Realism and Antirealism in the Philosophy of Science Today

除了每一个具体的问题，我们这三年的研究使我们能够把我们的计划的影响概括如下：我们可以作为本世纪实在论和反实在论之争的起点，列宁的唯物主义和经验主义批评为唯物主义和唯心主义辩护。然而，逻辑实证主义在弗雷格和维特根斯坦语言哲学的影响下进行了语言学转向，将心灵和物质的框架简化为可以在语言框架内简单处理的问题之一；它断言现实主义和理想主义的对立是无稽之谈，因为先验现实和先验观念都不是我们可以理解的语言使用所能达到的。但逻辑实证主义并没有走到打破旧框架本身的地步。直到达米特提出了实在论和反实在论的提法，作为对二价论原理的肯定和否定，它才被拆解。他进一步向我们展示了经典逻辑和直觉逻辑之间的对立。从那时起，他就质疑基于二元论原则的经典逻辑是否应该为自然语言提供基础，并反对现实主义，即只要它要求这一原则，它就无法逃脱幻觉。这意味着，当旧的框架被新的框架取代时，现实主义开始采取防御措施。我们可以得出结论，实在论与反实在论对立的根本问题在于指称理论和语言理解理论。毫无疑问，这将是我们下一个研究项目的中心主题。

Apart from each particular point of issue, our study in these three years has enabled us to give a total outline of the effects of our project as follows.We can take as a starting point of the dispute between realism and antirealism in this century V. Lenin's Materialism and Empirico-Criticism which defended materialism against idealism. However, when it gave the linguistic turn under the influence of G. Frege's and L. Wittgenstein's philosophy of language, logical positivism reduced the framework of mind and matter to one of those problems which can simply be dealt with within the framework of language; it asserted the opposition between realism and idealism as nonsense because transcendental reality and transcendental ideas were both unattainable by our intelligible use of language. But logical positivism did not go so far as to break down the old framework itself. It was only when M. Dummett advanced a formulation of realism and antirealism as an affirmation and a denial of the principle of bivalence that it was broken down. And he further presented us with the opposition between classical logic and intuitionistic logic. Since then, he has raised doubts of whether classical logic grounded on the principle of bivalence should supply natural language with its basis, and has argued against realism that in so far as it demands the principle, it cannot escape illusion. This means that when the old framework has been replaced by the new one, realism has come to take the defensive. We can conclude that the fundamental problem concerning the opposition between realism and antirealism consists in the theory of reference and the theory of language understanding. There is no doubt that this will be a central theme of our next research project.