Effective Ontic Structural Realism

Three accounts of effective realism have been advanced in this journal to solve threeproblems for scientific realism: Fraser and Vickers develop a version of effective realismabout non-relativistic quantum mechanics that they argue is compatible with all themain realist versions (‘interpretations’) of quantum mechanics avoiding the problem ofunderdetermination among them; Williams and Fraser propose effective realism aboutquantum field theory as a response to the problems facing realist interpretations; Robert-son and Wilson propose effective realism to deal with the dubious ontological status ofthe entities belonging to superseded theories. This article argues for the unification ofthese proposals based on realism about modal structure and the idea of scale relativityof ontology developed by ontic structural realists. This solves problems some or all theaccounts of effective realism face, especially that of making explicit in what way they arerealist. Furthermore, we respond to a recent critique that has been raised against theontic structural realist account of quantum mechanics that we employ.