology. In order to account for paradigm cases of reference failure and the point of new theoretical terminology, a descriptive element must play a role in fixing the reference of theoretical terms. Richard Boyd's concept of theory constituitive metaphors provides the necessary descriptive element in reference fixing. In addition to providing a plausible account of reference (...)
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  • Scientific Realism and the Divide et Impera Strategy: The Ether Saga Revisited.Alberto Cordero - 2011 - Philosophy of Science 78 (5):1120-1130.
    Using the optical ether as a case study, this article advances four lines of consideration to show why synchronic versions of the divide et impera strategy of scientific realism are unlikely to work. The considerations draw from the nineteenth-century theories of light, the rise of surprising implication as an epistemic value from the time of Fresnel on, assessments of the ether in end-of-century reports around 1900, and the roots of ether theorizing in now superseded metaphysical assumptions. The typicality of the (...)
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  • Critical scientific realism.Ilkka Niiniluoto - 1999 - New York: Oxford University Press.
    This book comes to the rescue of scientific realism, showing that reports of its death have been greatly exaggerated. Philosophical realism holds that the aim of a particular discourse is to make true statements about its subject matter. Ilkka Niiniluoto surveys different kinds of realism in various areas of philosophy and then sets out his own critical realist philosophy of science.
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  • Defensible territory for entity realism.Steve Clarke - 2001 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 52 (4):701-722.
    In the face of argument to the contrary, it is shown that there is defensible middle ground available for entity realism, between the extremes of scientific realism and empiricist antirealism. Cartwright's ([1983]) earlier argument for defensible middle ground between these extremes, which depended crucially on the viability of an underdeveloped distinction between inference to the best explanation (IBE) and inference to the most probable cause (IPC), is examined and its defects are identified. The relationship between IBE and IPC is clarified (...)
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  • The Structuralist Conception of Objects.Anjan Chakravartty - 2003 - Philosophy of Science 70 (5):867-878.
    This paper explores the consequences of the two most prominent forms of contemporary structural realism for the notion of objecthood. Epistemic structuralists hold that we can know structural aspects of reality, but nothing about the natures of unobservable relata whose relations define structures. Ontic structuralists hold that we can know structural aspects of reality, and that there is nothing else to know—objects are useful heuristic posits, but are ultimately ontologically dispensable. I argue that structuralism does not succeed in ridding a (...)
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  • Semirealism.Anjan Chakravartty - 1998 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 29 (3):391-408.
    The intuition of the naı¨ve realist, miracle arguments notwithstanding, is countered forcefully by a host of considerations, including the possibility of underdetermination, and criticisms of abductive inferences to explanatory hypotheses. Some have suggested that an induction may be performed, from the perspective of present theories, on their predecessors. Past theories are thought to be false, strictly speaking; it is thus likely that present-day theories are also false, and will be taken as such at an appropriate future time.
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  • Structuralism as a form of scientific realism.Anjan Chakravartty - 2004 - International Studies in the Philosophy of Science 18 (2 & 3):151 – 171.
    Structural realism has recently re-entered mainstream discussions in the philosophy of science. The central notion of structure, however, is contested by both advocates and critics. This paper briefly reviews currently prominent structuralist accounts en route to proposing a metaphysics of structure that is capable of supporting the epistemic aspirations of realists, and that is immune to the charge most commonly levelled against structuralism. This account provides an alternative to the existing epistemic and ontic forms of the position, incorporating elements of (...)
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  • Preservative realism and its discontents: Revisiting caloric.Hasok Chang - 2003 - Philosophy of Science 70 (5):902-912.
    A popular and plausible response against Laudan's “pessimistic induction” has been what I call “preservative realism,” which argues that there have actually been enough elements of scientific knowledge preserved through major theory‐change processes, and that those elements can be accepted realistically. This paper argues against preservative realism, in particular through a critical review of Psillos's argument concerning the case of the caloric theory of heat. Contrary to his argument, the historical record of the caloric theory reveals that beliefs about the (...)
