PhilSci Archive

How not to be a Realist or why we Ought to Make it Safe for Closet Structural Realists to Come out.

Votsis, Ioannis (2010) How not to be a Realist or why we Ought to Make it Safe for Closet Structural Realists to Come out. [Preprint]

[img]
Preview
PDF
Votsis_How_not_to_be_a_Realist.pdf

Download (136kB)

Abstract

When it comes to name-calling, structural realists have heard pretty much all of it. Among the many insults, they have been called ‘empiricist anti-realists’ but also ‘traditional scientific realists’. Obviously the collapse accusations that motivate these two insults cannot both be true at the same time. The aim of this paper is to defend the epistemic variety of structural realism against the accusation of collapse to traditional scientific realism. In so doing, I turn the tables on traditional scientific realists by presenting them with a dilemma. They can either opt for a construal of their view that permits epistemic access to non-structural features of unobservables but then face the daunting task of substantiating a claim that seems to have little hope of being true or they can drop the requirement of epistemic access to non-structural features but then face a collapse to epistemic structural realism. There is thus only one well supported way to be a realist. No wonder then that many traditional scientific realists have over the years expressed views that are strikingly similar to epistemic structural realism. It is high time to let these epistemic structural realists out of the closet.


Export/Citation: EndNote | BibTeX | Dublin Core | ASCII/Text Citation (Chicago) | HTML Citation | OpenURL
Social Networking:
Share |

Item Type: Preprint
Creators:
CreatorsEmailORCID
Votsis, Ioannis
Keywords: structural realism, scientific realism, Newman problem, Ramsey sentence, theories of reference, Russell, history of science.
Subjects: General Issues > Theory Change
General Issues > Theory/Observation
General Issues > History of Science Case Studies
General Issues > Realism/Anti-realism
Depositing User: Dr Ioannis Votsis
Date Deposited: 30 Mar 2010
Last Modified: 07 Oct 2010 15:19
Item ID: 5232
Subjects: General Issues > Theory Change
General Issues > Theory/Observation
General Issues > History of Science Case Studies
General Issues > Realism/Anti-realism
Date: January 2010
URI: https://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/id/eprint/5232

Monthly Views for the past 3 years

Monthly Downloads for the past 3 years

Plum Analytics

Actions (login required)

View Item View Item