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  1. Structuralism as a form of scientific realism.Anjan Chakravartty - 2004 - International Studies in the Philosophy of Science 18 (2 & 3):151 – 171.
    Structural realism has recently re-entered mainstream discussions in the philosophy of science. The central notion of structure, however, is contested by both advocates and critics. This paper briefly reviews currently prominent structuralist accounts en route to proposing a metaphysics of structure that is capable of supporting the epistemic aspirations of realists, and that is immune to the charge most commonly levelled against structuralism. This account provides an alternative to the existing epistemic and ontic forms of the position, incorporating elements of (...)
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  • Realism for realistic people.Hasok Chang - 2018 - Spontaneous Generations 9 (1):31-34.
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  • Preservative realism and its discontents: Revisiting caloric.Hasok Chang - 2003 - Philosophy of Science 70 (5):902-912.
    A popular and plausible response against Laudan's “pessimistic induction” has been what I call “preservative realism,” which argues that there have actually been enough elements of scientific knowledge preserved through major theory‐change processes, and that those elements can be accepted realistically. This paper argues against preservative realism, in particular through a critical review of Psillos's argument concerning the case of the caloric theory of heat. Contrary to his argument, the historical record of the caloric theory reveals that beliefs about the (...)
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  • How Historical Experiments Can Improve Scientific Knowledge and Science Education: The Cases of Boiling Water and Electrochemistry.Hasok Chang - 2011 - Science & Education 20 (3-4):317-341.
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  • Truth may not explain predictive success, but truthlikeness does.Gustavo Cevolani & Luca Tambolo - 2013 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 44 (4):590-593.
    In a recent paper entitled “Truth does not explain predictive success” , Carsten Held argues that the so-called “No-Miracles Argument” for scientific realism is easily refuted when the consequences of the underdetermination of theories by the evidence are taken into account. We contend that the No-Miracles Argument, when it is deployed within the context of sophisticated versions of realism, based on the notion of truthlikeness , survives Held’s criticism unscathed.
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  • Knowledge, Truth and Plausibility.Carlo Cellucci - 2014 - Axiomathes 24 (4):517-532.
    From antiquity several philosophers have claimed that the goal of natural science is truth. In particular, this is a basic tenet of contemporary scientific realism. However, all concepts of truth that have been put forward are inadequate to modern science because they do not provide a criterion of truth. This means that we will generally be unable to recognize a scientific truth when we reach it. As an alternative, this paper argues that the goal of natural science is plausibility and (...)
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  • Structural Distinctions: Entities, Structures, and Changes in Science.Angelo Cei - 2005 - Philosophy of Science 72 (5):1385-1396.
    Abstract. I argue that pessimistic meta-induction (PMI) seems to point an ontological priority of the relations over the objects of the scientific theories of the kind suggested by French and Ladyman (French and Ladyman 2003). My strategy will involve a critical examination of epistemic structural realism (ESR) and historical case-study: the prediction of Zeeman’s effect in Lorentz’s theory of electron.
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  • The Challenge of Scientific Realism to Intelligent Design.Christian Carman - 2022 - European Journal for Philosophy of Religion 14 (4):42-69.
    Intelligent Design (ID) argues for the existence of a designer, postulating it as a theoretical entity of a scientific theory aiming to explain specific characteristics in nature that seems to show design. It is commonly accepted within the Scientific Realism debate, however, that asserting that a scientific theory is successful is not enough for accepting the extramental existence of the entities it postulates. Instead, scientific theories must fulfill additional epistemic requirements, one of which is that they must show successful novel (...)
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  • Structural realism and the interpretation of quantum field theory.Tian Yu Cao - 2003 - Synthese 136 (1):3 - 24.
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  • Quantum Ontology and Extensional Mereology.Claudio Calosi, Vincenzo Fano & Gino Tarozzi - 2011 - Foundations of Physics 41 (11):1740-1755.
    The present paper has three closely related aims. We first argue that Agazzi’s scientific realism about Quantum Mechanics is in line with Selleri’s and Tarozzi’s proposal of Quantum Waves. We then go on to formulate rigorously different metaphysical principles such as property compositional determinateness and mereological extensionalism. We argue that, contrary to widespread agreement, realism about Quantum Mechanics actually refutes only the former. Indeed we even formulate a new quantum mechanical argument in favor of extensionalism. We conclude by noting that, (...)
