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How not to be a Realist
Get PDFWhen it comes to name-calling, structural realists have heard pretty much all of
it. Among the many insults, they have been called ‘empiricist anti-realists’ but
also ‘traditional scientific realists’. Obviously the collapse accusations that motivate these two insults cannot both be true at the same time. The aim of this paper is to defend the epistemic variety of structural realism against the accusation of collapse to traditional scientific realism. In so doing, I turn the tables on traditional scientific realists by presenting them with a dilemma. They can either opt for a construal of their view that permits epistemic access to non-structural features of unobservables but then face the daunting task of substantiating a claim that up till now has failed to deliver the goods or they can drop the problematic requirement of epistemic access to non-structural features but then face a collapse to epistemic structural realism. There are good reasons to suspect that traditional scientific realists have, perhaps
unwittingly, been edging towards the second option as some of their proclamations can attest. It is high time to let these epistemic structural realists out of the closet
Everything you always wanted to know about structural realism but were afraid to ask
Get PDFA structuralist perspective is one that sees the investigation of the structural features of a domain of interest as the primary goal of enquiry. This vision has shaped research programmes in fields as diverse as linguistics, literary criticism, aesthetics, sociology, anthropology, psychology, and various branches of philosophy. The focus of this paper is structuralism in the philosophy of science, and in particular those movements that have endeavoured to articulate a structural version of scientific realism, now commonly referred to as structural realism (SR). The paper provides a critical survey of the debates raging over structural realism: it provides explicit statements of the different positions as well as the arguments put forward to support them, clarifies how the different positions relate to one another, draws attention to hitherto neglected arguments, and evaluates criticisms launched against different strands of SR. Attention to the history of the field is paid in as far as this is essential to understanding the contemporary scene, but documenting the long and intricate development of SR is beyond the scope of this paper. We begin by introducing the set theoretic conception of structure on which many of the positions that we are concerned with rely (Section 2). In Section 3 we introduce the two main strands of epistemic structural realism, discuss the central objections levelled against them, most notably Newman’s objection, and present the Ramsey sentence formulation. Section 4 is dedicated to a discussion of ontic structural realism. In Section 5 we offer some concluding remarks
Feasts and Gifts of Food in Medieval Europe: Ritualised Constructions of Hierarchy, Identity and Community, special issue of the Journal of Medieval History 37:1
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'Performing the Self and the World in the Poetry of Delmore Schwartz, John Berryman and Sylvia Plath'
No full textThis paper examined twentieth-century American poets' representations of the self in relation to wider contexts
Scientific Realism Quo Vadis? Theories, Structures, Underdetermination and Reference
Get PDFThe papers collected in this special issue are written versions of talks delivered at the Theoretical Frameworks and Empirical Underdetermination workshop which we organised at the University of Duesseldorf on April 11–12 2008. Early in the summer of 2007 we were still immersed in the planning stages of the workshop. At the time our main concern was to invite philosophers that were making and would continue to make significant contributions to the scientific realism debate. With this aim in mind, we prepared a list of invitees. One of the names at the top was that of Peter Lipton. His work on inference to the best explanation had established him as one of the most prominent and formidable defenders of scientific realism. When Peter accepted the invitation our confidence in the workshop’s prospects was greatly enhanced. Alas it
was not meant to be. Peter unexpectedly passed away in November 2007. His absence from the workshop was strongly felt not least because quite a few of the participants had known Peter both on a professional as well as on a personal basis. David Papineau was drafted in as a replacement. Since David had a long and entwined history with Peter he was entrusted with the honourable task of delivering a eulogy on the opening day of the workshop. We are very thankful to David for delivering a moving eulogy as well as for agreeing to replace Peter at such short notice. We would like to dedicate this special issue of Synthese to the memory of Peter Lipton, a fellow philosopher and
to some of us a dear friend
Feasts and gifts: sharing food in the middle ages
No full textThis essay introduces a special issue of the Journal of Medieval History on feasting and gifts of food from the early middle ages through to the early modern period. It discusses the tensions between hierarchy and community, largesse and luxury in the feast, and the continued importance of communal eating throughout the medieval period