The main realism/anti-realism issue in the philosophy of science is the issue of scientific realism, concerned with the unobservable entities of science. However, there is also a more general issue, often known as “realism about the external world,” concerned primarily with the observable entities of common sense, but which spreads to scientific entities, both observable and unobservable. The i...

In this paper I will give a model-theoretic account for structural realism. I will introduce the so-called ‘hierarchy of models’ which can be used to formally analyse the structure shared by a ‘high-level theory’ and the ‘phenomena’. I will show that structural empiricism (as characterized by Bueno (1997, 2000) and Van Fraassen (1980)) cannot be accommodated in the hierarchy of models and show ...

In the current study the level of realism in visualizations and the role of diverse presentation formats of dynamic and different static visualizations in a complex, dynamic domain (locomotion pattern classification) were investigated. In a two-by-three design with the two independent factors realism (realistic, schematic) and presentation format (dynamic, static-sequential, static-simultaneous...

Large-scale competitive P2P systems are threatened by the noncooperation problem, where peers do not forward queries to potential competitors. While non-cooperation is not a problem in current P2P free file-sharing systems, it is likely to be a problem in such P2P systems as pay-per-transaction file-sharing systems, P2P auctions, and P2P service discovery systems, where peers are in competition...