The reasonableness of doubt: phenomenology and scientific realism

This article considers the contribution of Husserlian transcendental phenomenology to the scientific realism debate by thematizing the problem of dubitability. After first considering the rigorous standards for apodictic evidence in phenomenology, particularly in terms of the intuitive givenness of evidence, I consider how scientific theory is open, in principle, to doubt. I argue that phenomenology has both a critical and descriptive function for scientific theory: it clarifies what scientific theory can or cannot tell us about the world, both possibly and necessarily; and it describes the meaningfulness that scientific theory can have for us in our experience of the world-that is, in the living flow of conscious experience that is indubitably real. As such, I explain how phenomenology can take scientific theory as a serious field of investigation.