How to be a scientific realist: a normative-pragmatist proposal

Motivated by the question about whether we should be realists about dark matter, I propose a new articulation of the debate between the scientific realist and anti-realist. I defend three claims. First, that the debate should be articulated in normative terms, where questions about normativity are understood as being questions about authority. Second, that positions in this debate should be defended using pragmatist strategies, where pragmatist strategies are understood as being agent-first strategies. Third, that the manner of implementation of a pragmatist strategy with respect to some scientific-theoretical vocabulary - such as 'dark matter' - is highly domain-specific and turns on choices made by agents about what (and whom) they recognise as authoritative. I conclude by demonstrating that this articulation is (plausibly) extensionally adequate, in the sense that canonical scientific realists and canonical scientific anti-realists retain those statuses.