 | This article reads like a review rather than an encyclopedic description of the subject.(July 2017) |
"The Natural Ontological Attitude" (1984) is the name of a paper published by philosopher Arthur Fine in which he coins the term "natural ontological attitude" (NOA). It deals with the philosophy of science. He published a sequel, "And Not Antirealism Either" [1] in the same year, and both papers were later anthologized in the book The Shaky Game (1986).
Fine published "The Natural Ontological Attitude" [2] in 1984 and a sequel, "And Not Antirealism Either" [3] in the same year. His subject is the nature and validity of scientific knowledge and his goal is to get the reader to abandon either realism or antirealism as he understands them. In their place he advocates a "natural ontological attitude" (NOA). Both articles were republished as chapters in Fine's book The Shaky Game, [4] which takes its title from a comment by Einstein that physicists who undermine causality in physics are playing a shaky/risky game.
Fine argues that both realists and anti-realists share a basic "core position" about both everyday things and scientific statements. Realists and antirealists both trust the evidence of their senses that tables, chairs and other people are present before us and in some sense exist. They also trust the substantiated pronouncements of science that protons and electrons exist and have the size, mass and charge science assigns them. To quote Fine about such common ("core") positions: "…it is possible to accept the evidence of one's senses and accept, in the same way [his italics], the confirmed results of science….". [5] Stated another way: "…both realist and antirealist accept the results of scientific investigations as 'true,' on par with more homely [commonplace, everyday] truths."
Fine asks, if everybody, realist and antirealist included, shares a core position about entities that exist and propositions that are true (e.g., F = ma) where do the differences lie? They lie, according to Fine, in the additions that partisans make to the core. Antirealists may add "the pragmatic…[or] instrumentalist…[or] conventionalist conceptions of truth…[or maybe add an overlay of] idealism, constructivism, phenomenalism [or] empiricism." [6] Spelling out what realists add to the core position takes Fine a long paragraph that boils down to simply one charge: "correspondence with the world … claims about reality." [7]
Fine then goes on. "It seems to me that when we contrast the realist and the antirealist in terms of what they each want to add to the core position, a third alternative emerges—and an attractive one at that. It is the core position itself, and all by itself [his italics]." [8] Fine continues, "…at heart, the grip of realism only extends to the homely connection of everyday truths with scientific truths, and that good sense dictates our acceptance of the one on the same basis as our acceptance of the other, then the homely line makes the core position, all by itself, a compelling one...." [9]
Realism itself is unpalatable to Fine because of the realist's desire to connect truths about an entity (say the mass or charge of an electron) to an actual, existing entity (electron). It is permissible to believe in the properties of an electron but not in the electron itself as the bearer of those properties. That is the mistake realists make. Yet Fine admits that the working scientist believes "…in the existence of those entities to which his theories refer." [10] In addition, Fine concedes that practitioners of science are in no need of the goals, interpretations or justifications of science that theorists can provide. [11] And although scientists may discover more and more properties of, or facts about, an entity, Fine insists that we should not confuse successive advances in our knowledge of an entity with closer approximations as to what that entity actually is.
Antirealists also come under criticism. Theorists who define truth in terms of "acceptance" (rational agreement), or behaviorism or empiricism are all "truthmongers" who are seeking some foundation, some rationale, for what they believe. They make the same basic mistake as the realists since they "rely on metaphysical or epistemological hearing aids" [12] to hear the voice of science. Only NOA is immune from these delusions and distractions. Fine concludes And Not Antirealism Either by arguing that truth is a semantical concept and not an ontological or metaphysical concept. He argues that those who wish to ground "truth" in correspondence, empiricism, pragmatism, acceptance, etc. are all making the same fundamental mistake. Embrace NOA he argues and be non-judgmental and heuristic in your pursuit of knowledge. Reject the concept of "truth" as a gold standard to which all knowledge must be compared or evaluated.
Since Fine criticizes both realists and antirealists he has come in for criticism from both sides. Many critics could not resist some word play with NOA/NOAH, ark, and "Fine." [13]
Alan Musgrave argues that Fine distorts the varied positions of antirealists especially with regard to their support of the "core." [14] He and others object to the way Fine equates his "core" position with their definition (or anti-definition) of "true."
Robert Klee writes: "NOA seems like obvious inconsistent fence-sitting." [15]
Richard Schlagel writes "I find it utterly implausible that Fine could be serious when he argues that explanatory success could have nothing at all to do with truth." [16]
Stathis Psillos writes "When is the question of theory-acceptance scientifically relevant, and when is it not? Fine refrains from saying, perhaps, because, in the final analysis, it always is relevant." [17]
In analytic philosophy, anti-realism is a position which encompasses many varieties such as metaphysical, mathematical, semantic, scientific, moral and epistemic. The term was first articulated by British philosopher Michael Dummett in an argument against a form of realism Dummett saw as 'colorless reductionism'.
Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy that studies the fundamental nature of reality, including the first principles of: being or existence, identity and change, space and time, cause and effect, necessity, and possibility.
The problem of universals is an ancient question from metaphysics that has inspired a range of philosophical topics and disputes: Should the properties an object has in common with other objects, such as color and shape, be considered to exist beyond those objects? And if a property exists separately from objects, what is the nature of that existence?
