Practical Realism: Against Standard Scientific Realism and Anti-Realism

21 Realism / Anti - Realism

The main realism/anti-realism issue in the philosophy of science is the issue of scientific realism, concerned with the unobservable entities of science. However, there is also a more general issue, often known as “realism about the external world,” concerned primarily with the observable entities of common sense, but which spreads to scientific entities, both observable and unobservable. The i...

Against 'realism'

We examine the prevalent use of the phrase “local realism” in the context of Bell’s Theorem and associated experiments, with a focus on the question: what exactly is the “realism” in “local realism” supposed to mean? Carefully surveying several possible meanings, we argue that all of them are flawed in one way or another as attempts to point out a second premise (in addition to locality) on whi...

Scientific and Theological Realism

In this paper I shall explore the parallels and contrasts between scientific and theological realism. I shall start by providing an outline of the various aspects of scientific realism before looking at these in more detail and in comparison to theological realism. I hope that by this comparison with the well-developed debates between various species of scientific antirealists and realists, tha...

Inconsistency and scientific realism

I erect a framework within the semantic view of theories for explaining the empirical success of internally inconsistent models and theories, with scientific realism in mind. The framework is an instance of the ‘content-driven’ approach to inconsistency, advocated by both Norton (Philos Sci 54:327–350, 1987) and Smith (Stud Hist Philos Sci 19:429–445, 1988a, In: Fine A, Leplin J (eds) PSA1988, ...

Incommensurability and Scientific Realism