Realist versus Anti-Realist (Philosophy of Physics Pt 2)

(Updated entry, so it no longer appears in the original order)

I spent the better part of my weekend immersed in the works of a literary theorist turn philosopher of science, and after having waded through more than half the book, finally all that point of the debate made sense. In the last 3 chapters, he outlined most clearly, if not somewhat repetitively (good for a person like me who needs constant reminders :D), that the realist lies in the category of the alethic-objective (truth value whereas the anti-realist lies in the group of the epistemic approach to quantum theory.

But a question is, why is a person who is considered an instrumentalist be philosophically equated to subscribing to an anti-realist theory just because he is dogmatic? Maybe I might be accused of being a relativist in saying that an instrumentalist might not so much be completely rejecting the possibility of a truth-value out there rather than being convinced that the truth value lies inherently in the system he/she is propagating. Kind of like what fundamentalist believers of any religion believe that whatever truths can be found, is found in the Book/Scriptures/Creed they subscribe to.

Hence, if I were to do a bit of deduction, an adherent to epistemological reasonings (and I assue this reasoning would be logical deduction from a particular arbitrary ideal that one subscribes to) should believe that anything that could not be deduced from a theory that (im)perfectly explains what we see therefore either have to be illustrated by a complementary theory or be rejected. The "realists" (I am using scare quotes here because I am using this term from the POV of the 'mainstream' realist/antirealist camp) seem to argue that the "antirealist" (basically adherents of the "Copenhagen QM Model") reject the idea of an unknown truth-value, when I suspect that the latter's approach to the alethic is more agnostic than atheistic.
And as the author of the book I read himself pointed out, both sides weaved in and out of the epistemic and the alethic in their arguments, thus making their points chaotic in the process (or perhaps chaotic to a philosopher who insists on drawing a territorial border between the "realist" and the "anti-realist"). But somehow, I feel, it is more likely that each camp has their own 'imperfect' ontology of the theories they have each contributed to formin, and are perhaps waffling around in trying to find the most concise way of expressing their thoughts non-mathematically.

While the "instrumentalists" can fall into the trap of dogmatism (and I argue that not only them, but also the "truth-seekers"), they have enabled applications to be constructed based on their mathematical formalism. However, one might also argue that perhaps we are always hitting a cul-de-sac in trying to break the glass ceiling of quantum technology applications because we are using imperfect mathematical formalism.

There is also something else to be said about the descriptivists and mind-linguistic signification-through-the-process-of-assigning-a-signifier. Apparently, the author does not favour the Saussaurean approach of "assigning reality" through the project of assigning a signifier to the signified. While he seems to favour the post-structuralist in his arguments by criticising the positivists and structuralists, his stance does not fall into the former category. So I find myself in a fatigue inducing whirl last weekend, trying to pin down the theoretical foundation from which this realist/anti-realist idea is being worked from. Since I am at this stage unfamiliar with the works of Putnam and Rorty, having only arrived at them via secondary sources (yes I blush to admit that), I cannot critique his criticism of them, yet.



Anyway, as I do not have the book with me right now and am typing this during a short break at work, I can't say much more for fear of mis-citing the author


See "Quantum Mechanics and the Flight from Realism" by Prof Christopher Norris. There is a review of it here