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Scientific Realism, Metaphysics, and Epistemic Stances

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An epistemic stance is an attitude or orientation of an agent that determines whether or not that agent's evidence justifies their claims to know. Stances have been thought to involve debatable policies, values, and aims that distinguish, for example, the scientific realist from the anti-realist. This symposium will consider how those sympathetic to scientific realism and scientific metaphysics should conceive of these stances. If a stance is necessary to defend one's claims to know about unobservable entities of various kinds, should the realist admit the possibility of other, non-realist stances? If so, how should a realist stance be motivated and defended? The four contributors to this symposium provide four different answers to these questions and their relevance to broader issues in the philosophy of science, including rationality, evidence, explanation, and mathematical structure.

Nov 11, 2022 01:15 PM - 03:15 PM(America/New_York)
Venue : Sterlings 3
20221111T1315 20221111T1515 America/New_York Scientific Realism, Metaphysics, and Epistemic Stances

An epistemic stance is an attitude or orientation of an agent that determines whether or not that agent's evidence justifies their claims to know. Stances have been thought to involve debatable policies, values, and aims that distinguish, for example, the scientific realist from the anti-realist. This symposium will consider how those sympathetic to scientific realism and scientific metaphysics should conceive of these stances. If a stance is necessary to defend one's claims to know about unobservable entities of various kinds, should the realist admit the possibility of other, non-realist stances? If so, how should a realist stance be motivated and defended? The four contributors to this symposium provide four different answers to these questions and their relevance to broader issues in the philosophy of science, including rationality, evidence, explanation, and mathematical structure.

 Sterlings 3 PSA 2022 office@philsci.org
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Presentations

View Abstract

Defending the Realist Stance

SymposiumRealism / Anti-realism / Instrumentalism 01:15 PM - 03:15 PM (America/New_York) 2022/11/11 18:15:00 UTC - 2022/11/11 20:15:00 UTC
I argue that realism requires a stance, but that the realist should maintain that their stance is the only rationally permissible one. The basic motivation for maintaining that only a realist stance is rationally permissible is that being more open-minded induces a kind of pragmatic incoherence on the part of the realist (Psillos 2021). A realist cannot maintain their defense of realism while admitting that this defense requires adopting a policy that others are rationally permitted to ignore. For this is tantamount to admitting that they have no defense of their own realism.
Presenters Christopher Pincock
Ohio State
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Structuralism as a Stance

SymposiumRealism / Anti-realism / Instrumentalism 01:15 PM - 03:15 PM (America/New_York) 2022/11/11 18:15:00 UTC - 2022/11/11 20:15:00 UTC
I argue that considerations analogous to those van Fraassen raises in connection with physicalism support regarding ontic structural realism as a stance also. Like physicalists, structuralists prescind from defining structure too carefully, in large part because they want the notion of structure to be open to future scientific developments. And structuralists have also allowed the term ‘structure’ to come to cover aspects of the world they themselves previously presented as antithetical. For these reasons, I propose that rather than a doctrine about how the world fundamentally is, structuralism should be viewed as a kind of stance.
Presenters Kerry Mckenzie
Presenter , University Of California, San Diego
View Abstract

Resolving Debates about Realism: The Challenge from Stances

Contributed PapersRealism / Anti-realism / Instrumentalism 01:15 PM - 03:15 PM (America/New_York) 2022/11/11 18:15:00 UTC - 2022/11/11 20:15:00 UTC
Epistemic stances are collections of attitudes, values, aims, and policies relevant to assessing evidence, eventuating in belief or agnosticism in relation to scientific theories and models. If more than one stance is permissible, this would seem to undermine certain debates between scientific realists and antirealists. In reply to skepticism about this, I argue that: (1) hopes for a shared basis for assessing evidence to serve as a neutral arbiter either beg the question against one side of the debate, or are insufficiently probative; and (2) rejecting the superior rationality of stances supporting realism does not amount to skepticism about science.
Presenters
AC
 Anjan Chakravartty
University Of Miami
View Abstract

Epistemic Stances, Naturalization, and Naturalism

SymposiumRealism / Anti-realism / Instrumentalism 01:15 PM - 03:15 PM (America/New_York) 2022/11/11 18:15:00 UTC - 2022/11/11 20:15:00 UTC
My aim in this paper will be to explore which deeper and more general epistemic stances underlie methodological naturalism. In particular, I aim to consider whether the same epistemic stance that underlies scientific realism must also underlie methodological naturalism. Since it is often assumed that realism is a prerequisite of methodological naturalism, one might think that they share an underlying stance in common. However, I will argue that this is not clearly the case. I will also consider whether methodological naturalism must stem from a distinctively scientistic stance. I will argue that this, too, is not clearly the case.
Presenters
AB
 Amanda Bryant
Ryerson University
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Session speakers, moderators & attendees
Amanda Bryant
Ryerson University
Anjan Chakravartty
University of Miami
Dr. Kerry Mckenzie
Presenter
,
University of California, San Diego
Christopher Pincock
Ohio State
Jason DeWitt
moderator
,
The Ohio State University
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