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  • What the tortoise said to Achilles.Lewis Carroll - 1895 - Mind 4 (14):278-280.
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  • What is right with the miracle argument: Establishing a taxonomy of natural kinds.Martin Carrier - 1993 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 24 (3):391-409.
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  • How the laws of physics lie.Nancy Cartwright - 1983 - New York: Oxford University Press.
    In this sequence of philosophical essays about natural science, the author argues that fundamental explanatory laws, the deepest and most admired successes of modern physics, do not in fact describe regularities that exist in nature. Cartwright draws from many real-life examples to propound a novel distinction: that theoretical entities, and the complex and localized laws that describe them, can be interpreted realistically, but the simple unifying laws of basic theory cannot.
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  • The miracle of science.James Robert Brown - 1982 - Philosophical Quarterly 32 (128):232-244.
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  • What Realism Implies and What it Does Not.Richard Boyd - 1989 - Dialectica 43 (1‐2):5-29.
    SummaryThis paper addresses the question of what scientific realism implies and what it does not when it is articulated so as to provide the best defense against plausible philosophical alternatives. A summary is presented of “abductive” arguments for scientific realism, and of the epistemological and semantic conceptions upon which they depend. Taking these arguments to be the best current defense of realism, it is inquired what, in the sense just mentioned, realism implies and what it does not. It is concluded (...)
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  • On the current status of the issue of scientific realism.Richard Boyd - 1983 - Erkenntnis 19 (1-3):45 - 90.
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  • Evolution: The History of an Idea.Peter J. Bowler - 1985 - Journal of the History of Biology 18 (1):155-157.
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  • Newman's objection.Peter M. Ainsworth - 2009 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 60 (1):135-171.
    This paper is a review of work on Newman's objection to epistemic structural realism (ESR). In Section 2, a brief statement of ESR is provided. In Section 3, Newman's objection and its recent variants are outlined. In Section 4, two responses that argue that the objection can be evaded by abandoning the Ramsey-sentence approach to ESR are considered. In Section 5, three responses that have been put forward specifically to rescue the Ramsey-sentence approach to ESR from the modern versions of (...)
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  • Laws and symmetry.Bas C. van Fraassen - 1989 - New York: Oxford University Press.
    Metaphysicians speak of laws of nature in terms of necessity and universality; scientists, in terms of symmetry and invariance. In this book van Fraassen argues that no metaphysical account of laws can succeed. He analyzes and rejects the arguments that there are laws of nature, or that we must believe there are, and argues that we should disregard the idea of law as an adequate clue to science. After exploring what this means for general epistemology, the author develops the empiricist (...)
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  • The Dappled World: A Study of the Boundaries of Science.Nancy Cartwright - 2001 - Erkenntnis 54 (3):411-415.
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  • Explanatory unification.Philip Kitcher - 1981 - Philosophy of Science 48 (4):507-531.
    The official model of explanation proposed by the logical empiricists, the covering law model, is subject to familiar objections. The goal of the present paper is to explore an unofficial view of explanation which logical empiricists have sometimes suggested, the view of explanation as unification. I try to show that this view can be developed so as to provide insight into major episodes in the history of science, and that it can overcome some of the most serious difficulties besetting the (...)
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  • Novel evidence and severe tests.Deborah G. Mayo - 1991 - Philosophy of Science 58 (4):523-552.
    While many philosophers of science have accorded special evidential significance to tests whose results are "novel facts", there continues to be disagreement over both the definition of novelty and why it should matter. The view of novelty favored by Giere, Lakatos, Worrall and many others is that of use-novelty: An accordance between evidence e and hypothesis h provides a genuine test of h only if e is not used in h's construction. I argue that what lies behind the intuition that (...)
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  • Anarchy, State, and Utopia.Robert Nozick - 1974 - New York: Basic Books.
