Structural Realism and Abductive-Transcendental Arguments

The paper deals with an attempt to present an “abductive-transcendental” argument in favour of a particular version of structural realism (SR), dubbed Intermediate SR. In the first part of the paper the general structure of transcendental arguments is scrutinized with a close view on Kant’s original version and the prospect of their abductive variation. Then the role of symmetries in modern physics, especially symmetries without real instantiations and in particular gauge symmetries is discussed. This is combined with a presentation of SR as a promising current version of scientific realism. The discussion is supported by various arguments form gauge theories in modern physics. Intermediate SR, a realist position about all and only structurally derivable entities located between the extremes of Epistemic and Ontic SR turns out as the best fit to our current fundamental gauge physics and this finally leads to an abductive-transcendental reasoning concerning this position. Transcendental and Abductive-transcendental Arguments It seems to be a clear lesson from the history of modern physics, that the Kantian program – taken literally – is wrong-headed. Kant’s way of deriving Newtonian physics in his Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science (1786) seems evidence enough that his way of deriving the fundamental laws of physics is fatally flawed. Why, then, should one be interested in the Kantian program at all? Indeed a reason could be that if we strip off the inclinations of armchair philosophy from Kant’s program, there might remain a core which could be still of value in modern science. This core, the core of the whole Kantian enterprise, survives in the structure and nature of transcendental arguments on which we will focus in the following. Kant introduces transcendental arguments as arguments referring to the very preconditions of experience. In Critique B 25 he writes: “I call all cognition transcendental that is occupied not so much with objects but rather with our mode of cognition of these objects insofar as this is to be possible a priori.” [p. 149] And in B 80 we find: “...that not every a priori cognition must be called transcendental, but only that by means of which we cognize that and how certain representations (intuitions or conceptions) are applied entirely a priori, or are possible (i.e., the possibility of cognition or its use a priori).” [p. 196] Email: [email protected]