Steven French

An account of scientific representation in terms of partial structures and partial morphisms is further developed. It is argued that the account addresses a variety of difficulties and challenges that have recently been raised against such formal accounts of representation. This allows some useful parallels between representation in science and art to be drawn, particularly with regard to apparently inconsistent representations. These parallels suggest that a unitary account of scientific and artistic representation is possible, and our article can be viewed as laying the groundwork for such an account—although, as we shall acknowledge, significant differences exist between these two forms of representation.

Fifteen essays are contained in this collection, all relating to Heinz Post ’ s article ‘ Correspondence, Invariance and Heuristics ’, also reprinted. In this article, written in the heyday of the post - positivist movement, Post aims to convince his fellowphilosophers of science to bring the issue of heuristics back to the philosophical stage. Examining a wealth of theories and models from the physics and chemistry of the last 300 years, Post extracts several strategies of theory construction of which he considers the General Correspondence Principle to be the most important. According to this principle, any acceptable newtheory should explain the well - confirmed part of its predecessor. Later Post states the General Correspondence Principle more precisely and uses it with what he considers its de facto validity to argue against incommensurability, Kuhn - losses, 1 and relativism. Post himself seems to support a kind of convergent realism which is most notably expressed in his credo that science progresses linearly

The mathematical concept of pragmatic truth, first introduced in Mikenberg, da Costa and Chuaqui (1986), has received in the last few years several applications in logic and the philosophy of science. In this paper, we study the logic of pragmatic truth, and show that there are important connections between this logic, modal logic and, in particular, Jaskowski's discussive logic. In order to do so, two systems are put forward so that the notions of pragmatic validity and pragmatic truth can be accommodated. One of the main results of this paper is that the logic of pragmatic truth is paraconsistent. The philosophical import of this result, which justifies the application of pragmatic truth to inconsistent settings, is also discussed.

We formulate Suppes predicates for various kinds of space-time: classical Euclidean, Minkowski's, and that of General Relativity. Starting with topological properties, these continua are mathematically constructed with the help of a basic algebra of events; this algebra constitutes a kind of mereology, in the sense of Lesniewski. There are several alternative, possible constructions, depending, for instance, on the use of the common field of reals or of a non-Archimedian field (with infinitesimals). Our approach was inspired by the work of Whitehead (1919), though our philosophical stance is completely different from his. The structures obtained are idealized constructs underlying extant, physical space-time.

The issue of what consequences to draw from the existence of non-classical logical systems has been the subject of an interesting debate across a diversity of fields. In this paper the matter of alternative logics is considered with reference to a specific belief system and its propositions :the Azande are said to maintain beliefs about witchcraft which, when expressed propositionally, appear to be inconsistent. When the Azande have been presented with such inconsistencies, they either fail to see them as such or else accept them as non-problematical. Is our knowledge of logical truths a relative and culturally determined phenomenon, or is there some (transcendent) criterion that allows us to adjudicate between alternative logical systems? The authors propose an approach for resolving disputes about the status of Azande reasoning which assumes a paraconsistent framework, thus providing a new perspective on this debate

Quasi-set theory has been proposed as a means of handling collections of indiscernible objects. Although the most direct application of the theory is quantum physics, it can be seen per se as a non-classical logic (a non-reflexive logic). In this paper we revise and correct some aspects of quasi-set theory as presented in [12], so as to avoid some misunderstandings and possible misinterpretations about the results achieved by the theory. Some further ideas with regard to quantum field theory are also advanced in this paper

Some recent work in the philosophy of quantum mechanics has suggested that quantum systems can be thought of as non-separable and therefore non-individual, in some sense, in Bell and E.P.R. type situations. This suggestion is set in the context of previous work regarding the individuality of quantal particles and it is argued that such entities can be considered as individuals if their non-classical statistical correlations are understood in terms of non-supervenient relations holding between them. We conclude that such relations are strongly non-supervenient in Cleland's sense and note a possible connection between this idea and the realist quantum logic programme

Many important explanations in physics are based on ideas and assumptions about symmetries, but little has been said about the nature of such explanations. This chapter aims to fill this lacuna, arguing that various symmetry explanations can be naturally captured in the spirit of the counterfactual-dependence account of Woodward, liberalized from its causal trappings. From the perspective of this account symmetries explain by providing modal information about an explanatory dependence, by showing how the explanandum would have been different, had the facts about an explanatory symmetry been different. Furthermore, the authors argue that such explanatory dependencies need not be causal.

