著者

北村 直彰

出版者

The Philosophy of Science Society, Japan

雑誌

科学哲学 (ISSN:02893428)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.47, no.1, pp.1-17, 2014-07-30 (Released:2015-07-24)

参考文献数

9

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This paper aims to precisely characterize the theoretical significance of the notion of truthmakers. First, the closeness of the alleged principle of truthmaker theory and the realistic intuition on which it rests is assessed, thereby determining to what extent a certain kind of general objection against truthmaker theory carries weight. Second, the principle of truthmaker theory is reformulated on the basis of this assessment, and truthmaker theory is argued to offer a methodological role for identifying fundamental entities that ground metaphysically nonfundamental truths. The discussion suggests a sophisticated nonQuinean criterion of ontological commitment.

著者

北村 直彰 森田 紘平

出版者

The Philosophy of Science Society, Japan

雑誌

科学哲学 (ISSN:02893428)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.52, no.1, pp.1-22, 2019-12-30 (Released:2020-06-20)

参考文献数

27

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Ontic structural realism (hereafter OSR) is one of the most significant ontological attitudes toward modern physics. On close examination, OSR can be classified into several versions in terms of the relative ontological status of objects and relations. Previous studies have not carefully dealt with the differences among the several versions of OSR, mainly because the meanings of some metaphysical concepts are ambiguous. Among them, one way to formulate OSR is to appeal to the idea of identity. However, “identity” can be regarded as either numerical identity or essence. In this article, the derivations of OSR’s minimal statements from the cases in quantum theory give a clear-cut explanation about relationships between metaphysical and scientific statements and show that the formulation of OSR should be based on essence.