A general insight of 20th-century philosophy of science is that the acceptance of a scientific theory is grounded, not merely on a theory’s relation to data, but on its status as having no, or being superior to its, competitors. I explore the ways in which scientific realists might be thought to utilise this insight, have in fact utilised it, and can legitimately utilise it. In more detail, I p...

We show that quantum mechanics predicts a contradiction with local hidden variable theories for photon number measurements which have limited resolving power, to the point of imposing an uncertainty in the photon number result which is macroscopic in absolute terms. We show how this can be interpreted as a failure of a new premise, macroscopic local realism. Bell [1] in 1966 showed that the pre...

Scientific realism involves two key claims. First, science aims primarily at truth. Second, we can justifiably believe that our successful scientific theories achieve, or at least approximate, this aim. The contemporary scientific realism debate turns on the acceptability of these claims. To acquire a more robust picture of scientific realism, let us identify some of the related theses on which...

This paper investigates the nature of scientific realism. I begin by considering the anomalous fact that Bas van Fraassen’s account of scientific realism is strikingly similar to Arthur Fine’s account of scientific non-realism. To resolve this puzzle, I demonstrate how the two theorists understand the nature of truth and its connection to ontology, and how that informs their conception of the r...

After decades of neglect philosophers of physics have discovered gauge theories—arguably the paradigm of modern field physics—as a genuine topic for foundational and philosophical research. Incidentally, in the last couple of years interest from the philosophy of physics in structural realism—in the eyes of its proponents the best suited realist position towards modern physics—has also raised. ...

We define realism using a slightly modified version of the EPR criterion of reality. This version is strong enough to show that relativity is incomplete. We show that this definition of realism is nonetheless compatible with the general principles of causality and canonical quantum theory as well as with experimental evidence in the (special and general) relativistic domain. We show that the re...