Anti-realism

Heil, John. The Epistemic Route to Anti-Realism. Australasian Journal of Philosophy 66 (1988) 161-173. 

Fine 1986). On my reading the important part of this notion resides in the choice of the word attitude rather than position and although Fine has not really developed a distinction between attitude and position his articles hint in this direction. What I believe Fine is getting at is that we should no longer think of the discussion as an either/or situation between realism and anti-realism but rather that scientists adopt both positions at different times and sometimes even both at once. These are not so much positions held by scientists and philosophers but the more temporary, more dynamic, attitudes. 

Here, I merely refer to metaphysical anti-realism. Semantic realism might be combinable with metaphysical anti-realism. This distinction will be mainly ignored here. 

Based on these minimal characterizations of the distinctions between anti-realism/realism and eliminativism/conservatism, we can introduce a taxonomy of four monistic positions, all of which have been associated with some stance towards reductionism. I will again refer to the case of biology ... 

Note secondly that for some philosophers it might be difficult to judge whether or not they belong to the camp of Conservative Realism or Conservative Anti-Realism If you take truth to be described in terms of pragmatism, then, under certtun interpretations, the distinction breaks down. 

Now, the different positions sketched above raise different conceptual issues. This book deals with monistic realism regarding high-level science. For the monist, the idea of reconciling diversity and directionality with strong unity without relying on (metaphysical) elimination, or anti-realism, is particularly pressing. This leads to an important distinction between issues related to reductionism on the one hand, and eliminativism, or replacementism on the other. 

Gavroglu, K. 1996. Can theories of chemistry provide an argument against realism In Realism and anti-realism in the philosophy of science, ed. R. 5. Cohen, R. Hilpinen, and Q. Renzong, 149-170. Dordrecht Kluwer Academic Publishers. 

Section C. Realism and Anti-Realism, and Educational Issues in Philosophy of Chemistry... 

Conclusion and the Question of Models. Recent work by philosophers seems to place less emphasis on linguistic aspects of theories as well as on the questions of realism and anti-realism and whether or not scientific terms refer. The modem approach has been to attend to semantic aspects of scientific theories, and most importantly, to examine the role of models within scientific theories. In view of this tendency it becomes all the more relevant to obtain a clear understanding of the status of one of the central... 

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