Ioannis Votsis

This paper examines what exactly amounts to the view commonly known as ‘perspectivism’, sometimes also known as ‘perspectivalism’. Of the various possible conceptions of perspectivism, four are singled out for closer inspection. Each makes clearly separable claims of varying strength. Their strength is judged against how much doubt they throw on key claims made by the view’s presumed arch-nemesis, namely realism. It is argued that the first two offer no serious challenge to realism. To be precise, it is argued that the first one is blatantly false, while the second is true but utterly harmless. Things are less clear cut with the other two conceptions of perspectivism. If true, they appear to present a more serious challenge to realism. It is argued that considerable doubts hang over their truth as to date arguments raised in their support are far from compelling. Even so, these conceptions cannot be summarily dismissed. Indeed, under more reasonable construals, they need not be for realism to survive and thrive. This is because claims these conceptions make in the name of perspectivism turn out to be easily coupled with realism.

When it comes to name-calling, structural realists have heard pretty much all of it. Among the many insults, they have been called ‘empiricist anti-realists’ but also ‘traditional scientific realists’. Obviously the collapse accusations that motivate these two insults cannot both be true at the same time. The aim of this paper is to defend the epistemic variety of structural realism against the accusation of collapse to traditional scientific realism. In so doing, I turn the tables on traditional scientific realists by presenting them with a dilemma. They can either opt for a construal of their view that permits epistemic access to non-structural features of unobservables but then face the daunting task of substantiating a claim that seems to have little hope of being true or they can drop the requirement of epistemic access to non-structural features but then face a collapse to epistemic structural realism. There is thus only one well supported way to be a realist. No wonder then that many traditional scientific realists have over the years expressed views that are strikingly similar to epistemic structural realism. It is high time to let these epistemic structural realists out of the closet.

The paper is divided into three parts. The first part identifies one of the main problems with many current accounts of the notion of explanation: The unreasonable demand, proposed by Michael Scriven and subsequently adopted by many philosophers, that we must square our account of scientific explanation to our intuitions about explanations in everyday contexts. It is first pointed out that the failure to provide a satisfactory account is not endemic to the notion of explanation, i.e. it is widespread amongst notions. Many of the notions considered in philosophical contexts originate and have a function in broader everyday contexts. Indeed, in evaluating accounts of these notions we rely on intuitions that originate in these broader contexts. Yet, we rarely seem to question the appropriateness of these intuitions in more restricted, in this case scientific, contexts. I argue against this complacency, pointing out that our intuitions can often be inconsistent.

In the first part of this paper we investigate how scientific theories can be represented by frames. Different kinds of scientific theories can be distinguished in terms of the systematic power of their frames. In the second part we outline the central questions and goals of our research project. In the third and final part of this paper we show that frame-representation is a useful tool in the comparison of the theories of phlogiston and oxygen, despite those theories being traditionally conceived as incommensurable. The frame-theoretic representation reveals common attributes, values and ultimately structural correspondence relations between the two theories. In our view this outcome lends credence to a structural realist view of science.

An integral part of the schooling of scientists, especially experimental ones, is the cultivation of the significance and role of scientific evidence. Naturally this schooling is not conducted in vacuuo. Budding scientists already have experiences of, and intuitions about, the use of evidence in everyday life. In this talk I take a sustained look at the relations between common-sense notions of evidence and scientific ones. Among other things, I argue that scientific notions of evidence and associated practices are in many ways conservative extensions of what is best about our common-sense notions and practices. This contradicts a rather widely held but often tacit view that science and its notions are largely insular.

Structural realists of nearly all stripes endorse the structural continuity claim. Roughly speaking, this is the claim that the structure of successful scientific theories survives theory change because it has latched on to the structure of the world. In this paper I elaborate, elucidate and modify the structural continuity claim and its associated argument. I do so without presupposing a particular conception of structure that favours this or that kind of structural realism. Instead I focus on how structural realists can best account for the neutrally formulated historical facts. The result, I hope, crystallises some of the shared commitments, desiderata and limits of structural realists