Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 February 2022
In my discussion of Sellars I have said as little as possible about my own position. But I think I should just mention that the descriptions of instrumentalists by Professors Sellars and Cornman do not fit me. That is why I would prefer the term “anti-realist”.
To my mind, theoretical entities are fictions. To explain this, let me draw an analogy. Suppose someone writes a short story about a quarrel between a man and a cat. There may be or have been in the world, somewhere, a man and a cat who quarrelled, and who are by and large just like the characters in the story. This possibility is quite irrelevant to what the author is doing, and to our evaluation of the story. Of course, it keeps us from saying categorically that all short stories are false; but this too is quite irrelevant.
Research for this paper was supported by the Canada Council.