Science as Communication with Nature: Building an Effective Entity-Ontic Realism with Underdetermined Entities

With the advent of Quantum Field Theory, scientists increasingly believe that the best achievable scientific theories remain effective. Given the limited experimental situations we can probe, a scientific theory of the world appears to be underdetermined concerning fundamental entities. Effective Field Theories are however strong, successful frameworks for describing results, which should warrant a realist commitment to the entities they posit. Porter Williams’ recent paper argues for effective realism and inspires an important question: should effective entities at all scales be equally real? I will argue against this, saying that a gradient of realness is necessary, granting increasing realness to more fundamental entities, because they can explain more experimental results. I will further problematize Williams’ account by drawing on Quine’s philosophy, the chariot argument from Indian-Buddhist philosophy, and a recent critique by Laura Ruetsche. Then, I will build an effective...Show moreWith the advent of Quantum Field Theory, scientists increasingly believe that the best achievable scientific theories remain effective. Given the limited experimental situations we can probe, a scientific theory of the world appears to be underdetermined concerning fundamental entities. Effective Field Theories are however strong, successful frameworks for describing results, which should warrant a realist commitment to the entities they posit. Porter Williams’ recent paper argues for effective realism and inspires an important question: should effective entities at all scales be equally real? I will argue against this, saying that a gradient of realness is necessary, granting increasing realness to more fundamental entities, because they can explain more experimental results. I will further problematize Williams’ account by drawing on Quine’s philosophy, the chariot argument from Indian-Buddhist philosophy, and a recent critique by Laura Ruetsche. Then, I will build an effective realism inspired by Quinean naturalist ideas, picturing science as a linguistic attempt to describe the world. Using one innovation I hope to re-introduce entity-ontic realism into Quine’s account: the relation between scientist and nature is seen as communicative, such that the scientist is like a translator of natural language. Given some assumptions, this focus on the translation rather than on the interpretation of the natural world should make it easier to have epistemic optimism about effective entities, as the problem of epistemic optimism is likened to the indeterminacy of translation. Since realness is seen as a communicative rapport between nature and scientists, realness reflects an intersubjective rather than an objective truth, which allows for effective theories to be objectively false or only approximately true and yet real. Lastly, this communicative account vindicates the existential position of the scientist as engaged in a profound pursuit to understand the world around her.Show less

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Science as Communication with Nature: Building an Effective Entity-Ontic Realism with Underdetermined Entities