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This chapter traces the development of structural realism within the scientific realism debate and the wider current of structuralism that has swept the philosophy of the natural sciences in the twentieth century.1 The primary aim is to make perspicuous the many manifestations of structural realism and their underlying claims. Among other things, I will compare structural realism’s various manifestations in order to throw more light onto the relations between them. At the end of the chapter, I will identify the main objections raised against the epistemic form of structural realism. This last task will pave the way for the evaluation of the structural realist answer to the main epistemological question, an evaluation that will be central to the rest of this dissertation.

Structural realism has been proposed as an epistemological position interpolating between realism and sceptical anti-realism about scientific theories. The structural realist who accepts a scientific theory Theta thinks that Theta is empirically correct, and furthermore is a realist about the ‘structural content’ of Theta. But what exactly is ‘structural content’? One proposal is that the ‘structural content’ of a scientific theory may be associated with its Ramsey sentence R(Theta). However, Demopoulos and Friedman argued, using ideas drawn from Newman’s earlier criticism of Russell’s structuralism, that this move fails to achieve an interesting intermediate position between realism and anti-realism. Rather, R(Theta) adds little content beyond the instrumentalistically acceptable claim that the theory Theta is empirically adequate. Here, we formulate carefully the crucial claim of Demopoulos and Friedman, and show that the Ramsey sentence R(Theta) is true just in case Theta possesses a full model which is empirically correct and satisfies a certain cardinality condition on its theoretical domain. This suggests that structural realism is not a position significantly different from the anti-realism it attempts to distinguish itself from.

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).

Structural realism is considered by many realists and antirealists alike as the most defensible form of scientific realism. There are now many forms of structural realism and an extensive literature about them. There are interesting connections with debates in metaphysics, philosophy of physics and philosophy of mathematics. This entry is intended to be a comprehensive survey of the field.

Structural realism is a rather popular view in philosophy of science. As with many popular views, sprouting is never far behind. No sprout has had as much grip on the view’s image as ontic structural realism. Indeed its supporters have such a stranglehold that ‘structural realism’ has almost become a byword for their views. In this talk, I want to redress this imbalance by returning to structural realism’s humble epistemic beginnings to examine exactly what made the view so attractive in the first place. To this effect, I will reconstruct several arguments – some of which little known – proposed in the early part of the twentieth century in support of the epistemic version of structural realism. Not wanting to dwell too much on the past, I will then switch to more recent arguments both for and against the position. A careful evaluation of these arguments will hopefully provide useful information as to what form, if any, epistemic structural realism must take in order to be a viable alternative to its direct competitors, namely standard scientific realism and constructive empiricism.

The central terms of certain theories which were valued highly in the past, such as the phlogiston theory, are now believed by realists not to refer. Laudan and others have claimed that, in the light of the existence of such theories, scientific realism is untenable. This paper argues in response that realism is consistent with — and indeed is able to explain — such theories' having been highly valued and yet not being close to the truth. It follows that the set of highly-valued past theories cited by Laudan, presumed to militate against realism, is in fact innocuous to the doctrine. The argument hinges largely on identifying the grounds on which theory-adoption is actually performed.

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 by trying to show that structural realism and entity realism entail one another. I demonstrate that this position will not work, but follow Chakravartty's contention that structural realism need not imply that scientific knowledge can only be of mathematical structure. I advance from this conclusion to sketch a version of structural realism that is consistent with recent deflationary approaches to the scientific realism question. Finally, I consider a third approach to structural realism Ladyman's "metaphysical structural realism" which tries to avoid the difficulties of earlier versions by taking structure to be ontologically primary. I show that the deflationary approach to structural realism undermines the rationale behind Ladyman's approach.

This paper elaborates on the following correspondence theorem (which has been defended and formally proved elsewhere): if theory T has been empirically successful in a domain of applications A, but was superseded later on by a different theory T* which was likewise successful in A, then under natural conditions T contains theoretical expressions which were responsible for T’s success and correspond (in A) to certain theoretical expressions of T*. I illustrate this theorem at hand of the phlogiston versus oxygen theories of combustion, and the classical versus relativistic theories of mass. The ontological consequences of the theorem are worked out in terms of the indirect reference and partial truth. The final section explains how the correspondence theorem may justify a weak version of scientific realism without presupposing the no-miracles argument.

In this paper, I consider Kitcher's (1993) account of reference for the expressions of past science. Kitcher's case study is of Joseph Priestley and his expression `dephlogisticated air'. There is a strong intuitive case that `dephlogisticated air' referred to oxygen, but it was underpinned by very mistaken phlogiston theory, so concluding either that dephlogisticated air referred straightforwardly or that it failed to refer both have unpalatable consequences. Kitcher argues that the reference of such terms is best considered relative to each token--some tokens refer, and others do not. His account thus relies crucially on how this distinction between tokens can be made good--a puzzle I call the discrimination problem. I argue that the discrimination problem cannot be solved. On any reading of Kitcher's defence of the distinction, the grounds provided are either insufficient or illegitimate. On the first reading, Kitcher violates the principle of humanity by making Priestley's referential success a matter of the mental contents of modern speakers. The second reading sidesteps the problem of beliefs by appealing to mind-independent facts, but I argue that these are insufficient to achieve reference because of the indeterminacy introduced by the qua problem. On the third and final reading, Priestley's success is given by what he would say in counterfactual circumstances. I argue that even if there are facts about what Priestley would say, and there is reason for doubt, there is no motivation to think that such facts determine how Priestley referred in the actual world.

Starting from a brief recapitulation of the contemporary debate on scientific realism, this paper argues for the following thesis : Assume a theory T has been empirically successful in a domain of application A, but was superseded later on by a superior theory T * , which was likewise successful in A but has an arbitrarily different theoretical superstructure. Then under natural conditions T contains certain theoretical expressions, which yielded T's empirical success, such that these T-expressions correspond (in A) to certain theoretical expressions of T * , and given T * is true, they refer indirectly to the entities denoted by these expressions of T * . The thesis is first motivated by a study of the phlogiston–oxygen example. Then the thesis is proved in the form of a logical theorem , and illustrated by further examples. The final sections explain how the correspondence theorem justifies scientific realism and work out the advantages of the suggested account. Introduction: Pessimistic Meta-induction vs. Structural Correspondence The Case of the Phlogiston Theory Steps Towards a Systematic Correspondence Theorem The Correspondence Theorem and Its Ontological Interpretation Further Historical Applications Discussion of the Correspondence Theorem: Objections and Replies Consequences for Scientific Realism and Comparison with Other Positions 7.1 Comparison with constructive empiricism 7.2 Major difference from standard scientific realism 7.3 From minimal realism and correspondence to scientific realism 7.4 Comparison with particular realistic positions CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this?