By appealing to the no-miracle argument (NM), scientific realists claim that the approximate truth of scientific theories and the existence of their postulated entities are the cause of the predictive and explanatory success of science. Antirealists, however, by appealing to the pessimistic meta-induction argument (PMI), claim that a lot of past predictively successful and yet false theories show that there is not any relationship between success of a theory and its truth. One of the most influential responses of realists to PMI is structural realism, proposed by John Worral. The aim of this thesis is to show that during theory-shift there has been a continuity at the structural or formal level, and the central terms of successive theories refer to the same entities (structures). In the first part of this paper NM and PMI will be explained. Then, a critical evaluation of structural realism is given in both epistemological and ontological versions. It will be shown that this thesis is unable to rebut PMI conclusively. The conclusion of this paper, however, is that PMI cannot work against structural realists’ thesis if they limit the domain of their claim to existential sentences of scientific theories, to what I call “Existential realism.”

This paper provides a critical and comparative study of two versions of scientific structuralism. After a brief introduction, in section 2, we review the key concepts in the long-lasting debate between realism and antirealism in the general philosophy of science; scientific realism is a positive and optimistic epistemic attitude towards scientific theories (and especially the non-observational aspects thereof). Two influential arguments around the above debate are introduced and briefly examined in section 3; the main disagreement between the realist and the antirealist will turn on whether or not the novel predictive success of scientific theories is in need of any explanation (especially through truth). In section 4, focusing on a classic paper by John Worrall, we will see that structural realism has been introduced as a middle and more balanced position in the realism-antirealism dispute: (theoretical) scientific knowledge only concerns the structure of the (unobservable) world. Although Worrall himself was not explicit in this regard, we try to provide a preliminary understanding of his notion of structure. The more elaborate and detailed formulation of Worrall’s structural realism based on Ramseyfication is presented and briefly examined in section 5. Possibly the most well-known threat to structural realism is an objection originally attributed to Max Newman: structuralism trivializes the theoretical (or non-observational) implications of scientific theories. In section 6, we provide an extensive treatment of Newman’s objection, before arguing that structural realism can successfully circumvent it. Bas van Fraassen, who seems to consider Newman’s objection somewhat detrimental to Worrall’s project, advocates an antirealist view called empiricist structuralism. The latter mainly originates from the fact that the vehicles of scientific representation are mathematical models and structures. The motivations for this view along with its differences from scientific realism are reviewed in section 7. In the penultimate section 8, we will note that empiricist structuralism too is not totally immune from trivialization objections of the kind raised by Newman and also Putnam. It is, among other things, these kinds of threats that lead van Fraassen to a nonstructural aspect of scientific representation: perspectivity/indexicality. In our final argument, we intend to show that recognizing such an aspect, though revealing in itself, is NOT sufficient for repelling trivialization threats, unless van Fraassen is willing to sacrifice his long-standing commitment to the literal construal of the language of science. We will end with a brief conclusion.

Teller has argued that in our complex world, applying standard referential semantics is successful only in idealized environments. Most of the time, however, reference fails, leading to a failure of referential as well as scientific realism. This is due to a feature of objects in our world that I call spectralness. That is why Teller turns to perspectival realism as a pis aller. I will argue that not only the standard referential semantics but also the standard modal semantics is doomed to fail as a result of spectralness. This, however, does not mean that spectralness is not a modal property. I will discuss that counterpart theory prepares an appropriate framework to deal with spectralness, in light of which the failure of the standard referential (modal) semantics can be explained. I will thus argue that spectralness is a modal property of objects, which the best interpretation of it is the structural one. I accept Teller's perspectival realism but argue that it is a kind of modal structural realism, as Ladyman has in mind.

Ramseyfication is one of the methods philosophers have proposed for formalizing structural realism. Ketland (2004), while providing explications about the Ramseyfication of theories and introducing some concepts related to it, presents a formulation of the Newman problem. He believes it can be almost said that the problem is as follows. The description of the theory, according to Ramsey’s way, in addition to empirical adequacy, only yields the cardinal number of entities in the world. In this article, in addition to providing a more precise formulation of Ketland about the Newman problem, we examine it. Furthermore, an explanation of the structural relationship between theory and the world will be presented based on definitions that are somehow given by borrowing from Ketland’s definitions, including “metaphysically correct structure” and “metaphysically and partially correct structure.” The structural consideration is also based on a definition of approximate truth, which is justified on the grounds of inference to the best explanation. We can give a plausible explanation of structural realism with the illustrations presented.

