The Research Of Structural Realism And Its Modality

Philosophy of science has focused on the issue that whether what scientific theories tell us are true or not for a long time.Scientific realist believe the truth of scientific theories but anti-realists argue that the theories are just pragmatic instruments and cannot tell us the reality of the world,and neither can pursue the other.Structural realism was introduced into philosophy of science as a way to break the impasse between scientific realism and anti-realism,and had been developed into some ontic forms.However,it also incurred some chanllenges,such as how can the structure itself interact with the physical world and form individual objects.Focusing on how can the structures acquire individuality and modality which aiming at how can structures interact with our physical world,the main works of my article contain:(1)Introduce the impasse between scientific realism and anti-realism by articulating the relevant historical debates in the scientific development and semantic aspects.(2)Discuss and compare the four approaches of structural realism.(3)Analyse previous opinions about how to add modality to structures and propose the idea that a new kind of structural universals combined with causal structuralism can do the work well.The central conclusion of my paper are:(1)It is aiming at solve the problem of whether the reference of scientific terms are true,and the continuity of scientific development,structural realism was proposed by John Worrall.(2)Moderate structural realism and constructive structural realism are revisions of radical ontic structural realism;the main challenge of structure realism is,because structure lack of causality and individuality,pure structures cannont interact with the physical world.(3)The notion of structural universals provides a potential approach to adding the modality to structures.Intergrate arrangement universals with particularising univerals,we can get a new kind of structural universals,which form an isomorphism with particulars.In this way,structural universals together with causal structuralism,we can offer a possible interpretaion of how can structures have causality,therefore modality.