Principia: An International Journal of Epistemology (Dec 2007)

Common-Sense Realism and the Unimaginable Otherness of Science

  • Bradley Monton

Journal volume & issue
Vol. 11, no. 2
pp. 117 – 126

Abstract

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Bas van Fraassen endorses both common-sense realism — the view, roughly, that the ordinary macroscopic objects that we take to exist actually do exist — and constructive empiricism — the view, roughly, that the aim of science is truth about the observable world. But what happens if common-sense realism and science come into conflict? I argue that it is reasonable to think that they could come into conflict, by giving some motivation for a mental monist solution to the measurement problem of quantum mechanics. I then consider whether, in a situation where science favors the mental monist interpretation, van Fraassen would want to give up common-sense realism or would want to give up science.

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