A 'duality' is a formal mapping between the spaces of solutions of two empirically equivalent theories. In recent times, dualities have been found to be pervasive in string theory and quantum field theory. Naively interpreted, duality-related theories appear to make very different ontological claims about the world---differing in e.g. spacetime structure, fundamental ontology, and mereological structure. In light of this, duality-related theories raise questions familiar from discussions of underdetermination in the philosophy of science: in the presence of dual theories, what is one to say about the ontology of the world? In this paper, we undertake a comprehensive and non-technical survey of the landscape of possible ontological interpretations of duality-related theories. We provide a significantly enriched and clarified taxonomy of options---several of which are novel to the literature.

中文翻译：

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对偶与本体

“对偶性”是两种在经验上等效的理论的解空间之间的形式映射。近年来，在弦论和量子场论中发现了对偶性。天真的解释，与二元性有关的理论似乎对世界提出了非常不同的本体论主张，例如时空结构，基本本体论和论论结构的差异。有鉴于此，与二元性相关的理论提出了科学哲学中对不确定性的讨论所熟悉的问题：在二元理论的存在下，世界本体论该说些什么？在本文中，我们对与对偶相关的理论的可能的本体论解释进行了全面而非技术的考察。