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The Presentation of Objects and the Representation of Structure

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Structural Realism

Part of the book series: The Western Ontario Series in Philosophy of Science ((WONS,volume 77))

Abstract

The rise and development of various forms of structuralism (including structural realism and structural empiricism) has seen a concomitant array of diverse representations of structure placed on the table, from Ramsey sentences and mathematical equations, to the group-, set- and category-theoretic [35, 36]. This diversity has contributed to the confusion over what is intended by ‘structure’, particularly in the debate between realists and anti-realists and my intention in this paper is to help clarify the situation by drawing on Brading and Landry’s distinction between the presentation of putative objects via the relevant ‘shared structure’ that our theories make available and the representation of such objects (as features of the world) by those theories.

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Acknowledgments

My thanks to Elaine Landry for organising the Banff workshop in 2007 where an early version of this paper was presented and to all the participants for helpful comments and criticisms; particular thanks go to Katherine Brading, Angelo Cei, Anjan Chakravartty, James Ladyman, Elaine Landry, Kerry McKenzie and Ioan Muntean for useful discussions on these and related topics. As always, the blame for any errors, infelicitous phrases or poor philosophy is entirely mine. Finally, I would like to thank the Leverhulme Trust for the award of a Major Research Fellowship which enabled me to complete this work.

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  1. University of Leeds, Leeds, UK

    Steven French

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  1. Steven French
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Correspondence to Steven French .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of California, Davis, 95616, California, USA

    Elaine Landry

  2. Unit for History & Philosophy of, Science, University of Sidney, Sydney, 2006, New South Wales, Australia

    Dean Rickles

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French, S. (2012). The Presentation of Objects and the Representation of Structure. In: Landry, E., Rickles, D. (eds) Structural Realism. The Western Ontario Series in Philosophy of Science, vol 77. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-2579-9_1

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