An Approach To Scientific Realism:a Perspective From Theory Of Reference

There is a long history of the debate with regard to scientific realism and anti-realism, concerning the central issues of the significance of truth and the existence of theoretical realities. In this dissertation I am going to argue for scientific realism against anti-realsim from the standpoint of the theory of reference in the philosophy of language, and the basic idea is that scientific realism is supported by the claim that the core theoretical terms in a scientific theory typically have references. The thesis divides into5parts.Part one is mainly about the basic questions involving realism and anti-realism disputation. It deals with the origin and current state of the disputation and what is the main point. I give a picture of the debate from ontological, semantic, and epistemological point of view and make attempts to clarify the relationship between scientific realism and empiricism. And I also make attempts to cover the debate and the relationship in terms of observability, the change of paradigms, theoretical realities and the nature of truth.Part two is focused on the problem of core theoretical terms with discussions on what the theoretical terms are, what their meanings are and whether they have references in reality. I give an interpretation of theoretical terms in connection with scientific explanation, scientific theory as a whole and theoretical terms by themselves. It also concens with the significance and ontological status of theoretical terms,In part three, I concentrate on the relationship between language, reality and theoretical terms in science. I deal with the relationship from the following aspects:the relationship between reality and language, the modes and grounds of determining the referred object, and the references of theoretical terms in science. To do this, I go deep into the discussion on the universal and the references of the theoretical terms in a science through languistic analysis.There the title of the4th part is "Reference under attack from anti-realism and its elimination". I reconstruct the attacks by anti-realists for supposed ontological, epistemological and semantical reasons, and summarize the central point of objections from anti-realism to scientific realism as the efforts to eliminate reference in scienfitic discourse.Finally part five is the concluding part of the dissertation. I take a reflection on the the up-to-date new trends in contemporary scientific realism with the purpose of finding a way out to save the reference. Through a review of various theories of reference, such as two-dimensional semantics, so called post-modern scientific realism, and the flight to reference strategy, and, I believe that it is possible to explicate the problem of the theoretical terms of scientific theories in a more comprehensive manner.