Motivated by examples from general relativity and Newtonian gravitation, this essay attempts to distinguish between the dynamical structure associated with a theory in physics, and its kinematical structure. This enables a distinction to be made between a structural realist interpretation of a theory based on its dynamical structure, and a structural realist interpretation of spacetime, as desc...

It is sometimes claimed that if moral realism is true, then rational and informed individuals would not disagree about morality. According to this line of thought, the moral realist is committed to an extremely substantive convergence thesis, one that might very well turn out to be false. Although this idea has been accepted by prominent moral realists as well as by antirealists, I argue that w...

I propose that Foucault‟s works, since he wrote Discipline and Punish, rely on an implicit meta-theory that is compatible with the fundamentals of Critical Realism. To this end I examine the status of truth, methodology and social ontology used by Foucault. If this thesis is correct, then a critical realist reading of Michel Foucault would avoid some of the pitfalls that have been attributed to...

Scientific entity realism has been challenged on the grounds that it depends on the controversial principle of inference to the best explanation. I defend the view against this challenge, by showing that the particular inferences needed by the entity realist do not have the objectionable features antirealist's cite in questioning inference to the best explanation. Indeed, these inferences are e...

Realist ontologies organize knowledge by strict adherence to philosophical principles, ensuring robustness and coherence. According to those principles, only entities empirically verifiable can be represented. Our study aimed to analyze medical records to evaluate which kinds of entities should be represented for physicians. We classified the entities and found several entities that cannot be r...

I take a view of ICD-9-CM codes as diagnostic statements, where these statements are about entities that exist in reality. I then represent these entities according to a realist view of disease, disorder, and diagnosis as defined by the Ontology for General Medical Science and using Referent Tracking templates. I illustrate the approach using ICD-9-CM codes that refer to systemic arterial hyper...

The purpose of this paper is to show how “realist synthesis” methodology (Pawson, 2002) was adapted to review a large sample of community based projects addressing alcohol and drug use problems. Our study drew on a highly varied sample of 127 projects receiving funding from a national non-government organisation in Australia between 2002 and 2008. Open and pattern coding led to the identificati...