Senses of objectivity. Henri Poincaré and Ernst Cassirer in the context of structural realism
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Abstract
The goal of the paper is to, at least partly, justify the rejection of what I term the thesis of the origins of structural realism. This thesis deals with the connections, postulated by a certain metaphilosophical narrative, between the contemporary positions of epistemic/ontic structural realism and the views held by physicists and philosophers from the early 20th century. In the paper I summarize the above-mentioned positions and the relationships they are supposed to have enjoyed with the philosophy of Henri Poincaré and Ernst Cassirer. I then proceed to illustrate why such relationships are ill-founded and present conclusions about the unique nature of both structural realism and the notions of objectivity and reality in their context.
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