List of tables page ............................................ ix
List of figures ................................................. x
Preface ........................................................ xi
List of abbreviations ........................................ xvii
Part I. Scientific realism today
1. Realism and antirealism; metaphysics and empiricism .......... 3
1.1. The trouble with common sense ........................... 3
1.2. A conceptual taxonomy ................................... 8
1.3. Metaphysics, empiricism, and scientific knowledge ...... 13
1.4. The rise of stance empiricism .......................... 17
1.5. The fall of the critique of metaphysics ................ 20
2. Selective scepticism: entity realism, structural realism,
semirealism ................................................. 27
2.1. The entities are not alone ............................. 27
2.2. Lessons from epistemic structuralism ................... 33
2.3. Semirealism (or: how to be a sophisticated realist) .... 39
2.4. Optimistic and pessimistic inductions on past
science ................................................ 45
2.5. The minimal interpretation of structure ................ 52
3. Properties, particulars, and concrete structures ............ 58
3.1. Inventory: what realists know .......................... 58
3.2. Mutually entailed particulars and structures ........... 61
3.3. Ontic structuralism: farewell to objects? .............. 70
3.4. Ontological theory change .............................. 76
3.5. Return of the motley particulars ....................... 80
Part II. Metaphysical foundations
4. Causal realism and causal processes ......................... 89
4.1. Causal connections and de re necessity ................. 89
4.2. Is causal realism incoherent? .......................... 96
4.3. A first answer: relations between events .............. 102
4.4. A better answer: causal processes ..................... 107
4.5. Processes for empiricists ............................. 114
5. Dispositions, property identity, and laws of nature ........ 119
5.1. The causal property identity thesis ................... 119
5.2. Property naming and necessity ......................... 126
5.3. Objections: epistemic and metaphysical ................ 134
5.4. Vacuous laws and the ontology of causal properties .... 141
5.5. Causal laws, ceteris paribus .......................... 147
6. Sociability: natural and scientific kinds .................. 151
6.1. Law statements and the role of kinds .................. 151
6.2. Essences and clusters: two kinds of kinds ............. 156
6.3. Clusters and biological species concepts .............. 162
6.4. Sociability (or: how to make kinds with properties) ... 168
6.5. Beyond objectivity, subjectivity, and promiscuity ..... 174
Part III. Theory meets world
7. Representing and describing: theories and models ........... 183
7.1. Descriptions and non-linguistic representations ....... 183
7.2. Representing via abstraction and idealization ......... 187
7.3. Extracting information from models .................... 192
7.4. The inescapability of correspondence .................. 199
7.5. Approximation and geometrical structures .............. 205
8. Approximate truths about approximate truth ................. 212
8.1. Knowledge in the absence of truth simpliciter ......... 212
8.2. Measuring "truth-likeness" ............................ 214
8.3. Truth as a comparator for art and science ............. 218
8.4. Depiction versus denotation; description versus
reference ............................................. 224
8.5. Products versus production; theories and models
versus practice ....................................... 230
References .................................................... 235
Index ......................................................... 244
|
