Explanation and Scientific Realism

1990 ◽  
Vol 27 ◽  
pp. 285-295
Author(s):  
Philip Gasper
Keyword(s):  
Scientific Realism ◽  
Good Explanation ◽  
Scientific Methodology ◽  
Van Fraassen ◽  
Scientific Theories ◽  
Scientific Realist ◽  
Technical Problems ◽  
Bas Van Fraassen ◽  
Long Time ◽  
Realist Perspective

A few years ago, Bas van Fraassen reminded philosophers of science that there are two central questions that a theory of explanation ought to answer. First, what is a (good) explanation—when has something been explained satisfactorily? Second, why do we value explanations? (van Fraassen, 1977, 1980, ch. 5). For a long time, discussions of explanation concentrated on technical problems connected with the first of these questions, and the second was by and large ignored. But, in fact, I think it is the second question which raises the more fundamental and interesting philosophical issues. I shall offer reasons for thinking that the answer to the first question requires acceptance of the sort of fullblown notion of causation that only a scientific realist can love, and that the answer to the second question requires a realist construal of scientific theories and scientific methodology. My argument will be mainly negative, surveying the problems facing some major alternative accounts of explanation. A full elaboration of the realist perspective will have to await the completion of work in progress.

scholarly journals Realism, empiricism and causal inquiry in International Relations: What is at stake?

2018 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 562-587 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adam R C Humphreys
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Scientific Realism ◽  
Scientific Practice ◽  
World Politics ◽  
Constructive Empiricism ◽  
Van Fraassen ◽  
Scientific Realist ◽  
Bas Van Fraassen ◽  
Causal Mechanisms ◽  
Everyday World

Discussions of causal inquiry in International Relations are increasingly framed in terms of a contrast between rival philosophical positions, each with a putative methodological corollary — empiricism is associated with a search for patterns of covariation, while scientific realism is associated with a search for causal mechanisms. Scientific realism is, on this basis, claimed to open up avenues of causal inquiry that are unavailable to empiricists. This is misleading. Empiricism appears inferior only if its reformulation by contemporary philosophers of science, such as Bas van Fraassen, is ignored. I therefore develop a fuller account than has previously been provided in International Relations of Van Fraassen’s ‘constructive empiricism’ and how it differs from scientific realism. In light of that, I consider what is at stake in calls for the reconstitution of causal inquiry along scientific realist, rather than empiricist, lines. I argue that scientific realists have failed to make a compelling case that what matters is whether researchers are realists. Constructive empiricism and scientific realism differ only on narrow epistemological and metaphysical grounds that carry no clear implications for the conduct of causal inquiry. Yet, insofar as Van Fraassen has reformed empiricism to meet the scientific realist challenge, this has created a striking disjunction between mainstream practices of causal inquiry in International Relations and the vision of scientific practice that scientific realists and contemporary empiricists share, especially regarding the significance of regularities observed in everyday world politics. Although scientific realist calls for a philosophical revolution in International Relations are overstated, this disjunction demands further consideration.

4. Realism and anti‐realism

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Samir Okasha
Keyword(s):  
Scientific Realism ◽  
Van Fraassen ◽  
No Miracles Argument ◽  
Bas Van Fraassen ◽  
Aim Of Science ◽  
The World ◽  
True Description ◽  
Underdetermination Argument

‘Realism and anti-realism’ is concerned with the debate between scientific realism and its converse, anti-realism or instrumentalism. Realists hold that the aim of science is to provide a true description of the world. Anti-realists hold that it is to provide a true description of the ‘observable’ part of the world. The ‘no miracles’ argument, one of the strongest arguments for scientific realism, is shown to be a plausibility argument — an inference to the best explanation. Central to the debate between realism and anti-realism is the observable/unobservable distinction and the views of realist Grover Maxwell and anti-realist Bas van Fraassen are described. The underdetermination argument is also explained.

Scientific Realism

2021 ◽  
pp. 251-253
Author(s):  
Heikki Patomäki
Keyword(s):  
Interwar Period ◽  
Scientific Realism ◽  
Scientific Theory ◽  
Constructive Empiricism ◽  
Van Fraassen ◽  
Scientific Theories ◽  
True Story ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
The Status

This chapter addresses scientific realism. After the heyday of empiricism in the interwar period and its immediate aftermath, many critical reactions to empiricism seemed to suggest scientific realism. It was widely agreed that scientific theories make references to things that cannot be directly observed (or at least seen), and thus emerged the issue of the status of non-observables. As scientific realism became increasingly dominant, new philosophical stances such as Bas C. van Fraassen’s constructive empiricism were often defined in opposition to it. Van Fraassen understands scientific realism as a claim that science aims to give us, in its theories, a literally true story of what the world is like; and acceptance of a scientific theory involves the belief that it is true. More in line with established forms of scientific realism, Ilkka Niiniluoto talks about verisimilitude, or truth-likeness. This concept is supposed to avoid the consequences of claiming to have access to the truth itself. The chapter then considers how the social sciences seem to pose difficulties for scientific realism.

