Tuesday, October 21, 2014

What are the major differences between scientific realism, anti-realism, and irrealism?

Scientific realism is the belief that the theory or idea
being explained is either true or false, depending upon whether the entities talked
about by the theory exist and whether they are correctly described by the theory.  This
seems to be the popular position taken by most scientists in their attempts to explain
the physical world around them.  Support for this belief is that it is an inference to
the best explanation available at the time, based upon the observable evidence. 
Positions taken against this belief tend to point out the existence of theories that
were once considered successful, but are now regarded as
false.


Anti-realism, as the name tends to suggest, is the
belief that we should be skeptical about the physical world around us.  Anti-realists
embrace the following:  1) Nothing exists outside of the mind, and 2) We have no access
to a mind-integrated reality, even if it does
exist.


Irrealism, a metaphysical philosophy, seems to be a
combination of the two, a "blend", if you will.  The main belief here is that some part
of the theory or idea may be valid, while others may be invalid.  This belief relies on
intuition, more so than scientific fact as it challenges science as
fact.

No comments:

Post a Comment

What is the meaning of the 4th stanza of Eliot's Preludes, especially the lines "I am moved by fancies...Infinitely suffering thing".

A century old this year, T.S. Eliot's Preludes raises the curtain on his great modernist masterpieces, The Love...