<一般論文> 調和主義的観点からの実在論論争

Abstract

It is well known that one of the most famous arguments for scientific realism, called "no miracles argument, " is begging the question against anti-realism because it has the same inferential form with "inference to the best explanation, " whose legitimacy is at stake in the scientific realism debate. Since this point was made by Fine and Laudan in 1984, realists have shifted their focus from the problem of establishing the (approximate) truth of scientific theories to the problem of formulating realism as a tenable position. Working in this spirit, the main concern of their research has been the problem of "pessimistic induction" or "new induction, " and they have put the burden of proof regarding the problem of underdetermination on the anti-realists' shoulders. Seeing the current situation of the debate, recently I proposed a new research program to show the legitimacy of realism that employs the criteria of justification proposed in epistemology, and demonstrated the merits of this approach with an analysis of the debate based on reliabilism. In this paper, I further carry out my research program and examine the scientific realism debate from the coherentist's point of view.