Structural Realism, again

Saunders, Simon

doi:10.1023/a:1024180822088

Cited by 53 publications

(28 citation statements)

References 12 publications

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“…Both positions move away from any metaphysical substantivalism (there are no permanent and more fundamental, individual "hooks", substantial atoms, monads, substrata or essential elements), so they may not necessarily be distinguished - Saunders [2003], for example, does not -or may be distinguished but interpreted as interchangeable, as in Morganti [2004]. I shall argue that they are quite different.…”

Section: ) a Non-empty Set Of Relations R On O And 4) A Possibly Emmentioning

confidence: 92%

“…Note that the point here may be not that objects may be structural, but that, even if there are objects, they are unreachable, hidden behind an infinite series of structural layers, or as the lower limit of an infinite series of structures. In either case, it may be turtles all the way down, as 22 Saunders [2003] wittily puts it. This is certainly a solution.…”

Section: How To Reconcile Esr and Osrmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…It has become common to acknowledge that both physics (Saunders [2003], Chakravartty [2003]) and mathematics (Brink and Rewitzky [2002], Shapiro [2004]) underdetermine metaphysics. This may be cause for despair in some skeptical quarters, for some sort of "anything goes" thesis may seem inevitable; but it may also be interpreted, more optimistically, as a green light for a purely philosophical approach.…”

Section: How To Reconcile Esr and Osrmentioning

confidence: 99%

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A defence of informational structural realism

Floridi

2007

Synthese

139

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Synthese (Springer)Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. It is a publisher's requirement to display the following notice:The documents distributed by this server have been provided by the contributing authors as a means to ensure timely dissemination of scholarly and technical work on a noncommercial basis. Copyright and all rights therein are maintained by the authors or by other copyright holders, notwithstanding that they have offered their works here electronically. It is understood that all persons copying this information will adhere to the terms and constraints invoked by each author's copyright. These works may not be reposted without the explicit permission of the copyright holder.In the case of Springer, it is the publisher's requirement that the following note be added: shown that, within the debate about structural realism (SR), epistemic (ESR) and ontic (OSR) structural realism are reconcilable. It follows that a version of OSR is defensible from a structuralist-friendly position. Second, it is argued that a version of OSR is also plausible, because not all relata (structured entities) are logically prior to relations (structures). Third, it is shown that a version of OSR is also applicable to both sub-observable (unobservable and instrumentally-only observable) and observable entities, by developing its ontology of structural objects in terms of informational objects. The outcome is informational structural realism, a version of OSR supporting the ontological commitment to a view of the world as the totality of informational objects dynamically interacting with each other. The paper has been discussed by several colleagues and, in the second half, ten objections that have been moved to the proposal are answered in order to clarify it further. KeywordsEpistemic structural realism; informational ontology; levels of abstraction; ontic structural realism; structural realism.

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Section: ) a Non-empty Set Of Relations R On O And 4) A Possibly Emmentioning

confidence: 92%

Section: How To Reconcile Esr and Osrmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: How To Reconcile Esr and Osrmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

A defence of informational structural realism

Floridi

2007

Synthese

139

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“…An ontological structuralist conclusion (regarding (E2)) could perhaps be be argued for by saying that structuralist metaphysics provides the only way to make sense of the notion of objecthood at the level of quantum particles. (Saunders 2003a(Saunders , 2003b 8 But this is not the claim presently evaluated! Indeed, such a claim directly contradicts the underdetermination premise which is conditional on both horns being intelligible bona fide possibilities.…”

Section: Resisting the Argumentmentioning

confidence: 94%

“…Pooley (2006) dissents, especially regarding the underdetermined status of spacetime points. See also Redhead & Teller (1992) and Saunders (2003b) for criticism of the underdetermination thesis, and French & Krause (2006) for further defence.…”

Section: The Argumentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Whence Ontological Structural Realism?

Saatsi

2009

EPSA Epistemology and Methodology of Science

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Abstract'Structural realism' is a buzzword in the scientific realism debate. Various positions with diverse motivations fall under this label. A much advertised distinction is between epistemic and ontological forms of structuralism. This paper scrutinizes the alleged dichotomy between these two 'alternatives', and criticises the considerations that have been taken to motivate the ontic variety over the epistemic. I will argue that ontological structural realism is not called for within the traditional realism debate.

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Structures and Complex Systems

Brenner¹,

Igamberdiev

2020

Studies in Applied Philosophy, Epistemology and Rational Ethics

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Structural Realism, again

Cited by 53 publications

References 12 publications

A defence of informational structural realism

A defence of informational structural realism

Whence Ontological Structural Realism?

Structures and Complex Systems

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