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  • Controversia con escépticos sobre la justificación de afirmaciones en filosofía de la ciencia con evidencia de la historia de la ciencia.Dubian Cañas - 2022 - Ideas Y Valores 71:237-262.
    Una manera de integrar historia y filosofía de la ciencia consiste en usar estudios históricos de caso como evidencia de conclusiones filosóficas sobre la ciencia. A pesar de tener ejemplos representativos en la actualidad, varios autores han puesto esta metodología en tela de juicio con un argumento escéptico de circularidad epistémica. En este artículo reivindico el estatus epistémico de esta metodología mediante una estrategia que muestra que este argumento no funciona o que el escéptico estaría finalmente en desventaja dialéctica. Sobre (...)
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  • Erkenntnistheoretische und ontologische probleme der theoretischen begriffe.Marco Buzzoni - 1997 - Journal for General Philosophy of Science / Zeitschrift für Allgemeine Wissenschaftstheorie 28 (1):19-53.
    Operationalism and theoretical entities. The thesis of the“theory ladenness” of observation leads to an antinomy. In order to solve this antinomy a technical operationalism is sketched, according to which theories should in principle not contain anything that cannot be reduced to technical procedures. This implies the rejection of Quine's underdeterminacy thesis and of many views about the theoretical-observational distinction, e.g. neopositivistic views, van Fraassen's view, Sneed-Stegmüller's view. Then I argue for the following theses: 1. All scientific concepts are theory laden (...)
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  • No new miracles, same old tricks.Jacob Busch - 2008 - Theoria 74 (2):102-114.
    Abstract: Laudan (1984) distinguishes between two senses of success for scientific theories: (i) that a particular theory is successful, and (ii) that the methods for picking out approximately true theories are successful. These two senses of success are reflected in two different ways that the no miracles argument for scientific realism (NMA) may be set out. First, I set out a (traditional) version of NMA that considers the success of particular theories. I then consider a more recent formulation of NMA (...)
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  • Entity Realism Meets the Pessimistic Meta-Induction Argument. The World is not Enough.Jacob Busch - 2006 - SATS 7 (2).
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  • Entity Realism Meets the Pessimistic Meta-Induction – The World is not Enough.Jacob Busch - 2006 - SATS 7 (106):26.
    In the following I briefly set out Devitt's (1997) definition of entity realism and compare it to Hacking's (1983) definition. I then set out the pessimistic induction argument as suggested by Putnam (1978). I present an argument developed by Bertolet (1988) to the effect that Devitt's abductive defence of realism fails. In the light of its failure, Devitt offers the ability of his definition of scientific realism to solve the pessimistic induction argument as a tactical advantage for his definition. I (...)
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  • Explanation Arguments for Scientific Realism and Theism–Faulty or Restricted in Scope?Jacob Busch - 2010 - SATS 11 (2):161-180.
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  • Explanation Arguments for Scientific Realism and Theism – Faulty or Restricted in Scope?Jacob Busch - 2010 - SATS 11 (2):161-180.
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  • Ontological Progress in Science.Richard M. Burian & J. D. Trout - 1995 - Canadian Journal of Philosophy 25 (2):177 - 201.
    In the grand tradition, philosophical ontology was considered logically and epistemologically prior to scientific ontology. Like many contemporary philosophers of science, we consider this to be a mistake. There is two-way traffic between philosophical and scientific ontologies; the more we learn about what there actually is, the more we learn about what can be and what must be, and vice versa. But that is not the present topic; here we focus on the ontology or ontologies of science, not traditional philosophical (...)
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  • Against generality: Meaning in genetics and philosophy.Richard M. Burian, Robert C. Richardson & Wim J. Van der Steen - 1996 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 27 (1):1-29.
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  • A structuralist interpretation of the relational interpretation.Giovanni Buonocore - 2022 - Theoria 88 (4):733-742.
    Theoria, Volume 88, Issue 4, Page 733-742, August 2022.
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  • What is structural empiricism? Scientific change in an empiricist setting.Otávio Bueno - 1999 - Erkenntnis 50 (1):55-81.
    In this paper a constructive empiricist account of scientific change is put forward. Based on da Costa's and French's partial structures approach, two notions of empirical adequacy are initially advanced (with particular emphasis on the introduction of degrees of empirical adequacy). Using these notions, it is shown how both the informativeness and the empirical adequacy requirements of an empiricist theory of scientific change can then be met. Finally, some philosophical consequences with regard to the role of structures in this context (...)
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  • Structural Realism, Scientific Change, and Partial Structures.Otávio Bueno - 2008 - Studia Logica 89 (2):213-235.
