Analyzing the Scientific Realism Debate from the Contextualist’s Point of View

Abstract

    The debate over scientific realism is one of the traditional topics in philosophy of science. Today there are various types of realism and anti-realism, including entity realism, (epistemic/ontic/moderate) structural realism, semirealism, eclectic realism, and constructive empiricism. However, the main point of the dispute, which is the validity of inference from observable evidence to unobservable events, seems to have been set aside in the recent debate. To improve this situation, I propose a new approach to the scientific realism issue that utilizes the epistemological positions. As an example, I also demonstrate an analysis of the debate based on contextualism in epistemology.