Scientific Realism Without Reality? What Happens When Metaphysics is Left Out
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Scientific Realism Without Reality? What Happens When Metaphysics is Left Out Alberto Corti1,2 Accepted: 8 September 2020 © The Author(s) 2020
Abstract Scientific realism is usually presented as if metaphysical realism (i.e. the thesis that there is a structured mind-independent external world) were one of its essential parts. This paper aims to examine how weak the metaphysical commitments endorsed by scientific realists could be. I will argue that scientific realism could be stated without accepting any form of metaphysical realism. Such a conclusion does not go as far as to try to combine scientific realism with metaphysical antirealism. Instead, it amounts to the combination of the former with a weaker view, called quietism, which is agnostic on the existence of mind-independent structures. In Sect. 2, I will argue that the minimal claim that brings together every scientific realist view is devoid of any metaphysical commitment. In Sect. 3, I will define metaphysical realism and antirealism. Such work will be instrumental in providing a more precise statement of quietism. Finally (Sect. 4), I will argue that assuming quietism, it is still possible to make sense of the debate between scientific realists and antirealists. Keywords General philosophy of science · Scientific realism · Metaphysical realism · Quietism · Natural ontological attitude Possibly, the only metaphysical hypothesis that is needed by physics is, as Dirac used to say at the beginning of his lectures, that there exists an external world. -Dorato (2010, p. 2)
1 Introduction The debate on the ontological status of unobservable theoretical entities (i.e. entities posited by our best scientific theories that human beings cannot observe directly) is a central topic in philosophy of science. Even today, the question of their existence splits into two main camps the philosophers of science involved. On the one hand, there are the so-called scientific realists, who claim that unobservable entities, as posited by our best scientific theories, exist. Therefore, these scientific theories are, given a correspondence theory of * Alberto Corti [email protected] 1
Department of Philosophy, University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland
2
Department of Pure and Applied Sciences, University of Urbino, Urbino, Italy
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truth, (at least approximately) true. On the other hand, the scientific antirealists hold that scientific theories are either false, without a truth value at all or cannot be put into correspondence with the world, and thus it makes no sense to talk about their truth-value.1 Both ‘scientific realism’ and ‘scientific antirealism’ are umbrella terms for a wide range of positions that differ massively from each other; therefore, as in other similar cases, general discourses incur the risk of missing crucial details.2 Given the generality of the argument here presented, we will take such a hazard with the proviso that some conclusions cannot be generalized to every form of scientific (anti-)realism. To a h
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