Scientific Perspectivism and Its Foes

Philosophica 84 (1):25-52 (2012)
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Abstract

In this paper, I address a prominent realist challenge recently raised by Anjan Chakravartty (2010) against scientific perspectivism. I offer a response to the challenge, by rethinking scientific perspectivism as a view on how we form scientific knowledge, as opposed to a view about what sort of objects we have scientific knowledge of. My response follows Ernest Sosa’s perspectivism in epistemology by drawing a distinction between truth and justification for our knowledge claims. With this distinction in place, I pledge to defend scientific perspectivism as a promising alternative to both objectivist realism and relativism.

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Michela Massimi
University of Edinburgh

Citations of this work

Towards a New Scientific Realism.Jan Voosholz - 2025 - Cham: Springer Nature.
Perspectival pluralism for animal welfare.Walter Veit & Heather Browning - 2021 - European Journal for Philosophy of Science 11 (1):1-14.
Trueing.Holly Andersen - 2023 - In H. K. Andersen & Sandra D. Mitchell, The Pragmatist Challenge: Pragmatist Metaphysics for Philosophy of Science. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.

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References found in this work

Ways of worldmaking.Nelson Goodman - 1978 - Hassocks [Eng.]: Harvester Press.
Scientific Representation: Paradoxes of Perspective.Bas C. van Fraassen - 2008 - Oxford, GB: Oxford University Press UK.
Realism with a human face.Hilary Putnam - 1990 - Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Edited by James Conant.
Reliabilism Leveled.Jonathan Vogel - 2000 - Journal of Philosophy 97 (11):602.

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