Markus Alliksaar

My background is that of a meteorologist. I have 28 years of experience in meteorology at Environment Canada, 16 years as an operational weather forecaster (where I analyzed NWP models every day), and seven years as a research meteorologist. I have a physics degree from the University of Toronto and a Masters’ degree from York University in meteorology.

In my research project I will defend the position of scientific realism, the belief that our best scientific theories try to correctly describe the mind-independent world as faithfully as possible. Realists believe that the ability of our scientific theories to generate predictions is directly proportional to how faithfully they represent the large-scale order in the universe. This conclusion will be derived from an modified version of Putnam’s no-miracles argument or NMA. I will introduce a variation on the NMA that I call the Reverse No-Miracles Argument (Reverse NMA).