Abstract American philosophical realism developed in two forms: “new” and “critical” realism. While the new realists sought to ‘emancipate’ ontology from epistemology defended a direct theory of perception, critical promoted representationalist account perception thus argued for an epistemological dualism. Bertrand Russell’s early writings figured prominently both these realist camps. However, ...

Scientific realism is dead, or so many philosophers believe. Its death was announced when philosophers became convinced that one can accept all scientific results without committing oneself to metaphysical existence claims about theoretical entities (Fine 1986, 112). In addition, the inability of self–proclaimed scientific realists, despite recurrent demands, to distinguish themselves from thei...

Scientific realism involves two key claims. First, science aims primarily at truth. Second, we can justifiably believe that our successful scientific theories achieve, or at least approximate, this aim. The contemporary scientific realism debate turns on the acceptability of these claims. To acquire a more robust picture of scientific realism, let us identify some of the related theses on which...

Successful individuals were frequently found to be overly optimistic. These Þnding are puzzling, as one could expect that realists would perform best in the long run. We show, however, that in a large class of strategic interactions of either cooperation or competition, the equilibrium payoffs of optimists may be higher than those of realists. This is because the very fact of being optimistic c...

The influence of individuals' misconceptions in assessing fruit and vegetable consumption on the ability of the theory of planned behaviour to explain variance in the consumption of these foods was studied. Dutch women (mean age 41, n=159) completed a questionnaire assessing the theory's constructs with regard to the daily consumption of at least two pieces of fruit and 200 gram of vegetables. ...