Critical Scientific Realism
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Critical Scientific Realism
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Author : Ilkka Niiniluoto
language : en
Publisher: OUP Oxford
Release Date : 1999-12-09
Critical Scientific Realism written by Ilkka Niiniluoto and has been published by OUP Oxford this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 1999-12-09 with Philosophy categories.
Ilkka Niiniluoto comes to the rescue of scientific realism, showing that reports of its death have been greatly exaggerated. Philosophical realism holds that the aim of a particular discourse is to make true statements about its subject-matter. Niiniluoto surveys the different varieties of realism in ontology, semantics, epistemology, theory construction, and methodology. He then sets out his own original version, and defends it against competing theories in the philosophy of science. Niiniluoto's critical scientific realism is founded upon the notion of truth as correspondence between language and reality, and characterizes scientific progress in terms of increasing truthlikeness. This makes it possible not only to take seriously, but also to make precise, the troublesome idea that scientific theories typically are false but nevertheless close to the truth.
A Critical Introduction To Scientific Realism
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Author : Paul Dicken
language : en
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Release Date : 2016-07-28
A Critical Introduction To Scientific Realism written by Paul Dicken and has been published by Bloomsbury Publishing this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2016-07-28 with Philosophy categories.
What are the reasons for believing scientific theories to be true? The contemporary debate around scientific realism exposes questions about the very nature of scientific knowledge. A Critical Introduction to Scientific Realism explores and advances the main topics of the debate, allowing epistemologists to make new connections with the philosophy of science. Moving from its origins in logical positivism to some of the most recent issues discussed in the literature, this critical introduction covers the no-miracles argument, the pessimistic meta-induction and structural realism. Placing arguments in their historical context, Paul Dicken approaches scientific realism debate as a particular instance of our more general epistemological investigations. The recurrent theme is that the scientific realism debate is in fact a pseudo-philosophical question. Concerned with the methodology of the scientific realism debate, Dicken asks what it means to offer an epistemological assessment of our scientific practices. Taking those practices as a guide to our epistemological reflections, A Critical Introduction to Scientific Realism fills a gap in current introductory texts and presents a fresh approach to understanding a crucial debate.
Scientific Realism
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Author : N. Rescher
language : en
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Release Date : 2012-12-06
Scientific Realism written by N. Rescher and has been published by Springer Science & Business Media this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2012-12-06 with Science categories.
The increasingly lively controversy over scientific realism has become one of the principal themes of recent philosophy. 1 In watching this controversy unfold in the rather technical way currently in vogue, it has seemed to me that it would be useful to view these contemporary disputes against the background of such older epistemological issues as fallibilism, scepticism, relativism, and the traditional realism/idealism debate. This, then, is the object of the present book, which will recon sider the newer concerns about scientific realism in the context of these older philosophical themes. Historically, realism concerns itself with the real existence of things that do not "meet the eye" - with suprasensible entities that lie beyond the reach of human perception. In medieval times, discussions about realism focused upon universals. Recognizing that there are physical objects such as cats and triangular objects and red tomatoes, the medievels debated whether such "abstract objects" as cathood and triangularity and redness also exist by way of having a reality indepen dent of the concretely real things that exhibit them. Three fundamen tally different positions were defended: (1) Nominalism. Abstracta have no independent existence as such: they only "exist" in and through the objects that exhibit them. Only particulars (individual substances) exist. Abstract "objects" are existents in name only, mere thought fictions by whose means we address concrete particular things. (2) Realism. Abstracta have an independent existence as such.
Scientific Realism
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Author : N Rescher
language : en
Publisher:
Release Date : 1987-08-31
Scientific Realism written by N Rescher and has been published by this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 1987-08-31 with categories.
Philosophy Of Language And The Challenge To Scientific Realism
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Author : Christopher Norris
language : en
Publisher: Routledge
Release Date : 2004-06-02
Philosophy Of Language And The Challenge To Scientific Realism written by Christopher Norris and has been published by Routledge this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2004-06-02 with Philosophy categories.
In this book Christopher Norris develops the case for scientific realism by tackling various adversary arguments from a range of anti-realist positions. Through a close critical reading he shows how they fail to make adequate sense on any rational, consistent, and scientifically-informed survey of the evidence. Along the way he incorporates a number of detailed case-studies from the history and philosophy of science. Norris devotes much of his discussion to some of the most prominent and widely influential source-texts of anti-realism. Also included are the sophisticated versions of verificationism developed - albeit in very different ways - by thinkers such as Michael Dummett and Bas van Fraassen. Central to Norris's argument is a prolonged engagement with the once highly influential but nowadays neglected work of Norwood Russell Hanson. This book will be welcomed especially by readers who possess some knowledge of the background debate and who wish to deepen and extend their understanding of these issues beyond an introductory level.
Antipositivist Theories Of The Sciences
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Author : N. Stockman
language : en
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Release Date : 2013-03-09
Antipositivist Theories Of The Sciences written by N. Stockman and has been published by Springer Science & Business Media this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2013-03-09 with Science categories.