    Scientific change has two important dimensions: conceptual change and structural change. In this paper, I argue that the existence of conceptual change brings serious difficulties for scientific realism, and the existence of structural change makes structural realism look quite implausible. I then sketch an alternative account of scientific change, in terms of partial structures, that accommodates both conceptual and structural changes. The proposal, however, is not realist, and supports a structuralist version of van Fraassen’s constructive empiricism (structural empiricism).
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  • Empiricism, scientific change and mathematical change.Otávio Bueno - 2000 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 31 (2):269-296.
    The aim of this paper is to provide a unified account of scientific and mathematical change in a thoroughly empiricist setting. After providing a formal modelling in terms of embedding, and criticising it for being too restrictive, a second modelling is advanced. It generalises the first, providing a more open-ended pattern of theory development, and is articulated in terms of da Costa and French's partial structures approach. The crucial component of scientific and mathematical change is spelled out in terms of (...)
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  • The Rationality of Science.James Robert Brown - 1983 - Dialogue 22 (2):299-309.
    William Newton-Smith is a fine young Canadian philosopher of science who has spent the last decade in productive thought at Balliol, Oxford. His new work, The Rationality of Science, follows hot on the heels of his other book, The Structure of Time. And with them he establishes himself as a major force to be reckoned with in philosophical circles.
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  • Intellectualizing Medicine: A Reply to Commentaries on “Prediction, Understanding, and Medicine”.Alex Broadbent - 2018 - Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 43 (3):325-341.
    This article is a reply to two critics of my “Prediction, Understanding, and Medicine,” published elsewhere in this journal issue. In that essay, I argued that medicine is best understood not as essentially a curative enterprise, but rather as one essentially oriented towards prediction and understanding. Here, I defend this position from several criticisms made of it.
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  • How Do Feynman Diagrams Work?James Robert Brown - 2018 - Perspectives on Science 26 (4):423-442.
    Feynman diagrams are now iconic. Like pictures of the Bohr atom, everyone knows they have something important to do with physics. Those who work in quantum field theory, string theory, and other esoteric fields of physics use them extensively. In spite of this, it is far from clear what they are or how they work. Are they mere calculating tools? Are they somehow pictures of physical reality? Are they models in any interesting sense? Or do they play some other kind (...)
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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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  • Using Structure to Understand Justice and Care as Different Worlds.Alexandra Bradner - 2013 - Topoi 32 (1):111-122.
    When read as a theory that is supposed to mirror, represent or fit some collection of historical data, critics argue that Kuhn’s theory of paradigm shift in Structure of Scientific Revolutions fails by cherry-picking and underdetermination. When read as the ground for a socio-epistemological conception of rationality, critics argue that Kuhn’s theory fails by either the naturalistic fallacy or underarticulation. This paper suggests that we need not view Structure as a historian’s attempt to accurately depict scientific theory change or a (...)
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  • Using Structure to Understand Justice and Care as Different Worlds.Alexandra Bradner - 2013 - Topoi 32 (1):111-122.
    When read as a theory that is supposed to mirror, represent or fit some collection of historical data, critics argue that Kuhn’s theory of paradigm shift in Structure of Scientific Revolutions fails by cherry-picking and underdetermination. When read as the ground for a socio-epistemological conception of rationality, critics argue that Kuhn’s theory fails by either the naturalistic fallacy or underarticulation. This paper suggests that we need not view Structure as a historian’s attempt to accurately depict scientific theory change or a (...)
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  • The subsumption of reference.David Braddon-Mitchell - 2005 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 56 (1):157-178.
    How can the reference of theoretical terms be stable over changes of theory? I defend an approach to this that does not depend on substantive metasemantic theories of reference. It relies on the idea that in contexts of use, terms may play a role in a theory that in turn points to a further (possibly unknown) theory. Empirical claims are claims about the nature of the further theories, and the falsification of these further theories is understood not as showing that (...)
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  • A selectionist explanation for the success and failures of science.K. Brad Wray - 2007 - Erkenntnis 67 (1):81-89.
    I argue that van Fraassen’s selectionist explanation for the success of science is superior to the realists’ explanation. Whereas realists argue that our current theories are successful because they accurately reflect the structure of the world, the selectionist claims that our current theories are successful because unsuccessful theories have been eliminated. I argue that, unlike the explanation proposed by the realist, the selectionist explanation can also account for the failures of once successful theories and the fact that sometimes two competing (...)
