Extensional Realism: Interesting and Uninteresting Truths
Andrew Fish

Abstract:
Sebastian de Haro offers a new kind of scientific realism, extensional realism, which allows us to be realists, if not about the intensions of scientific terms, then at least their extensions. After examining the view and how it fits into the wider debate about scientific realism, it is argued that the notion of approximate truth employed threatens the novelty of the position, as well as commits the extensional realist to realism only about scientific claims of no interest. By adapting Karl Popper’s verisimilitude in a particular way, extensional realism is equipped to solve this problem by identifying which theories are the best according to the usefulness of the truths they espouse.