2021/01/01 by Sebastian De Haro
Arts and Humanities · Physics and Astronomy · Psychology · #Argument (complex analysis) #Class (philosophy) #Critical realism (philosophy of perception) #Dual (grammatical number) #Ontology #Philosophy and History of Science #Philosophy and Theoretical Science #Quantum Mechanics and Applications #Realism #Scientific realism #physics.hist-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1007/s10670-020-00342-0
31 pages, 3 figures
openalex publication_date 2021/01/01 · arxiv created 2021/01/04 · arxiv updated 2021/01/05 · openalex created_date 2021/01/18 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
Abstract This paper explores the options available to the anti-realist to defend a Quinean empirical under-determination thesis using examples of dualities. I first explicate a version of the empirical under-determination thesis that can be brought to bear on theories of contemporary physics. Then I identify a class of examples of dualities that lead to empirical under-determination . But I argue that the resulting under-determination is benign, and is not a threat to a cautious scientific realism. Thus dualities are not new ammunition for the anti-realist. The paper also shows how the number of possible interpretative options about dualities that have been considered in the literature can be reduced, and suggests a general approach to scientific realism that one may take dualities to favour.