Cognitive illusions and nonrealism
objections and replies
pp. 151-163
in: Evandro Agazzi (ed), Varieties of scientific realism, Berlin, Springer, 2017Abstract
I adopt an agnostic position concerning scientific realism, partly for historicist reasons. In work more fully developed elsewhere, I suggest that cognitive illusions (e.g., the flat future or end-of-history illusion, the maturity illusion, the fish-in-water illusion), often involving insensitivity to past and future history, make realism look more plausible than it is. Strong realists, in effect, claim to be able to foretell the future in denying that there will be either revolutionary or long-term evolutionary change in mature theoretical sciences—no matter how far into the future we go. Most of this chapter is devoted to answering selected objections to the agnostic position. All research tools available to realists are also available to pragmatists, and, contrary to common perception, pragmatists can be tougher minded than strong realists.