THE WESTERN ONTARIO SERIES IN PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE

Transcription

1 Structural Realism

2 THE WESTERN ONTARIO SERIES IN PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE A SERIES OF BOOKS IN PHILOSOPHY OF MATHEMATICS AND NATURAL SCIENCE, HISTORY OF SCIENCE, HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE, EPISTEMOLOGY, PHILOSOPHY OF COGNITIVE SCIENCE, GAME AND DECISION THEORY Managing Editor WILLIAM DEMOPOULOS Department of Philosophy, University of Western Ontario, Canada Department of Logic and Philosophy of Science, University of California/Irvine Assistant Editors DAVID DEVIDI Philosophy of Mathematics, University of Waterloo ROBERT DISALLE Philosophy of Physics and History and Philosophy of Science, University of Western Ontario WAYNE MYRVOLD Foundations of Physics, University of Western Ontario Editorial Board JOHN L. BELL, University of Western Ontario YEMINA BEN-MENAHEM, Hebrew University of Jerusalem JEFFREY BUB, University of Maryland PETER CLARK, St. Andrews University JACK COPELAND, University of Canterbury, New Zealand JANET FOLINA, Macalester College MICHAEL FRIEDMAN, Stanford University CHRISTOPHER A. FUCHS, Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, Waterloo, Ontario MICHAEL HALLETT, McGill University WILLIAM HARPER, University of Western Ontario CLIFFORD A. HOOKER, University of Newcastle, Australia AUSONIO MARRAS, University of Western Ontario JÜRGEN MITTELSTRASS, Universität Konstanz THOMAS UEBEL, University of Manchester VOLUME 77

3 Elaine M. Landry Dean P. Rickles Editors Structural Realism Structure, Object, and Causality 123

4 Editors Elaine M. Landry University of California Davis California USA Dr. Dean P. Rickles University of Sydney Unit for History & Philosophy of Science Sydney New South Wales F07 Carslaw Bldg. Australia ISSN X ISBN e-isbn DOI / Springer Dordrecht Heidelberg London New York Library of Congress Control Number: c Springer Science+Business Media B.V No part of this work may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming, recording or otherwise, without written permission from the Publisher, with the exception of any material supplied specifically for the purpose of being entered and executed on a computer system, for exclusive use by the purchaser of the work. Printed on acid-free paper Springer is part of Springer Science+Business Media (

5 Preface It still seems reasonable to assume that scientific realism, in some form or other, is the majority position amongst both practicing scientists and philosophers of science. However, as Jarrett Leplin quipped some years ago, realism is [l]ike the Equal Rights Movement...a majority position whose advocates are so divided as to appear a minority (Scientific Realism, University of California Press, 1985, p. 1). Within the broader church of scientific realism, structural realism too has splintered into many diverse denominations, often underpinned by quite distinct motivations and argued for using quite different defences. There is, then, no monolithic position known as structural realism. But there is a general convergence on the idea that a central role is to be played by relational aspects over object-based aspects of ontology whether this reflects a fundamental fact about the world (the ontological thesis) as opposed to our engagement with it (the epistemological thesis) introduces still further divisions. Still further divisions within these divisions are created in the task of establishing what is actually meant by each of these theses. Structural realism (if not quite labeled such) has been around in some form or other since at least as long ago as Poincaré s famous comment about Nature hiding the true natures of objects, leaving us instead with their their projections in the form of structural shadows. Perhaps if we looked closely enough, we could find earlier versions of it. Kant s theory of the division between phenomena and noumena certainly comes very close since phenomena will, by their very nature, involve relations (if only between observer and the qualitative properties of a system) as an inevitable consequence. However, in more recent times, largely thanks to its integration with themes from the philosophy of physics (especially physical symmetries and group theory), it has evolved and broadened considerably from this earlier epistemological stance. For example, the position spawned an ontological version, according to which the shadows are all that exists at a fundamental level. Whether objects can be entirely eliminated from one s ontology, in favour of a world of pure structure, is a subject of current debate, and one heavily discussed in several of the chapters that follow. There is even, thanks to van Fraassen, an anti-realist (empiricist) counterpart to structural realism according to which one can agree with the structuralist aspects of structural realism but question the realist s characterisation of science in terms v

