Scientific Ontology: Fact or Stance?

Abstract

In this paper, the key tenets of Anjan Chakravartty's book Scientific Ontology are critically discussed. After a brief presentation of the project of stance-based ontology (Section 2), I move on to criticize Chakravartty's account of metaphysical inference (Sections 2 and 3). Then, in Section 4, I take issue with Chakravartty's view that fundamental debates in metaphysics inevitably lead to irresolvable disagreement, while in Section 5, the concept of epistemic stance is scrutinized, noting that there are problems in Chakravartty's account of the rationality of stance-choice. Finally, Section 6 is about the implications of stance-based ontology for the scientific realism debate.