Abstract
Recent developments in the scientific realism debate have resulted in a form of ‘exemplar driven’ realism that eschews general ‘recipes’ and instead focuses on the specific, ‘local’ reasons for adopting a realist stance in particular theoretical contexts. Here I suggest that such a move highlights even more sharply the need for the realist to incorporate a healthy dose of metaphysics in her position, particularly when it comes to the theories associated with modern physics. Turning to another set of recent developments, having to do with the relationship between metaphysics and science, I argue that the exemplar driven realist can appropriate certain current metaphysical devices to help make concrete her commitments. Specifically I focus on a kind of exemplar based structural realism and examine the adequacy of, first, the determinables-determinate relationship as presented by Wilson and, second, Paul’s ‘one category ontology, as such devices within this framework.
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Notes
- 1.
Actually, following Cassirer the structure of the world is understood in terms of a three-way interwoven complex of symmetries, laws and determinate phenomena (French ibid.).
- 2.
Curiously, Nounou (2015) suggests that ontic structural realism is almost exclusively focussed on quantum mechanics with very little attention paid to quantum field theory and hardly any at all to high-energy physics, although the former is covered in French and Ladyman (2003) and the other papers in the special issue of Synthese in which this appeared (in particular Cao 2003 and Saunders 2003), as well as in French (2014) which also tackles the latter.
- 3.
Paul explicitly considers how metaphysical realism meshes with scientific realism (2012, p. 232).
- 4.
Her emphasis on n-adic properties as fundamental also resonates with Mertz’s ontology, which has also been taken to be a suitable metaphysics for OSR (see Mertz 2016).
- 5.
In a sense still be spelled out, this stance sits somewhere between metaphysical nihilism and monism.
- 6.
Paul herself remarks that she finds Wilson’s defence of determinables ‘interesting and plausible’ (2012, p. 245 fn 22).
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French, S. (2017). Structural Realism and the Toolbox of Metaphysics. In: Agazzi, E. (eds) Varieties of Scientific Realism. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-51608-0_12
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