Willard Van Orman Quine was an American philosopher and logician in the analytic tradition, recognized as "one of the most influential philosophers of the twentieth century". From 1930 until his death 70 years later, Quine was continually affiliated with Harvard University in one way or another, first as a student, then as a professor. He filled the Edgar Pierce Chair of Philosophy at Harvard from 1956 to 1978.
The philosophy of mathematics is the branch of philosophy that studies the assumptions, foundations, and implications of mathematics. It aims to understand the nature and methods of mathematics, and find out the place of mathematics in people's lives. The logical and structural nature of mathematics makes this branch of philosophy broad and unique.
In philosophy of science and in epistemology, instrumentalism is a methodological view that ideas are useful instruments, and that the worth of an idea is based on how effective it is in explaining and predicting phenomena. According to instrumentalists, a successful scientific theory reveals nothing known either true or false about nature's unobservable objects, properties or processes. Scientific theory is merely a tool whereby humans predict observations in a particular domain of nature by formulating laws, which state or summarize regularities, while theories themselves do not reveal supposedly hidden aspects of nature that somehow explain these laws. Instrumentalism is a perspective originally introduced by Pierre Duhem in 1906.
Scientific realism is the view that the universe described by science is real regardless of how it may be interpreted.
An unobservable is an entity whose existence, nature, properties, qualities or relations are not directly observable by humans. In philosophy of science, typical examples of "unobservables" are the force of gravity, causation and beliefs or desires. The distinction between observable and unobservable plays a central role in Immanuel Kant's distinction between noumena and phenomena as well as in John Locke's distinction between primary and secondary qualities. The theory that unobservables posited by scientific theories exist is referred to as scientific realism. It contrasts with instrumentalism, which asserts that we should withhold ontological commitments to unobservables even though it is useful for scientific theories to refer to them. There is considerable disagreement about which objects should be classified as unobservable, for example, whether bacteria studied using microscopes or positrons studied using cloud chambers count as unobservable. Different notions of unobservability have been formulated corresponding to different types of obstacles to their observation.
Ram Roy Bhaskar (1944–2014) was an English philosopher of science who is best known as the initiator of the philosophical movement of critical realism (CR). Bhaskar argued that the task of science is "the production of the knowledge of those enduring and continually active mechanisms of nature that produce the phenomena of the world", rather than the discovery of quantitative laws, and that experimental science makes sense only if such mechanisms exist and operate outside the lab as well as inside it. He went on to apply that realism about mechanisms and causal powers to the philosophy of social science, and he also elaborated a series of arguments to support the critical role of philosophy and the human sciences. According to Bhaskar, it is possible and desirable for the study of society to be scientific.
In philosophy of science, constructive empiricism is a form of empiricism. While it is sometimes referred to as an empiricist form of structuralism, its main proponent, Bas van Fraassen, has consistently distinguished between the two views.
Philosophical realism is usually not treated as a position of its own but as a stance towards other subject matters. Realism about a certain kind of thing is the thesis that this kind of thing has mind-independent existence, i.e. that it is not just a mere appearance in the eye of the beholder. This includes a number of positions within epistemology and metaphysics which express that a given thing instead exists independently of knowledge, thought, or understanding. This can apply to items such as the physical world, the past and future, other minds, and the self, though may also apply less directly to things such as universals, mathematical truths, moral truths, and thought itself. However, realism may also include various positions which instead reject metaphysical treatments of reality entirely.
Alan Musgrave is an English-born New Zealand philosopher.
Arthur Isadore Fine is an American philosopher of science now emeritus at the University of Washington.
Entity realism, sometimes equated with referential realism, is a philosophical position within the debate about scientific realism. It is a variation of realism that restricts warranted belief to only certain entities.
Meta-ontology is the study of the field of inquiry known as Ontology. The goal of meta-ontology is to clarify what ontology is about and how to interpret the meaning of ontological claims. Different meta-ontological theories disagree on what the goal of ontology is and whether a given issue or theory lies within the scope of ontology. There is no universal agreement whether meta-ontology is a separate field of inquiry besides ontology or whether it is just one branch of ontology.
Speculative realism is a movement in contemporary Continental-inspired philosophy that defines itself loosely in its stance of metaphysical realism against its interpretation of the dominant forms of post-Kantian philosophy.
Brian Ellis is an Australian philosopher. He is an Emeritus Professor in the philosophy department at La Trobe University in Victoria, Australia, and Professional Fellow in philosophy at the University of Melbourne. He was the Editor of the Australasian Journal of Philosophy for twelve years. He is one of the major proponents of the New Essentialist school of philosophy of science.
In the philosophy of science, structuralism asserts that all aspects of reality are best understood in terms of empirical scientific constructs of entities and their relations, rather than in terms of concrete entities in themselves.
Realism, Realistic, or Realists may refer to:
Critical realism is a philosophical approach to understanding science, and in particular social science, initially developed by Roy Bhaskar (1944–2014). It specifically opposes forms of empiricism and positivism by viewing science as concerned with identifying causal mechanisms. In the last decades of the twentieth century it also stood against various forms of postmodernism and poststructuralism by insisting on the reality of objective existence. In contrast to positivism's methodological foundation, and poststructuralism's epistemological foundation, critical realism insists that (social) science should be built from an explicit ontology. Critical realism is one of a range of types of philosophical realism, as well as forms of realism advocated within social science such as analytic realism and subtle realism.
{{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)