Critical Scientific Realism
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| Author | : Ilkka Niiniluoto |
| Publisher | : OUP Oxford |
| Total Pages | : 356 |
| Release | : 1999-12-09 |
| Genre | : Philosophy |
| ISBN | : 0191519405 |
Ilkka Niiniluoto comes to the rescue of scientific realism, showing that reports of its death have been greatly exaggerated. Philosophical realism holds that the aim of a particular discourse is to make true statements about its subject-matter. Niiniluoto surveys the different varieties of realism in ontology, semantics, epistemology, theory construction, and methodology. He then sets out his own original version, and defends it against competing theories in the philosophy of science. Niiniluoto's critical scientific realism is founded upon the notion of truth as correspondence between language and reality, and characterizes scientific progress in terms of increasing truthlikeness. This makes it possible not only to take seriously, but also to make precise, the troublesome idea that scientific theories typically are false but nevertheless close to the truth.
| Author | : N. Rescher |
| Publisher | : Springer Science & Business Media |
| Total Pages | : 190 |
| Release | : 2012-12-06 |
| Genre | : Science |
| ISBN | : 9400939051 |
The increasingly lively controversy over scientific realism has become one of the principal themes of recent philosophy. 1 In watching this controversy unfold in the rather technical way currently in vogue, it has seemed to me that it would be useful to view these contemporary disputes against the background of such older epistemological issues as fallibilism, scepticism, relativism, and the traditional realism/idealism debate. This, then, is the object of the present book, which will recon sider the newer concerns about scientific realism in the context of these older philosophical themes. Historically, realism concerns itself with the real existence of things that do not "meet the eye" - with suprasensible entities that lie beyond the reach of human perception. In medieval times, discussions about realism focused upon universals. Recognizing that there are physical objects such as cats and triangular objects and red tomatoes, the medievels debated whether such "abstract objects" as cathood and triangularity and redness also exist by way of having a reality indepen dent of the concretely real things that exhibit them. Three fundamen tally different positions were defended: (1) Nominalism. Abstracta have no independent existence as such: they only "exist" in and through the objects that exhibit them. Only particulars (individual substances) exist. Abstract "objects" are existents in name only, mere thought fictions by whose means we address concrete particular things. (2) Realism. Abstracta have an independent existence as such.
| Author | : J. Joseph |
| Publisher | : Springer |
| Total Pages | : 269 |
| Release | : 2010-07-30 |
| Genre | : Political Science |
| ISBN | : 0230281982 |
Critical and scientific realism have emerged as important perspectives on international relations in recent years. The attraction of these approaches lies in the claim that they can transcend the positivism vs postpositivism divide. This book demonstrates the vitality of this approach and the difference that 'realism' makes.
| Author | : Wenceslao J. Gonzalez |
| Publisher | : Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG |
| Total Pages | : 465 |
| Release | : 2020-08-24 |
| Genre | : Philosophy |
| ISBN | : 3110664739 |
Scientific realism is at the core of the contemporary philosophical debate on science. This book analyzes new versions of scientific realism. It makes explicit the advantages of scientific realism over alternatives and antagonists, contributes to deciding which of the new approaches better meets the descriptive and the prescriptive criteria, and expands the philosophico-methodological field to take in new topics and disciplines.
| Author | : Roy Bhaskar |
| Publisher | : Verso Books |
| Total Pages | : 367 |
| Release | : 2020-05-05 |
| Genre | : Philosophy |
| ISBN | : 1789603536 |
A Realist Theory of Science is one of the few books that have changed our understanding of the philosophy of science. In this analysis of the natural sciences, with a particular focus on the experimental process itself, Roy Bhaskar provides a definitive critique of the traditional, positivist conception of science and stakes out an alternative, realist position. Since it original publication in 1975, a movement known as 'Critical Realism', which is both intellectually diverse and international in scope, has developed on the basis of key concepts outlined in the text. The book has been hailed in many quarters as a 'Copernican Revolution' in the study of the nature of science, and the implications of its account have been far-reaching for many fields of the humanities and social sciences.
| Author | : Christopher Norris |
| Publisher | : Psychology Press |
| Total Pages | : 248 |
| Release | : 2004 |
| Genre | : Language Arts & Disciplines |
| ISBN | : 9780415327855 |
In this book Christopher Norris develops the case for scientific realism by tackling various adversary arguments from a range of anti-realist positions. Through a close critical reading he shows how they fail to make adequate sense on any rational, consistent, and scientifically-informed survey of the evidence. Along the way he incorporates a number of detailed case-studies from the history and philosophy of science. Norris devotes much of his discussion to some of the most prominent and widely influential source-texts of anti-realism. Also included are the sophisticated versions of verificationism developed - albeit in very different ways - by thinkers such as Michael Dummett and Bas van Fraassen. Central to Norris's argument is a prolonged engagement with the once highly influential but nowadays neglected work of Norwood Russell Hanson. This book will be welcomed especially by readers who possess some knowledge of the background debate and who wish to deepen and extend their understanding of these issues beyond an introductory level.
| Author | : R. Andrew Sayer |
| Publisher | : SAGE |
| Total Pages | : 224 |
| Release | : 2000-02-11 |
| Genre | : Social Science |
| ISBN | : 9780761961246 |
Realism and Social Science offers an authoritative guide to critical realism and an assessment of its virtues in comparison with other leading traditions in social science. It is illustrated throughout with relevant and accessible examples.
| Author | : Douglas V. Porpora |
| Publisher | : Cambridge University Press |
| Total Pages | : 253 |
| Release | : 2015-09-03 |
| Genre | : Philosophy |
| ISBN | : 1107107377 |
A general critique of sociology, particularly sociology in the United States, from a critical realist perspective.
| Author | : Andrew Collier |
| Publisher | : |
| Total Pages | : 296 |
| Release | : 1994 |
| Genre | : Philosophy |
| ISBN | : |
The work of Roy Bhaskar has had far-reaching effects in the philosophy of science and for political and moral theories of human emancipation. It shows how to overcome the atomistic and narrowly human-centered approaches which have dominated European thought for four centuries. In this readable introduction to his work, Andrew Collier expounds and defends the main concepts of Bhaskar's philosophy. The first part of this book looks at the philosophy of experimental science and discusses the stratification of nature, showing how biological structures are founded on chemical ones yet are not reducible to them. This paves the way, in part two, for a discussion of the human sciences which demonstrates that the world they study is also rooted in and emergent from nature. Bhaskar's concept of an "explanatory critique" (an explanation that is also a criticism, not in addition to, but by virtue of, its explanatory work) is discussed at length as a key concept for ethics and politics. Collier concludes by looking at the uses to which critical realism has been put in clarifying disputes within the human sciences with particular reference to linguistics, psychoanalysis, economics and politics.
| Author | : Derek Turner |
| Publisher | : Cambridge University Press |
| Total Pages | : 195 |
| Release | : 2007-07-05 |
| Genre | : Science |
| ISBN | : 1139465058 |
Scientists often make surprising claims about things that no one can observe. In physics, chemistry, and molecular biology, scientists can at least experiment on those unobservable entities, but what about researchers in fields such as paleobiology and geology who study prehistory, where no such experimentation is possible? Do scientists discover facts about the distant past or do they, in some sense, make prehistory? In this book Derek Turner argues that this problem has surprising and important consequences for the scientific realism debate. His discussion covers some of the main positions in philosophy of science - realism, social constructivism, empiricism, and the natural ontological attitude - and shows how they relate to issues in paleobiology and geology. His original and thought-provoking book will be of wide interest to philosophers and scientists alike.