6 vi Preface of aim thesis having to do with grasping (in something like the correspondence sense) the unobservable parts of the world, just as much as the observable parts. There has also been some merging between the discussions of structure framed in the context of pure mathematics and those taking place in the physical sciences. Still more recently, structural realism has been applied within the social sciences. However, with this expansion of the forms and applications of structural realism there have emerged new challenges. It has reached the status of a mature position in the philosophy of science. But there are lingering issues stemming from the precise characterisation of structure, objects, and relations and the inclusion of causality and modality in structural realist positions. How do we talk about causation in a purely structural world? Objects are usually viewed as the causes and the generators of change in the world; hence, given the structural realist s prioritization of relations over objects it is natural to ask about how causality fits into structuralism. Does the structural realist s world have sufficient resources to provide an adequate account of causal relations, or are objects a necessary condition of an adequate account of causation? What about deeper modal aspects of the world, as bundled into the concept of a law of Nature? Can such necessity supervene on an ontology of pure structure? This book is about these intertwined aspects, on the preliminary task of getting clearer on just what structural realists mean by structure, and how it relates to the objects that are part of our folk ontology. The book is organized into three parts (though with much thematic overlapping amongst them): Part I examines the various frameworks (syntactic versus semantic) for, and the various interpretations (epistemic versus ontic versus methodological) of, structural realism, in addition to some of the standard motivations underlying these. Part II critically examines the differing frameworks, interpretations, and motivations of structural realism and examines their impact on what scientific theories say about the nature of objects and relations (and vice versa). Part III probes the issue of what can be said about what conception of object (if any) is needed to underwrite the concept of a causally connected, law-governed world. This map corresponds roughly to the themed sessions of a 2007 workshop from which most of the chapters were drawn. However, in their conversion from talks to chapters, they have been significantly revised and updated and, we think, offer a faithful reflection of the current state of the art with respect to the problems and prospects of structural realism.

7 Acknowledgements The contributions to this volume grew out of a workshop on structural realism held in Banff, Canada, August 28 30, in We are grateful to the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the International Collaboration on Complex Interventions, and the University of Calgary for generous financial support for this workshop. Dean Rickles would like to thank the Australian Research Council for funding the Australian Research Fellowship under which this book was completed. vii

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9 Contents Part I Frameworks for Structural Realism 1 The Presentation of Objects and the Representation of Structure... 3 Steven French 2 Methodological Structural Realism Elaine M. Landry 3 How Not to Be a Realist Ioannis Votsis 4 Miracles and Structural Realism John Worrall Part II Structural Realism and the Nature of Objects and Relations 5 Underdetermination as a Path to Structural Realism Katherine Brading and Alexander Skiles 6 Kinds of Objects and Varieties of Properties Antigone M. Nounou 7 Time, Observables, and Structure Dean P. Rickles Part III Modality and Causality in Structural Realism 8 Ontic Structural Realism and Modality Nora Berenstain and James Ladyman 9 Adding Modality to Ontic Structuralism: An Exploration and Critique Stathis Psillos ix

10 x Contents 10 Ontological Priority: The Conceptual Basis of Non-eliminative, Ontic Structural Realism Anjan Chakravartty Index...207