The sciences are too important to be left exclusively to scientists, and indeed they have not been. The structure of scientific knowledge, the role of the sciences in society, the appropriate social contexts for the pursuit of scientific inquiry, have long been matters for reflection and debate about the sciences carried on both within academe and outside it. Even within the universities this reflection has not been the property of any single discipline. Philosophy might have been first in the field, but history and the social sciences have also entered the fray. For the latter, new problems came to the fore, since reflection on the sciences is, in the case of the social sciences, necessarily also reflection on themselves as sciences. Reflection on the natural sciences and self-reflection by the social sciences came to be dominated in the 1960s by the term 'positivism'. At the time when this word had been invented, the sciences were flourishing; their social and material environment had become increasingly favourable to scientific progress, and the sciences were pointing the way to an optimistic future. In the later twentieth century, however, 'positivism' came to be a word used more frequently by those less sure of nineteenth century certainties. In both sociology and philosophy, 'positivism' was now something to be rejected, and, symbolizing the collapse of an earlier consensus, it became itself the shibboleth of a new dissensus, as different groups of reflective thinkers, in rejecting 'positivism', rejected something different, and often rejected each other.
Scientific Realism And International Relations
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Author : J. Joseph
language : en
Publisher: Springer
Release Date : 2010-07-30
Scientific Realism And International Relations written by J. Joseph and has been published by Springer this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2010-07-30 with Political Science categories.
Critical and scientific realism have emerged as important perspectives on international relations in recent years. The attraction of these approaches lies in the claim that they can transcend the positivism vs postpositivism divide. This book demonstrates the vitality of this approach and the difference that 'realism' makes.
The Instrument Of Science
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Author : Darrell P. Rowbottom
language : en
Publisher: Routledge
Release Date : 2019-03-25
The Instrument Of Science written by Darrell P. Rowbottom and has been published by Routledge this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2019-03-25 with Philosophy categories.
Roughly, instrumentalism is the view that science is primarily, and should primarily be, an instrument for furthering our practical ends. It has fallen out of favour because historically influential variants of the view, such as logical positivism, suffered from serious defects. In this book, however, Darrell P. Rowbottom develops a new form of instrumentalism, which is more sophisticated and resilient than its predecessors. This position—‘cognitive instrumentalism’—involves three core theses. First, science makes theoretical progress primarily when it furnishes us with more predictive power or understanding concerning observable things. Second, scientific discourse concerning unobservable things should only be taken literally in so far as it involves observable properties or analogies with observable things. Third, scientific claims about unobservable things are probably neither approximately true nor liable to change in such a way as to increase in truthlikeness. There are examples from science throughout the book, and Rowbottom demonstrates at length how cognitive instrumentalism fits with the development of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century chemistry and physics, and especially atomic theory. Drawing upon this history, Rowbottom also argues that there is a kind of understanding, empirical understanding, which we can achieve without having true, or even approximately true, representations of unobservable things. In closing the book, he sets forth his view on how the distinction between the observable and unobservable may be drawn, and compares cognitive instrumentalism with key contemporary alternatives such as structural realism, constructive empiricism, and semirealism. Overall, this book offers a strong defence of instrumentalism that will be of interest to scholars and students working on the debate about realism in philosophy of science.
A Realist Theory Of Science
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Author : Roy Bhaskar
language : en
Publisher: Routledge
Release Date : 2013-01-28
A Realist Theory Of Science written by Roy Bhaskar and has been published by Routledge this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2013-01-28 with Philosophy categories.
First Published in 2008. Now acknowledged as a classic in the philosophy of science, A Realist Theory of Science is one of the very few books which has transformed not only our understanding of science, but that of the nature of the world it studies. Since its original publication in 1975, the book has inspired the multi-disciplinary and international movement of thought known as "critical realism"; and its ideas have been influential across the whole spectrum of the sciences, arts and humanities and in a diverse array of social practices and professions. In this book, Roy Bhaskar sets out to revindicate ontology, critiquing the reduction of being in favor of knowledge, which he calls the "epistemic fallacy". Employing a transcendental argument from the nature of experimental activity, he establishes a critique of the dominant positivist and neo-Kantian traditions in the philosophy of science, developing a new ontology in which concepts of structure, difference and change come to the fore. Then, analyzing the nature of scientific discovery and development, he shows how, against both the empiricist and rationalist traditions, science can come to have a posteriori knowledge of natural necessity. The resultant position, which the author characterizes as transcendental realism, has the power to resolve many traditional philosophical problems, such as the problem of induction. At the same time it lays the basis for radically new accounts of social science, ethics and the project of human emancipation. A new introduction to this edition by Mervyn Hartwig decribes the significance of A Realist Theory of Science throughout the humanities world, and offers an expert critique of its content.
Scientific Realism And Human Emancipation
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Author :
language : en
Publisher: Routledge
Release Date :
Scientific Realism And Human Emancipation written by and has been published by Routledge this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on with categories.