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Scientific Anti-Realism and the Epistemic Community

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 January 2023

William Seager
William Seager*
Affiliation:
University of Toronto
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The ability to observe is the ability to reliably detect, but that is not all observation is. A thermometer reliably detects temperature yet does not observe the temperature, whereas I do, even though in terms of reliability I cannot match the thermometer. An observation is detection accompanied by active classification and, typically, the subsequent formation of opinion. Even when we say of an animal that it can see something we mean more than that it reliably detects things of a certain sort but also that it deals with such things as objects, gauging their usefulness or lack thereof in relation to its interests and to other aspects of the world. This crucial addendum to the notion of observation can be enshrined in slogan: observers are potential believers. This marks the difference between mere detecting mechanisms and observers.

The contemporary scientific anti-realism of one such as van Fraassen, which is developed in detail under the label of “constructive empiricism” in van Fraassen (1980), can be characterized in terms of detecting mechanisms.

Type
Part VI. Realism
Information
PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association , Volume 1988 , Issue 1: Volume One: Contributed Papers 1988 , 1988 , pp. 181 - 187
Copyright
Copyright © Philosophy of Science Association 1988

References

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van Fraassen, B. (1980). The Scientific Image. Oxford: Clarendon Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
van Fraassen, B. (1983). “Theory Comparison and Relevant Evidence.” In Testing Scientific Theories, Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science, Volume 10. Edited by Earman, . University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar