Realism and Antirealism in the Philosophy of Science Today

除去每个特定的问题点，我们在这三年的研究使我们能够给出我们项目的总体效果概述如下。我们可以把本世纪现实主义与反现实主义之争的起点看作列宁的《唯物主义与经验批判》，它为唯物主义辩护，反对唯心主义。然而，当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语言学转向时，它把精神和物质的框架简化为一个可以在语言框架内简单处理的问题；它断言，现实主义和唯心主义之间的对立是无稽之谈，因为先验的现实和先验的思想都是无法通过我们可理解的语言来实现的。但是逻辑实证主义并没有走到打破旧框架的地步。只有当达米特先生提出了一种现实主义和反现实主义的表述，作为对二元性原则的肯定和否定时，它才被打破。他进一步向我们展示了经典逻辑和直觉逻辑的对立。从那时起，他对建立在二价性原则基础上的经典逻辑是否应该为自然语言提供其基础提出了怀疑，并反对实在论，认为只要它要求这个原则，它就无法逃避幻觉。这意味着，当旧框架被新框架所取代时，现实主义就开始采取防御措施。我们可以得出结论，现实主义与反现实主义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 This means that when the old framework has been replaced by the new one, realism has come to take the defensive.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.