English

Disentangling scientific realism from anti-exceptionalism

History and Philosophy of Physics 2025-07-08 v1 Quantum Physics

Abstract

Scientific realism is, currently, one of the most well-entrenched background assumptions of some relevant versions of anti-exceptionalism about logic. We argue that this is a sort of sociological contingency rather than a metaphilosophical necessity. Drawing parallels with the metaphysics of science (as applied to quantum foundations), we try to bring the realist assumptions of anti-exceptionalism to light, to demotivate the necessary connection between realism and anti-exceptionalism, briefly exploring the possibility of adopting antirealism as the background default view of science instead.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2507.04479,
  title  = {Disentangling scientific realism from anti-exceptionalism},
  author = {Jonas R. B. Arenhart and Raoni Arroyo and Ederson Safra Melo},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2507.04479},
  year   = {2025}
}

Comments

Invited contribution to appear in S Molick, ed. (forthcoming) Demarcating Logic and Science: Exploring New Frontiers. Springer. Submitted: November 27, 2023; Accepted: August 4, 2024

R2 v1 2026-07-01T03:48:31.667Z