Online research in philosophy

Depois de uma breve apresentação do que considero ser a démarche representacional na ciência, enfatizo o papel fundamental, na construção de modelos, de juízos verdadeiros. O sucesso e a correção de uma representação baseiam-se na verdade de juízos que atribuem propriedades a entidades reais visadas, denominados “juízos ônticos”. Apresento então o que van Fraassen chama “a objeção da Perda de Realidade”. Depois de criticar sua dissolução dessa objeção, ofereço uma maneira alternativa de responder à objeção da Perda de Realidade mostrando (...) que o contato de nossos modelos com a realidade é fundamentado na verdade de juízos ônticos. Concluo examinando a implicação dessa concepção para a questão do realismo científico. doi: http://dx.doi.org/ 10.5007 / 1808-1711.2011v15n3p461. (shrink)

(No abstract is available for this citation).

Although Kuhn is much more an antirealist than a realist, the earlier and later articulations of realist and antirealist ingredients in his views merit close scrutiny. What are the constituents of the real invariant World posited by Kuhn and its relation to the mutable paradigm-related worlds? Various proposed solutions to this problem (dubbed the "new-world problem" by Ian Hacking) are examined and shown to be unsatisfactory. In The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, the stable World can reasonably be taken to be (...) made up of ordmary perceived objects, whereas in Kuhn's later works the transparadigmatic World is identified with something akin to the Kantian world-in-itself. It is argued that both proposals are beset with insuperable difficulties which render Kuhn's earlier and later versions of antirealism implausible. (shrink)

In this paper, I briefly present the regularity and necessity views and assess their difficulties. I construe scientific laws as universal propositions satisfied by empirically successful scientific models and made — approximately — true by the real systems represented, albeit partially, by these models. I also conceive a scientific theory as a set of models together with a set of propositions, some of which are laws. A scientific law is a universal proposition or statement that belongs to a scientific theory. (...) Scientific laws also are laws of nature since we can provide arguments in favour of natural causal powers that ground the truth of laws. I argue that the truth of counterfactual conditional statements and the occurrence of regularities in nature provide good reasons to believe that real causal powers exist in nature and that the (approximate) truth of scientific laws is based on a metaphysics of nature. (shrink)

In this paper, I criticize Putnam’s argument, which contends that scientific realism implies adherence to a God’s eye point of view. I also show that some sort of God’s eye point of view in a weak sense, i.e. interest-free, is indeed accessible to humans and that a moderate version of scientific realism is philosophically defensible.

This article argues that Thomas Kuhn's views on the existence of the world have undergone significant change in the course of his philosophical career. In Structure, Kuhn appears to be committed to the existence of the ordinary empirical world as well as the existence of an independent metaphysical world, but realism about the empirical world is abandoned in his later writings. Whereas in Structure the only relative worlds are the scientific worlds inhabited by the practitioners of various paradigms, the later (...) Kuhn puts the non-scientific worlds of particular groups or cultures on the same footing as the paradigm-related scientific worlds. The article shows that, on what Ian Hacking called the "new-world problem", the later Kuhn has moved to a more radical antirealist position. It is also argued that the earlier and later solutions to the "new-world problem" face insuperable difficulties, which render Kuhn's account of scientific change implausible. (shrink)