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Is There a Compelling Argument for Ontic Structural Realism?
Full text linkStructural realism first emerged as an epistemological thesis aimed to avoid the so-called pessimistic meta-induction on the history of science. Some authors, however, suggested that the preservation of structure across theory-change is best explained by endorsing the metaphysical thesis that structure is all there is. While the possibility of this latter, „ontic‟ form of structural realism has been extensively debated, though, not much has been said concerning its justification. In this paper, I distinguish between two arguments in favour of ontic structural realism that can be reconstructed from the literature, and find both of them wanting
From Ontic Structural Realism to Metaphysical Coherentism
Full text linkThe present paper argues that the typical structuralist claims according to which
invariances, symmetries and the like are fundamental – especially in physics – should
not be understood in terms of physical relations being fundamental. Rather, they should
be understood in terms of ‘metaphysical coherentism’ - the idea that object-like parts of
reality exhibit symmetric relations of ontological dependence. The view is developed in
some detail, in particular by showing that i) symmetric ontological dependence does
not necessarily lead to uninformative metaphysical explanations, and ii) metaphysical
coherentism strikes the best balance between the requirements of naturalism and those
of theoretical consistency – especially in view of the difficulties that structuralists seem
to have in accounting for all state-independent properties of particles in relational terms.
On this basis, the coherentist picture is applied to the interpretation of the quantum
domain, and contrasted with extant varieties of structuralism, of both the eliminative
and the non-eliminative sort, and holism
Recensione critica di M. Dorato, Che cos'è il tempo?, Carocci 2013, F. Orilia, Filosofia del tempo, Carocci 2012 e G. Torrengo, I viaggi nel tempo, Laterza 2011
No full textWeak Discernibility, Quantum Mechanics and the Generalist Picture
Full text linkSaunders' recent arguments in favour of the weak discernibility of (certain) quantum particles seem to be grounded in the 'generalist' view that science only provides general descriptions of the worlIn this paper, I introduce the ‘generalist’ perspective and consider its possible justification and philosophical basis; and then look at the notion of weak discernibility. I expand on the criticisms formulated by Hawley (2006) and
Dieks and Veerstegh (2008) and explain what I take to be the
basic problem: that the properties invoked by Saunders cannot be pointed to as ‘individuators’ of otherwise indiscernible (and thus numerically identical) entities because their ontological status remains underdetermined by the evidence and the established interpretation of the theory. In addition to to this, I suggest that Saunders does not deal adequately with bosons, and cannot do so exactly because he subscribes to PII and the generalist picture. The last part of the paper contains a critical examination of the claim (or at least implicit
assumption) that the generalist picture should be regarded as obviously
compelling by the modern-day empiricist
A New Look at Relational Holism in Quantum Mechanics
Full text linkTeller argued that violations of Bell’s inequalities are to be explained by interpreting
quantum entangled systems according to ‘relational holism’, that is, by postulating
that they exhibit irreducible (‘inherent’) relations. Teller also suggested a possible application
of this idea to quantum statistics. However, the basic proposal was not explained
in detail nor has the additional idea about statistics been articulated in further
work. In this article, I reconsider relational holism, amending it and spelling it out as
appears necessary for a proper assessment, and application, of the position
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