What is science? -- Scientific inference -- Explanation in science -- Realism and anti-realism -- Scientific change and scientific revolutions -- Philosophical problems in physics, biology, and psychology -- Science and its critics.

Roughly, instrumentalism is the view that science is primarily, and should primarily be, an instrument for furthering our practical ends. It has fallen out of favour because historically influential variants of the view, such as logical positivism, suffered from serious defects. In this book, however, Darrell P. Rowbottom develops a new form of instrumentalism, which is more sophisticated and resilient than its predecessors. This position—‘cognitive instrumentalism’—involves three core theses. First, science makes theoretical progress primarily when it furnishes us with more predictive power or understanding concerning observable things. Second, scientific discourse concerning unobservable things should only be taken literally in so far as it involves observable properties or analogies with observable things. Third, scientific claims about unobservable things are probably neither approximately true nor liable to change in such a way as to increase in truthlikeness. There are examples from science throughout the book, and Rowbottom demonstrates at length how cognitive instrumentalism fits with the development of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century chemistry and physics, and especially atomic theory. Drawing upon this history, Rowbottom also argues that there is a kind of understanding, empirical understanding, which we can achieve without having true, or even approximately true, representations of unobservable things. In closing the book, he sets forth his view on how the distinction between the observable and unobservable may be drawn, and compares cognitive instrumentalism with key contemporary alternatives such as structural realism, constructive empiricism, and semirealism. Overall, this book offers a strong defence of instrumentalism that will be of interest to scholars and students working on the debate about realism in philosophy of science.

Throughout the past century, a debate has raged over the thesis of realism and its alternatives. Realism—the seemingly commonsensical view that all or most of what we encounter in the world exists and is what it is independently of human thought—has been vigorously denied by such prominent intellectuals as Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Richard Rorty, Thomas Kuhn, Hilary Putnam, and Nelson Goodman. The opponents of realism, among them historians and social scientists who support social constructionism, hold that all or most of reality depends on human conceptual schemes and beliefs. In this volume of original essays, a group of philosophers explores the ongoing controversy. The book opens with an introduction by William P. Alston, whose writing on the subject has been widely influential. Selected essays then compare and contrast aspects of the arguments put forward by the realists with those of the antirealists. Other chapters discuss the importance of the debate for philosophical topics such as epistemology and for domains ranging from religion, literature, and science to morality.

There are a bewildering variety of ways the terms "realism" and "anti-realism" have been used in philosophy and furthermore the different uses of these terms are only loosely connected with one another. Rather than give a piecemeal map of this very diverse landscape, the authors focus on what they see as the core concept: realism about a particular domain is the view that there are facts or entities distinctive of that domain, and their existence and nature is in some important sense objective and mind-independent. The authors carefully set out and explain the different realist and anti-realist positions and arguments that occur in five key domains: science, ethics, mathematics, modality and fictional objects. For each area the authors examine the various styles of argument in support of and against realism and anti-realism, show how these different positions and arguments arise in very different domains, evaluate their success within these fields, and draw general conclusions about these assorted strategies. Error theory, fictionalism, non-cognitivism, relativism and response-dependence are taken as the most important positions in opposition to the realist and these are explored in depth. Suitable for advanced level undergraduates, the book offers readers a clear introduction to a subject central to much contemporary work in metaphysics, epistemology and philosophy of language.

Beijing International Conference, 1992

The debate between moral realism and antirealism plays an important role in contemporary metaethics as well as in the interpretation of Kant’s moral philosophy. This volume aims to clarify whether, and in what sense, Kant is a moral realist, an antirealist, or something in-between. Based on an explication of the key metaethical terms, internationally recognized Kant scholars discuss the question of how Kant’s moral philosophy should be understood in this regard. All camps in the metaethical field have their inhabitants: Some contributors read Kant’s philosophy in terms of a more or less robust moral realism, objectivism, or idealism, and some of them take it to be a version of constructivism, constitutionism, or brute antirealism. In any case, all authors introduce and defend their terminology in a clear manner and argue thoughtfully and refreshingly for their positions. With contributions of Stefano Bacin, Jochen Bojanowski, Christoph Horn, Patrick Kain, Lara Ostaric, Fred Rauscher, Oliver Sensen, Elke Schmidt, Dieter Schönecker, and Melissa Zinkin.

But it would be unfair to the reader to reveal what happens when a gang of professional crooks gets wind of the scheme and moves to muscle in on this bettors' dream of a long-odds situation. Worked out with all the meticulous detail, terror, and suspense of a nightmare, the tale is, on one level, comparable to a Graham Greene thriller; on another, it explores a group of people, their relationships fears, and loves. For as Leslie A. Fiedler says in his introduction, "John Hawkes.. . makes terror rather than love the center of his work, knowing all the while, of course, that there can be no terror without the hope for love and love's defeat . . . ."

This landmark collection of essays by six renowned philosophers explores the implications of the contentious realism/antirealism debate for epistemology. The essays examine issues such as whether epistemology needs to be realist, the bearing of a realist conception of truth on epistemology, and realism and antirealism in terms of a pragmatist conception of epistemic justification. Richard Rorty's essay provides a critical commentary on the other five.

Perhaps the most significant development in American philosophy in recent times has been the extraordinary renaissance of Pragmatism, marked most notably by the reformulations of the so-called "Neopragmatists" Richard Rorty and Hilary Putnam. With Pragmatism offering the allure of potentially resolving the impasse between epistemological realists and antirealists, analytic and continental philosophers, as well as thinkers across the disciplines, have been energized and engaged by this movement. In Beyond Realism and Antirealism: John Dewey and the Neopragmatists, David L. Hildebrand asks two important questions: first, how faithful are the Neopragmatists' reformulations of Classical Pragmatism (particularly Deweyan Pragmatism)? Second, and more significantly, can their Neopragmatisms work? In assessing Neopragmatism, Hildebrand advances a number of historical and critical points: • Current debates between realists and antirealists (as well as objectivists and relativists) are similar to early twentieth-century debates between realists and idealists that Pragmatism addressed extensively. • Despite their debts to Dewey, the Neopragmatists are reenacting realist and idealist stands in their debate over realism, thus giving life to something shown fruitless by earlier Pragmatists. • What is absent from the Neopragmatist's position is precisely what makes Pragmatism enduring: namely, its metaphysical conception of experience and a practical starting point for philosophical inquiry that such experience dictates. • Pragmatism cannot take the "linguistic turn" insofar as that turn mandates a theoretical starting point. • While Pragmatism's view of truth is perspectival, it is nevertheless not a relativism. • Pace Rorty, Pragmatism need not be hostile to metaphysics; indeed, it demonstrates how pragmatic instrumentalism and metaphysics are complementary. In examining these and other difficulties in Neopragmatism, Hildebrand is able to propose some distinct directions for Pragmatism. Beyond Realism and Antirealism will provoke specialists and non-specialists alike to rethink not only the definition of Pragmatism, but its very purpose.

Provides a spirited defence of anti-realism in philosophy of science. Shows the historical evidence and logical challenges facing scientific realism.