Realism

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Kenneth R Westphal - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.

  • Realism, Science, and Pragmatism
    2016
    Co-Authors: Kenneth R Westphal
    Abstract:

    Introduction Kenneth R. Westphal Part I: Realism Contextualized 1. What is Real(ism)? Jaakko Hintikka 2. Aristotle's Direct Realism and Some Later Developments Mika Perala 3. Late Mediaeval Realisms: Key Arguments Supporting Non-Semantic Universality Laurent Cesalli 4. Descartes on the Formal Reality, Objective Reality, and Material Falsity of Ideas: Realism through Constructivism? Dermot Moran 5. Quine's Conception of Objects: Beyond Realism and Anti-Realism Antti Keskinen 6. Did Sherlock Holmes Inhale Pipe Smoke Through a Hole In His Forehead? Peter Swirski Part II: Scientific Realism 7. Realism: Metaphysical, Semantic, and Scientific Panu Raatikainen 8. Scientific Realism: Independence, Causation, and Abduction Ilkka Niiniluoto 9. Cognitive Semantics and Newton's Rule Four of Experimental Philosophy: Scientific Realism without Empiricism Kenneth R. Westphal 10. Naturalism without Metaphysics Jonathan Knowles Part III: Pragmatism and Realism 11. Majesty of Truth and the Moral Sentiment: Emerson's and Peirce's Ethico-Ontological Realism Heikki A. Kovalainen and Douglas R. Anderson 12. Concepts and the Real in C. I. Lewis' Epistemology Lauri Jarvilehto 13. Pragmatic Realism Sami Pihlstrom 14. McDowell's Pragmatist Anti-Anti-Realism Eirik Julius Risberg

  • Hegel’s Semantics of Singular Cognitive Reference, Newton’s Methodological Rule 4 and Scientific Realism Today (*)
    Philosophical Inquiries, 2014
    Co-Authors: Kenneth R Westphal
    Abstract:

    Empirical investigations use empirical methods, data, and evidence. This banal observation appears to favour empiricism, especially in philosophy of science, though no rationalist ever denied their importance. Natural sciences often provide what appear to be, and are taken by scientists as, realist, causal explanations of natural phenomena, often in terms of forces or entities we do not perceive with our normal, unaided human senses. Empiricism has never been congenial to Realism about such scientific posits. Bas van Fraassen’s “Constructive Empiricism” purports that realist interpretations of any “unobservables” mentioned by a scientific theory in principle always transcend whatever can be justified by that theory’s empirical adequacy, and that “explanations” are merely pragmatic, insofar as they are context‑specific to the presuppositions of whomever poses the question an explanation is to answer. Here I argue that “Constructive Empiricism” rests upon a series of flawed presumptions about natural science and about epistemology. I draw upon two main resources. One resource is the constraints upon specifically c ognitive reference to particulars, first identified by Kant (and later by Evans). The second is William Harper’s (2011) brilliant re‑analysis and defense of Newton’s Prin c ipia , which shows that, and how, Newton justified his Realism about gravitational force. One surprise is that Kant’s semantics of singular cognitive reference (examined in §3) directly and strongly supports Newton’s Rule 4 of scientific method (§4), which strongly supports his Realism about gravi‑ tational force (summarized in §2). A further surprise is that Hegel first recognized that this semantics of singular cognitive reference directly and strongly supports Newton’s meth odological Rule 4 of experimental philosophy in ways which support Newton’s Realism about gravitational force, and about distance forces generally. The textual and exegetical issues these attributions require I examine elsewhere. Here I make these important findings available to philosophers and historians of science. (*) Invited paper

  • hegel s semantics of singular cognitive reference newton s methodological rule 4 and scientific Realism today
    Philosophical Inquiries, 2014
    Co-Authors: Kenneth R Westphal
    Abstract:

