Realism between metaphysics and science

The aim of my dissertation is to understand what realism debates in philosophy of science should be about. To achieve this goal, a number of questions need to be addressed: What is the target of realism and antirealism in the philosophy of science, and what does it mean to be a realist or an antirealist? Does only realism in this debate imply a commitment to metaphysics, or are both realism and antirealism equally metaphysical positions? Is there really anything to be debated, or should we just be quietists about realism debates in philosophy of science? My answer is that, in its current form, the realism debate in philosophy of science is a skeptical debate, that is, antirealism is offered exclusively as an epistemic challenge to realism. This leads to an unsatisfactory stalemate between realism and antirealism, which often prompts a kind of quietism about these debates. While I reject this quietism as insufficiently supported by argument, I concede that the debate in its current shape is not satisfactory either. Instead I propose to change the target of realism debates away from claims about unobservables towards modal claims made in the sciences. Debates about the latter, I argue, can go beyond skeptical challenges to include semantic and metaphysical questions as well. Switching the target in this way makes the debate about realism in the philosophy of science more like realism debates in other fields.