Scientific Realism and the Plasticity of Mind

The present essay is addressed simultaneously to two distinct audiences. The first audience consists of my professional colleagues, other academics, students, and lay readers, who are less than intimately familiar with the philosophical position commonly called scientific realism. For them I have here attempted to make available in fairly short compass a coherent and comprehensive account of that position as it bears on the philosophy of perception, on the theory of meaning, on the philosophy of mind, and on systematic epistemology.