Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (2011)
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Abstract |
Debates about scientific realism are closely connected to almost everything else in the philosophy of science, for they concern the very nature of scientific knowledge. Scientific realism is a positive epistemic attitude toward the content of our best theories and models, recommending belief in both observable and unobservable aspects of the world described by the sciences. This epistemic attitude has important metaphysical and semantic dimensions, and these various commitments are contested by a number of rival epistemologies of science, known collectively as forms of scientific antirealism. This article explains what scientific realism is, outlines its main variants, considers the most common arguments for and against the position, and contrasts it with its most important antirealist counterparts.
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Keywords | scientific realism philosophy of science variants of scientific realism arguments for and against scientific realism |
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References found in this work BETA
Scientific Explanation and the Causal Structure of the World.Wesley C. Salmon - 1984 - Princeton University Press.
Science as Social Knowledge: Values and Objectivity in Scientific Inquiry.Helen E. Longino (ed.) - 1990 - Princeton University Press.
Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective.Donna Harawy - 1988 - Feminist Studies 14 (3):575-599.
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Citations of this work BETA
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Folk Psychology and the Bayesian Brain.Joe Dewhurst - 2017 - In Thomas Metzinger & Wanja Wiese (eds.), Philosophy and Predictive Processing. Frankfurt am Main: MIND Group.
Optimistic Realism Over Selectivism.Seungbae Park - 2019 - Kriterion - Journal of Philosophy 33 (1):89-106.
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