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  1. Three Dogmas on Scientific Theory.Massimiliano Badino - manuscript
    Most philosophical accounts on scientific theories are affected by three dogmas or ingrained attitudes. These dogmas have led philosophers to choose between analyzing the internal structure of theories or their historical evolution. In this paper, I turn these three dogmas upside down. I argue (i) that mathematical practices are not epistemically neutral, (ii) that the morphology of theories can be very complex, and (iii) that one should view theoretical knowledge as the combination of internal factors and their intrinsic historicity.
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  2. To Save the Semantic View: An Argument for Returning to Suppes' Interpretation.Thomas Cunningham - 2008
    Recent work on the semantic view of scientific theories is highly critical of the position. This paper identifies two common criticisms of the view, describes two popular alternatives for responding to them, and argues those responses do not suffice. Subsequently, it argues that retuning to Patrick Suppes’ interpretation of the position provides the conceptual resources for rehabilitating the semantic view.
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  3. Against ‘Interpretation’: Quantum Mechanics Beyond Syntax and Semantics.Raoni Wohnrath Arroyo & Gilson Olegario da Silva - 2022 - Axiomathes 32 (6):1243-1279.
    The question “what is an interpretation?” is often intertwined with the perhaps even harder question “what is a scientific theory?”. Given this proximity, we try to clarify the first question to acquire some ground for the latter. The quarrel between the syntactic and semantic conceptions of scientific theories occupied a large part of the scenario of the philosophy of science in the 20th century. For many authors, one of the two currents needed to be victorious. We endorse that such debate, (...)
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  4. A pluralist view on theories.Marcoen J. T. F. Cabbolet - 2022 - In And now for something completely different: the Elementary Process Theory. Revised, updated and extended 2nd edition of the dissertation with almost the same title. Utrecht: Eburon Academic Publishers. pp. 193-198.
    In philosophy of science, several views have been espoused on the meaning of the term 'theory'; among these are the syntactic view and the semantic view. But even after decades of debate, no consensus has been reached on an all-encompassing positively defined view on theories. Here we take that to mean that the outcome of the debate is that such an all-encompassing view is nonexisting. Correspondingly, the purpose of this paper is to present a pluralist view on theories: it is (...)
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  5. Reichenbach’s empirical axiomatization of relativity.Joshua Eisenthal & Lydia Patton - 2022 - Synthese 200 (6):1-24.
    A well known conception of axiomatization has it that an axiomatized theory must be interpreted, or otherwise coordinated with reality, in order to acquire empirical content. An early version of this account is often ascribed to key figures in the logical empiricist movement, and to central figures in the early “formalist” tradition in mathematics as well. In this context, Reichenbach’s “coordinative definitions” are regarded as investing abstract propositions with empirical significance. We argue that over-emphasis on the abstract elements of this (...)
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  6. An Inferential Response to the "Loss of Reality Objection" to Structural Empiricism.Franco Menares Paredes - 2022 - Principia: An International Journal of Epistemology 26 (3):539–558.
    This paper aims to meet an objection that has been raised against structural empiricism known as the “loss of reality objection.” I argue that an inferential approach to scientific representation allows the structural empiricist to account for the representation of phenomena by data models and ensures that such a representation is not arbitrary. By the notions of immersion, derivation, and interpretation, I show how data models are able to represent phenomena in a non-arbitrary manner. I conclude this paper with a (...)
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  7. What Theoretical Equivalence Could Not Be.Trevor Teitel - 2021 - Philosophical Studies 178 (12):4119-4149.
    Formal criteria of theoretical equivalence are mathematical mappings between specific sorts of mathematical objects, notably including those objects used in mathematical physics. Proponents of formal criteria claim that results involving these criteria have implications that extend beyond pure mathematics. For instance, they claim that formal criteria bear on the project of using our best mathematical physics as a guide to what the world is like, and also have deflationary implications for various debates in the metaphysics of physics. In this paper, (...)
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  8. Beyond the metrological viewpoint.Jean Baccelli - 2020 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 1:56-61.
    The representational theory of measurement has long been the central paradigm in the philosophy of measurement. Such is not the case anymore, partly under the influence of the critique according to which RTM offers too poor descriptions of the measurement procedures actually followed in science. This can be called the metrological critique of RTM. I claim that the critique is partly irrelevant. This is because, in general, RTM is not in the business of describing measurement procedures, be it in idealized (...)
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  9. Semantic realism in the semantic conception of theories.Quentin Ruyant - 2020 - Synthese 198 (8):7965-7983.
    Semantic realism can be characterised as the idea that scientific theories are truth-bearers, and that they are true or false in virtue of the world. This notion is often assumed, but rarely discussed in the literature. I examine how it fares in the context of the semantic view of theories and in connection with the literature on scientific representation. Making sense of semantic realism requires specifying the conditions of application of theoretical models, even for models that are not actually used, (...)
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  10. La red teórica de la dinámica de poblaciones.Martín Díaz & Pablo Lorenzano - 2017 - Scientiae Studia 15 (2):307.
