Entity realism and singularist semirealism

Bence Nanay

pp. 499-517

in: Darrell P. Rowbottom, Jamin Asay (eds), Scientific realism, Synthese 196 (2), 2019.

Abstract

Entity realism is the view that ‘a good many theoretical entities do really exist’. The main novelty of entity realism was that it provided an account of scientific realism that did not have to endorse realism about theories—the general proposal was that entity realism is noncommittal about whether we should be realist about scientific theories. I argue that the only way entity realists can resist the pull of straight scientific realism about theories is by endorsing a recent new player in the scientific realism debate: singularist semirealism.