Why There are No Ready-Made Phenomena: What Philosophers of Science Should Learn From Kant

2008 ◽  
Vol 63 ◽  
pp. 1-35 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michela Massimi
Keyword(s):  
Scientific Realism ◽  
Constructive Empiricism ◽  
Van Fraassen ◽  
Scientific Theories ◽  
The Way

The debate on scientific realism has raged among philosophers of science for decades. The scientific realist's claim that science aims to give us a literally true description of the way things are, has come under severe scrutiny and attack by Bas van Fraassen's constructive empiricism. All science aims at is to save the observable phenomena, according to van Fraassen. Scientific realists have faced since a main sceptical challenge: the burden is on them to prove that the entities postulated by our scientific theories are real and that science is still in the ‘truth’ business.

Realism and the Principle of the Common Cause

1992 ◽  
Vol 22 (4) ◽  
pp. 445-461
Author(s):  
Mark A. Stone
Keyword(s):  
Scientific Realism ◽  
Explanatory Power ◽  
Scientific Methodology ◽  
Necessary Condition ◽  
Sufficient Condition ◽  
Scientific Theories ◽  
Common Cause ◽  
The Common ◽  
Preceding Event

Contemporary arguments for scientific realism are typically based on some form of inference to the best explanation. Sometimes such arguments concern the methods of science: given the success of scientific methodology, realism offers the best explanation of this success. Sometimes such arguments concern the content of scientific theories: given observed regularities in nature, explanations must be given of those regularities; the best such explanations will be realist. One forceful explanationist argument about the content of science can be based on Hans Reichenbach’s Principle of the Common Cause (CC). Roughly, CC says that whenever an enduring correlation between two events is observed, there must be some preceding event which is the common cause of the two, and is the explanation for the correlation. Rigid adherence to this demand for a common cause, however, supposedly goes beyond the instrumentalist explanatory resources available to the antirealist, and hence CC is taken to be a sufficient condition for realism. Further, one might claim that any argument that realism has greater explanatory power than antirealism depends either explicitly or implicitly on CC, and hence CC is also a necessary condition for realism.

scholarly journals A Fond Farewell to "Approximate Truth"?

2018 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 78 ◽  
Author(s):  
P. Kyle Stanford
Keyword(s):  
Scientific Realism ◽  
Scientific Inquiry ◽  
High Probability ◽  
Historical Record ◽  
Scientific Theories ◽  
Scientific Realist ◽  
Approximate Truth ◽  
Different Types ◽  
Realism Debate

Most commonly, the scientific realism debate is seen as dividing those who do and do not think that the striking empirical and practical successes of at least our best scientific theories indicate with high probability that those theories are ‘approximately true’. But I want to suggest that this characterization of the debate has far outlived its usefulness. Not only does it obscure the central differences between two profoundly different types of contemporary scientific realist, but even more importantly it serves to disguise the most substantial points of actual disagreement between these two kinds of realists and those who instead think the historical record of scientific inquiry itself reveals that such realism is untenable in either form.

Instrumentalism

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
P. Kyle Stanford
Keyword(s):  
Newtonian Mechanics ◽  
Scientific Theories ◽  
Restricted Class ◽  
Scientific Realist ◽  
Scientific Domain ◽  
The World

This chapter seeks to explore and develop the proposal that even our best scientific theories are not (as the scientific realist would have it) accurate descriptions of how things stand in otherwise inaccessible domains of nature but are instead simply powerful conceptual tools or instruments for engaging practically with the world around us. It describes a number of persistent challenges facing any attempt to apply the American Pragmatists’ global conception of all ideas, beliefs, theories, and cognitions quite generally as such tools or instruments to only a restricted class or category of such entities (such as our best scientific theories) instead. It then seeks to overcome these challenges by regarding scientific instrumentalism as simply applying the scientific realist’s own attitude toward a theory like Newtonian mechanics to even the most empirically successful and instrumentally powerful theory we have in any given scientific domain.

The Empirical Stance ? Bas van Fraassen

2006 ◽  
Vol 32 (3) ◽  
pp. 177-177
Author(s):  
John Ross Churchill
Keyword(s):  
Van Fraassen ◽  
Bas Van Fraassen ◽  
Empirical Stance

scholarly journals A Dilemma for the Scientific Realist

2018 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 65
Author(s):  
Howard Sankey
Keyword(s):  
Scientific Realism ◽  
Common Sense ◽  
The Other ◽  
Scientific Realist ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
The One ◽  
Evidential Basis ◽  
Apparent Conflict

This note poses a dilemma for scientific realism which stems from the apparent conflict between science and common sense. On the one hand, we may accept scientific realism and agree that there is a conflict between science and common sense. If we do this, we remove the evidential basis for science and have no reason to accept science in the first place. On the other hand, we may accept scientific realism and endorse common sense. If we do this, we must reject the conflict between science and common sense. The dilemma is to be resolved by distinguishing between basic common sense and widely held beliefs. Basic common sense survives the advance of science and may serve as the evidential basis for science.

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