Realism Entity

Pauling s resonance theory raised questions as to the ontological status of theoretical entities very similar to the problematique associated with discussions about scientific realism. Differences in the assessment of the methodological and ontological status of resonance were the object of a dispute between Pauling and Wheland, who worked towards the extension of resonance theory to organic... 

IR3) is the thesis which distinguishes internal realism from the doctrines it is most closely related to. Kant would have endorsed some version of (IR1). Peirce would have accepted (IR2) as well. But the sort of conceptual pluralism (IR3) represents has not traditionally been part of the picture that reality and truth are not independent of the human mind. We must start approaching this thesis from a distance. We already know that a conceptual scheme is a relatively self-contained group of words or concepts. The referents of the words that make up conceptual schemes are determined by the justification conditions of some simple sentences in which they occur. So we may also say that a conceptual scheme is the set of justification conditions for a set of sentences. The determination of reference is the same as the constitution of the structure of reality, because the entities - individuals, kinds, etc. - are carved out by justification conditions which provide criteria of identity for them. So the structure of reality is constituted by conceptual schemes. 

There is no reason why the internal realist could not help herself to the notion of supervenience. It requires no match between entities carved out in different conceptual schemes, as the first attempted reply. It does not call for stepping outside all conceptual schemes into the quasi-noumenal realm of stuff to be organized, as the second attempted solution. So the answer to the question is roughly this. Two conceptual schemes share the same domain if the entities described in one of them supervene on the entities described in the other one. There is only one thing that might be cause for concern. How do we know that the supervenience relation actually obtains The problem is exacerbated by the fact that supervenience claims are modal claims. (If there is a mental difference, there must be some physical difference.) This question has not received much attention. Fortunately, I will not have to attempt to solve it now, for it is not a special problem for internal realism. It is a problem for all positions which employ the notion of (modal) supervenience. I trust that if it is solved, the solution can be accepted by the internal realist as well. (The issue of sharing a domain will be discussed in more detail in 5.1.)... 

Andrew Pickering s pragmatic realism calls for an interactive stabilization of microspic entities such as quarks. See Pickering, Living in the Material World On Realism and Experimental Practice, in The Uses of Experiment, ed. Gooding et al. 

Ian Hacking s philosophy of experimental realism integrated the epistemological sensibilities of the new empiricism into the practice-model of science by severing the theoreticist link between the truth of theories and a realist commitment to the existence of unobservable entities. As a form of entity realism , experimental realism allows experimentalists to be antirealists or instrumental-... 

In contemporary chemistry, concepts such as orbitals, configurations, and hybridization are frequently used as though they were "real," contrary to the pronouncements of modern physics and philosophers of science who deny the reduction of such typically chemical concepts to quantum mechanics. In this case, the realism I am identifying takes the form of an unwarranted belief in microscopic entities that the theory tells us do not, in fact, exist. My claim is that modern chemistry correctly continues to adopt an intermediate position between realism and reduction in the tradition of Mendeleev and Paneth. 

In philosophy, the term naive realism is generally taken to mean a belief in macroscopic objects for what they appear to be and independently of any views on what lies below the surface. I will be using the term in this sense but will also use it to mean the adoption of superficial views about microscopic entities when discussing atomic orbitals and configurations. 

The topic of noise has a bearing on arguments for scientific realism, necessitating a more nuanced interpretation of our commitments to reality than one often finds in the philosophy literature. For example, based on his manipulability criterion. Hacking proposes that our commitments to real-world processes are revealed in the use of certain entities as manipulating tools for the study of other, more hypothetical, processes. We know that electrons, for example, are real, because experimenters exploit the... 

Zeidler, Pawel, Sobczynska, Danuta. 1995—96. "The Idea of Realism in the New Experimen-talism and the Problem of the Existence of Theoretical Entities in Chemistry." Foundations of Science, 4 517-535. 

There were, of course, middle positions between ontological realism and extreme conventionalism or positivism. Berzelius devised the alphanumeric system which, in slightly modified form, chemists still use today in order to designate the presumed atomistic compositions of molecular formulas rather than to make any detailed statement about the nature of the atoms themselves. Each of Berzelius s letters, such as the three entities in his preferred water formula, H2O, might reasonably be taken to refer to a quantity of matter, the real micro-characteristics of which were deliberately elided. A Berzelian chemical (as opposed to physical) atom, by this more cautious interpretation, was simply a packet of elemental matter of a certain relative weight, a packet that... 

The dialectical path on which we are now embarked may be compared to another that 1 have explored elsewhere. Consider Platonic realism as a theory of predication for an object to be red is for it to stand in a special relation. Exemplification, to a special entity, Redness. One could complain that this theory does not do justice to the thought that being red (or being square, in case you take a traditional line about secondary qualities) is an intrinsic feature of an object, not merely a relation of it to something else. Platonic realists make all predicational facts relational. In so doing, they make the subjects of predication in one sense bare, devoid of intrinsic properties. A better alternative, it seems to me, is a view in which to be red or square is to be some way— 3. monadic rather than a relational fact about it. 

As to the central statement of scientific realism Bas van Fraassen cites Wilfrid Sellars as follows To have good reason to accept a theory is to have good reasrai to believe that the entities it postulates are real, Existence criteria might be formulated scientifically like the Latvian-German chemist and historian of chemistry (and former student of Ostwald) Paul Walden (1863-1957) communicated in his monograph on radicals fi-om 1924. He differentiated three possible cases ... 

What seems to be peculiar for chemistry is the priority of entity-realism over theory-realism long before an appropriate theoretical representation was developed chemists denoted their scientific objects as radicals. To put it in other words the discovery of triphenylmethyl has not been the result of theory-driven activities. 

A. Assume you and your team are members of a consulting engineering firm tracking a potential project to be conducted, with heavy consultant assistance, by a client, owner, or customer, that is, a prospect. Your team just received the RFP from the prospect as a result of Step 5 in Figure 13.3. (Note To enhance the realism of this exercise, obtain an actual RFP. One way to do this is to contact a local government entity and ask them to share an RFP with you. An already-issued RFP is a public document and, therefore, you should be able to access it. RFPs may be posted on the government entity s website. You may also be able to obtain an RFP from a private entity such as a manufacturer or land developer.)... 

The philosophy of continental nineteenth century chemistry was, like nineteenth century physics, dominated by discussions on the reality of scientific entities. In the case of chemistry these were notably atoms in the case of physics, the discussion focused on the reality of the terms appearing in the physical laws. One of the physicists of the older generation, Ernst Mach, entered a fierce debate with Planck on the issue of realism. According to Mach, atoms were mere instruments in scientific theorising, and it was as useless as it was senseless to describe them as real . Physics had become a religion, complained Mach, drawing conclusions far beyond what is warranted by observation and sensible theorising ... 

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