RECONSIDERING SCIENTIFIC REALISM: A CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF THE NO MIRACLES ARGUMENT

Date

2024-10

Author

Ak, Ebru Gülşah

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In this study I'm examining the recent history of realism debate in the contemporary philosophy of science. I am focusing on the central argument to support realism which is first coined together by Putnam in 1970s and has been the object of countless criticisms from anti-realist philosophers ever since, namely the No Miracles Argument(NMA). I have surveyed through some canonical anti-realist objections to NMA like the criticisms from base rate fallacy, the claim of committing rule circularity, the role of theory change and problem of approximate truth. My main goal is to assess to which extent aforementioned main criticisms are defeat-able from a traditional realist framework and in which cases we should fall back to more cautious and possibly narrowed positions regarding realism. Synthesizing what we can gather from these objections to revise our undertaking of realism, I propose a cognitive turn towards a more feasible, localised and flexible approach to realism in light of the evidence I've gathered from my survey.

Subject Keywords

Scientific realism, No Miracles Argument, Theory Change, Verisimilitude

URI

https://hdl.handle.net/11511/111501

Collections

Graduate School of Social Sciences, Thesis