ABSTRACT
The debate between realism and anti-realism continues. As Daniel Hausman puts it: ‘Like Muhammed Ali, philosophical positions may occasionally be knocked out, but they always return to fight again’ (Hausman 1982:21). Hausman maintains that, although constructive empiricism has got in some good punches, the current champion, i.e. scientific realism, is not in any danger. In this connection let us briefly review the constructive empiricist’s fighting strategy in the rounds thus far and some of the good punches inflicted on its opponent. An integral part of this strategy is to adopt some basic realist positions. Thus van Fraassen, contrary to the philosophical instrumentalist, is, in Mäki’s terminology, a veristic realist vis-à-vis theoretical sentences, i.e. he interprets theories literally and maintains that theoretical sentences are true or false. Moreover, he accepts the realist critique of logical positivism, especially of its dualistic approach to scientific language, and of its emphasis on a syntactical, rather than a semantical, approach to scientific models. Furthermore, both agree that all factual statements are theory-laden. This common fighting strategy, however, is extended by the constructive empiricist to a sharp distinction between the epistemic and pragmatic dimensions of theory acceptance. The epistemic dimension is focused on the empirical adequacy, rather than the truth, of a scientific theory: a theory is empirically adequate if what the theory says about all the observable phenomena is true, with a suspension of judgement on the rest.
