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Semirealism or Neo-Aristotelianism?

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Abstract

Chakravartty claims that science does not imply any specific metaphysical theory of the world. In this sense, science is consistent with both neo-Aristotelianism and neo-Humeanism. But, along with many others, he thinks that a neo-Aristotelian outlook best suits science. In other words, neo-Aristotelianism is supposed to win on the basis of an inference to the best explanation (IBE). I fail to see how IBE can be used to favour neo-Aristotelianism over neo-Humeanism. In this essay, I aim to do two things. Firstly, I explain why this failure is not idiosyncratic: it should be there even by Chakravartty’s lights. Secondly, I raise some critical worries about Chakravartty’s semirealism, especially in connection with the concept of a ‘concrete structure’ and the detection/auxiliary distinction. The essay ends with a dilemma: an exclusive disjunction encapsulated in its title.

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Notes

  1. Chakravartty (p. 130) is careful to note that the thesis that laws are metaphysically necessary is meant to imply that the laws of the actual world hold in all those possible worlds in which all and only the properties inhabiting the actual world exist.

Acknowledgments

This research has been co-financed by the European Union (European Social Fund—ESF) and Greek national funds through the Operational Program “Education and Lifelong Learning” of the National Strategic Reference Framework (NSRF)—Research Funding Program: THALIS–UOA-APRePoSMa.

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Correspondence to Stathis Psillos.

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Psillos, S. Semirealism or Neo-Aristotelianism?. Erkenn 78, 29–38 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-012-9418-z

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-012-9418-z

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