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The Structure of the World: Metaphysics and Representation

New York: Oxford University Press (2014)

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  1. (2 other versions)Scientific Realism.Anjan Chakravartty - 2011 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
    Debates about scientific realism are closely connected to almost everything else in the philosophy of science, for they concern the very nature of scientific knowledge. Scientific realism is a positive epistemic attitude toward the content of our best theories and models, recommending belief in both observable and unobservable aspects of the world described by the sciences. This epistemic attitude has important metaphysical and semantic dimensions, and these various commitments are contested by a number of rival epistemologies of science, known collectively (...)
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  • But in the End, Why is Deleuze “Anti-Hegelian”? At the Root of the Hegel–Deleuze Affair.Giacomo Pezzano - 2014 - Religija Ir Kultura [Religion and Culture] 14:89-110.
    Deleuze said that he detested Hegelianism and dialectics: this paper claims that Deleuze is contra Hegel because he has and proposes a different philosophical system. Thus, I suggest that if we want to understand the reason of such a “disgust,” we need to focus the philosophical question that moves the entire Deleuzian system (§ 1). Then, I explain that if the ground-question of Hegel’s philosophy is “how is it possible that things are surpassed, that they go on?”, the Deleuzian one (...)
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  • From ontic structural realism to metaphysical coherentism.Matteo Morganti - 2018 - European Journal for Philosophy of Science 9 (1):1-20.
    The present paper argues that the typical structuralist claims according to which invariances, symmetries and the like are fundamental – especially in physics – should not be understood in terms of physical relations being fundamental. Rather, they should be understood in terms of ‘metaphysical coherentism’ - the idea that object-like parts of reality exhibit symmetric relations of ontological dependence. The view is developed in some detail, in particular by showing that i) symmetric ontological dependence does not necessarily lead to uninformative (...)
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  • Scientific Realism without the Wave-Function: An Example of Naturalized Quantum Metaphysics.Valia Allori - 2020 - In Steven French & Juha Saatsi (eds.), Scientific Realism and the Quantum. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
    Scientific realism is the view that our best scientific theories can be regarded as (approximately) true. This is connected with the view that science, physics in particular, and metaphysics could (and should) inform one another: on the one hand, science tells us what the world is like, and on the other hand, metaphysical principles allow us to select between the various possible theories which are underdetermined by the data. Nonetheless, quantum mechanics has always been regarded as, at best, puzzling, if (...)
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  • Analytic Metaphysics versus Naturalized Metaphysics: The Relevance of Applied Ontology.Baptiste Le Bihan & Adrien Barton - 2021 - Erkenntnis 86 (1):21-37.
    The relevance of analytic metaphysics has come under criticism: Ladyman & Ross, for instance, have suggested do discontinue the field. French & McKenzie have argued in defense of analytic metaphysics that it develops tools that could turn out to be useful for philosophy of physics. In this article, we show first that this heuristic defense of metaphysics can be extended to the scientific field of applied ontology, which uses constructs from analytic metaphysics. Second, we elaborate on a parallel by French (...)
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  • The Realist Turn in the Philosophy of Science.Stathis Psillos - unknown
    This chapter offers a narrative of the basic twists and turns of the realism debate after the realist turn. It starts with what preceded and initiated the turn, viz., instrumentalist construals of scientific theories. It then moves on to discuss the basic lines of development of the realist stance to science, focusing on one of its main challenges: the historical challenge.
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  • Romanian Studies in Philosophy of Science.Ilie Parvu, Gabriel Sandu & Iulian D. Toader (eds.) - 2015 - Boston Studies in the Philosophy and History of Science, vol. 313: Springer.
    This book presents a collection of studies by Romanian philosophers, addressing foundational issues currently debated in contemporary philosophy of science. It offers a historical survey of the tradition of scientific philosophy in Romania. It examines some problems in the foundations of logic, mathematics, linguistics, the natural and social sciences. Among the more specific topics, it discusses scientific explanation, models, and mechanisms, as well as memory, artifacts, and rules of research. The book is useful to those interested in the philosophy of (...)
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  • (1 other version)Scientific Realism meets Metaphysics of Quantum Mechanics.Juha Saatsi - 2017 - In Philosophers Think About Quantum Theory.
    I examine the epistemological debate on scientific realism in the context of quantum physics, focusing on the empirical underdetermin- ation of different formulations and interpretations of QM. I will argue that much of the interpretational, metaphysical work on QM tran- scends the kinds of realist commitments that are well-motivated in the light of the history of science. I sketch a way of demarcating empirically well-confirmed aspects of QM from speculative quantum metaphysics in a way that coheres with anti-realist evidence from (...)
