Michela Massimi, "Perspectival Realism" (Oxford UP, 2022)

In Conversation: An OUP Podcast · Jul 11, 2022 · 1h 7m

For many philosophers, the fact that scientists take different perspectives on the world is an obstacle to being a realist about the world. In Perspectival Realism (Oxford University Press, 2022), Michela Massimi argues that to the contrary the plurality of perspectives is the driving force behind realism. On her view, the scientific realism that emerges out of the perspectival nature of scientific representation takes perspectival models as inferential blueprints for exploring what is possible. The realist’s primitives are not essential properties, but the stable lawlike dependencies that…