    Empirical investigations use empirical methods, data, and evidence. This banal observation appears to favour empiricism, especially in philosophy of science, though no rationalist ever denied their importance. Natural sciences often provide what appear to be, and are taken by scientists as, realist, causal explanations of natural phenomena, often in terms of forces or entities we do not perceive with our normal, unaided human senses. Empiricism has never been congenial to Realism about such scientific posits. Bas van Fraassen’s “Constructive Empiricism” purports that realist interpretations of any “unobservables” mentioned by a scientific theory in principle always transcend whatever can be justified by that theory’s empirical adequacy, and that “explanations” are merely pragmatic, insofar as they are context‑specific to the presuppositions of whomever poses the question an explanation is to answer. Here I argue that “Constructive Empiricism” rests upon a series of flawed presumptions about natural science and about epistemology. I draw upon two main resources. One resource is the constraints upon specifically c ognitive reference to particulars, first identified by Kant (and later by Evans). The second is William Harper’s (2011) brilliant re‑analysis and defense of Newton’s Prin c ipia , which shows that, and how, Newton justified his Realism about gravitational force. One surprise is that Kant’s semantics of singular cognitive reference (examined in §3) directly and strongly supports Newton’s Rule 4 of scientific method (§4), which strongly supports his Realism about gravi‑ tational force (summarized in §2). A further surprise is that Hegel first recognized that this semantics of singular cognitive reference directly and strongly supports Newton’s meth odological Rule 4 of experimental philosophy in ways which support Newton’s Realism about gravitational force, and about distance forces generally. The textual and exegetical issues these attributions require I examine elsewhere. Here I make these important findings available to philosophers and historians of science. (*) Invited paper

Petr Kratochvíl - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.

  • George Liska and political Realism: on the tension between history and structure, and between norms and power
    Journal of International Relations and Development, 2007
    Co-Authors: Petr Kratochvíl
    Abstract:

    This article suggests that it is by exploring the work of George Liska, the once influential yet today almost forgotten realist scholar, that we can find answers to the question of the compatibility between classical Realism and its purported neoclassical offspring. Firstly, although Liska is not widely read today and his recent books are only rarely cited, the evolution of his work reveals that the tension between normativity and politics is an inseparable part of classical realist thinking. Secondly, even though he started from a purely historicist version of Realism, as demonstrated in his treatment of empire and international order, Liska came to be one of the first realist scholars to try to develop a theory combining historicism and a structural approach to international relations. To those general reasons one may add a particular third one, specifically interesting for Journal of International Relations and Development . Even though Liska spent most of his scholarly career in the United States, he belonged to the group of émigrés from Central Europe (in his case from Czechoslovakia); and this heritage leaves a special mark on all his works dedicated to the Soviet Union, and Eastern and Central Europe. His work is thus an interesting testimony to the rise and fall of realist hegemony over the field of international relations; hence, ironically reinforcing Liska's own notion of the historical contingency of all human cognition.

Hugh Willmott - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.

Inanna Hamatiataya - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.

  • neoRealism reconsidered human nature or state behavior
    International Studies Review, 2012
    Co-Authors: Inanna Hamatiataya
    Abstract:

    History and NeoRealism. Edited By Ernest R. May, Richard Rosecrance, Zara Steiner . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010. 394 pp., $35.00 paperback (ISBN-13: 978-0-521-13224-4). Political Realism, Freud, and Human Nature in International Relations. The Resurrection of the Realist Man. By Robert Schuett . Houndmills, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010. 237 pp., $89.00 hardcover (ISBN-13: 978-0-230-62354-5). NeoRealism remains the most widely criticized theoretical approach in international relations (IR) today. The literature that attempts to show the conceptual limits, theoretical flaws, and moral obtuseness of Neorealist or post-classical realist theorizing continues to grow, attesting to the ongoing institutional dominance of Neorealist thought just as much as to the sustained dissatisfaction with its intellectual legacy. The two books reviewed here contribute to the three-decade-old critique of NeoRealism, but from two different perspectives. While the volume edited by Richard Rosecrance, Zara Steiner and the late Ernest May, History and NeoRealism , focuses on NeoRealism's, and more generally Realism's inability to explain how states actually behave on the international scene, Robert Schuett, in Political Realism, Freud, and Human Nature in International Relations. The Resurrection of the Realist Man , resurrects Realism's philosophical frame of analysis and addresses NeoRealism's failure to sustain a coherent reflection on human nature and its role in international behavior. History and NeoRealism aims to show “through the use of case histories addressing different countries and covering different periods, that, even in those episodes where power is centrally involved, ‘Realism’ characteristically fails to explain what is happening” (p. 6). More specifically, the authors of the volume successfully demonstrate, contra the (Neo)realist balance-of-power/survival-and-hegemony explanatory scheme, that states have historically often made the choice to either “overuse” or “underuse” their power, and that these choices depend on their “different understandings of what power permits or of the elements of which it is composed” (Rosecrance, p. 12). Moreover, they show that states' behavior can only be understood if both non-systemic and systemic factors are taken into account, such as “ideological, economic, and social constraints,”“ideological leadership,”“geography,” as well as “transnational and institutional, economic, and social factors which affect the international environment in which states operate” (pp. 6–7). The ways wherein these …

