Roger Jones asks what Newtonian realists should be realists about, given that there are four empirically equivalent formulations of Newtonian mechanics which have different ontological commitments and explanatory mechanisms. A realist answer is sketched: Newtonians should be realists about what the best metaphysical considerations dictate, where the best metaphysical considerations are those which have yielded the best physics. Metaphysical considerations are required within physics, just as they are required to eliminate idealist and surrealist theories which are empirically equivalent to realist (...) ones. Realists must reject the positivist assumption that empirically equivalent theories are explanatory and evidential equivalents, too. (shrink)

This paper investigates the nature of scientific realism. I begin by considering the anomalous fact that Bas van Fraassen’s account of scientific realism is strikingly similar to Arthur Fine’s account of scientific non-realism. To resolve this puzzle, I demonstrate how the two theorists understand the nature of truth and its connection to ontology, and how that informs their conception of the realism debate. I then argue that the debate is much better captured by the theory of truthmaking, and not by (...) any particular theory of truth. To be a scientific realist is to adopt a realism-relevant account of what makes true the scientific theories one accepts. The truthmaking approach restores realism’s metaphysical core—distancing itself from linguistic conceptions of the debate—and thereby offers a better characterization of what is at stake in the question of scientific realism. (shrink)

The aim of this paper will be to show that certain strongly realist forms of scientific realism are either misguided or misnamed. I will argue that, in the case of a range of robustly realist formulations of scientific realism, the ‘scientific’ and the ‘realism’ are in significant philosophical and methodological conflict with each other; in particular, that there is a tension between the actual subject matter and methods of science on the one hand, and the realists' metaphysical claims about which (...) categories of entities the world contains on the other. (shrink)