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What is realism?
4 points
- belief in both the observable and unobservable
- science goes beyond the observable
- a world exists independent from perception
- theories describe reality
What is the correspondence theory of truth?
a scientific theory is true of the world if the world is the way the theory says it is
What is scientific realism?
3 points
- science aiming at true statements about the world and how it behaves
- strong form
- theories are at least approximately true
What is conjectural realism?
- fallibility of knowledge (POPPER)
- weak form
- aim of science is to discover truth, however truth cannot be proven // don't expect to reach it
- praise theories to the extent that they fulfil this aim: CORROBORATION
What is structural realism?
- characterising structure of reality while representations might change
- AIM: find underlying structures, science became increasingly accurate in doing so
- theories might be right but representations are wrong
sits between scientific realism and conjectural realism
What is the problem of realism?
4 points 2 counterpoints
- claims about unobservable must be hypothetical
- theories have often been rejected
-- BUT entities become real once we know how to manipulate them
- Duhem: idealisation of theoretical descriptions
- cannot be taken literally
-- BUT idealisation enables useful predictions
What is the problem of the correspondence theory of truth?
2 points
- paradoxes possible! (e.g. i am a liar)
- Tarski: criticises Realists because they cannot describe relations between a statement and the world - but only between statements - they have to do that otherwise we have paradoxes
What is anti-realism?
science can only have claims about what is observable
(distinguish between observational and theoretical knowledge)
How does anti-realism work?
- Theories can be useful despite the fact that they don't represent reality
- maintains that the content of a scientific theory involves nothing more than the set of claims that can be substantiated by observation and experiment
- desire to restrict science to those claims that can be justified by scientific means
Problems with anti-realism?
1) judging from predictive success, theories must be approximately true
2) distinguishing between observable and theoretical knowledge not possible
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