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  • The Coincidentalist Reply to the No-Miracles Argument.Kenneth Boyce - 2018 - Erkenntnis 83 (5):929-946.
    Proponents of the no-miracles argument contend that scientific realism is “the only philosophy that doesn’t make the success of science a miracle.” Bas van Fraassen argued, however, that the success of our best theories can be explained in Darwinian terms—by the fact they are survivors of a winnowing process in which unsuccessful theories are rejected. Critics of this selectionist explanation complain that while it may account for the fact we have chosen successful theories, it does not explain why any particular (...)
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  • Rethinking natural kinds, reference and truth: towards more correspondence with reality, not less.Richard Boyd - 2019 - Synthese 198 (Suppl 12):2863-2903.
    Recent challenges to non-traditional theories of natural kinds demand clarifications and revisions to those theories. Highlights: The semantics of natural kind terms is a special case of a general naturalistic conception of signaling in organisms that explains the epistemic reliability of signaling. Natural kinds and reference are two aspects of the same natural phenomenon. Natural kind definitions are phenomena in nature not linguistic or representational entities; their relation to conceptualized definitions is complex. Reference and truth are special cases of a (...)
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  • Evolutionary debunking arguments, commonsense and scepticism.Sandy C. Boucher - 2020 - Synthese 198 (12):11217-11239.
    Evolutionary debunking arguments seek to infer from the evolutionary origin of human beliefs about a particular domain to the conclusion that those beliefs are unjustified. In this paper I discuss EDAs with respect to our everyday, commonsense beliefs. Those who seriously entertain EDAs for commonsense argue that natural selection does not care about truth, it only cares about fitness, and thus it will equip us with beliefs that are useful rather than true. In recent work Griffiths and Wilkins argue that (...)
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  • Realismo estructural óntico y modalidad.Bruno Borge - 2020 - Ideas Y Valores 69 (173):37-56.
    En el presente trabajo analizo críticamente dos estrategias empleadas para esclarecer la naturaleza modal de las estructuras tal como son concebidas por el realismo estructural óntico (reo) en su versión eliminativista: los patrones reales de Ladyman y Ross (2007) y las leyes y simetrías de French (2014). Ofrezco argumentos para mostrar que ambas resultan incapaces de brindar una caracterización de las estructuras como entidades inherentemente modales. Ese resultado impone serias dificultades al proyecto de presentar el reo como una posición realista (...)
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  • Ontic structural realism and modality Bruno Borge.Bruno Borge - 2020 - Ideas Y Valores 69 (173):37-56.
    RESUMEN En el presente trabajo analizo críticamente dos estrategias empleadas para esclarecer la naturaleza modal de las estructuras tal como son concebidas por el realismo estructural óntico en su versión eliminativista: los patrones reales de Ladyman y Ross y las leyes y simetrías de French. Ofrezco argumentos para mostrar que ambas resultan incapaces de brindar una caracterización de las estructuras como entidades inherentemente modales. Ese resultado impone serias dificultades al proyecto de presentar el REO como una posición realista acerca del (...)
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  • Realism versus anti-realism: philosophical problem or scientific concern?Jesús P. Zamora Bonilla - 2019 - Synthese 196 (10):3961-3977.
    The decision whether to have a realist or an anti-realist attitude towards scientific hypotheses is interpreted in this paper as a choice that scientists themselves have to face in their work as scientists, rather than as a ‘philosophical’ problem. Scientists’ choices between realism and instrumentalism are interpreted in this paper with the help of two different conceptual tools: a deflationary semantics grounded in the inferentialist approach to linguistic practices developed by some authors, and an epistemic utility function that tries to (...)
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  • Incompatibility and the pessimistic induction: a challenge for selective realism.Florian J. Boge - 2021 - European Journal for Philosophy of Science 11 (2):1-31.
    Two powerful arguments have famously dominated the realism debate in philosophy of science: The No Miracles Argument (NMA) and the Pessimistic Meta-Induction (PMI). A standard response to the PMI is selective scientific realism (SSR), wherein only the working posits of a theory are considered worthy of doxastic commitment. Building on the recent debate over the NMA and the connections between the NMA and the PMI, I here consider a stronger inductive argument that poses a direct challenge for SSR: Because it (...)
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  • Scientific progress and the prospects for culture-bound syndromes.Charlotte Blease - 2010 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 41 (4):333-339.
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  • Scientific progress and the prospects for culture-bound syndromes.Charlotte Blease - 2010 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 41 (4):333-339.
