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Hacking's experimental realism: An untenable middle ground
Richard Reiner,Robert Pierson +1 more
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The authors argue that Hacking's argument is as dependent on inference to the best explanation (IBE), and therefore as weak, as the other realist arguments, since what is to be shown is precisely the legitimacy of such abductive inferences.Abstract:
As Laudan and Fine show, and Boyd concedes, the attempt to infer the truth of scientific realism from the fact that it putatively provides the best explanation of the instrumental success of science is circular, since what is to be shown is precisely the legitimacy of such abductive inferences. Hacking's "experimental argument for scientific realism about entities" is one of the few arguments for scientific realism that purports to avoid this circularity. We argue that Hacking's argument is as dependent on inference to the best explanation (IBE), and therefore as weak, as the other realist arguments.read more
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Philosophy of experimental biology
TL;DR: In this paper, the nature of explanations and reductionism are discussed and a discussion of the role of explanations in scientific inference is presented in the context of ontogeny and scientific realism in search of the truth.
Journal ArticleDOI
The Way Things Are
TL;DR: BRIDGMAN has made a noble effort to employ the rigorous critique of a scientist on some of the pressing problems of everyday life of which mankind has almost unique talents for making a mess.
Journal ArticleDOI
Testing Inference To The Best Explanation
TL;DR: A method is described that, by combining Glymour's theory of bootstrapping and Hacking's arguments from microscopy, allows us to test IBE without begging any antirealist issues.
Journal ArticleDOI
Defensible territory for entity realism
TL;DR: In the face of argument to the contrary, it is shown that there is defensible middle ground available for entity realism, between the extremes of scientific realism and empiricist antirealism as mentioned in this paper.
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Manipulative success and the unreal
TL;DR: In this article, the authors analyze the foundations on which Hacking's postulate rests and identify the conditions on which one can derive a form of entity realism from it, and develop in detail an extensive class of counterexamples, drawing on the notion of quasi-particles in condensed matter physics.
References
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How the laws of physics lie
TL;DR: In this paper, Cartwright argues that fundamental explanatory laws, the deepest and most admired successes of modern physics, do not in fact describe the regularities that exist in nature and draws a novel distinction, arguing that theoretical entities and the complex and localized laws that describe them, can be interpreted realistically, but that the simple unifying laws of basic theory cannot.
Book
Representing and Intervening: Introductory Topics in the Philosophy of Natural Science
TL;DR: Analytical table of contents Preface Introduction: rationality Part I.
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A Confutation of Convergent Realism
TL;DR: In this article, it is argued that the history of science, far from confirming scientific realism, decisively confutes several extant versions of avowedly 'naturalistic' forms of scientific realism.
Journal ArticleDOI
How the Laws of Physics Lie.
Henry E. Kyburg,Nancy Cartwright +1 more
TL;DR: In this article, Cartwright argues that despite their great explanatory power these laws do not describe reality, but describe highly idealized objects in models, and that the correct account of explanation in science is not the traditional covering law view, but the "simulacrum" account.