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Are Realism and Instrumentalism Methodologically Indifferent?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 2022

Robin Findlay Hendry
Robin Findlay Hendry*
Affiliation:
University of Durham
*
†Send requests for reprints to the author, Department of Philosophy, University of Durham, Durham, United Kingdom, DH1 3HN; email: R.F.Hendry@durham.ac.uk.
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Abstract

Arthur Fine and André Kukla have argued that realism and instrumentalism are indifferent with respect to scientific practice. I argue that this claim is ambiguous. One interpretation is that for any practice, the fact that that practice yields predictively successful theories is evidentially indifferent between scientific realism and instrumentalism. On the second construal, the claim is that for any practice, adoption of that practice by a scientist is indifferent between their being a realist or instrumentalist. I argue that there are no good arguments for the indifference claim under the second interpretation, and good reasons to think that it is false.

Type
Metaphysics and Methodology of Science
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 68 , Issue S3: No. 3 Supplement: Proceedings of the 2000 Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association. Part I: Contributed Papers Sep., 2001 , 2001 , pp. S25 - S37
Copyright
Copyright © Philosophy of Science Association 2001

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Footnotes

‡

I would like to thank Arthur Fine for comments on an earlier version of this paper, and the University of Durham Special Staff Travel Fund for financial support towards my attending the PSA Meeting.

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