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  • Syntactical Informational Structural Realism.Majid Davoody Beni - 2018 - Minds and Machines 28 (4):623-643.
    Luciano Floridi’s informational structural realism takes a constructionist attitude towards the problems of epistemology and metaphysics, but the question of the nature of the semantical component of his view remains vexing. In this paper, I propose to dispense with the semantical component of ISR completely. I outline a Syntactical version of ISR. The unified entropy-based framework of information has been adopted as the groundwork of SISR. To establish its realist component, SISR should be able to dissolve the latching problem. We (...)
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  • Digging Deeper: Why Metaphysics is More Than a Toolbox.Barbara Vetter - 2018 - Journal for General Philosophy of Science / Zeitschrift für Allgemeine Wissenschaftstheorie 49 (2):231-241.
    Steven French proposes a vindication of “scientifically disinterested” metaphysics that leaves little room to its original ambitions. He claims that as a discipline that looks to find out truths about the world, it is untenable; and that rather, its vindication lies in its use as a “toolbox” of concepts for a philosophical discipline that does have a claim at getting us closer to truth—the philosophy of science, and more specifically of physics. I respond to both his main claims. The first (...)
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  • Inductive Social Metaphysics—A Defence of Inference to the Best Explanation in the Metaphysics of Social Reality: Comments on Katherine Hawley.Oliver R. Scholz - 2018 - Journal for General Philosophy of Science / Zeitschrift für Allgemeine Wissenschaftstheorie 49 (2):199-210.
    How is metaphysics related to the empirical sciences? Should metaphysics in general be guided by the sources, methods and results of the sciences? And what about the special case of the metaphysics of the social world: should it likewise be guided by the sources, methods and results of the social sciences? In her paper “Social Science as a Guide to Social Metaphysics?”, K. Hawley raises the question: If we are sympathetic to the project of naturalising metaphysics, how should we approach (...)
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  • Structure-preserving Representations, Constitution and the Relative A priori.Thomas Mormann - 2021 - Synthese 198 (Supplement 21):1-24.
    The aim of this paper is to show that a comprehensive account of the role of representations in science should reconsider some neglected theses of the classical philosophy of science proposed in the first decades of the 20th century. More precisely, it is argued that the accounts of Helmholtz and Hertz may be taken as prototypes of representational accounts in which structure preservation plays an essential role. Following Reichenbach, structure-preserving representations provide a useful device for formulating an up-to-date version of (...)
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  • Toying with the Toolbox: How Metaphysics Can Still Make a Contribution.Steven French - 2018 - Journal for General Philosophy of Science / Zeitschrift für Allgemeine Wissenschaftstheorie 49 (2):211-230.
    Current analytic metaphysics has been claimed to be, at best, out of touch with modern physics, at worst, actually in conflict with the latter The continuum companion to the philosophy of science, Continuum, London, 2011; Ladyman and Ross Every thing must go: metaphysics naturalized, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2007). While agreeing with some of these claims, it has been suggested that metaphysics may still be of service by providing a kind of ‘toolbox’ of devices that philosophers of science can access (...)
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  • Scientific Representation and Theoretical Equivalence.James Nguyen - 2017 - Philosophy of Science 84 (5):982-995.
    In this article I connect two debates in the philosophy of science: the questions of scientific representation and both model and theoretical equivalence. I argue that by paying attention to how a model is used to draw inferences about its target system, we can define a notion of theoretical equivalence that turns on whether models license the same claims about the same target systems. I briefly consider the implications of this for two questions that have recently been discussed in the (...)
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  • The Ontology of Quantum Field Theory: Structural Realism Vindicated?David Glick - 2016 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 59:78-86.
    In this paper I elicit a prediction from structural realism and compare it, not to a historical case, but to a contemporary scientific theory. If structural realism is correct, then we should expect physics to develop theories that fail to provide an ontology of the sort sought by traditional realists. If structure alone is responsible for instrumental success, we should expect surplus ontology to be eliminated. Quantum field theory (QFT) provides the framework for some of the best confirmed theories in (...)
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  • Scientific realism: what it is, the contemporary debate, and new directions.Darrell P. Rowbottom - 2019 - Synthese 196 (2):451-484.
