Abstract
We all have realistic intuitions: there is a mind-independent world out there, and we can capture some of its features in our scientific theories. There have been many attempts to justify our realistic intuitions, and I will analyze some that build on ideas from Saul Kripke and (in particular) Hilary Putnam. However, many of these attempts share a dependency on what I call “The Perfect Theory -Theory,” which holds that there could be a theory that perfectly mirrors the objectively existing world. But this theory is defunct, so the dependency is an issue. Scientific realism, many have argued, relies on referential continuity, but referential continuity is problematic since Thomas Kuhn’s analysis of scientific revolutions. Putnam has advanced two lines of reasoning that can be read as responses to Kuhn. In this article, I elaborate one of those, a necessity-based argument, and also propose a way of strengthening it by combining brief suggestions from Kuhn and Putnam. The result is a realism anchored in pluralism and scientific practices.
Recommended Citation
Fried, Magnus
(2023)
"Against the Perfect Theory-Theory: Toward a Tenable Realism,"
Budhi: A Journal of Ideas and Culture: Vol. 27:
No.
3, Article 5.
Available at:
https://archium.ateneo.edu/budhi/vol27/iss3/5
