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A Buddhist system of two truths provides a descriptive framework with criteria for what counts as real in contrast to what does not. This paper looks at the relationship between these two truths in the works of two seventh-century Indian philosophers, Dharmakīrti and Candrakīrti, and draws implications for comparison and contrast with modern scientific understandings of the world. It highlights important features of Dharmakīrti’s epistemology that aim to circumvent cultural conventions in a way that resonates with scientific representations of knowledge. It also contrasts this approach with one inspired by Candrakīrti in order to argue for the place of ethics and persons in a hybrid Buddhist–scientific picture of the world.

Philosophers commonly make claims about the aims of science, and these claims have played a significant role in debates about topics like scientific realism, modeling, and idealization. Nevertheless, there has been little discussion about the basis for those aims or the source of justification for claims about those aims. We use recent debates about the appropriate roles for values in science to bring this lack of discussion to the fore. These debates raise the question of whether there are global aims that apply to all areas of science. In response to this question, we examine a variety of different ways of conceptualizing the aims of science and conclude that no matter how one conceptualizes them, there do not appear to be convincing arguments for the view that science has global aims that constrain the influence of local aims on scientific practice. Thus, we place the burden of proof on those who claim that science has one or more global aims of this sort to show how those aims can be justified. Furthermore, we develop an account of scientific normativity that relies solely on local aims. When applied to debates about values in science, this view vindicates the cogency of what we call an “equal aims” approach to managing roles for values in science. Abandoning global aims might seem to raise the potential for epistemic corruption in science, but we argue that this concern is not compelling. We conclude that a local conception of scientific aims provides the foundation for a highly naturalized and engaged approach to the philosophy of science.

In recent years there has been a noticeable yet largely unacknowledged ‘pragmatic turn’ in the scientific realism debate, inspired in part by van Fraassen’s work on ‘epistemic stances’. Features of this new approach include: an ascent to the meta-level (the focus is not so much on whether scientific realism is true, but on the prior questions of the nature of the positions in this debate, how to decide whether to be a scientific realist, etc.); a reinterpretation of scientific realism and anti-realism as (or as closely associated with) stances or frameworks, rather than theories or beliefs; a move away from the previously dominant empirical-explanatory (i.e. quasi-scientific or naturalistic) conception of scientific realism, anti-realism, and their justification; and a stress on the pragmatic and values-based elements in the debate. The traditional scientific realism debate is concerned with determining which position is true, or most epistemically justified. The new approach by contrast is concerned with determining which position best serves certain values, e.g. is most useful, fruitful, or otherwise prudentially preferable. In this paper we try to bring together the various strands in this new orientation, summarise its key features, contrast it with superficially similar but opposing views, and explore the similarities and differences among some of its adherents. Given we are advocates of the turn, we also offer a defence of the value and fruitfulness of this reconceptualization of the debate.

This article considers the contribution of Husserlian transcendental phenomenology to the scientific realism debate by thematizing the problem of dubitability. After first considering the rigorous standards for apodictic evidence in phenomenology, particularly in terms of the intuitive givenness of evidence, I consider how scientific theory is open, in principle, to doubt. I argue that phenomenology has both a critical and descriptive function for scientific theory: it clarifies what scientific theory can or cannot tell us about the world, both possibly and necessarily; and it describes the meaningfulness that scientific theory can have for us in our experience of the world—that is, in the living flow of conscious experience that is indubitably real. As such, I explain how phenomenology can take scientific theory as a serious field of investigation.

This paper begins by applying a version of Timothy Williamson’s anti-luminosity argument to normative properties. This argument suggests that there must be at least some unknowable normative facts in normative Sorites sequences, or otherwise we get a contradiction given certain plausible assumptions concerning safety requirements on knowledge and our doxastic dispositions. This paper then focuses on the question of how the defenders of different forms of metaethical anti-realism (namely, error theorists, subjectivists, relativists, contextualists, expressivists, response dependence theorists, and constructivists) could respond to the explanatory challenge created by the previous argument. It argues that, with two exceptions, the metaethical anti-realists need not challenge the argument itself, but rather they can find ways to explain how the unknowable normative facts can obtain. These explanations are based on the idea that our own attitudes on which the normative facts are grounded need not be transparent to us either. Reaching this conclusion also illuminates how metaethical anti-realists can make sense of instances of normative vagueness more generally.

The phrase ‘social constructionism about race’ is so ambiguous that it is unable to convey anything very meaningful. I argue that the various versions of social constructionism about race are either false, overly broad, or better described as anti-realism about biological race. One of the central rhetorical purposes of social constructionism about race has been to serve as an alternative to biological racial realism. However, most versions of social constructionism about race are compatible with biological racial realism, and there are some race scholars who endorse both positions. Going a step further, David Reich has recently defended both social constructionism about race and racial hereditarianism. While Reich’s defense of racial hereditarianism is unconvincing, I show that most versions of social constructionism about race are indeed compatible with racial hereditarianism. I argue that we ought to replace the social constructionist “consensus” about race with the view that there are no races, only racialized groups.

My main aim in this paper is to lay out a metaphysical map of the possible metaphysical attitudes that philosophers may hold with respect to physical symmetries. Even though it is customary to distinguish between realism vs. anti-realism, I show that the metaphysical landscape looks a bit more complex. To show this, I differentiate at least nine different views that have been held, or might be held, concerning which place physical symmetries occupy in one’s ontology. Mi objetivo en este artículo es desarrollar un mapa metafísico de las posibles actitudes metafísicas que los filósofos pueden adoptar con respecto a las simetrías en física. Aunque es usual distinguir entre realismo y anti-realismo, en este artículo muestro que el panorama metafísico es un poco más complejo que eso. Para ello, distingo al menos nueve posiciones diferentes que han sido adoptadas, o podrían ser adoptadas, en relación al lugar que las simetrías pueden ocupar en la ontología que uno conciba.

Mimesis is one of the oldest, most fundamental concepts in Western aesthetics. This book offers a new, searching treatment of its long history at the center of theories of representational art: above all, in the highly influential writings of Plato and Aristotle, but also in later Greco-Roman philosophy and criticism, and subsequently in many areas of aesthetic controversy from the Renaissance to the twentieth century. Combining classical scholarship, philosophical analysis, and the history of ideas--and ranging across discussion of poetry, painting, and music--Stephen Halliwell shows with a wealth of detail how mimesis, at all stages of its evolution, has been a more complex, variable concept than its conventional translation of \"imitation\" can now convey. Far from providing a static model of artistic representation, mimesis has generated many different models of art, encompassing a spectrum of positions from realism to idealism. Under the influence of Platonist and Aristotelian paradigms, mimesis has been a crux of debate between proponents of what Halliwell calls \"world-reflecting\" and \"world-simulating\" theories of representation in both the visual and musico-poetic arts. This debate is about not only the fraught relationship between art and reality but also the psychology and ethics of how we experience and are affected by mimetic art. Moving expertly between ancient and modern traditions, Halliwell contends that the history of mimesis hinges on problems that continue to be of urgent concern for contemporary aesthetics.