The scientific realism debate directly addresses the relation between human thought and the reality in which it finds itself. A core question: Can we justifiably believe that science accurately describes the reality that lies beneath the limits of human experience? Exploring this question, this Element begins at the most foundational level of scientific realism, the endeavor to justify belief in the existence of unobservables by way of abduction. Raising anti-realist challenges, some much discussed in the literature but also some generally overlooked, it works its way toward more refined variants of scientific realism. Because scientific realism is the default position of many – scientific realists themselves often assuming it is the default position of scientists – the emphasis will be on the challenges. Those challenges will also motivate the variants of scientific realism traced. The Element concludes with a brief articulation of the author’s own position, Socratic scientific realism.

lgrsnf/25776.pdf

Cambridge Library Collection

United Kingdom and Ireland, United Kingdom

2025 feb

Cover
Title page
Copyright page
Scientific Realism
Contents
1 Believing Existence Abductions
1.1 Abduction and the Existence of Unobservables
1.2 Challenge 1: van Fraassen against the Demand for Explanation
1.3 Challenge 2, a Glimpse: The Historical Argument
against Realism
1.4 Challenge 3, a Glimpse: The Threat of a Low Degree
of Implication and a Shift to “T”
1.5 Challenge 4, a Glimpse: The Competitor Thesis
and Underdetermination
2 Believing the Best Explanation: The Realist’s Move to Comparative Inference
2.1 Inference to the Best Explanation (IBE)
2.2 Challenge 5: A Descriptive Competitor to the Realist’s IBE
2.3 Challenge 6: Supraempirical Criteria and Their Relation
to Reality
2.4 An Exploratory Tool: A Set of Exceptioned Competitors
Extracted from Science Itself
2.5 Some Pre-Reflective Exclusionary Proposals
3 Supraempirical Virtues and Their Prospects for Justifiably Excluding Competitors
3.1 Virtue 1, an Overarching Virtue: Supraempirical Criteria Are Justified Provided They Are Inherited from Empirically Successful Background Systems
3.2 Virtue 2: Coherence with the Background System in Place
3.3 Virtue 3: Indirect, Vicarious Support
3.4 Virtue 4: Breadth of Scope
3.5 Virtue 5: Novelty
3.6 Virtue 6: Simplicity
4 Truth and the Argument from the Bad Lot
4.1 The Realist’s Explicit Appeal to Truth
4.2 Challenge 7: The Argument from the Bad Lot
4.3 Dovetailing Challenges 2 and 7: History, Privilege,
and the Bad Lot
4.4 A Shift toward Deductive Validity and a Clear
Directing of the Burden
5 The Realist Justification for Epistemic Privilege: The No-Miracles Argument
5.1 The Realist’s Shift to the Meta-Level: Explaining Success
5.2 Challenge 8: Competing Explanations at the Meta-level: The Selectionist Explanation
5.3 The Realist’s Two-Pronged Defense: Truth as the Best Explanation
for the Novel Success of Individual Theories
5.4 Reprise, Challenge 3: Truth, Degree of Implication, and the
Problem of Explanatory Vacuity
5.5 Reprise, Challenge 2: Novel Success from False Theories
5.6 Reprise Challenge 2, the Historical Meta-Modus Tollens
5.7 Reprise, Challenges 2 and 3: Approximate Truth, Degree
of Implication, and the Historical Argument
5.8 Reprise, Challenge 2: A Historical and Evidentially Gradated
Meta-Modus Ponens
5.9 Reprise, Dovetailing Challenges 2 and 7: History and a Bad Lot
Modus Ponens
5.10 Reprise, Challenge 8: Modest Surrealism
and a Supplementary Competitor Explanation for Success
6 Conclusion and Epilogue: Socratic Scientific Realism
6.1 Conclusion
6.2 Epilogue: Socratic Scientific Realism
References
Acknowledgments

2025-03-09