11 Contributors Nora Berenstain University of Texas, Austin, TX, USA, Katherine Brading Department of Philosophy, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN, USA, Anjan Chakravartty Department of Philosophy, University of Notre Dame, 301 Malloy Hall, Notre Dame, IN , USA, Steven French University of Leeds, Leeds, UK, James Ladyman Department of Philosophy, University of Bristol, Bristol, UK, Elaine M. Landry Department of Philosophy, University of California, Davis, CA, USA, Antigone M. Nounou National Hellenic Research Foundation, Athens, Greece, Stathis Psillos Department of Philosophy and History of Science, University of Athens, University Campus, Athens, Greece, Dean P. Rickles Unit for History & Philosophy of Science, University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW, Australia, Alexander Skiles Department of Philosophy, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN, USA, Ioannis Votsis Philosophisches Institut, University of Düsseldorf, Universitätsstraβe 1, Düsseldorf, Germany, John Worrall Philosophy, Logic & Scientific Method, London School of Economics, London, UK, xi

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13 About the Editors Elaine M. Landry is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Davis. Dean P. Rickles is Senior ARC Research Fellow at the University of Sydney. He is author of Symmetry, Structure, and Spacetime (Elsevier, 2007); editor of The Ashgate Companion to Contemporary Philosophy of Physics (Ashgate, 2008); and co-editor of The Structural Foundations of Quantum Gravity (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2006) and The Role of Gravitation in Physics: Report from the 1957 Chapel Hill Conference (Max Planck Research Library for the History and Development of Science, 2011). xiii

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15 About the Authors Nora Berenstain is a PhD student in philosophy of science at the University of Texas at Austin. nberenstain@mail.utexas.edu Katherine Brading is William J. and Dorothy K. O Neill Collegiate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Notre Dame. She is co-editor of Symmetries in Physics: Philosophical Reflections (Cambridge University Press, 2003). kbrading@nd.edu Anjan Chakravartty is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Notre Dame. He is author of A Metaphysics for Scientific Realism: Knowing the Unobservable (Cambridge University Press, 2007). chakravartty.1@nd.edu Steven French is Professor of Philosophy of Science at the University of Leeds. He is author of Science: Key Concepts in Philosophy (Continuum, 2007); co-author of Identity in Physics: A Historical, Philosophical, and Formal Analysis (Oxford University Press, 2010) and Science and Partial Truth: A Unitary Approach to Models and Scientific Reasoning (Oxford University Press, 2003); and co-editor of The Structural Foundations of Quantum Gravity (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2006) and Correspondence, Invariance and Heuristics: Essays in Honour of Heinz Post (Springer, 1993). s.r.d.french@leeds.ac.uk James Ladyman is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Bristol. He is author of Understanding Philosophy of Science (Routledge, 2002), and co-editor of Every Thing Must Go: Metaphysics Naturalised (Oxford University Press, 2007). james.ladyman@bristol.ac.uk Antigone M. Nounou is a researcher for the National Hellenic Research Foundation. amnounou@eie.gr Stathis Psillos is Professor of Philosophy of Science and Metaphysics at the dept of Philosophy and History of Science in the University of Athens, Greece. He is the author of: Knowing the Structure of Nature (Palgrave 2009), Philosophy of Science A-Z (Edinburgh University Press, 2007); Causation and Explanation (McGill-Queens U.P. 2002); and Scientific Realism: How Science Tracks Truth (Routledge, 1999). He is also the co-editor of The Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Science (Routledge 2008). psillos@phs.uoa.gr xv

16 xvi About the Authors Alexander Skiles is a PhD student in Philosophy at at the University of Notre Dame. askiles@nd.edu Ioannis Votsis is a researcher in the Philosophisches Institut at the University of Düsseldorf. votsis@phil.uni-duesseldorf.de John Worrall is Professor of Philosophy of Science at the London School of Economics. He is editor of The Ontology of Science (Dartmouth, 1994); co-editor of Rationality and Reality: Conversations with Alan Musgrave (Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2006) and I. Lakatos: Proofs and Refutations (Cambridge University Press, 1976); and managing editor of I. Lakatos: The Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes: Philosophical Papers Volume I and Mathematics, Science and Epistemology: Philosophical Papers Volume II (Cambridge University Press, 1978). j.worrall@lse.ac.uk