Pyrrhonists provide a way of investigating the world in which conflicting views about a given topic are critically compared, assessed, and juxtaposed. Since Pyrrhonists are ultimately unable to decide between these views, they end up suspending judgment about the issues under examination. In this paper, I consider the question of whether Pyrrhonists can be realists or anti-realists about scienc...

The article considers the theoretical and practical consequences of so-called "soft" version epistemological realism in Bimal K. Matilal's philosophical project. author offers an analytical view on philosophy, which helps to understand it a broader prospective, comparing his arguments perception objectivity with contemporary Western philosophy; fact, is possible Matilal not only as proponent re...

This paper critically reviews Philip Kitcher’s most recent epistemology of science, real realism. I argue that this view is unstable under different understandings of the term “representation”, and that the arguments offered for the position are either unsound or invalid depending on the understanding employed. Suitably modified those arguments are however convincing in favor of a deflationary ...

Traditional “hard” OR has been based on quantitative modelling and embodies, usually implicitly, a positivist or empiricist philosophy. “Soft OR”, for instance problem structuring methods such as SSM, developed as an antithesis and embodied an interpretivist or constructivist philosophy. This has generated somewhat of a schism between the two sides. Previous papers have advocated critical reali...

In this interview, Ruth Groff discusses how she came to be a realist, her role as community organizer, relationship critical realism, and various issues arising from published work over the years. Discussion ranges across nature of positivism its legacy, concept falsehood, realism about causal powers, mind-independent reality, history philosophy, underlying interest in ideology-critique that ru...

For mathematicians, modern philosophy of mathematics may seem somewhat puzzling. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the borders between philosophy and mathematics were porous. Influential mathematicians like Poincaré, Brouwer, Ramsey, and Hilbert wrote extensively on philosophical topics, and philosophers like Russell, Wittgenstein, and Quine made serious philosophical use of...

In this paper I argue that Poincaré’s acceptance of the atom does not indicate a shift from instrumentalism to scientific realism. I examine the implications of Poincaré’s acceptance of the existence of the atom for our current understanding of his philosophy of science. Specifically, how can we understand Poincaré’s acceptance of the atom in structural realist terms? I examine his 1912 paper c...

The fundamental question that is the title of this symposium elicits answers that are not just philosophical in nature, directly pertain to measurement, interpretation of empirical results, modeling, as well as the daily practice and general philosophy of the science that studies cognitive phenomena. Four different perspectives on the realist question will be provided by the speakers in this sy...