Chad Carmichael

The scientific realism debate directly addresses the relation between human thought and the reality in which it finds itself. A core question: can we justifiably believe that science accurately describes the reality that lies beneath the limits of human experience? Exploring this question, Lyons begins at the most foundational level of scientific realism, the endeavor to justify belief in the existence of unobservables by way of abduction. Raising anti-realist challenges, some much discussed in the literature but also some generally overlooked, Lyons works his way toward more refined variants of scientific realism. Because scientific realism is taken to be the default position of many—scientific realists themselves often assuming it is the default position of scientists—the emphasis will be on the challenges. Those challenges also motivate the variants of scientific realism traced. Lyons concludes with a brief articulation of his own position, Socratic scientific realism.

One of the central questions of material-object metaphysics is which highly visible objects there are right before our eyes. Daniel Z. Korman defends a conservative view, according to which our ordinary, natural judgments about which objects there are are more or less correct. He begins with an overview of the arguments that have led people away from the conservative view, into revisionary views according to which there are far more objects than we ordinarily take there to be or far fewer. Korman criticizes a variety of compatibilist strategies, according to which these revisionary views are actually compatible with our ordinary beliefs. He goes on to respond to debunking arguments; objections that the conservative's verdicts about which objects that are and aren't are objectionably arbitrary; the argument from vagueness; the overdetermination argument; the argument from material constitution; and the problem of the many.