Scientific Realism

Can we justifiably believe that our scientific theories accurately describe the reality that underlies the world as we experience it?

Timothy D. Lyons (Author)

9781009507226, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 20 February 2025

84 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 0.6 cm, 0.259 kg

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.

1. Believing existence abductions
2. Believing the best explanation: the realist's move to comparative inference
3. Supraempirical virtues and their prospects for justifiably excluding competitors
4. Truth and the argument from the bad lot
5. The realist justification for epistemic privilege: the No-Miracles argument
6. Conclusion and epilogue: Socratic scientific realism
References.

Subject Areas: Philosophy of science [PDA]