Paper ID: 2412.10643

Scientific Realism vs. Anti-Realism: Toward a Common Ground

Hanti Lin

The debate between scientific realism and anti-realism remains at a stalemate, with reconciliation seeming hopeless. Yet, important work remains: to seek a common ground, even if only to uncover deeper points of disagreement. I develop the idea that everyone values some truths, and use it to benefit both sides of the debate. More specifically, many anti-realists, such as instrumentalists, have yet to seriously engage with Sober's call to justify their preferred version of Ockham's razor through a positive epistemology. Meanwhile, realists face a similar challenge: providing a non-circular explanation of how their version of Ockham's razor connects to truth. Drawing insights from fields that study scientific inference -- statistics and machine learning -- I propose a common ground that addresses these challenges for both sides. This common ground also isolates a distinctively epistemic root of the irreconcilability in the realism debate.

Submitted: Dec 14, 2024