Jonathan, Anti-Realism here isn’t restricted to the view in philosophy of science. It’s also associated with a rejection of the correspondence and deflationary theories of truth and of external-world realism. I’m currently somewhere in between a scientific realist and a structural realist, and I’m fine with classifying the latter as an anti-realism, though not necessarily in the sense of Anti-Realism Chalmers coined above to label one of the factors.
Your characterization of scientific realism, though, is way too strong. “In every case” should read “In most cases” or “In many cases”, for Epistemic Realism. That’s already a difficult enough view to defend, without loading it with untenable absolutism.
My main concern with Anti-Realists isn’t that they’re often skeptical about whether bosons exist; it’s that they’re often skeptical about whether tables exist, and/or about whether they’re mind-independent, and/or about whether our statements about them are true in virtue of how the world outside ourselves is.
Ah, I see that I misread. Somehow I had it in my head that you were talking about the question on the philpapers survey specifically about scientific realism. Probably because I’ve been teaching the realism debate in my philosophy of science course the last couple of weeks.
I am, however, going to disagree that I’ve given a too strong characterization of scientific realism. I did (stupidly and accidentally) drop the phrase ”… is true or approximately true” from the end of the second commitment, but with that in place, the scientific realist really is committed to our being able to uniquely determine by evidence which of several literal rivals we ought to believe to be true or approximately true. Weakening to “most cases” or “many cases” deflates scientific realism significantly. Even constructive empiricists are going to believe that many scientific theories are literally true, since many scientific theories do not say anything about unobservable entities.
Also, without the “in every case,” it is really hard to make sense of the concern realists have about under-determination. If realists thought that sometimes they wouldn’t have good reasons to believe some one theory to be true or approximately true, then they could reply to real-life under-determination arguments (as opposed to the toy examples sometimes offered) by saying, “Oh, this is an exceptional case.”
Anyway, the kinds of anti-realist who oppose scientific realism almost never deny that tables exist. (Though maybe they should for reasons coming out of material object metaphysics.)
Jonathan, Anti-Realism here isn’t restricted to the view in philosophy of science. It’s also associated with a rejection of the correspondence and deflationary theories of truth and of external-world realism. I’m currently somewhere in between a scientific realist and a structural realist, and I’m fine with classifying the latter as an anti-realism, though not necessarily in the sense of Anti-Realism Chalmers coined above to label one of the factors.
Your characterization of scientific realism, though, is way too strong. “In every case” should read “In most cases” or “In many cases”, for Epistemic Realism. That’s already a difficult enough view to defend, without loading it with untenable absolutism.
My main concern with Anti-Realists isn’t that they’re often skeptical about whether bosons exist; it’s that they’re often skeptical about whether tables exist, and/or about whether they’re mind-independent, and/or about whether our statements about them are true in virtue of how the world outside ourselves is.
Ah, I see that I misread. Somehow I had it in my head that you were talking about the question on the philpapers survey specifically about scientific realism. Probably because I’ve been teaching the realism debate in my philosophy of science course the last couple of weeks.
I am, however, going to disagree that I’ve given a too strong characterization of scientific realism. I did (stupidly and accidentally) drop the phrase ”… is true or approximately true” from the end of the second commitment, but with that in place, the scientific realist really is committed to our being able to uniquely determine by evidence which of several literal rivals we ought to believe to be true or approximately true. Weakening to “most cases” or “many cases” deflates scientific realism significantly. Even constructive empiricists are going to believe that many scientific theories are literally true, since many scientific theories do not say anything about unobservable entities.
Also, without the “in every case,” it is really hard to make sense of the concern realists have about under-determination. If realists thought that sometimes they wouldn’t have good reasons to believe some one theory to be true or approximately true, then they could reply to real-life under-determination arguments (as opposed to the toy examples sometimes offered) by saying, “Oh, this is an exceptional case.”
Anyway, the kinds of anti-realist who oppose scientific realism almost never deny that tables exist. (Though maybe they should for reasons coming out of material object metaphysics.)