Arthur Fine is an American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 philosopher of science

Philosophy of science

The philosophy of science is concerned with the assumptions, foundations, methods and implications of science. It is also concerned with the use and merit of science and sometimes overlaps metaphysics and epistemology by exploring whether scientific results are actually a study of truth...

 teaching at the University of Washington

University of Washington

University of Washington is a public research university, founded in 1861 in Seattle, Washington, United States. The UW is the largest university in the Northwest and the oldest public university on the West Coast. The university has three campuses, with its largest campus in the University...

 (UW). Before moving to UW he taught for many years at Northwestern University

Northwestern University

Northwestern University is a private research university in Evanston and Chicago, Illinois, USA. Northwestern has eleven undergraduate, graduate, and professional schools offering 124 undergraduate degrees and 145 graduate and professional degrees....

 and, before that, at Cornell University

Cornell University

Cornell University is an Ivy League university located in Ithaca, New York, United States. It is a private land-grant university, receiving annual funding from the State of New York for certain educational missions...

 and the University of Illinois at Chicago

University of Illinois at Chicago

The University of Illinois at Chicago, or UIC, is a state-funded public research university located in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Its campus is in the Near West Side community area, near the Chicago Loop...

. He is a past president of the American Philosophical Association

American Philosophical Association

The American Philosophical Association is the main professional organization for philosophers in the United States. Founded in 1900, its mission is to promote the exchange of ideas among philosophers, to encourage creative and scholarly activity in philosophy, to facilitate the professional work...

 and the Philosophy of Science Association

Philosophy of Science Association

The Philosophy of Science Association is an academic organization which promotes further studies and free discussion from diverse standpoints in the field of philosophy of science....

 and has for many years been on the editorial board of the journal Philosophy of Science, one of the leading publications in the field. He proposed the Natural Ontological Attitude

Natural Ontological Attitude

Arthur Fine published "The Natural Ontological Attitude" in 1984 and a sequel, "And Not Antirealism Either" in the same year. His subject is the nature and validity of scientific knowledge and his goal is to get the reader to abandon either realism or antirealism as he understands them. In their...

 (NOA) as a resolution to the debates over scientific realism

Scientific realism

Scientific realism is, at the most general level, the view that the world described by science is the real world, as it is, independent of what we might take it to be...

. Fine also developed one of the possible interpretations of quantum mechanics

Interpretation of quantum mechanics

An interpretation of quantum mechanics is a set of statements which attempt to explain how quantum mechanics informs our understanding of nature. Although quantum mechanics has held up to rigorous and thorough experimental testing, many of these experiments are open to different interpretations...

 yet to be decided between and has contributed to the probabilistic understanding of Bell's Theorem

Bell's theorem

In theoretical physics, Bell's theorem is a no-go theorem, loosely stating that:The theorem has great importance for physics and the philosophy of science, as it implies that quantum physics must necessarily violate either the principle of locality or counterfactual definiteness...

. See the entry “Arthur Fine” in The Dictionary of Modern American Philosophers, General Editor, John R. Shook, Bristol: Thoemmes Press, 2005 for a detailed biography.

Natural Ontological Attitude

In 2001, Fine gave the following re-counting of the birth of NOA and its important relationship to Bas van Fraassen's anti-realism:

The Scientific Image arrived in 1980 like a breath of fresh air.
Although in the introduction van Fraassen counts me among the
realist foot soldiers, at just that time Micky Forbes and I were
engaged in rethinking the whole realism/antirealism issue. The
result was NOA. Van Fraassen’s powerful and enlightening monograph
encouraged us in that project. If Micky and I are parents
of NOA, then Bas is perhaps a godfather. Paul Teller too, since he
was among the people then who helped us refine our ideas as they
developed.

External links

• Arthur Fine's page in University of Washington
  University of Washington
  University of Washington is a public research university, founded in 1861 in Seattle, Washington, United States. The UW is the largest university in the Northwest and the oldest public university on the West Coast. The university has three campuses, with its largest campus in the University...
  
  website