{"id":840,"date":"2009-01-18T23:32:21","date_gmt":"2009-01-19T03:32:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/noahgreenstein.com\/wordpress\/?p=840"},"modified":"2009-01-18T23:32:21","modified_gmt":"2009-01-19T03:32:21","slug":"counter-structural-realism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.noahgreenstein.com\/wordpress\/2009\/01\/18\/counter-structural-realism\/","title":{"rendered":"Counter Structural Realism"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’m starting to think that ‘structural’ in ‘structural realism<\/a>‘ is vacuous.<\/p>\n

Before getting to the meaning of structural we have to know what we mean by real.\u00a0 In this instance we are specifically concerned with science so what we are looking for is the goal of science, i.e. what is scientifically real.\u00a0 This is a meta-scientific question, and the best I can do here is to quote what Darwin quoted at the start <\/a>of the Origin of Species:<\/p>\n

“The only distinct meaning of the word ‘natural’ is stated<\/em>, fixed<\/em> or settled<\/em>; since what is natural as much requires and presupposes an intelligent agent to render it so, i.e.<\/em>, to affect it continually or at stated times, as what is supernatural or miraculous does to affect it for once.”<\/p>\n

Butler: Analogy of Revealed Religion<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The goal of science is, therefore, to separate the settled from the anomalous.\u00a0 We do this by crafting a theory and testing its predictions:\u00a0 Since we have some fixed part of our theory that consistently predicts some phenomenon, there must also be something fixed in nature that is causing the consistent behavior.<\/p>\n

This leaves us to consider the meanings of stated, fixed and settled in order to understand ‘natural’ or ‘scientifically real.’\u00a0 However, for my current interests, all I need to point out is that if everything we must do to call something ‘scientifically real’ is also sufficient for calling something a structure, then structure is doing no work.<\/p>\n

Now we have to identify the structures that we are referring to in structural realism: these structures are the mathematical and logical relations that still apply even if other parts of the theory are modified.\u00a0 Since some mathematical and logical relations can be retained even as the overall theory changes, these structures the ones that structural realists want to save in order to maintain continuity across theory and paradigm.<\/p>\n

But what are the settle or fixed parts of a theory?\u00a0 First and foremost it will be the part that is making the consistently correct predictions, which includes the math and logical relations that determine how to formulate the predictions.\u00a0 Therefore determining something to be real is to already determine everything that the structural realist was trying to gain by using the concept of structure.\u00a0 This is to say that calling something real is to already attribute all the properties that we were hoping to gain by calling the thing structural, making the term structural vacuous.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’m starting to think that ‘structural’ in ‘structural realism‘ is vacuous. Before getting to the meaning of structural we have to know what we mean by real.\u00a0 In this instance we are specifically concerned with science so what we are looking for is the goal of science, i.e. what is scientifically real.\u00a0 This is a meta-scientific question, and the best I can do here is to quote what Darwin quoted at the start of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,26,34],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-840","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ontology","category-philosophy","category-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.noahgreenstein.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/840","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.noahgreenstein.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.noahgreenstein.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.noahgreenstein.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.noahgreenstein.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=840"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.noahgreenstein.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/840\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.noahgreenstein.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=840"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.noahgreenstein.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=840"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.noahgreenstein.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=840"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}