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Realism about Structure: The Semantic View and Nonlinguistic Representations

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Steven French  and
Juha Saatsi
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Abstract

The central concern of this article is whether the semantic approach has the resources to appropriately capture the core tenets of structural realism. Chakravartty (2001) has argued that a realist notion of correspondence cannot be accommodated without introducing a linguistic component, which undermines the approach itself. We suggest that this worry can be addressed by an appropriate understanding of the role of language in this context. The real challenge, however, is how to incorporate the core notion of ‘explanatory approximate truth’ in such a way that the emphasis on structure is retained.

Type
The Semantic View of Theories, Scientific Structuralism, and Structural Realism
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 73 , Issue 5: Proceedings of the 2004 Biennial Meeting of The Philosophy of Science Association. Part II: Symposia Papers. Edited by Miriam Solomon , December 2006 , pp. 548 - 559
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

‡

We have had discussions with many people about the issues considered here, but we would like to thank Angelo Cei in particular. Of course, any errors or confusions are entirely our responsibility. The research for this article was supported in part (for Juha Saatsi) by the Finnish Cultural Foundation.

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