Abstract

Critical scientific realism is contrasted with the neo‐pragmatist views of Goodman, Kuhn, and Putnam. Ontological realism can be combined with conceptual pluralism, which accepts that the mind‐independent world can be carved up or structured by various linguistic frameworks. The world can be regarded as a lawlike flux of causal processes, and its existing objects are individuated and identified relative to conceptual frameworks. This agrees with Putnam's criticism of metaphysical realism that presupposes a ready‐made world. But it is argued that conceptual pluralism is compatible with the non‐epistemic correspondence account of truth, so that critical realism differs also from Putnam's internal realism, Goodman's irrealist account of worldmaking, and Kuhn's Darwinian Kantianism.