Steven French

Van Inwagen's General Composition Question (GCQ) asks what conditions on an object and its constituents make the object a whole that these constituents compose, as opposed to an object linked to the constituents by a relation other than composition. The answer is traditionally expected to cite no mereological terms, to hold of metaphysical necessity and to be such that no defeating scenarios can be conceived (e.g., a scenario in which the conditions are met but the constituents fail to genuinely compose the object). While not all writers agree on setting these high expectations on the principles that constitute answers to the GCQ (Hawley 2006), there is a yet unsettled issue concerning the principles’ naturalistic accreditation: Could putative principles be constrained and informed by advanced physical knowledge? Arguing positively, we outline two styles of principles worthy of naturalistic authority. In an explorative spirit, we notice that each style incurs certain costs. First, the principle in question may fail some of the above expectations set in an aprioristic context. Second, it may require a specific meta-theoretic understanding of what it takes to achieve naturalistic accreditation. Finally, it may address the GCQ “piecemeal” and fail to generalize to objects of all physical sorts.1.

The ontological status of theories themselves has recently re-emerged as a live topic in the philosophy of science. We consider whether a recent approach within the philosophy of art can shed some light on this issue. For many years philosophers of aesthetics have debated a paradox in the (meta)ontology of musical works (e.g. Levinson [1980]). Taken individually, there are good reasons to accept each of the following three propositions: (i) musical works are created; (ii) musical works are abstract objects; (iii) abstract objects cannot be created. However it seems clear that, if one wants to avoid inconsistency, one cannot commit to all three. Following up recent developments courtesy of Cameron ([2008a]), we consider how one might respond to the corresponding set of propositions in the (meta)ontology of scientific theories. 1 Introduction2 Setting up the Problem3 What to Reject? 3.1 Scientific theories are not created? 3.2 Scientific theories are not abstract objects? 3.3 Abstract objects can be created?4 A Fourth Way: Truth-maker Theory5 Objections and Replies 5.1 What are the truth-makers? 5.2 Objections from World 3 5.3 Fictionalism 5.4 Concrete/abstract6 Conclusion.

Given how thoroughly the history of quantum physics has been excavated, it might be wondered what these two hefty volumes by a physicist (Duncan) and a historian (Janssen) bring to the table. Aside from their inclusion of a wide range of recent work in this area, including some notable publications by themselves, the answer is twofold: first, as they state explicitly in the preface to the first volume, derivations of the key results are presented ‘at a level that a reader with a command of physics and mathematics comparable to that of an undergraduate in physics should be able to follow without having to take out pencil and paper’ (vol. 1, p. vi). In response to those who might raise Whiggish eyebrows, I shall simply play the ‘you-try-reading-Pascual-Jordan's-groundbreaking-work-in-the-original’ card. As the authors suggest, by using modern notation and streamlining derivations whilst also, they maintain, remaining conceptually faithful to the original sources (ibid.), the book is rendered suitable for classroom use, albeit at the higher undergraduate or graduate levels.

An eliminativist view of objects in physics has recently been defended in the context of “ ‘ontic structural realism.” This chapter explores the extent to which a similar eliminativism can be articulated and defended in the philosophy of biology. Obviously the motivations are very different, but a range of issues can be identified that pull us away from an object-oriented stance. Various metaphysical resources can then be deployed to help assuage concerns regarding such a move, and the chapter considers two in particular: a version of truthmaker theory and a form of monism. The development of such resources in the biological context offers a number of interesting avenues of exploration, particularly if we take biological lineages to provide the appropriate grounding in each case.

In a recent work, ‘Thinking Outside the Toolbox’, we mounted a qualified defence of analytic metaphysics in the face of ardent criticism. While sympathizing with other philosophers of science in decrying the lack of engagement of metaphysicians with real science when addressing central metaphysical problems, we also wanted to acknowledge the role that analytic metaphysics has played in providing useful tools for naturalistic metaphysicians. This double-edged stance compels us to identify what feature it is that marks out as problematic some, but not all, analytic metaphysics, and this we thought we could do by appeal to something we call here the compatibility principle. It now strikes us, however, that the approach we took in that earlier work is fundamentally unstable. After giving a streamlined presentation of our earlier argument, we will identify where we take the instability to lie. From there we shall make a more nuanced proposal for how naturalistic metaphysicians should regard the work of their analytic counterparts.

In this paper, we provide a new formulation of a coherence theory of truth using the resources of the partial structures approach − in particular the notions of partial structure and quasi-truth. After developing this new formulation, we apply the resulting theory to the philosophy of mathematics, and argue that it can be used to develop a new account of nominalism in mathematics. This application illustrates the strength and usefulness of the proposed formulation of a coherence theory of truth.Neste artigo, propomos uma nova formulação de uma teoria coerentista da verdade utilizando os recursos da abordagem de estruturas parciais - em particular as noções de estrutura parcial e quase-verdade. Após desenvolver esta formulação, aplicamos a teoria resultante à filosofia da matemática, e argumentamos que aquela pode ser usada para desenvolver um novo tratamento do nominalismo na matemática. Esta aplicação ilustra a força e utilidade da formulação proposta de uma teoria coerentista da verdade.

