For or against structural realism? A verdict from high energy physics

Abstract

When it comes to supporting the main ontic structural realist thesis, that we are better off with a metaphysics purged of objects, its proponents have to meet several challenges, three of which are to ensure that objects can be recast in terms of structure alone at both the level of theory and the level of ontology, to justify on physical grounds that structure exists in the world in a way that affects the goings-on in it, and to show that the relation between objects and structure is non-reciprocal, so that structure is ontologically prior to objects but not the converse. Assuming—tacitly or explicitly—that the objects of physics can be thus recast using symmetry group structure, supporters of the thesis have, therefore, to meet the remaining challenges. The present paper discusses and contests two such attempts, which typify arguments in favor of ontic structural realism from high-energy physics.