Bohr and the Realism Debates

MacKinnon, Edward

doi:10.1007/978-94-015-8106-6_13

Cited by 19 publications

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“…This is so because phenomenological models survive through theory change, because of the way they are built. 8 This is similar, as I will argue, to the story associated with phenomenological realism.9 This connotation between the theoretical description and models in Bohr's work was also suggested by bothMackinnon (1993) andMurdoch (1987). Nonetheless I think that my approach to the issue differs from theirs.…”

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confidence: 68%

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Bohr as a Phenomenological Realist

Shomar

2008

J Gen Philos Sci

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There is confusion among scholars of Bohr as to whether he should be categorized as an instrumentalist (see Faye 1991) or a realist (see Folse 1985). I argue that Bohr is a realist, and that the confusion is due to the fact that he holds a very special view of realism, which did not coincide with the philosophers' views. His approach was sometimes labelled instrumentalist and other times realist, because he was an instrumentalist on the theoretical level, but a realist on the level of models. Such a realist position is what I call phenomenological realism. In this paper, and by taking Bohr's debate with Einstein as a paradigm, I try to prove that Bohr was such a realist.

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confidence: 68%

“… See Folse (1985. Others agree on this: seeKrips (1993),Mackinnon (1993), andHonner (1987). 2 WhichFolse himself admits in 1985, pp.…”

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confidence: 99%