    First, I answer the controversial question ’What is scientific realism?’ with extensive reference to the varied accounts of the position in the literature. Second, I provide an overview of the key developments in the debate concerning scientific realism over the past decade. Third, I provide a summary of the other contributions to this special issue.
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  • Four Kinds of Perspectival Truth.Michela Massimi - 2018 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 96 (2):342-359.
    In this paper, I assess recent claims in philosophy of science about scientific perspectivism being compatible with realism. I clarify the rationale for scientific perspectivism and the problems and challenges that perspectivism faces in delivering a form of realism. In particular, I concentrate my attention on truth, and on ways in which truth can be understood in perspectival terms. I offer a cost-benefit analysis of each of them and defend a version that in my view is most promising in living (...)
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  • How models represent.James Nguyen - 2016 - Dissertation,
    Scientific models are important, if not the sole, units of science. This thesis addresses the following question: in virtue of what do scientific models represent their target systems? In Part i I motivate the question, and lay out some important desiderata that any successful answer must meet. This provides a novel conceptual framework in which to think about the question of scientific representation. I then argue against Callender and Cohen’s attempt to diffuse the question. In Part ii I investigate the (...)
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  • (1 other version)Aesthetic values in science.Milena Ivanova - 2017 - Philosophy Compass 12 (10):e12433.
    Scientists often use aesthetic values in the evaluation and choice of theories. Aesthetic values are not only regarded as leading to practically more useful theories but are often taken to stand in a special epistemic relation to the truth of a theory such that the aesthetic merit of a theory is evidence of its truth. This paper explores what aesthetic considerations influence scientists' reasoning, how such aesthetic values relate to the utility of a scientific theory, and how one can justify (...)
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  • (1 other version)Reconstructing the upward path to structural realism.Majid Davoody Beni - 2017 - European Journal for Philosophy of Science 7 (3):393-409.
    In his Analysis of Matter, Russell advocated an epistemic form of Epistemic Structural Realism which held that our knowledge of the external world is structural. This approach has been criticised by M.H.A. Newman, 137–148, 1928) and Stathis Psillos, S13–S24, 2001). The paper aims to reconstruct Russell’s version of ESR, and defend its experimental and philosophical plausibility. The basic assumption is that without getting a viable experimental handle on the linkage between the structure of perceptions and causal structure of the stimuli, (...)
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  • Simplicity as a criterion of theory choice in metaphysics.Andrew Brenner - 2017 - Philosophical Studies 174 (11):2687-2707.
    Metaphysicians frequently appeal to the idea that theoretical simplicity is truth conducive in metaphysics, in the sense that, all other things being equal, simpler metaphysical theories are more likely to be true. In this paper I defend the notion that theoretical simplicity is truth conducive in metaphysics, against several recent objections. I do not give any direct arguments for the thesis that simplicity is truth conducive in metaphysics, since I am aware of no such arguments. I do argue, however, that (...)
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  • Scientific representation.Roman Frigg & James Nguyen - 2016 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
    Science provides us with representations of atoms, elementary particles, polymers, populations, genetic trees, economies, rational decisions, aeroplanes, earthquakes, forest fires, irrigation systems, and the world’s climate. It's through these representations that we learn about the world. This entry explores various different accounts of scientific representation, with a particular focus on how scientific models represent their target systems. As philosophers of science are increasingly acknowledging the importance, if not the primacy, of scientific models as representational units of science, it's important to (...)
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  • Relationalism about mechanics based on a minimalist ontology of matter.Antonio Vassallo, Dirk-André Deckert & Michael Esfeld - 2016 - European Journal for Philosophy of Science:1-20.
    This paper elaborates on relationalism about space and time as motivated by a minimalist ontology of the physical world: there are only matter points that are individuated by the distance relations among them, with these relations changing. We assess two strategies to combine this ontology with physics, using classical mechanics as example: the Humean strategy adopts the standard, non-relationalist physical theories as they stand and interprets their formal apparatus as the means of bookkeeping of the change of the distance relations (...)
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  • Fundamentality, Effectiveness, and Objectivity of Gauge Symmetries.Aldo Filomeno - 2016 - International Studies in the Philosophy of Science 30 (1):19-37.
    Much recent philosophy of physics has investigated the process of symmetry breaking. Here, I critically assess the alleged symmetry restoration at the fundamental scale. I draw attention to the contingency that gauge symmetries exhibit, that is, the fact that they have been chosen from an infinite space of possibilities. I appeal to this feature of group theory to argue that any metaphysical account of fundamental laws that expects symmetry restoration up to the fundamental level is not fully satisfactory. This is (...)
