Realism and Explanatory Perspectives

The prospects and challenges of reconciling perspectivism and realism are the ongoing concerns of Chapter 4 by Juha Saatsi. Saatsi advocates a modest scientific realism, which he believes can address the challenges that scientific realism faces, such as those advanced by perspectival realists. Saatsi argues that the perspectival aspects of science are best assimilated into the realist view in what he calls “explanatory perspectives.” His explanatory perspectives are explicated with his favored account of explanation, the counterfactual-dependence account, which is grounded in real modal connections in the world.