After introducing semantic anti-realism and the paradox of knowability, the paper offers a reconstruction of the anti-realist argument from understanding. The proposed reconstruction validates an unrestricted principle to the effect that truth requires the existence of a certain kind of “demonstration”. The paper shows that that principle fails to imply the problematic instances of the original...

Thesis (1) appears in two papers published in 1963.1 Theses (2) and (3) appear in later works under the joint rubric of internal realism.2 Putnam has not explained how the semantic theses that constitute internal realism fit together with his earlier, reliabilist conception of scientific inquiry. Nor have his followers. Barrels of philosophical ink have been spilled on (3) in complete isolation...

In this paper we introduce a new spatio-temporal methodology for biosurveillance entitled the Repeated Two-sample Rank (RTR) procedure. It is designed to sequentially incorporate information from individual observations and thus can operate on data in real-time as it arrives into an automated biosurveillance system. In addition, upon a signal of a possible outbreak, the methodology suggests a w...

This article explains for a general philosophical audience the central issues and strategies in the contemporary moral realism debate. It critically surveys the contribution of some recent scholarship, representing expressivist and pragmatist nondescriptivism (Mark Timmons, Hilary Putnam), subjectivist and nonsubjectivist naturalism (Michael Smith, Paul Bloomfield, Philippa Foot), nonnaturalism...

After introducing semantic anti-realism and the paradox of knowability, the paper considers a new threat posed to a restricted version of semantic anti-realism by a group of recent arguments. These arguments purport to achieve with respect to a restricted version of anti-realism what the paradox of knowability achieves with respect to an unrestricted version. Building on features of the informa...

Most physicists uphold that the tests of the Bell–Clauser, Horne, Shimony and Holt (BCHSH) inequalities confirm the predictions of standard quantum mechanics (SQM) and refute local realism. Some scholars, however, criticize this conviction, yet maintaining that SQM conflicts with local realism. Contrasting with both viewpoints, we present here an improved version of the extended semantic realis...

Most physicists uphold that the tests of the Bell–Clauser, Horne, Shimony and Holt (BCHSH) inequalities confirm quantum mechanics (QM) and refute local realism. Some scholars, however, criticize this conviction, yet maintaining that QM conflicts with local realism. At variance with both viewpoints one of the authors has recently worked out an extended semantic realism (ESR) model which shows th...

How can we distinguish between quasi-realist expressivism and normative realism? The most promising answer to this question is the “explanation” explanation proposed by Dreier (2004), Simpson (2018), others: two views might agree in their claims about truth objectivity, or even attributions of semantic content sentences, but they disagree how explain meaning. Realists meaning invoking ...

In this paper I examine Locke’s criticism of the view that some species natural objects are determined by real essences, a call realism. Most commentators have focused either on putative objections to realist’s claim determining essences exist or his semantic case against assumption our terms can refer determine species. identify another objection, which, argue, is independent from both these l...