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  • THE TRANSCENDENTAL METAPHYSIC OF G.F. STOUT: HIS DEFENCE AND ELABORATION OF TROPE THEORY.Fraser Macbride - 2014 - In A. Reboul (ed.), Mind, Value and Metaphysics: Papers Dedicated to Kevin Mulligan. Springer. pp. 141-58.
    G. F. Stout is famous as an early twentieth century proselyte for abstract particulars, or tropes as they are now often called. He advanced his version of trope theory to avoid the excesses of nominalism on the one hand and realism on the other. But his arguments for tropes have been widely misconceived as metaphysical, e.g. by Armstrong. In this paper, I argue that Stout’s fundamental arguments for tropes were ideological and epistemological rather than metaphysical. He moulded his scheme to (...)
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  • Epistemic selectivity, historical threats, and the non-epistemic tenets of scientific realism.Timothy D. Lyons - 2017 - Synthese 194 (9):3203-3219.
    The scientific realism debate has now reached an entirely new level of sophistication. Faced with increasingly focused challenges, epistemic scientific realists have appropriately revised their basic meta-hypothesis that successful scientific theories are approximately true: they have emphasized criteria that render realism far more selective and, so, plausible. As a framework for discussion, I use what I take to be the most influential current variant of selective epistemic realism, deployment realism. Toward the identification of new case studies that challenge this form (...)
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  • The Possibility of Naturalized Metaphysics.Rasmus Jaksland - 2016 - Dissertation, University of Copenhagen
    This project investigates naturalized metaphysics as a recent trend in analytic metaphysics originating in the naturalist attitude of James Ladyman and Don Ross in their seminal work Everything must Go: Metaphysics Naturalized (2007). The primary focus, however, will be the more recent article “Neo-Positivist Metaphysics” (2012) by Alyssa Ney that originates in this tradition. The project will conclude that naturalized metaphysics is an unsuccessful attempt at an answer to the question ’how is metaphysics possible’. More precisely, the project will establish (...)
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  • Modeling and Inferring in Science.Emiliano Ippoliti, Thomas Nickles & Fabio Sterpetti - 2016 - In Emiliano Ippoliti, Fabio Sterpetti & Thomas Nickles (eds.), Models and Inferences in Science. Cham: Springer. pp. 1-9.
    Science continually contributes new models and rethinks old ones. The way inferences are made is constantly being re-evaluated. The practice and achievements of science are both shaped by this process, so it is important to understand how models and inferences are made. But, despite the relevance of models and inference in scientific practice, these concepts still remain contro-versial in many respects. The attempt to understand the ways models and infer-ences are made basically opens two roads. The first one is to (...)
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  • Particles, causation, and the metaphysics of structure.Anjan Chakravartty - 2017 - Synthese 194 (7):2273-2289.
    I consider the idea of a structure of fundamental physical particles being causal. Causation is traditionally thought of as involving relations between entities—objects or events—that cause and are affected. On structuralist interpretations, however, it is unclear whether or how precisely fundamental particles can be causally efficacious. On some interpretations, only relations exist; on others, particles are ontologically dependent on their relations in ways that problematize the traditional picture. I argue that thinking about causal efficacy in this context generates an inevitable (...)
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  • Quantum Humeanism, or: Physicalism without Properties.Michael Esfeld - 2014 - Philosophical Quarterly 64 (256):453-470.
    In recent literature, it has become clear that quantum physics does not refute Humeanism: Lewis’s thesis of Humean supervenience can be literally true even in the light of quantum entanglement. This point has so far been made with respect to Bohm’s quantum theory. Against this background, this paper seeks to achieve the following four results: to generalize the option of quantum Humeanism from Bohmian mechanics to primitive ontology theories in general; to show that this option applies also to classical mechanics; (...)
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  • Fundamentality and Ontological Minimality.Tuomas E. Tahko - 2018 - In Ricki Bliss & Graham Priest (eds.), Reality and its Structure: Essays in Fundamentality. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. pp. 237-253.
    In this chapter, a generic definition of fundamentality as an ontological minimality thesis is sought and its applicability examined. Most discussions of fundamentality are focused on a mereological understanding of the hierarchical structure of reality, which may be combined with an atomistic, object-oriented metaphysics. But recent work in structuralism, for instance, calls for an alternative understanding and it is not immediately clear that the conception of fundamentality at work in structuralism is commensurable with the mereological conception. However, it is proposed (...)
