Realism and scientific practice

Scientific realism holds that scientific theories are true descriptions of a mind-independent reality and that the theoretical terms in scientific theories (i.e. terms that designate unobservables) have factual reference. That is to say that these terms refer to existing things and that theoretical sentences containing such terms are made true, if they are true, by how things are in the world.

Anti-Realism assumes that theoretical terms do not refer and that scientific theories merely serve as instruments to describe and influence the observable phenomena. According to this view, science never reveals the reality that lies behind the observable.

This project aims at a defence of the central claim of so called Entity Realism, which holds that we are more entitled to accept the existence of theoretical entities than we are entitled to accept scientific claims about them. To achieve this, it is necessary to show that theories (and models respectively) are not our exclusive resources of epistemic access to reality. Empirical practice, or rather experience as such, should be conceived as a self-contained way of accessing reality. This is bound to the assumption that, for a long period of time, philosophy of science has been applying an unfeasible concept of «experience». A historical analysis of the concept will reveal that, in the first half of the twentieth century, the philosophy of Logical Empiricism has framed a reductionist notion of experience which was derived from the empiricist tradition of the seventeenth century and which is still operative in the current debate on realism. A critique of the empiricist view on experience will demonstrate that, first, it does not adequately describe the experimental practice of the natural sciences, that, second, it does not provide a suitable basis for an explanation of our epistemic access to the world, and, third, it therefore blocks any satisfactory answer to the question of scientific realism.

Participants:
Dr. Karim Bschir
Prof. Dr. Michael Hampe