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Models and the Semantic View

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Martin Thomson-Jones
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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

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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.

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