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  • Dynamic and stochastic systems as a framework for metaphysics and the philosophy of science.Christian List & Marcus Pivato - 2021 - Synthese 198 (3):2551-2612.
    Scientists often think of the world as a dynamical system, a stochastic process, or a generalization of such a system. Prominent examples of systems are the system of planets orbiting the sun or any other classical mechanical system, a hydrogen atom or any other quantum–mechanical system, and the earth’s atmosphere or any other statistical mechanical system. We introduce a general and unified framework for describing such systems and show how it can be used to examine some familiar philosophical questions, including (...)
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  • (1 other version)Quanten-Identität und Ununterscheidbarkeit.Holger Lyre - 2015 - In Cord Friebe, Meinard Kuhlmann, Holger Lyre, Paul Näger, Oliver Passon & Manfred Stöckler (eds.), Philosophie der Quantenphysik. Heidelberg: Springer Spektrum. pp. 79-111.
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  • (1 other version)The metaphysics of laws: dispositionalism vs. primitivism.Mauro Dorato & Michael Esfeld - 2014 - In T. Bigaj & C. Wuthrich (eds.), Metaphysics and Science (tentative title). Poznan Studies.
    The paper compares dispositionalism about laws of nature with primitivism. It argues that while the distinction between these two positions can be drawn in a clear-cut manner in classical mechanics, it is less clear in quantum mechanics, due to quantum non-locality. Nonetheless, the paper points out advantages for dispositionalism in comparison to primitivism also in the area of quantum mechanics, and of contemporary physics in general.
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  • How to account for quantum non-locality: ontic structural realism and the primitive ontology of quantum physics.Michael Esfeld - 2017 - Synthese 194 (7):2329-2344.
    The paper has two aims: (1) it sets out to show that it is well motivated to seek for an account of quantum non-locality in the framework of ontic structural realism (OSR), which integrates the notions of holism and non-separability that have been employed since the 1980s to achieve such an account. However, recent research shows that OSR on its own cannot provide such an account. Against this background, the paper argues that by applying OSR to the primitive ontology theories (...)
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  • Ordinary objects.Daniel Z. Korman - 2011 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
    An encyclopedia entry which covers various revisionary conceptions of which macroscopic objects there are, and the puzzles and arguments that motivate these conceptions: sorites arguments, the argument from vagueness, the puzzles of material constitution, arguments against indeterminate identity, arguments from arbitrariness, debunking arguments, the overdetermination argument, and the problem of the many.
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  • An Inferential Response to the "Loss of Reality Objection" to Structural Empiricism.Franco Menares Paredes - 2022 - Principia: An International Journal of Epistemology 26 (3):539–558.
    This paper aims to meet an objection that has been raised against structural empiricism known as the “loss of reality objection.” I argue that an inferential approach to scientific representation allows the structural empiricist to account for the representation of phenomena by data models and ensures that such a representation is not arbitrary. By the notions of immersion, derivation, and interpretation, I show how data models are able to represent phenomena in a non-arbitrary manner. I conclude this paper with a (...)
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  • Identity and individuality in quantum theory.Steven French - 2008 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
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  • Scientific Realism.Richard Boyd - 1984 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy 21 (1&2):767-791.
    (i) Scientific realism is primarily a metaphysical doctrine about the existence and nature of the unobservables of science. (ii) There are good explanationist arguments for realism, most famously that from the success of science, provided abduction is allowed. Abduction seems to be on an equal footing, at least, with other ampliative methods of inference. (iii) We have no reason to believe a doctrine of empirical equivalence that would sustain the underdetermination argument against realism. (iv) The key to defending realism from (...)
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  • When to defer to supermajority testimony — and when not.Christian List - 2014 - In Jennifer Lackey (ed.), Essays in Collective Epistemology. Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 240-249.
    Pettit (2006) argues that deferring to majority testimony is not generally rational: it may lead to inconsistent beliefs. He suggests that “another ... approach will do better”: deferring to supermajority testimony. But this approach may also lead to inconsistencies. In this paper, I describe conditions under which deference to supermajority testimony ensures consistency, and conditions under which it does not. I also introduce the concept of “consistency of degree k”, which is weaker than full consistency by ruling out only “blatant” (...)
