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  1. Recent Debates Over Structural Realism.Daniel McArthur - 2006 - Journal for General Philosophy of Science / Zeitschrift für Allgemeine Wissenschaftstheorie 37 (2):209-224.
    In recent years Structural Realism has been revived as a compromise candidate to resolve the long-standing question of scientific realism. Recent debate over structural realism originates with Worrall’s (1989) paper “Structural Realism: The best of Both Worlds”. However, critics such as Psillos contend that structural realism incorporates an untenable distinction between structure and nature, and is therefore unworkable. In this paper I consider three versions of structural realism that purport to avoid such criticism. The first is Chakravartty’s “semirealism” which proceeds (...)
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  • Discovery, theory change and structural realism.Daniel James McArthur - 2011 - Synthese 179 (3):361 - 376.
    In this paper I consider two accounts of scientific discovery, Robert Hudson's and Peter Achinstein's. I assess their relative success and I show that while both approaches are similar in promising ways, and address experimental discoveries well, they could address the concerns of the discovery sceptic more explicitly than they do. I also explore the implications of their inability to address purely theoretical discoveries, such as those often made in mathematical physics. I do so by showing that extending Hudson's or (...)
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  • Friedman’s Relativised A Priori and Structural Realism: In Search of Compatibility.Milena Ivanova - 2011 - International Studies in the Philosophy of Science 25 (1):23-37.
    In this article I discuss a recent argument due to Dan McArthur, who suggests that the charge that Michael Friedman’s relativised a priori leads to irrationality in theory change can be avoided by adopting structural realism. I provide several arguments to show that the conjunction of Friedman’s relativised a priori with structural realism cannot make the former avoid the charge of irrationality. I also explore the extent to which Friedman’s view and structural realism are compatible, a presupposition of McArthur’s argument. (...)
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  • Contra Cartwright: Structural Realism, Ontological Pluralism and Fundamentalism About Laws.Dan Mcarthur - 2006 - Synthese 151 (2):233-255.
    In this paper I argue against Nancy Cartwright's claim that we ought to abandon what she calls "fundamentalism" about the laws of nature and adopt instead her "dappled world" hypothesis. According to Cartwright we ought to abandon the notion that fundamental laws apply universally, instead we should consider the law-like statements of science to apply in highly qualified ways within narrow, non-overlapping and ontologically diverse domains, including the laws of fundamental physics. For Cartwright, "laws" are just locally applicable refinements of (...)
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  • Relationism and the Problem of Order.Michele Paolini Paoletti - 2023 - Acta Analytica 38 (2):245-273.
    Relationism holds that objects entirely depend on relations or that they must be eliminated in favour of the latter. In this article, I raise a problem for relationism. I argue that relationism cannot account for the order in which non-symmetrical relations apply to their relata. In Section 1, I introduce some concepts in the ontology of relations and define relationism. In Section 2, I present the Problem of Order for non-symmetrical relations, after distinguishing it from the Problem of Differential Application. (...)
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  • Theory change, structural realism, and the relativised a priori.Dan McArthur - 2008 - International Studies in the Philosophy of Science 22 (1):5 – 20.
    In this paper I claim that Quinean naturalist accounts of science, that deny that there are any a priori statements in scientific frameworks, cannot account for the foundational role of certain classes of statements in scientific practice. In this I follow Michael Friedman who claims that certain a priori statements must be presupposed in order to formulate empirical hypotheses. I also show that Friedman's account, in spite of his claims to the contrary, is compatible with a type of non-Quinean naturalism (...)
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