Realists about fictional characters posit a certain theoretical role and candidate to fill this role. I will delineate the realists take like Emma Woodhouse fill, argue that it is better filled by what call ‘characterisations’. In explaining mean ‘characterisations’, show existence of these entities comparatively uncontroversial. should acknowledge their existence, but doing so, argue, obviates...

A well-rehearsed move among teleological realists in the philosophy of biology is to base the idea of genuinely teleological forms of organic self-reproduction on a type of causality derived from Kant. Teleological realists have long argued for the causal possibility of this form of causality--in which a whole is considered the cause of its parts--as well as formulated a set of teleological cri...

A finite data set is consistent with infinitely many alternative theories. Scientific realists recommend that we prefer the simplest one. Anti-realists ask how a fixed simplicity bias could track the truth when the truth might be complex. It is no solution to impose a prior probability distribution biased toward simplicity, for such a distribution merely embodies the bias at issue without expla...

A finite data set is consistent with infinitely many alternative theories. Scientific realists recommend that we prefer the simplest one. Anti-realists ask how a fixed simplicity bias could track the truth when the truth might be complex. It is no solution to impose a prior probability distribution biased toward simplicity, for such a distribution merely embodies the bias at issue without expla...

Some scholars known as offensive realists claim that in the uncertainty of world politics, trust and cooperation between states is extremely unlikely. Others, such as defensive realists, claim that rational states are capable of finding ways to counteract the complications created by misperceptions and distrust, and to reduce uncertainty to levels where it no longer inhibits cooperation. In thi...