    Winner of the 1975 National Book Award, this brilliant and widely acclaimed book is a powerful philosophical challenge to the most widely held political and social positions of our age--liberal, socialist, and conservative.
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  • Scientific Realism.Anjan Chakravartty - 2014 - In Edward N. Zalta (ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Stanford, CA: The Metaphysics Research Lab.
    Debates about scientific realism are closely connected to almost everything else in the philosophy of science, for they concern the very nature of scientific knowledge. Scientific realism is a positive epistemic attitude toward the content of our best theories and models, recommending belief in both observable and unobservable aspects of the world described by the sciences. This epistemic attitude has important metaphysical and semantic dimensions, and these various commitments are contested by a number of rival epistemologies of science, known collectively (...)
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  • Scientific Realism.Anjann D. Chakravartty - 2013 - The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
    Debates about scientific realism are closely connected to almost everything else in the philosophy of science, for they concern the very nature of scientific knowledge. Scientific realism is a positive epistemic attitude toward the content of our best theories and models, recommending belief in both observable and unobservable aspects of the world described by the sciences. This epistemic attitude has important metaphysical and semantic dimensions, and these various commitments are contested by a number of rival epistemologies of science, known collectively (...)
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  • What is Justified Belief?Alvin I. Goldman - 1979 - In George Pappas (ed.), Justification and Knowledge: New Studies in Epistemology. Boston: D. Reidel. pp. 1-25.
    The aim of this paper is to sketch a theory of justified belief. What I have in mind is an explanatory theory, one that explains in a general way why certain beliefs are counted as justified and others as unjustified. Unlike some traditional approaches, I do not try to prescribe standards for justification that differ from, or improve upon, our ordinary standards. I merely try to explicate the ordinary standards, which are, I believe, quite different from those of many classical, (...)
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  • Exceeding our grasp: science, history, and the problem of unconceived alternatives.P. Kyle Stanford - 2006 - New York: Oxford University Press.
    The incredible achievements of modern scientific theories lead most of us to embrace scientific realism: the view that our best theories offer us at least roughly accurate descriptions of otherwise inaccessible parts of the world like genes, atoms, and the big bang. In Exceeding Our Grasp, Stanford argues that careful attention to the history of scientific investigation invites a challenge to this view that is not well represented in contemporary debates about the nature of the scientific enterprise. The historical record (...)
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  • Scientific Realism: How Science Tracks Truth.Stathis Psillos - 1999 - New York: Routledge.
    Scientific realism is the optimistic view that modern science is on the right track: that the world really is the way our best scientific theories describe it. In his book, Stathis Psillos gives us a detailed and comprehensive study which restores the intuitive plausibility of scientific realism. We see that throughout the twentieth century, scientific realism has been challenged by philosophical positions from all angles: from reductive empiricism, to instrumentalism and to modern sceptical empiricism. _Scientific Realism_ explains that the history (...)
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  • How prediction enhances confirmation.Patrick Maher - 1990 - In J. Dunn & A. Gupta (eds.), Truth or Consequences: Essays in Honor of Nuel Belnap. Boston, MA, USA: Kluwer Academic Publishers. pp. 327--343.
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  • What is the problem of simplicity?Elliott Sober - 2001 - In Arnold Zellner, Hugo A. Keuzenkamp & Michael McAleer (eds.), Simplicity, Inference and Modelling: Keeping It Sophisticatedly Simple. New York: Cambridge University Press. pp. 13-32.
    The problem of simplicity involves three questions: How is the simplicity of a hypothesis to be measured? How is the use of simplicity as a guide to hypothesis choice to be justified? And how is simplicity related to other desirable features of hypotheses -- that is, how is simplicity to be traded-off? The present paper explores these three questions, from a variety of viewpoints, including Bayesianism, likelihoodism, and the framework of predictive accuracy formulated by Akaike (1973). It may turn out (...)
