On Sun, 31 Aug 2003, andie nachgeborenen wrote:
> For a really lovely refutation of this commonplace
> misconception, see Paul Churchland's little book,
> Scientific Realism and the Plasticity of Mind.
> "Perceptual" realism -- realism about trees, houses,
> cats, midsized objects generally -- might qualify as
> beefed up common sense, if we bear in mind that common
> sense is theoretical through and through. Scientific
> realism -- realism about the spacetime manifold,
> quarks and muons, genes and chromosomes -- has not a
> trace of common sense to it. jks
I'll read Churchland, but I don't quite get this. Do you mean referents like chromosomes and quarks are not common sense? Probably not, until most of the population studies these topics in detail. However, if a person understands these concepts, it is indeed the dominant, common-sense view that these terms correspond to real things. (The idea that ideas refer to "reality" is the common sense element here.)
Miles