(Structural) realism and its representational vehicles

Steven French

pp. 3311-3326

in: Emma Ruttkamp-Bloem (ed), New thinking about scientific realism, Synthese 194 (9), 2017.

Abstract

In this essay I shall focus on the adoption of the Semantic Approach by structural realists, including myself, who have done so on the grounds that it wears its structuralist sympathies on its sleeve (Ladyman Stud Hist Philos Sci 29:409–424, 1998). Despite this, the SA has been identified as standing in tension with the ontological commitments of the so-called ’ontic’ form of this view and so I shall explore that tension before discussing the usefulness of the SA in framing scientific representation and concluding with a discussion of the implications of the ontological status of theories and models themselves.