Scientific Realism, Theories and Models
In philosophy, scientific realism aims at identifying the conditions under which a scientific practice can deliver truly objective knowledge of the world. And Thagard (2012) reformulated this classical this thesis: science is a specific type of cognitive endeavour that builds knowledge of reality.
And one of the main ways this cognition is achieved is by constructing what is commonly called a theory. As Wright (1991) expresses directly: Scientific realism is a thesis on the truthfulness of a scientific theory about the world. And this realist thesis has generated a huge literature on various understandings of the conditions under which a theory “really” refers to the world it is about. But many anti-realists, for instance Giere (1988) think that the realist thesis cannot meet its own expectations. In this paper, we shall explore this realist thesis but in the context of cognitive science theories rather than in the classical “natural” sciences ones: What happens to the realist thesis when confronted with cognitive science theories? Do these type of scientific theories refer objectively to the real world?J.-G. Meunier (s)
Universite du Quebec a Montreal, Quebec, Canada e-mail: meunier.jean-guy@uqam.ca
© Springer International Publishing AG 2017
E. Agazzi (ed.), Varieties of Scientific Realism,
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-51608-0_18
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