Adding Modality to Ontic Structuralism: An Exploration and Critique

Abstract

In an attempt to pursue further my (hopefully constructive) criticism of Ontic Structuralism I want to examine in some detail a key recent idea that seems to shape the very kernel of this view, viz., that structures are modal. In Section 9.2, I argue that OS has to work with a notion of structure that is meant to play two roles at once: it should be abstract enough to be independent of concrete physical systems and concrete enough to be part of the causal identity of physical systems. I then reveal the tensions there are in this mixed view. In Section 9.3, I take on a more moderate version of OS which identifies structure with causal structure. I then argue against the resulting causal structuralist view of the world. In Sections 9.4 and 9.5, I explore a natural way to modalise structure, viz., taking structures to be structural universals. I argue that, despite all prima facie advantages, this view inherits all problems that structural universals face and in particular the so-called mereology or magic dilemma. In Section 9.6, I examine and criticise a prima facie plausible way to avoid this dilemma, which is based on the claim that there are certain spatial (or arrangement) universals that capture pure structure.

Everyone needs a little magic somewhere. John Bigelow & Robert Pargeter [3]

Effective magic is transcendent nature. George Eliot, Middlemarch