Research On The Metaphysical Character Of Scientific Realism

As a theory aiming at explicating the activities of scientific research,scientific realism tells us that the best scientific theories can describe not only phenomena observable but also unobservable correctly.Does scientific realism supply us rational explanations? Scientific realists have debated with their opponents on this question since the mid of the 20^th century.What they focused on is whether we can get the knowledge on those unobservable phenomena.Actually,the aforementioned discussions concerned not only the focal problems in the scientific philosophy,but also the more universal problem in philosophy and science,that is,problem on metaphysics.In the paper,I concentrate on researching the metaphysical character of scientific realism.My aim is as follows.First,I hope to study the main content of scientific realism,expatiating on the disputes between scientific realism and anti-scientific realism in the sense of metaphysical promise and reaching the conclusion that scientific realism is a theory with metaphysical character.Second,I need to argue the significance and necessity of the metaphysical promise,exploring the measures that we can take in order to unite the metaphysical promise with scientific realism itself,and to supply us with rationally scientific explanations.In order to achieve the aforementioned aims,I make a systematic research on the focal problems in debating between the scientific realists and their opponents.By examining and criticizing the precedents,I make the following conclusions.Firstly,the transcendent quality that scientific realism entails in its research subjects,aims and methods shows that there is metaphysical character in scientific realism.In the ontological,epistemological and semantic promise of scientific realism, we can induce that it focuses on the ontological problem of the transcendental theoretical entity and the epistemological problem on truth.The duty of scientific realism is to unite the understanding and pursuing of entity and truth.And the method of scientific realism is semantic analysis on the basis of logic method.In detail,the metaphysical character of scientific realism embodies in the following three problems.The first one is about the substantiality of world itself.The second one is about the existence of the theoretic entity which is postulated by scientific theories.The third one is about the truth in scientific theories.We can find definite answers of the aforementioned questions in scientific realism,which indicates that there is a position for metaphysics in science.The metaphysical character makes scientific realism own an incompletely materialist position,a character of presupposition and spirit of essentialism.Secondly,the metaphysical character brings scientific realism broad doubts.In the dialogue with those opponents,scientific realists lose their confidence in insisting such metaphysical character.In replying to the question on the substantiality of world itself,the scientific realists give us the following reactions.Shapere changes the problem of the world's existence from a factual one into an internal problem in the system of scientific concepts.Shapere's idea brings a reaction on the extreme usage of the anti-presupposition.Namely,the opponents think that it is possible that the belief of the world's existence be abandoned because of the development of science.Following the ideas of Kant and Quine,Putnam denies the existence of world,and proposed the argument on the conceptual relativity.As to the problem of the theoretical entity's existence,the scientific realists change their idea on the metaphysical character by concentrating on research of semantic meaning and references.Dummett argue that the significance of theoretic sentence can not be undecidable.This indicates that there is no need for a right theory of meaning to admit the independent existence of facts.Since Dummett explicates the concept of truth from the veritablility of sentences,the affected scientific realists have to accept a theory of meaning that be verified by experience.As to the problem of references of theoretic terms,Putnam gives us a reply under the effect of the uncertainty of translation which is raised by Quine.Putnam changes his causal reference theory into a new one,which holds that the causal function that the environment plays on men is not the necessary and sufficient condition,but only the necessary condition in understanding references.And Putnam also thinks that references are only concerned with the relationship of objects in the same conceptual scheme. Concerning the truth in scientific theories,the scientific realists make a compromise in epistemic optimism.They therefore put forward the concept of approximate truth.Actually,they hope to combine the ideas of correspondence theory, coherence theory and pragmatic theory of truth in order to get a united explanation on truth and science.Thirdly,the rational argument on the metaphysical character of scientific realism entails the following three aspects.(1) How to understand the substantiality of the world in the sense of the unity of ontology and epistemology?(2) How to understand the reality of the theoretic entity in the sense of the unity of entity realism and structure realism?(3) How to understand the truth in scientific theories in the sense of approximate truth? Meanwhile,to answer these questions is to argue that metaphysical character in scientific realism is important for science.There are two dimensions that can argue the substantiality of the world itself.In the logic dimension,the promise on the mind-independent reality is not the outcome of our conceptualizations and theorizing,but a presupposition that can supply significance and regulation for observations,and thereby make science possible in the first place.In the dimension of time,thought as the limited wisdom in the mortal animals is a posterior and limited understanding on reality.In this sense,we indispensably require the notion of reality to operate the concept of truth as "agreement with reality".Conception of truth is the indispensable bridge between thought and reality,the idea of being truly thought to be so establishes an indissoluble conceptual linkage between being-thought-to-be and actually being.This means that the truth is necessary in the sense of epistemology.Based on the epistemological character of causality,the entity realism believes that the entities described by scientific theories exist in a mind-independent reality. However,they also are generally skeptical about the theories in which these entities are described.Structure realism endorses knowledge of structure of the unobservable entities,but is skeptical about the nature of the entities that might be thought to inhabit these structures.In my idea,scientific realism should be a viewpoint which unites the two aforementioned groups together.Any a particular has its nature,since structures are identified with relations,there are no structures to speak of unless theses relations obtain.The joint of natures and structures is causal properties(first-order properties),such as mass,volume and temperature etc.,which forms the concrete structures.If causal properties can be understood the dispositions for specific relations, the knowledge on structures consists in knowledge of natures.Therefore,the existence of natures gives us proof on the existence of particulars.Scientific realists talk about the truth in scientific theories in the sense of approximate truth.Then how to understand approximate truth? In my opinion,the concept of approximate truth for realist is a heterogeneous term which is properly conceived.That is,it is understood by means of different sorts of representational relationships between theories and models on the one hand,and things in the world on the other.Such representations reflect the degrees that theories and models can be abstracted and idealized.The core of scientific representation is description and reference.Hence,greater approximate truth can be interpreted into improved representations of the recognition of the nature of the world.We can get this improvement by two dimensions:many of the relevant properties and relations one describes(abstraction),and how accurately one describes them(idealization).Fourthly,the defense and criticism on the metaphysical character of scientific idealism affects our understanding on metaphysics indirectly.On the one hand,empiricists do not supply us with sufficient explication on the role metaphysics plays in science.Constructive empiricists reconstruct empiricism and hope to argue that empiricism is superior to speculative metaphysics and analytic metaphysics.But it is a pity that they stand in a self-refuting position.That is,when empiricists define empiricism as a factual doctrine,believing that the only source of knowledge of the world is experiences,they make the same mistake as metaphysician, because they also speculate about the world in such a way as to reach beyond the observable.Actually,they oppose metaphysics by receiving another metaphysical proposition.Besides,the idea that empiricists try to prove facts with their relevance with metaphysics is irrational,hence,their conclusion that metaphysical position is irrational is incorrect.On the other hand,the change happened in the nature of metaphysics in scientific realism reflects the change in the viewpoint on metaphysics,which is the change from traditional viewpoint to the modern one.As to the former,metaphysics is regarded as the characterization of being qua being,while metaphysics is concerned with the characterization of human conceptual structures in the latter idea.This leads to the opposition on the nature of reality between scientific realists and anti-realists.Nowadays,there is a deep and broad research on scientific realism in academic field,but most of them focus on special research on philosophers.In this paper,I make a research on the character of scientific realism.With the research on the metaphysical character of scientific realism,I disclose that the essential problem between scientific realism and anti-realism is the substantiality of the world,the reality of theoretic entity and the truth in scientific theories.That is the clue in this paper.With the rational explication on the metaphysical character of scientific realism, and supply us the rational explanation for activity on scientific research.