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Candidate No: B00527
Degree:
BA Psychology & Philosophy
Module Code & Title:
PP302/3
Essay Title:
Is the anti-realist position on whether belief inunobservable entities is justified in reality anexpression of our inability to attribute knowledge tosuch beliefs?
Word Count:
3,791
Heythrop College, University of LondonMay 2008
Is the anti-realist position on whether belief in unobservable entities is
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Candidate No: B00527 justified in reality an expression of our inability to attribute knowledge to suchbeliefs? The term ‘realism’ has come to be used in many different ways todescribe a huge range of schools of philosophical thought, schools that varygreatly both in terms of subject and of validity (Laudan, 1998). Thus, it isimportant to first define exactly what is meant by realism in terms of thisparticular question. That is ‘epistemological realism’ (henceforth simply‘realism’), essentially the argument that we are justified in believing that theunobservable entities that our scientific theories argue to exist do exist inreality, that they are not merely theoretical entities that fit the data well. Toput it into more descriptive and formal terms, I shall borrow a set of fourgeneralised realist claims from Laudan (1998; pp.1115):‘R1:Scientific theories (at least in ‘mature’ sciences) are typicallyapproximately true and more recent theories are closer to thetruth than older theories of the same domain.R2:The observational and theoretical terms within the theories of amature science genuinely refer (roughly, there are substances inthe world that correspond to the ontologies presumed by ourbest theories)R3:Successive theories in any mature science will be such that they‘preserve’ the theoretical relations and the apparent referents of earlier theories (i.e., earlier theories will be limiting cases of latertheories)R4:Acceptable new theories do and should explain why theirpredecessors were successful insofar as they were successful.’ These four claims together argue that the success of science has occurredbecause scientific theories describe real entities, and the continueddevelopment of such theories results in a convergence towards absolute
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Candidate No: B00527truth, well described by Laudan as ‘convergent epistemological realism’(1998; pp.1116). This essay shall first attempt to defend this specific type of realism, and then discuss further arguments in favour of such realism in moregeneral terms. It is important to note here that this type of realism bydefinition has a strong epistemological element, this essay shall not attemptto deny this; however, the argument is that, in postulating that we are not justified in believing in the existence of unobservables, the anti-realist ismerely highlighting the difficulty of determining which of these entities wecan say that we know exist, rather than actually providing arguments againstthe justification for such beliefs. During the defence of realism, it is hoped thatit shall become apparent that anti-realism, in terms of the justification of belief in unobservable entities, is in reality an epistemological concern of whether we can attribute knowledge to such beliefs, rather than themethodological concern whether the unobservables that scientific theorypostulate exist in reality.Laudan, himself an anti-realist, argues that in light of R2 the realist isforced to ascribe to four claims, here reprinted in full:‘S1: The theories in the advanced or mature sciences are successful.S2: A theory whose central terms genuinely refer will be a successfultheory.S3: If a theory is successful, we can reasonably infer that its centralterms genuinely refer.S4: All the central terms in theories in the mature sciences do refer.’And further: ‘(S2) and (S4) explain (S1), while (S1) and (S3) provide thewarrant for (S4)’.(1998; pp.1117)Laudan bases his argument against realism on the fact that (S2) is obviouslyfalse. However, there is no need for the realist to claim (S2); S1 is supportedby empirical evidence in the form of observation of many successful theoriesin mature sciences. Whilst it is true that a strict inductive logician orPopperian would argue that science has been largely unsuccessful because it
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