Talk: Anjan Chakravartty (Miami)

Title:

Requiem for a Debate? Realism, Stances, Rationality, and Demarcation

Abstract:

Debates about scientific realism and antirealism have often been recognized as central to, foundational for, or in some other way relevant to much of the rest of philosophy of science. In recent times, however, after decades of animated discussion, some prominent participants in these debates have indicated that they may not, in fact, be resolvable after all – in principle. In this talk, I elaborate this diagnosis by means of a primer on recent work on the idea of epistemic stances (collections of attitudes, values, aims, andpolicies relevant to assessing evidence), and consider a number of objections to this idea concerning views of epistemic rationality and worries about pseudoscience and science denialism.