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2 Academicus. International Scientific Journal

2 Marsonet M.

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A Limited View of Realism

100%

Marsonet M.

nr 06

20-34

In the paper we argue that no neat border line between ontology and epistemology can be drawn. This is due to the fact that the separation between factual and conceptual is rather fuzzy, and the world is characterized by a sort of ontological opacity which makes the construction of any absolute ontology difficult. Our ontology is characterized by the fact that the things of nature are seen by us in terms of a conceptual apparatus that is inevitably influenced by mind-involving elements, and all this has important consequences on both the question of scientific realism and the realism/anti-realism debate. Conceptualization gives us access to the world, while, on the other, it is the most important feature of our cultural evolution. While the idealistic thesis according to which the mind produces natural reality looks hardly tenable, it is reasonable to claim instead that we perceive this same reality by having recourse to the filter of a conceptual apparatus whose presence is, in turn, connected to the development of language and social organization. Our science is essentially relational, and not absolute. The information with which it provides us is appropriate, but from our point of view. Science provides reliable information on the world, but this information is always relative to a particular framework, and it is a mistake to think that the limits of our cognitive capacities only have an aprioristic character. Science constantly attempts at providing answers to our questions about how things stand in the world, and thus purports to offer reliable information about it. But it should also be recognized that the extent to which science succeeds in accomplishing this task is disputable. What kind of realism, thus, can we actually endorse? Despite what many relativists claim, realism still is an arguable and defendable position. If one asks what difference is made to our knowledge claims if we accept the existence of an extra-conceptual world, the answer is the following: such recognition undermines the diffused anthropocentric stance which identifies reality with our limited knowledge of it.

Pragmatism and Science

100%

Marsonet M.

nr 08

101-109

Logical empiricism gave rise to a powerful paradigm and it took some decades to overthrow it, even though it should be judged respectfully since, after all, philosophy of science and logic as we know them stemmed from that ground. The basic assumptions on which the paradigm of the “received view” rested are essentially the following. In the first place, verificationism seemed almost a truth of faith. Secondly, logical empiricists never offered good arguments in support of their thesis that assertive discourse must be preferred to more pragmatic forms of language. Thirdly, they too easily assumed that something like “objective truth” really exists. Last but certainly not least, the logical empiricists did not fully recognize the historical dimension of the scientific enterprise, which subsequently turned to be something different from the “universal science” they were talking about. In the paper it is argued that scientific realism (and the nature of scientific knowledge at large) is a theme where the originality of pragmatist positions clearly emerge. Nicholas Rescher, for example, claims - against any form of instrumentalism and many postmodern authors as well - that natural science can indeed validate a plausible commitment to the actual existence of its theoretical entities. Scientific conceptions aim at what really exists in the world, but only hit it imperfectly and “well off the mark”. What we can get is, at most, a rough consonance between our scientific ideas and reality itself. This means that the scientific knowledge at our disposal in any particular moment of the history of mankind must be held to be “putative”, while its relations to the truth (i.e. how things really stand in the world) should be conceived in terms of tentative and provisional estimation. Even the optimistic visions that see science as growingly approaching the “real” truth have, at this point, to be rejected on pragmatic grounds.