Arthur Fine talks about what he calls "the natural ontological attitude," according to which the reason you have to believe in X is just the normal scientific argument for X. Why believe in atoms? Here's Einstein's Brownian motion paper. Etc. There isn't any more to "realism" -- he doesn't call it that -- that the NOA -- or so he suggests. That is one way to avoid a lot of fruitless dispute.
The hard case for realism even on the NOA is quantum mechanics. There the science itself sure as hells eems to tell that what there is, is in an important way observer-dependent.
jks
--- Miles Jackson <cqmv at pdx.edu> wrote:
>
>
> On Mon, 1 Sep 2003, Jon Johanning wrote:
>
> > Well, I'm not a scientist, but I think I would
> find it rather hard to
> > work on, say, quarks, day after day and not think
> that they were real. I
> > don't think many scientists think that what they
> are studying are
> > figments of their own imaginations.
> >
>
> I agree with you: most scientists are probably
> realists (has anyone
> done a survey?). However, I think it was
> Reichenbach (Justin, help
> me out?) who noted that the philosophical
> perspective of the scientist
> wouldn't have any real impact on day to day work.
> If you're
> an idealist, the quarks are products of human
> perception, but
> you've got to use exactly the same procedures to
> study them
> that a "realist" physicist would use. So "realism"
> is not
> a logical prerequisite for doing science or
> advancing scientific
> knowledge. (It might help when you're writing NSF
> grants,
> though.)
>
> Miles
>
> ___________________________________
>
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