Pluralist Realism: Where Onticity and Practice Meet

Abstract

In an article written with my (at the time) doctoral student and published in Foundations of Chemistry (Lombardi and Labarca 2005), I undertook the explicit defense of the ontic autonomy of the chemical world on the basis of a Kantian-rooted pluralist view, inspired by Hilary Putnam’s internal realism (Putnam 1981).1 From that perspective, the object of scientific knowledge is always the result of a synthesis between the categorical-conceptual frameworks embodied in scientific theories and the independent noumenal reality. However, unlike Kantian philosophy, our position admits the existence of different frameworks, both diachronically and synchronically; this leads to a pluralism that allows for the coexistence of different, even incompatible ontic domains. This view was further developed in subsequent works, particularly in its application to the relationship between chemistry and physics (Lombardi and Labarca 2006, 2011; Labarca and Lombardi 2010; Lombardi 2015). In an article also published in Foundations of Chemistry, Rein Vihalemm (2011a) directed his attention to our first two works on the matter (Lombardi and Labarca 2005, 2006), taking a critical stance regarding the Kantian roots of our position. Although agreeing with Putnam’s rejection of God’s-eye perspective to conceive knowledge, Vihalemm claims: “My main criticism of the paper by Lombardi and Labarca is, however, that there seems to be no need to take one’s stand on Putnam’s internal realism in order to give up God’s point of view . . . and defend the autonomy of the chemical world” (Vihalemm 2011a, 100). According to him, Kantian tradition embodies an idealistic philosophical conception that stands completely at odds with any realist view about science, in particular, with his practical realism, as developed in previous works (Vihalemm 2003, 2005)...