It has been claimed that Massimi’s recent perspectival approach to science sits in tension with a realist stance. I shall argue that this tension can be defused in the quantum context by recasting Massimi’s perspectivalism within a phenomenological framework. I shall begin by indicating how the different but complementary forms of the former are manifested in the distinction between certain so-called ‘-epistemic’ and ‘-ontic’ understandings of quantum mechanics, namely QBism and Relational Quantum Mechanics, respectively. A brief consideration of Dieks’ perspectivism will then lead to a consideration of the much-maligned and typically dismissed role of the observer in the measurement process. This opens the door to London and Bauer’s presentation of a form of ‘phenomenological quantum perspectivalism’ that brings together Massimi’s two forms and explicitly eschews the ‘naïve’ realism that creates the above tension. I shall conclude with some reflections on how intersubjectivity can still be established within this framework, focusing in particular on how Massimi’s idea of ‘interlacing’ scientific perspectives can be accommodated, using the example of a ‘new cosmopolitanism’ that gave rise to Bose-Einstein statistics.

Van Fraassen’s Scientific Representation: Paradoxes of Perspective presents a structural empiricist approach to scientific representation. As he notes, in order to pin that representation down to an actual situation, we must supplement our “God-like” reflections on the structure with some further specifying feature. In this essay I consider what that further feature might be and argue that the realist has the resources to meet the challenge set by van Fraassen in the form of the “Appearances from Reality” criterion in the context of quantum mechanics. The issue then is whether such resources should be taken to be a constitutive part of that theory or not. Further reflection reveals that underpinning this whole discussion is a certain view of theories as things that have well-defined identity conditions and in conclusion I suggest that dropping this demand will be a liberating move in all sorts of respects.

This volume builds on two recent developments in philosophy on the relationship between art and science: the notion of representation and the role of values in theory choice and the development of scientific theories. Its aim is to address questions regarding scientific creativity and imagination, the status of scientific performances--such as thought experiments and visual aids--and the role of aesthetic considerations in the context of discovery and justification of scientific theories. Several contributions focus on the concept of beauty as employed by practising scientists, the aesthetic factors at play in science and their role in decision making. Other essays address the question of scientific creativity and how aesthetic judgment resolves the problem of theory choice by employing aesthetic criteria and incorporating insights from both objectivism and subjectivism. The volume also features original perspectives on the role of the sublime in science and sheds light on the empirical work studying the experience of the sublime in science and its relation to the experience of understanding. The Aesthetics of Science tackles these topics from a variety of novel and thought-provoking angles. It will be of interest to researchers and advanced students in philosophy of science and aesthetics, as well as other subdisciplines such as epistemology and philosophy of mathematics.

The idea that there is some fundamental “level” or “ground” where our description of the world bottoms out has acquired the status of ‘the received view’ in metaphysics ; for a more recent critical defense, see Cameron, 2008). Typically this view is cashed out in terms of some set of ‘basic building blocks’ populating this level, which sits at the bottom of a hierarchy ordered according to some set of compositional principles. These fundamental building blocks are thus taken to have some form of “ultimate” ontological priority with regard to everything else in the hierarchy. In this chapter I shall consider two kinds of threats to this view: the first comes from arguments against the idea of such a level in general, whereas the second concerns the nature of these occupants. As we’ll see, both these threats become entwined in the context of modern physics but I’ll conclude with a suggestion as to how this “received view” may be maintained in this context.

Devising an appropriate formal framework for structural realism has long been an issue in the development of this position. Décio Krause has suggested that quasi-set theory might offer such a framework and here I explore that possibility in the context of so-called ‘moderate’ and ‘radical’ forms of Ontic Structural Realism (OSR). However, although the central claims of the former can indeed be captured by quasi-set theory, I argue that these claims cannot bear the metaphysical weight placed upon them and conclude that the search for an appropriate formal framework for OSR remains open.Over the past 35 years or so, structural realism has become one of the dominant positions in the realism-antirealism debate. As is now well-known, it broadly divides into two versions: epistemic structural realism, which, also broadly, states that all that we can know, is structure (Worrall, 1989); and ontic structural realism (OSR), which insists that all that there is, is structure (Ladyman, 1998). One of the questions that is most often asked about this position (asked so often in fact that I’m not going to bother with any citations here!) is the following: What is this structure that we are supposed to be realists about? As I’ve pointed out in what might be seen as a companion piece to this paper, it is remarkable that critics of this view never seem to bother to ask the same question of their own, ‘object-oriented’ stance (French, forthcoming-a, hopefully). It is almost as if they think that the notion of ‘object’ is so metaphysically transparent that no such question needs to be asked of it (reader, it isn’t and it does!). In that other paper I adopted the ‘toolbox’ view of the relationship between science and metaphysics, according to which the latter can be thought of as providing various devices and frameworks with which the theories of the former can be furnished (see French & McKenzie, 2012).

Although much of its history has been neglected or misunderstood, a structuralist ‘tendency’ has re-emerged within the philosophy of science. Broadly speaking, it consists of two fundamental strands: on the one hand, there is the identification of structural commonalities between theories; on the other, there is the metaphysical decomposition of objects in structural terms. Both have been pressed into service for the realist cause: the former has been identified primarily with Worrall's ‘epistemic’ structural realism; the latter with Ladyman's ‘ontic’ form. And both raise important issues of general interest within the philosophy of science and metaphysics, respectively. The former invites questions regarding the identification and appropriate representation of these commonalities; the latter touches on different views regarding the nature of objects, the constitutive role of properties and the seat of causal powers. Both strands have recently come under critical fire. It is my intention to present a unified account of the 'structuralist tendency’ which emphasizes the dual roles of structure as representational and constitutive, and to indicate how the more acute critical remarks can be dealt with.