Jak dowodzić realności przedmiotów teoretycznych?

Abstrakt

The aim of the article is to show a possible way of constructing an argument for the reality of theoretical entities which causal properties are know well enough to enable scientists to use them as tools. The argumentation is drawing consequences from the claim that entity realism is about levelling the ontological and epistemological status of observable and unobservable entities and therefore is immune to the criticism aimed at other forms of realism. The main line of presented reasoning amounts to combining I. Hacking’s argument for the reality of certain theoretical entities with P. Churchland’s arguments questioning the distinction between observable and theoretical entities. The article touches also in general the most important problems concerning entity realism, i.e. the problem of representation, correspondence theory of truth and the criticism from the side of instrumentalism and social constructivism.