Chapter 3 Idealism and Philosophy of Science
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Abstract
In Chapter 3, “Idealism and the Philosophy of Science,” Hugo Meynell argues that philosophical idealism is an enormously important half-truth, significantly improving upon materialism, which makes science impossible, but falling well short of critical realism, the position Meynell endorses, and its standard of true judgments. Philosophical idealism rightly emphasizes the constructive role of intelligence in our apprehension of what we take to be “reality” or “the actual world.” However, it is not the correct position for determining under what conditions, precisely, judgments are true. Critical realism does have such a criterion. Judgments are true insofar as they are well-founded and they are well-founded insofar as they are reached attentively (entertaining the relevant evidence in experience), intelligently (envisaging the possibilities or hypotheses which could explain the case at hand), and reasonably (judging in each case as probable or certain which hypothesis adequately explains the evidence).