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  • Objectivity, value judgment, and theory choice.Thomas S. Kuhn - 1981 - In David Zaret (ed.), Review of Thomas S. Kuhn The Essential Tension: Selected Studies in Scientific Tradition and Change. Duke University Press. pp. 320--39.
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  • The Natural Ontological Attitude.Arthur I. Fine - 1984 - In Jarrett Leplin (ed.), Scientific Realism. University of California. pp. 261--77.
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  • The Concept of Mind.Gilbert Ryle - 1949 - Revue Philosophique de la France Et de l'Etranger 141:125-126.
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  • The Analysis of Matter.Bertrand Russell - 1927 - London: Kegan Paul.
    "The Analysis of Matter" is one of the earliest and best philosophical studies of the new physics of relativity and quantum mechanics.
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  • The theory of probability.Hans Reichenbach - 1949 - Berkeley,: University of California Press.
    We must restrict to mere probability not only statements of comparatively great uncertainty, like predictions about the weather, where we would cautiously ...
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  • Probability and the Logic of Rational Belief.Henry Ely Kyburg - 1961 - Middletown, CT, USA: Wesleyan University Press.
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  • Error and the Growth of Experimental Knowledge.Deborah G. Mayo - 1996 - University of Chicago.
    This text provides a critique of the subjective Bayesian view of statistical inference, and proposes the author's own error-statistical approach as an alternative framework for the epistemology of experiment. It seeks to address the needs of researchers who work with statistical analysis.
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  • The logical structure of the world.Rudolf Carnap - 1967 - Chicago and La Salle, Ill.: Open Court. Edited by Rudolf Carnap.
    Available for the first time in 20 years, here are two important works from the 1920s by the best-known representative of the Vienna Circle.
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  • The logical structure of the world.Rudolf Carnap - 1967 - Berkeley,: University of California Press. Edited by Rudolf Carnap.
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  • Two Dogmas of Empiricism.W. Quine - 1951 - [Longmans, Green].
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  • William Whewell's Theory of Scientific Method.William Whewell & Robert E. Butts - 1968 - University of Pittsburgh Press.
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  • Why did Einstein's programme supersede lorentz's? (II).Elie Zahar - 1973 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 24 (3):223-262.
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  • Selection and Predictive Success.K. Brad Wray - 2010 - Erkenntnis 72 (3):365-377.
    Van Fraassen believes our current best theories enable us to make accurate predictions because they have been subjected to a selection process similar to natural selection. His explanation for the predictive success of our best theories has been subjected to extensive criticism from realists. I aim to clarify the nature of van Fraassen’s selectionist explanation for the success of science. Contrary to what the critics claim, the selectionist can explain why it is that we have successful theories, as well as (...)
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  • Structural realism: The best of both worlds?John Worrall - 1989 - Dialectica 43 (1-2):99-124.
    The no-miracles argument for realism and the pessimistic meta-induction for anti-realism pull in opposite directions. Structural Realism---the position that the mathematical structure of mature science reflects reality---relieves this tension.
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  • Structural Realism: The Best of Both Worlds?John Worrall - 1989 - Dialectica 43 (1-2):99-124.
    SummaryenThe main argument for scientific realism is that our present theories in science are so successful empirically that they can't have got that way by chance - instead they must somehow have latched onto the blueprint of the universe. The main argument against scientific realism is that there have been enormously successful theories which were once accepted but are now regarded as false. The central question addressed in this paper is whether there is some reasonable way to have the best (...)
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  • For Universal Rules, Against Induction.John Worrall - 2010 - Philosophy of Science 77 (5):740-753.
    This essay criticizes John Norton's 2010 defense of the thesis that “all induction is local.” Norton's local inductions are bound, if cogent, to involve general principles, and the need to accredit these general principles threatens to lead to all the usual problems associated with the ‘problem of induction’. Norton, in fact, recognizes this threat, but his responses are inadequate. The right response involves not induction but a sophisticated version of hypothetico-deduction. Norton's secondary thesis—that if there is a general account of (...)
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