Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-t8hqh Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-25T06:47:39.125Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Models and the Semantic View

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Martin Thomson-Jones
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

I begin by distinguishing two notions of model, the notion of a truth-making structure and the notion of a mathematical model (in one specific sense). I then argue that although the models of the semantic view have often been taken to be both truth-making structures and mathematical models, this is in part due to a failure to distinguish between two ways of truth-making; in fact, the talk of truth-making is best excised from the view altogether. The result is a version of the semantic view which is better supported by the direct evidence offered for it, better equipped to achieve its avowed aims, and, I think, closer to the intentions of the original proponents of the view in many ways, despite some of their own declarations to the contrary.

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. 524 - 535
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

‡

Thanks for helpful discussion to Paddy Blanchette, Charles Chihara, Lisa Lloyd, Brendan O'Sullivan, and audiences at the University of Durham and the Centre for the Philosophy of the Natural and Social Sciences at the London School of Economics. Special thanks to Bas van Fraassen, Mathias Frisch, Paul Teller, and Peter Godfrey-Smith.

References

Downes, Stephen M. (1992), “The Importance of Models in Theorizing: A Deflationary Semantic View,” in Hull, David, Forbes, Micky, and Okruhlik, Kathleen (eds.), PSA 1992: Proceedings of the 1992 Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association, Vol. 1. East Lansing, MI: Philosophy of Science Association, 142–153.Google Scholar
Frisch, Mathias (2005), Inconsistency, Asymmetry, and Non-locality: A Philosophical Investigation of Classical Electrodynamics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shoenfield, Joseph R. (1967), Mathematical Logic. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.Google Scholar
Suppes, Patrick (1957), Introduction to Logic. Princeton, NJ: Van Nostrand.Google Scholar
Suppes, Patrick (1960), “A Comparison of the Meaning and Uses of Models in Mathematics and the Empirical Sciences,” Synthese 12:287–301.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Suppes, Patrick (1967), “What Is a Scientific Theory?” in Morgenbesser, Sidney (ed.), Philosophy of Science Today. New York: Basic, 55–67.Google Scholar
Thomson-Jones, Martin (forthcoming a), “Mathematical Models and Propositional Models.”Google Scholar
Thomson-Jones, Martin (forthcoming b), “Missing Systems and the Face Value Practice,” Synthese.Google Scholar
van Fraassen, Bas C. (1980), The Scientific Image. Oxford: Clarendon.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
van Fraassen, Bas C. (1987), “The Semantic Approach to Scientific Theories,” in Nersessian, Nancy J. (ed.), The Process of Science. Dordrecht: Martinus Nijhoff, 105–124.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
van Fraassen, Bas C. (1989), Laws and Symmetry. Oxford: Clarendon.CrossRefGoogle Scholar