Purpose This study aims to correct errors in, and comment on the claims made in papers of Rigdon (2022) Henseler Schuberth (2022), tidy up any substantive oversights Cadogan Lee (2022). Design/methodology/approach The discusses clarifies gap between Rigdon’s notion scientific realism metaphysical, semantic epistemological commitments that are broadly agreed be key principles realism. also exami...

Scientific claims can be assessed epistemically in either of two ways: according to scientific standards, or by means of philosophical arguments such as the no-miracle argument in favor of scientific realism. This paper investigates the basis of this duality of epistemic assessments. It is claimed that the duality rests on two different notions of epistemic justification that are well-known fro...

Abstract According to the standard model of cosmology, $$\Lambda $$ Λ CDM, mass-energy budget current stage universe is not dominated by luminous matter that we are familiar with, but instead some form dark (and energy). It thus tempting adopt scientific realism about matter. However, there barely any constra...

► We primed moral realism, the belief that moral facts are like mathematical truths. ► Priming meta-ethical views (realism vs. antirealism) affected actual behavior. ► Priming a belief in moral realism increased charitable giving. ► Moral realism may raise the moral stakes and motivate moral behavior. a b s t r a c t a r t i c l e i n f o People disagree about whether " moral facts " are object...

Classical tautologies have probability 1. Classical contradictions have probability 0. These familiar features reflect a connection between standard probability theory and classical logic. In contexts in which classical logic is questioned—to deal with the paradoxes of self-reference, or vague propositions, for the purposes of scientific theory or metaphysical anti-realism—we must equally quest...

Two things about Hilary Putnam have not changed throughout his career: some (including Putnam himself) have regarded him as a “realist” and some have seen him as a philosopher who changed his positions (certainly with respect to realism) almost continually. Apparently, what realism meant to him in the 1960s, in the late seventies and eighties, and in the nineties, respectively, are quite differ...

In this essay I examine a recent argument by Steven Weinberg that seeks to establish local quantum field theory as the only type of quantum theory in accord with the relevent evidence and satisfying two basic physical principles. I reconstruct the argument as a demonstrative induction and indicate it’s role as a foil to the underdetermination argument in the debate over scientific realism.

Scientific naturalism is a metaphysical doctrine, a view about what there is, or what we ought to believe that there is. It maintains that natural science should be our guide in matters metaphysical: the ontology we should accept is the ontology that turns out to be required by science. Quine is often regarded as the doyen of scientific naturalists, though the supporting cast includes such gian...