Abstract
Structural Realism (SR) is typically rated as a moderate realist doctrine about the ultimate entities of nature described by fundamental physics. Whether it must be extended to the higher-level special sciences is not so clear. In this short paper I argue that there is no need to ‘structuralize’ the special sciences. By mounting concrete examples I show that structural descriptions and structural laws certainly play a role in the special sciences, but that they don’t play any exclusive role nor that they give us any reason to believe that all that there is on the various levels is structure. I fortify my points by arguing that structures are global entities (in order for SR not to collapse into a bundle ontology) and that the assumption of higher-level structures as genuinely global or holistic entities is even more arcane.
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Notes
- 1.
A remark about the notorious talk of “cross-classification” (cf. my 2009): the widespread anti-reductionist claim that higher order properties cross-classify lower-level ones, can, as Kim (1998, p.69) has rightly pointed out, only reasonably be maintained if one is willing to give up supervenience. For two taxonomies to cross-classify opens the possibility that the higher-level taxonomic class makes causally efficatious distinctions not made by the lower-level one. But this is a clear failure of supervenience. Cross-classifying taxonomies define conflicting causal profiles.
- 2.
Anyway, OSR is more than the idea that there are “just relations”. As I’ve argued elsewhere (Lyre 2010, 2012), OSR must be supplemented with a weak and special type of intrinsicality. I’ve dubbed this ‘Extended OSR’ (ExtOSR) – the view that relational and structurally derived intrinsic properties exist. Simple OSR, by contrast, assumes only relational but no intrinsic properties (however, both ExtOSR and SimpOSR are versions of non-eliminative OSR). Reasons to prefer ExtOSR over SimpOSR are symmetry invariants and zero-value properties (cf. my 2012). Pick up the first reason: The symmetry invariants under a given symmetry over a domain D provide properties that are shared by all members of D. They are ‘intrinsic’ in the sense that they belong to all members of D irrespective of the existence of other objects. Since they are shared by all members of D, they serve to individuate domains, not individuals. Such structure invariants provide structurally derived intrinsic properties. SimpOSR denies intrinsicality, but symmetry groups come equipped with their invariants. So SimpOSR doesn’t have the resources to embrace the symmetry structures of modern physics represented by the fundamental symmetry groups. Moreover, almost all fundamental symmetries are quantum gauge symmetries. Here, the argument about symmetry invariants becomes even more pressing since gauge symmetry transformations possess no real instantiations. Only the gauge invariants do. Hence, ExtOSR must be favoured.
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Lyre, H. (2013). Must Structural Realism Cover the Special Sciences?. In: Karakostas, V., Dieks, D. (eds) EPSA11 Perspectives and Foundational Problems in Philosophy of Science. The European Philosophy of Science Association Proceedings, vol 2. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-01306-0_31
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