Conclusion

I began by sketching recent moves towards a more local or ‘exemplar based' form of realism and suggesting that such moves do not preclude the adoption of a structuralist stance. However, if we are to take this move seriously then we need to pay close attention to the relevant exemplars, one such, in the context of modern physics, being the Standard Model with its emphasis on certain symmetry principles.

The exemplar realist is then faced with the issue of spelling out how the world is according to that model. One option is just to point to the relevant physics and insist ‘it is like that!', but that is obviously unsatisfactory. The alternative is to treat current metaphysics instrumentally, as a kind of toolbox and apply certain devices in an effort to generate a sense of understanding how the world could be that way. Focussing on the issue of capturing the relationship between such symmetry principles and certain properties, I've presented two such ‘tools': the determinable-determinate relationship and mereological bundle theory. The former, I think, does a better job in meshing with the physics, but the latter cannot be discounted. And there may be other devices that can be used as well. The point is, if we are going to ‘go local' and focus on the particularities of a given set of exemplars, whether historical or current, then in adapting our realism to those particularities there must be an even greater emphasis on spelling out what this realist stance commits us to, in terms of, as Paul puts it, not only the fundamental constituents, but the categories they fall under and the kinds of relations that hold between them. With particular metaphysical tools adapted to particular exemplars, this overall approach may reinvigorate and strengthen the currently strained relationship between metaphysics and science.

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Source: Agazzi E. (ed.). Varieties of Scientific Realism: Objectivity and Truth in Science. Springer,2017. — 411 pp.. 2017

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