Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview by J. P. Moreland & William Lane Craig

Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview by J. P. Moreland & William Lane Craig

Author:J. P. Moreland & William Lane Craig
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
Tags: epistemology, introduction to philosophy, philosophy student, philosophy, Christianity, Christian philosophy textbook, textbook, metaphysics, apologetics, philosopher, philosophy textbook, ethics, philosophy of religion, Christian philosophy, philosophy of science
ISBN: 9780830889174
Publisher: InterVarsity Press
Published: 2017-10-10T04:00:00+00:00


2.3 Evaluation of Scientific Realism

2.3.1 Positive Support

This, then, is a statement of scientific realism as a philosophy of science. How should we evaluate this position? There have been at least four basic kinds of arguments offered in favor of scientific realism. Due to space considerations, we can only state them briefly. Here is the first argument: Given that one must either embrace scientific realism or some form of antirealism, and given the fact that there are serious problems with each of the main forms of antirealism, then scientific realism, on balance, is to be preferred. Obviously, the strength of this argument turns on the case for the inadequacies of the various forms of antirealism. Later on in this chapter we will present the main antirealist position. At that time, you can get a feel for the various views. Hopefully, this will help you to begin to formulate your own evaluation of their strengths and weaknesses.

Second, a scientific realist can offer arguments in favor of SR1-SR5. For example, the scientific realist could offer arguments in favor of the correspondence theory of truth, in favor of the idea that rationality is intimately connected to truth, and against various forms of conceptual relativism. Similarly, the realist could also try to justify a reading of the history of science as a history of clear progress through the refinement and replacement of theories toward a better and better depiction of the way the world is. The first two issues (the correspondence theory of truth and the connection between rationality and truth) have already been discussed in chapters six and three, respectively. The third topic (conceptual relativism) was the subject of much of chapters four and six. The fourth factor would involve a detailed investigation of the history of science, among other things.

We cannot go into these debates here; however, one important point should not be missed. All of these topics are deeply philosophical in nature. Thus the defense or rebuttal of scientific realism illustrates the fact that the philosophy of science is presuppositional to science itself. That is, the question of how we should understand the existence claims of a given scientific theory will be answered, in part, by one’s attitude toward scientific realism, and one’s attitude about this will, in turn, be justified largely in philosophical terms. Thus the realism-antirealism debate serves as another illustration of the truth of an external philosophy of science that was discussed at the beginning of chapter seventeen.

The third argument for scientific realism is, perhaps, the main one. According to this argument, scientific realism is the best explanation for the fact that (1) our theories actually work (i.e., embody various epistemic virtues); (2) science makes progress in solving its problems; (3) often, a scientific theory will have a host of independent, empirical confirmations for it that converge together to support the theory, even if some of those empirical confirmations were not originally conceived as part of the domain for which the theory was thought to be responsible. Scientific realists



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