We examine the prevalent use of the phrase “local realism” in the context of Bell’s Theorem and associated experiments, with a focus on the question: what exactly is the “realism” in “local realism” supposed to mean? Carefully surveying several possible meanings, we argue that all of them are flawed in one way or another as attempts to point out a second premise (in addition to locality) on whi...

Great Power Politics. New York: W.W. Norton, 2001. More than afty years have passed since Hans Morgenthau introduced “realism” as an approach to the study of international relations. Since then, the approach has withstood not only a steady assault from such external quarters as liberal institutionalism, the democratic peace school, and “constructivism” but also a marked divisive tendency. Splin...

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...

We present a precise form of structural realism, called group structural realism, which identifies ‘structure’ in quantum theory with symmetry groups. However, working out the details of this view actually illuminates a major problem for structural realism; namely, a structure can itself have structure. This paper argues that, once a precise characterization of structure is given, the ‘metaphys...

‘Structural realism’ is a buzzword in the scientific realism debate. Various positions with diverse motivations fall under this label. A much advertised distinction is between epistemic and ontological forms of structuralism. This paper scrutinizes the alleged dichotomy between these two ‘alternatives’, and criticises the considerations that have been taken to motivate the ontic variety over th...

Semantic segmentation is a difficult task even when trained in supervised manner on photographs. In this paper, we tackle the problem of semantic artistic paintings, an more challenging because much larger diversity colors, textures, and shapes there are no ground truth annotations available for segmentation. We propose unsupervised method paintings using domain adaptation. Our approach creates...

Display designers are often called upon to create visualizations of complex geo-spatial environments for users engaged in tasks such as civil emergency, air traffic, or military operations. What visualization principles exist to guide them? One principle is to strive towards realism, on the belief that realistic depictions result in near effortless comprehension. We think this faith in realism ...

Quantum theory is a tremendously successful physical theory, but nevertheless suffers from two serious problems: the measurement problem and the problem of interpretational underdetermination. The latter, however, is largely overlooked as a genuine problem of its own. Both problems concern the doctrine of realism, but pull, quite curiously, into opposite directions. The measurement problem can ...

Despite the fact that realism has long been the dominant outlook in science, ethical realism has been thought to be especially problematic. Even the most steadfast realists in other fields have questioned the existence of moral truths. It seems that the would be moral realist has his work cut out for him. The first step necessary for any defense of moral realism will be the identification of th...