El sistema de asentamientos urbanos

This connection between Weak Aim Realism and Weak Epistemic Realism (which I will from this point on just call Aim Realism and Epistemic Realism) seems to be the potential basis for an anti-realist argument that looks something like this:

(P1) Because of the problem of underdetermination (or some other skeptical problem) knowledge of mind-independent reality is impossible.

(P2) If knowledge of mind independent reality is impossible, then we can’t make evaluations about whether the aim of truth has been achieved.

(C1) We can’t make evaluations about whether the aim of truth or accuracy has been achieved.

(P3) We can make evaluations about whether some more limited anti-realist aim such as empirical adequacy has been achieved.

(P4) The satisfaction of some more limited anti-realist aim satisfies essentially all the interests we have in having a true or accurate model.

(P5) If two potential aims satisfy essentially all the same interests, but we can evaluate whether one aim has been achieved and the other we cannot, then we should adopt the aim whose achievement we can evaluate.

(C2) We should adopt an anti-realist aim rather than the realist aim.¹⁸

18Whether this argument works or not is irrelevant as to whether the kind of design-based reasoning it employs is methodologically sound, and that is all that matters for this project. However, I ultimately think this argument fails on a number of grounds. First, it seems to be a mistake to assume that the kind of knowledge typically undermined in skeptical arguments is required for making some reasonable evaluations as to whether we are more or less likely achieving the goal of believing something true or approximately true. Just because our measures aren’t perfect and never will be doesn’t mean that they can

This argument is an intrinsically design motivated line of reasoning because the primary motivation for accepting (P5) is some practical concern about how we will have to design our practices. Why would we care about the evaluation of whether we have achieved our aims except as input back into our recalibration of our norms? No capacity for feedback would mean no ability to improve performance in the achieving of the aim.

We can get better at building empirically adequate theories, but if some form of

skepticism is right, then who knows what corrections we should make to try and get true theories. This kind of reasoning from skepticism to anti-realism is common in anti-realist arguments and is a fairly natural method of argument when considering and evaluating potential aims. Good aims aren’t just good because we would like to have them. More practical questions about the achievability and measurability of the aims should reasonably figure into any discussion of what aims are appropriate.

In essence an anti-realist who used the Design Method would argue in the

following way. Let’s suppose we initially thought or intuited that truth was valuable. We then try to begin the design process using truth as the constraint on our evaluation of

be useful or even mostly reliable in indicating whether we have gotten some at least approximately true beliefs.

Second, for any proposed anti-realist measure of success there is a question about whether it’s true that the measure has been achieved. For example, there is some fact of the matter about whether a theory is empirically adequate, and it is only valuable if it really is empirically adequate. This means that the anti-realist argument can’t be completely general. Their aim only has essentially the same value as truth if it really has been achieved, which means any evaluation of the fulfillment of the anti-realist measure requires at least something like realist knowledge of whether the measure has been fulfilled, and this is qa non-trivial kind of knowledge just as susceptible to skeptical doubts, so even the empiricist has to hold that we can evaluate our success relative to some doubtable body of truth, namely truths about empirical adequacy itself.

Third, even in situations where we can’t tell whether some aim has been achieved, the retention of it as an aim, can play a crucial and essential role in informing and structuring the revision of our epistemic aims and values. This important role that truth plays as an ideal, even if often unattainable or completely verifiable end, will be the subject of the realist argument we will consider.

various epistemic norms. We immediately run into a problem. The only direct means available to us in the evaluation of the norms is comparing them to our empirical

observations and not the underlying truth. Thus, we can’t make any progress in deciding on what norms to follow if we attempt to use truth itself as a constraint, thus we must settle for designing our norms using the actual measures at our disposal. Whether this argument or line of reasoning actually works or not isn’t really important for what we are concerned with here. All that matters is that this reasoning is relevant and must be taken seriously and is a kind of reasoning we must consider in our evaluation of whether to treat truth as an epistemic end.

If this is a fair characterization of a common line of anti-realist reasoning, then philosophers have been engaging in design-based reasoning about the appropriateness of various epistemic ends for years. This should hardly be surprising since the most

common form of anti-realism for decades was pragmatism and such views quite explicitly argue from the achievement of certain ends to the adoption of certain norms and concepts. All of that said, I want to use this point as a place to head off some potential confusion. Using the Conceptual Design Method and being a pragmatist are theoretically compatible, but not identical. Pragmatists define certain epistemic values in terms of certain pragmatic values. Truth for example might get defined in terms of beliefs with a certain utility. The Conceptual Design Method makes no such assumption about epistemic value. All it says is that whatever we find the epistemic values to be, we should figure out the content of our other epistemic norms and concepts by trying to design them with the achievement of those ends in mind. But, the epistemic ends that are plugged into such a method can at least in principle be either realist or anti-realist. Pragmatists can and

I think have used what I've called the Design Method, but not all users of the Design Method are Pragmatists.