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  • Peircean realism - towards a scientific metaphysics.Vittorio Justin Serra - 2024 - Dissertation, University of Kent
    The problem of the status of metaphysics -- what it is and what it is for, what use it is - has been with us for millennia, at least since Plato took issue with the Sophists, and continues to the present day. Here I attempt an intervention in this perennial dispute, with the aim of providing some kind of rapprochement between the factions. This intervention is based on how Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914) understood metaphysics and the position presented here is (...)
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  • Evolution in Space and Time: The Second Synthesis of Ecology, Evolutionary Biology, and the Philosophy of Biology.Mitchell Ryan Distin - 2023 - Self-published because fuck the leeches of Big Publishing.
    Change is the fundamental idea of evolution. Explaining the extraordinary biological change we see written in the history of genomes and fossil beds is the primary occupation of the evolutionary biologist. Yet it is a surprising fact that for the majority of evolutionary research, we have rarely studied how evolution typically unfolds in nature, in changing ecological environments, over space and time. While ecology played a major role in the eventual acceptance of the population genetic viewpoint of evolution in the (...)
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  • Gilles Deleuze and the Atheist Machine: The Achievement of Philosophy.F. LeRon Shults - 2024 - Edinburgh University Press.
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  • Toward an ontology of scientific concepts.Olin M. Robus - 2018 - Dissertation, University of Washington
    I argue that current projects in ‘naturalized metaphysics’ fail to be properly naturalistic, and thereby fail in their stated aim to take one’s metaphysics from science. I argue that naturalism must involve the idea of taking science seriously, and that this can only be spelled out in terms of taking not only the theories of science seriously, but also its practice and its socio-linguistic situatedness seriously as well. This accords with naturalism because not doing so draws an artificial (non-natural) distinction (...)
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  • On some objections to the powers-BSA.Samuel Kimpton-Nye - 2024 - Philosophical Quarterly 74 (3):998-1006.
    This paper responds to Friend’s (2023) critique of the Powers-BSA, a view according to which laws of nature are efficient descriptions of how modally laden properties (powers) are possibly distributed in spacetime. In the course of this response, the paper discusses the nature of scientific and metaphysical explanation, the aim of science and the structure of modal space.
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  • Measuring Ontological Simplicity.Noël B. Saenz - 2024 - Ergo: An Open Access Journal of Philosophy 11 (25):652-688.
    Standard approaches to ontological simplicity focus either on the number of things or types a theory posits or on the number of fundamental things or types a theory posits. In this paper, I suggest a ground-theoretic approach that focuses on the number of something else. After getting clear on what this approach amounts to, I motivate it, defend it, and complete it.
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  • DOĞA YASALARI BAĞLAMINDA KLASIK HUMECULUĞA KARŞI YAPISAL HUMECULUK.Omer Fatih Tekin - 2023 - Felsefe Dünyası Dergisi 1 (77):89-111.
    In The Context of Laws of Nature Structural Humeanism vs. Classical Humeanism -/- In the context of the laws of nature, philosophers of science have developed some views in order to adopt an attitude towards recurring events in nature. In this respect, it has been discussed whether there is any driving force underlying the regular behaviours and movements we encounter in nature, and two approaches have emerged as a result of the discussion: A view that there are certain driving forces (...)
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  • Properties, potentialities and modality.Barbara Vetter - 2024 - In A. R. J. Fisher & Anna-Sofia Maurin (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Properties. London: Routledge. pp. 315-324.
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  • Effective Ontic Structural Realism.James Ladyman & Lorenzo Lorenzetti - forthcoming - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science.
    Three accounts of effective realism (ER) have been advanced to solve three problems for scientific realism: Fraser and Vickers (forthcoming) develop a version of ER about non-relativistic quantum mechanics that they argue is compatible with all the main realist versions (‘interpretations’) of quantum mechanics avoiding the problem of underdetermination among them; Williams (2019) and Fraser (2020b) propose ER about quantum field theory as a response to the problems facing realist interpretations; Robertson and Wilson (forthcoming) propose ER to deal with the (...)
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  • From indeterminacy in a fundamental theory to fundamental indeterminacy?Chanwoo Lee - forthcoming - Analytic Philosophy.
    In this paper, I examine a case for fundamental indeterminacy (FI) by Elizabeth Barnes and offer my counterarguments. Barnes' account of FI includes both the characterization of FI and why we need to accept it. I argue that her reasons for accepting FI can be challenged even when we accept her characterization of FI. Her main claim is that finding a fundamental proposition that our fundamental theory is indeterminate about (FPF) gives us a reason to accept FI in metaphysics. I (...)
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