Marques, Bernardo (2026) Practice-Constituted Realism. In: UNSPECIFIED.

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Abstract

Local realism aims to reconcile scientific realism with the historical variability of scientific hypotheses by restricting the realist commitment to limited aspects of successful theories. I argue that local realism relies on a form of semantic minimalism: scientific theories are assumed to possess truth-conditional content independently of scientific practice. As an alternative, I propose a contextualist account according to which scientific theories are best understood as formal structures whose truth-conditions are constituted through practice. The resulting view offers a new perspective on two central arguments in the realism debate: the No-Miracles Argument and the Pessimistic Meta-Induction.

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Item Type:	Conference or Workshop Item (UNSPECIFIED)
Creators:	Creators Email ORCID Marques, Bernardo bernardo.marques@univ-paris1.fr
Keywords:	Scientific Realism; Local Realism; Contextualism; No-Miracles Argument; The Pessimistic Meta-Induction.
Subjects:	General Issues > Realism/Anti-realism
Depositing User:	Bernardo Marques
Date Deposited:	04 Jun 2026 14:03
Last Modified:	04 Jun 2026 14:03
Item ID:	29914
Subjects:	General Issues > Realism/Anti-realism
Date:	2026
URI:	https://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/id/eprint/29914

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