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Realism
About: Realism is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 10799 publications have been published within this topic receiving 175785 citations.
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TL;DR: 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.
37 citations
01 Jan 2015
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors argue that ethicists and philosophers of mathematics have confused what they call the justificatory challenge for realism about an area, D, with the reliability challenge for D-realism.
Abstract: What is the epistemological relevance of this contrast, if genuine? In this chapter, I argue that ethicists and philosophers of mathematics have misunderstood it. They have confused what I will call the justificatory challenge for realism about an area, D—the challenge to justify our D-beliefs—with the reliability challenge for D-realism—the challenge to explain the reliability of our D-beliefs. Harman’s contrast is relevant to the first, but not, evidently, to the second. One upshot of the discussion is that genealogical debunking arguments are fallacious. Another is that indispensability considerations cannot answer the Benacerraf–Field challenge for mathematical realism.
36 citations
TL;DR: The question of war and peace is still with us as mentioned in this paper, and a fresh look at it is made all the more necessary by the puzzling and paradoxical turn in our time, particularly in the most recent years since the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Abstract: It is to Martin Wight's everlasting credit that the question he asked several decades ago is still with us. Yet a fresh look at it is made all the more necessary by the puzzling and paradoxical turn which the question of war and peace has taken in our time, particularly in the most recent years since the fall of the Berlin Wall. In concluding his review of the three traditions-the realists, the rationalists and the revolutionists-Martin Wight discerns a dominant trend: the erosion of rationalism and the triumph of realism.' Yet, in the world of nuclear deterrence and of social and economic interdependence, one may well argue that, on the one hand, new restraints such as those favoured by the rationalist or Grotian school are imposed, at least upon nuclear power, by the necessity of survival; and that, on the other hand, the power of nation-states to control their societies and to pursue their foreign interests is being hampered by transnational trends which they find more and more difficult to manage, or even to understand. More than a world community, as aimed at by revolutionists, we have a world of rival nation-states; but more than an old-fashioned game of power politics, as described by the realist school, we have a world of turbulence where mass communications, financial networks, popular explosions constantly interfere with the calculations of diplomats and soldiers, a world where ambiguity and unpredictability seem to reign supreme. What, then, have the three traditions of thought about the relations between states to tell us about such a world? Perhaps their respective teachings are more
36 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors place realism and empiricism on an even score in regards to quantum theory, and propose a new type of measurement called "protective measurement" that affords a good reply for the realist.
Abstract: Quantum mechanics has sometimes been taken to be an empiricist (vs. realist) theory. I state the empiricist's argument, then outline a recently noticed type of measurement--protective measurement--that affords a good reply for the realist. This paper is a reply to scientific empiricism (about quantum mechanics), but is neither a refutation of that position, nor an argument in favor of scientific realism. Rather, my aim is to place realism and empiricism on an even score in regards to quantum theory.
36 citations
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01 Jan 2008TL;DR: Carruth as discussed by the authors argues that stories about how the United States cultivates, distributes and consumes food imbue it with the power to transform social and ecological systems around the world.
Abstract: Global Appetites explores how industrial agriculture and countercultural food movements underpin US conceptions of global power in the century since the First World War. Allison Carruth's study centers on what she terms the 'literature of food' - a body of work that comprises literary realism, late modernism and magical realism along with culinary writing, food memoir and advertising. Through analysis of American texts ranging from Willa Cather's novel O Pioneers! (1913) to Novella Carpenter's non-fiction work Farm City (2009), Carruth argues that stories about how the United States cultivates, distributes and consumes food imbue it with the power to transform social and ecological systems around the world. Lively and accessible, this interdisciplinary study will appeal to scholars of American literature and culture as well as those working in the fields of food studies, food policy, agriculture history, social justice and the environmental humanities.
36 citations