It is important to consider the ethical aspects of educational research, beside its other aspects (such as methodological, philosophical, sociological and structural aspects). That is because the negation or disregard of ethical aspects of educational research can propose challenges, threats or obstacles to performing quality research. These obstacles or threats include: incorrect interpretation of research result, manipulating of data for achieving specific and intended outcome, and misusing results for political, social and economical aims by governments. In order to prevent those challenges or obstacles, researchers must consider ethical issues of educational research such as the ethical principles and rules of the research at hand. Personal characteristics of researchers, for example, having moral virtue also has the main role in research. This paper studies the role and status of ethical dimensions of educational research in educational institutions.

In this paper, we first provide an overview of the debate between realism and antirealism in the philosophy of science,then, we introduce John Worrall’s structural realism as a middle position in this debate. structural realism is, roughly speaking, the view that our scientific knowledge only concerns the structure of the world. However, James Ladyman goes beyond this by defending a thesis called ontic structural realism (OSR) and arguing that the world itself is nothing but structure. In the three sections after the introduction (2, 3, and 4), we define OSR more precisely, study some of the motivations and arguments in its favor, and distinguish its main versions. Nevertheless, after providing his own formulation of OSR, Bas van Fraassen, the prominent philosopher of science, claims that this view is inherently paradoxical. We argue that his argument for this claim is not conclusive. To do this, we introduce, reconstruct, and then take issue with van Fraassen’s criticism in the next two sections (5 and 6). Not only are the assumptions of his criticism disputable, but we will see that van Fraassen’s simple formulation of OSR may be useful to proponents of this view, who are often accused of ambiguity and imprecision. Although we note a serious shortcoming in van Fraassen’s formulation, in the last section (7) before the conclusion, we will briefly show that perhaps another philosopher-Shamik Dasgupta-has successfully provided a more or less similar formulation of structuralism, without such a shortcoming.

The method of metaphysics: Metaphysics is empirical but depends not, like the sciences, on recondite experience but on close attention to aspects of everyday experience we ordinarily scarcely notice. "Real" is a broader concept than "exists" (which applies only to particulars) and also applies to phenomena, kinds, and laws, which are real, but not, of course, existent entities. But "there are real kinds, laws, etc." doesn't imply that all the kinds and laws we believe are real, are. I call my approach "Innocent realism" because--though it's certainly not naive--it requires attending to experience, so far as possible, without substantial preconceptions. There is one real world, enormously varied but also integrated. It includes physical stuff, kinds, laws, etc. and, here on earth, a vast array of human artifacts, physical, social, intellectual, and imaginative, all intimately interconnected. All this requires human mindedness (a better word than "mind" because it doesn't suggest that human mentality is an organ like the heart or the liver). Rather, it's a complex congeries of dispositions and abilities: to understand even such a relatively simple thing as what's involved in someone's believing something, we need to take account of the person's dispositions to behavior, verbal and otherwise; to the neurophysiological realizations of these dispositions; and to their connections to the world and to words in the person's linguistic community--this last requiring other people's words-world connection. "Virtual" reality is just one more computer artifact, clever, no doubt, but not metaphysically startling. It's oversold, but this is advertising hype, not serious metaphysics.

I argue that the positive metaphysical content of ontic structural realism –,the claim that structure is ontologically fundamental –,is indefensible from a naturalistic perspective. My strategy is to show that the evidence and arguments advanced by ontic structural realists to motivate their positive thesis underdetermine the choice between it and another, contradictory thesis. I argue that there is no apparent way to break this underdetermination without adopting an anti-naturalistic approach to the human mind. The negative metaphysical content of ontic structural realism, however –,the elimination of fundamental individuals with intrinsic nature –,is untouched by this criticism and may be defended independently.

Philosophy has gone through fundamental cyclic changes and metamorphosis during the recent decades. One of the metamorphoses is the manifestation of post - structuralism. In this paper, realism and objectivism are introduced as ways of getting out of noncritical deadlock in the post structural philosophy. Critical realism approach of Putnam and Bhasker is investigated in the first stage of this research, then it is tried to defend social objective by applying the principles of critical realism extracted from the philosophy of natural sciences. Acceptance of experimental and applied outcome of a scientific theory has been interpreted mainly in two ways. Realists believe that there is a phenomenological belief based on the existence of external universe and theoretical conformity behind any experimental sufficiency of any theory. Anti-realists, in contrast, argue that experimental c criteria are the only necessary condition for examining the validity of theory. This article confirms critical realism approach to be a better model of explaining the social identities and political philosophy. Thus, believing in social objectivity, political philosophy is better equipped to provide political critic and defend political ideals.