The central concern of this article is whether the semantic approach has the resources to appropriately capture the core tenets of structural realism. Chakravartty (2001) has argued that a realist notion of correspondence cannot be accommodated without introducing a linguistic component, which undermines the approach itself. We suggest that this worry can be addressed by an appropriate understanding of the role of language in this context. The real challenge, however, is how to incorporate the core notion of `explanatory approximate truth' in such a way that the emphasis on structure is retained.

The composition of objects is a much discussed issue in metaphysics. In this paper I look at various approaches to this issue in the context of two examples: the relationship between ‘everyday’ objects, such as tables, and their constituent physical entities, and the relationship between structures and objects, from the perspective of structural realism. My aims are first, to defend forms of eliminativism in both cases, whereby one can still make statements about the entities to be eliminated ; and second, to highlight some of the metaphysical moves that are available to the structuralist in articulating their ontology. In doing so I hope also to indicate how metaphysics and the philosophy of science can be brought into a more productive relationship.

The London and Bauer monograph occupies a central place in the debate concerning the quantum measurement problem. Gavroglu has previously noted the influence of Husserlian phenomenology on London's scientific work. However, he has not explored the full extent of this influence in the monograph itself. I begin this paper by outlining the important role played by the monograph in the debate. In effect, it acted as a kind of 'lens' through which the standard, or Copenhagen, 'solution' to the measurement problem came to be perceived and, as such, it was robustly criticized, most notably by Putnam and Shimony. I then spell out the Husserlian understanding of consciousness in order to illuminate the traces of this understanding within the London and Bauer text. This, in turn, yields a new perspective on this 'solution' to the measurement problem, one that I believe has not been articulated before and, furthermore, which is immune to the criticisms of Putnam and Shimony.

In this opinion piece, the authors offer their personal and idiosyncratic views of the future of the philosophy of science, focusing on its relationship with the history of science and metaphysics, respectively. With regard to the former, they suggest that the Kantian tradition might be drawn upon both to render the history and philosophy of science more relevant to philosophy as a whole and to overcome the challenges posed by naturalism. When it comes to the latter, they suggest both that metaphysics has much to learn from the philosophy of science and that it offers an array of tools that philosophers of science can themselves appropriate

Semi-realism offers a metaphysics of science based on causal properties. Insofar as these are understood in terms of dispositions for specific relations that comprise the concrete structure of the world it can be regarded as a form of structural realism. And insofar as these properties are 'sociable' and cohere into the groupings that comprise the particulars investigated by science, it captures the underlying intuition behind forms of entity realism. However, I shall raise concerns about both these features. I shall suggest that dispositionalism is not an appropriate metaphysics for modern physics and that 'sociability' should be understood in terms of the coherence revealed by symmetry principles. I hope to show how we can retain the virtues of semi-realism while dispensing with the problematic elements by recasting it in more thoroughly structuralist terms

Recent developments in the scientific realism debate have resulted in a form of ‘exemplar driven’ realism that eschews general ‘recipes’ and instead focuses on the specific, ‘local’ reasons for adopting a realist stance in particular theoretical contexts. Here I suggest that such a move highlights even more sharply the need for the realist to incorporate a health dose of metaphysics in her position, particularly when it comes to the theories associated with modern physics. Turning to another set of recent developments, having to do with the relationship between metaphysics and science, I argue that the exemplar driven realist can appropriate certain current metaphysical devices to help make concrete her commitments. Specifically I focus on a kind of exemplar based structural realism and examine the adequacy of, first, the determinables-determinate relationship as presented by Wilson and, second, Paul’s ‘one category ontology, as such devices within this framework.