Henry J. Folse - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.

  • Niels Bohr and Contemporary Philosophy - Niels Bohr and contemporary philosophy
    Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, 1994
    Co-Authors: Jan Faye, Henry J. Folse
    Abstract:

    Preface. Introduction. Bohr's Response to EPR M. Beller, A. Fine. Niels Bohr's Words and the Atlantis of Kantianism C. Chevalley. A Bohmian Response to Bohr's Complementarity J.T. Cushing. Niels Bohr and Realism D. Favrholdt. Non-Locality or Non-Separability? A Defense of Niels Bohr's Anti-Realist Approach to Quantum Mechanics J. Faye. Bohr's Framework of Complementarity and the Realism Debate H.J. Folse. Description and Deconstruction: Niels Bohr and Modern Philosophy J. Honner. Bohr and the Crisis of Empirical Intelligibility: an Essay on the Depth of Bohr's Thought and our Philosophical Ignorance C.A. Hooker. What Makes a Classical Concept Classical? Toward a Reconstruction of Niels Bohr's Philosophy of Physics D. Howard. Niels Bohr's Argument for the Irreducibility of Biology to Physics P. Hoyningen-Huene. Niels Bohr's Conceptual Legacy in Contemporary Particle Physics D. Kaiser. A Critique of Bohr's Local Realism H. Krips. Bohr and the Realism Debates E. MacKinnon. The Bohr--Einstein Dispute D. Murdoch. Hidden Historicity: the Challenge of Bohr's Philosophical Thought U. Roseberg. Quantum Theory and the Place of Mind in Nature H.P. Stapp. References. Name Index.

  • niels bohr and contemporary philosophy
    1994
    Co-Authors: Jan Faye, Henry J. Folse
    Abstract:

    Preface. Introduction. Bohr's Response to EPR M. Beller, A. Fine. Niels Bohr's Words and the Atlantis of Kantianism C. Chevalley. A Bohmian Response to Bohr's Complementarity J.T. Cushing. Niels Bohr and Realism D. Favrholdt. Non-Locality or Non-Separability? A Defense of Niels Bohr's Anti-Realist Approach to Quantum Mechanics J. Faye. Bohr's Framework of Complementarity and the Realism Debate H.J. Folse. Description and Deconstruction: Niels Bohr and Modern Philosophy J. Honner. Bohr and the Crisis of Empirical Intelligibility: an Essay on the Depth of Bohr's Thought and our Philosophical Ignorance C.A. Hooker. What Makes a Classical Concept Classical? Toward a Reconstruction of Niels Bohr's Philosophy of Physics D. Howard. Niels Bohr's Argument for the Irreducibility of Biology to Physics P. Hoyningen-Huene. Niels Bohr's Conceptual Legacy in Contemporary Particle Physics D. Kaiser. A Critique of Bohr's Local Realism H. Krips. Bohr and the Realism Debates E. MacKinnon. The Bohr--Einstein Dispute D. Murdoch. Hidden Historicity: the Challenge of Bohr's Philosophical Thought U. Roseberg. Quantum Theory and the Place of Mind in Nature H.P. Stapp. References. Name Index.