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46Theory-Parts for Scientific RealistsIn Vassilios Karakostas & Dennis Dieks (eds.), Epsa11 Perspectives and Foundational Problems in Philosophy of Science, Springer. pp. 153--165. 2013.
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10Arguing for Hidden RealitiesPoznan Studies in the Philosophy of the Sciences and the Humanities 55 148-165. 1997.
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58Realism and underdetermination: Some clues from the practices-upProceedings of the Philosophy of Science Association 2001 (3). 2000.Recent attempts to turn Standard Quantum Theory into a coherent representational system have improved markedly over previous offerings. Important questions about the nature of material systems remain open, however, as current theorizing effectively resolves into a multiplicity of incompatible statements about the nature of physical systems. Specifically, the most cogent proposals to date land in effective empirical equivalence, reviving old anti-realist fears about quantum physics. In this paper…Read more
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35On the Growing Complementarity of Science and TechnologyTechné: Research in Philosophy and Technology 4 (2): 86-92. 1998.
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23Holly Ramona: La ciencia y el ideal contemporáneo de excelenciaAreté. Revista de Filosofía 11 (1). 1999.According to an old way of thinking, any leve! of problematicity with respect to truth or theory dependence suffices to spoil the objectivity of a proposal. No credible discourse complies with such restrictions. Far from compromising the existence of knowledge, correct and incorrect, rational and nonrational ideas, however. the said old way of thinking is simply incapable of representing the cognitive achievements that we actually have. This paper discusses a contemporary way of approaching the …Read more
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46Diachronic Realism about Successful TheoriesProceedings of the Xxii World Congress of Philosophy 43 51-66. 2008.The success of a scientific theory T is not an all-or-nothing matter; nor is a theory something one can usually accept or reject in toto (i.e. one may take T as being "approximately true", or take as true just certain "parts" of it, without necessarily affirming every posit and claim specific to T as being either completely right or completely wrong). This, however, raises questions about precisely which parts of T deserve to be taken as approximately true. on the basis of its success. A line of…Read more
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2Sobre el mito de que el realismo científico ha muertoAreté. Revista de Filosofía 21 (2): 363-379. 2009.
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14Practical Reasoning in the Foundations of Quantum TheoryIn Dag Prawitz & Dag Westerståhl (eds.), Logic and Philosophy of Science in Uppsala, Kluwer Academic Publishers. pp. 439--452. 1994.
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101Explanatory Elucidation and Scientific RealismEpistemologia 1 59-70. 2012.Explanatory elucidation occurs when a theory has one or more of its assumptions explained by another independently successful theory. Because explanatory elucidation springs from independently supported theories, it improves the credibility of the assumptions it casts light on, hence its relevance for realists. But cases can be pointed to where explanatory elucidation has badly failed to identify truthful components. One way to address this challenge is by trying to find additional epistemic sup…Read more
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77Are GRW tails as bad as they say?Philosophy of Science 66 (3): 71. 1999.GRW models of the physical world are criticized in the literature for involving wave function "tails" that allegedly create fatal interpretive problems and even compromise standard arithmetic. I find such objections both unfair and misguided. But not all is well with the GRW approach. One complaint I articulate in this paper does not have to do with tails as such but with the specific way in which past physical structures linger forever in the total GRW wave function. By pushing the total propos…Read more
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36Realism and Underdetermination: Some Clues from the Practices-UpPhilosophy of Science 68 (S3). 2001.Recent attempts to turn Standard Quantum Theory into a coherent representational system have improved markedly over previous offerings. Important questions about the nature of material systems remain open, however, as current theorizing effectively resolves into a multiplicity of incompatible statements about the nature of physical systems. Specifically, the most cogent proposals to date land in effective empirical equivalence, reviving old anti-realist fears about quantum physics. In this paper…Read more
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Possibility, actuality, and the growth of imagination: The many-worlds approach to quantum physicsOntology Studies: Cuadernos de Ontología 93-102. 2008.Las interpretaciónes de la física cuántica de Everett-DeWitt hablan de una multiplicidad de mundos físicamente coexistenrtes. Éstas imaginativas reacciones a los problemas conceptuales de la mecánica cuántica estándar forman una família de propuestas de “universos múltiples” que, sin pleno éxito, han sido tachadas de incoherentes.Everett-DeWitt interpretations of quantum physics speak of a multiplicity of physically coexisting worlds. These imaginative reactions to the conceptual problems of sta…Read more
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