P.D. Magnus (research)

Cautious realism and middle range ontology

Part of a book symposium about Anjan Chakravartty's Scientific Ontology: Integrating Naturalized Metaphysics And Voluntarist Epistemology.

Versions available

• PDF of author's final draft
• at the journal
• the PhilPapers page for this

Abstract

Anjan Chakravartty's book Scientific Ontology is centrally about how metaphysics is embrangled with epistemology. I begin by discussing the broader literature in science and values, where arguments akin to Chakravartty's have been much-discussed. Then I talk about my own preferred approach, middle range ontology, which does not fit neatly into any of the three stances Chakravartty discusses. Finally, I use these considerations to pose a dilemma.

BibTeX

@ARTICLE(magnus2018d,
	AUTHOR = {P.D. Magnus},
	TITLE = {Cautious realism and middle range ontology},
	JOURNAL = {Metascience},
	YEAR = {2018},
	MONTH = nov,
	VOLUME = {23},
	NUMBER = {3},
	PAGES = {365--370},
	DOI = {10.1007/s11016-018-0342-y}
)

The first on-line draft of this paper was posted 15dec2017.