    This paper aims to show that the classification by the American Psychiatric Association in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders of a distinct listing of disorders known as Culture-Bound Syndromes is misguided. I argue that the list of CBS comprises either genuine disorders that should be included within the main body of the DSM; or ersatz-disorders that serve a practical role for psychiatrists dealing with patients from certain cultures but will one day be eliminated or assimilated by bona (...)
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  • The Theory Theory Thrice Over: The Child as Scientist, Superscientist or Social Institution?Michael A. Bishop & Stephen M. Downes - 2002 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 33 (1):117-132.
    Alison Gopnik and Andrew Meltzoff have argued for a view they call the ‘theory theory’: theory change in science and children are similar. While their version of the theory theory has been criticized for depending on a number of disputed claims, we argue that there is a fundamental problem which is much more basic: the theory theory is multiply ambiguous. We show that it might be claiming that a similarity holds between theory change in children and (i) individual scientists, (ii) (...)
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  • What is scientific progress?Alexander Bird - 2007 - Noûs 41 (1):64–89.
    I argue that scientific progress is precisely the accumulation of scientific knowledge.
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  • Putting pragmatism to work in the Cold War: Science, technology, and politics in the writings of James B. Conant.Justin Biddle - 2011 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 42 (4):552-561.
    This paper examines James Conant’s pragmatic theory of science – a theory that has been neglected by most commentators on the history of 20th-century philosophy of science – and it argues that this theory occupied an important place in Conant’s strategic thinking about the Cold War. Conant drew upon his wartime science policy work, the history of science, and Quine’s epistemological holism to argue that there is no strict distinction between science and technology, that there is no such thing as (...)
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  • Racionalidade covariante: valores e coerência como constitutivos do conhecimento e da racionalidade científicos.Valter Alnis Bezerra - 2014 - Scientiae Studia 12 (4):727-750.
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  • 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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  • Reconstructing Probabilistic Realism: Re-enacting Syntactical Structures.Majid Davoody Beni - 2020 - Journal for General Philosophy of Science / Zeitschrift für Allgemeine Wissenschaftstheorie 51 (2):293-313.
    Probabilistic realism and syntactical positivism were two among outdated theories that Feigl criticised on account of their semantical poverty. In this paper, I argue that a refined version of probabilistic realism, which relies on what Feigl specified as the pragmatic description of the symbolic behaviour of scientists’ estimations and foresight, is defendable. This version of statistical realism does not need to make the plausibility of realist thesis dependent on the conventional acceptance of a constructed semantic metalanguage. I shall rely on (...)
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  • Causal Informational Structural Realism.Majid D. Beni - 2020 - International Studies in the Philosophy of Science 33 (2):117-134.
    ABSTRACT The debate between proponents and opponents of causal foundationalism has recently surfaced as a disparity between causal structuralism and causal anti-foundationalism in the structural realist camp. The paper outlines and dissolves the problem of disparity for structural realism. I follow John Collier to specify causation in terms of the transmission of information. Unlike them, I built upon the reverse quantum data-processing inequality to show how this approach models causation as a symmetric process at the level of fundamental physics. I (...)
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  • Scientific Realism in the Wild: An Empirical Study of Seven Sciences and History and Philosophy of Science.James R. Beebe & Finnur Dellsén - 2020 - Philosophy of Science 87 (2):336-364.
    We report the results of a study that investigated the views of researchers working in seven scientific disciplines and in history and philosophy of science in regard to four hypothesized dimensions of scientific realism. Among other things, we found that natural scientists tended to express more strongly realist views than social scientists, that history and philosophy of science scholars tended to express more antirealist views than natural scientists, that van Fraassen’s characterization of scientific realism failed to cluster with more standard (...)
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  • The Abductivist Reply to Skepticism.James R. Beebe - 2009 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 79 (3):605-636.
    Abductivists claim that explanatory considerations (e.g., simplicity, parsimony, explanatory breadth, etc.) favor belief in the external world over skeptical hypotheses involving evil demons and brains in vats. After showing how most versions of abductivism succumb fairly easily to obvious and fatal objections, I explain how rationalist versions of abductivism can avoid these difficulties. I then discuss the most pressing challenges facing abductivist appeals to the a priori and offer suggestions on how to overcome them.
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  • The Evolution of our Understanding of the Cell: A Study in the Dynamics of Scientific Progress.William Bechtel - 1984 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 15 (4):309.
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