    The general aim of this article is to carry out a reconstruction of the theory of Population Dynamics (DP) in Ecology, according to Castle’s (2001) general stance with regard to the semantic view of theories, but doing it within the framework of metatheoretical structuralism. Thus, we will first identify Population Dynamics’ basic theory-element: its core K(DP) – with the class of potential models, the class of models (through the identification of its fundamental law) and the class of partial potential models (...)
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  11. Prefacio.Daniel Blanco, Santiago Ginnobili & Pablo Lorenzano - 2016 - Metatheoria – Revista de Filosofía E Historia de la Ciencia 6:1--2.
    Preface to the Thematic Volume: Models and Theories in Biology.
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  12. La estructura de la bioquímica metabólica.Ana Donolo, Lucía Federico & Pablo Lorenzano - 2016 - Metatheoria – Revista de Filosofía E Historia de la Ciencia 7:49--72.
    The structuralist reconstruction of the metabolic biochemistry here presented is a more complete and revised version than the one presented in Donolo, Federico & Lorenzano (2006). This version, as the previous one, continues with the reconstructive task initiated by César Lorenzano (2002), but advances further on those elements which remained pendent of reconstruction: applications subsequent to the paradigmatic one, for being these “too diversified and numerous” (p. 210).In line with which is said before, the objective of this new reconstruction is (...)
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  13. Explicar y contrastar.Santiago Ginnobili & Christián Carman - 2016 - Critica 48 (142):57-86.
    Resumen: Usualmente se ha asumido que una única distinción puede dar cuenta del rol que cumplen los conceptos en una teoría respecto de la contrastación y respecto de la explicación. Intentaremos mostrar que esta asunción es incorrecta. Por una parte, no hay razones para considerar que esta coincidencia deba darse, y por otra, como se intentará mostrar a partir de varios ejemplos, de hecho, no se da. La base de contrastación de una teoría no tiene por qué coincidir con el (...)
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  14. Introducción: Modelos y teorías en biología.Pablo Lorenzano - 2016 - Metatheoria – Revista de Filosofía E Historia de la Ciencia 6:5--46.
    Two metascientific concepts that have been ― and still are ― object of philosophical analysis are the concepts of model and theory. But while the concept of scientific theory was one of the concepts to which philosophers of science devoted most attention during the 20th century, it is only in recent decades that the concept of scientific model has come to occupy a central position in philosophical reflection. However, it has done so in such a way that, at present, as (...)
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  15. The Model-Theoretic Argument: From Skepticism to a New Understanding.Gila Sher - 2016 - In Sanford Goldberg (ed.), The Brain in a Vat. Cambridge, Britain: Cambridge University Press. pp. 208-225.
    In this paper I investigate Putnam’s model-theoretic argument from a transcendent standpoint, in spite of Putnam’s well-known objections to such a standpoint. This transcendence, however, requires ascent to something more like a Tarskian meta-level than what Putnam regards as a “God’s eye view”. Still, it is methodologically quite powerful, leading to a significant increase in our investigative tools. The result is a shift from Putnam’s skeptical conclusion to a new understanding of realism, truth, correspondence, knowledge, and theories, or certain aspects (...)
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  16. Circularities In The Contemporary Philosophical Accounts Of The Applicability Of Mathematics In The Physical Universe.Catalin Barboianu - 2015 - Revista de Filosofie 61 (5):517-542.
    Contemporary philosophical accounts of the applicability of mathematics in physical sciences and the empirical world are based on formalized relations between the mathematical structures and the physical systems they are supposed to represent within the models. Such relations were constructed both to ensure an adequate representation and to allow a justification of the validity of the mathematical models as means of scientific inference. This article puts in evidence the various circularities (logical, epistemic, and of definition) that are present in these (...)
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  17. Prefacio.Adolfo García de la Sienra & Pablo Lorenzano - 2015 - Metatheoria – Revista de Filosofía E Historia de la Ciencia 5:1--4.
    Preface to the thematic volume Metatheoretical Structuralism: Some Recent Developments and Applications.
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  18. Bibliography of Structuralism III.Cláudio Abreu, Pablo Lorenzano & C. Ulises Moulines - 2013 - Metatheoria – Revista de Filosofía E Historia de la Ciencia 3:1--36.
    In two occasions a Bibliography of Structuralism has been published in Erkenntnis (1989, 1994). Since then a lot of water has flowed under the bridge and the structuralist program has shown a continuous development. The aim of the present bibliography is to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the publication of An Architectonic for Science –structuralism’s main reference work– and of its recent translation into Spanish by updating the previous bibliographies with titles which have appeared since 1994 as well as before (...)
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  19. Bibliography of Structuralism III.Cláudio Abreu, Pablo Lorenzano & Ulises Moulines - 2013 - Metatheoria 3 (2):01-36.
    In two occasions a Bibliography of Structuralism has been published in Erkenntnis (1989, 1994). Since then a lot of water has flowed under the bridge and the structuralist program has shown a continuous development. The aim of the present bibliography is to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the publication of An Architectonic for Science –structuralism’s main reference work– and of its recent translation into Spanish by updating the previous bibliographies with titles which have appeared since 1994 as well as before (...)
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  20. Dr.Mavriche Adrian - 2012 - NON (non):10.
    The present document starts from the relative existence of the electromagnetic field, reaching through mental experiments its connection with the gravitational field, without the necessity to resort to other space - time dimensions or supplementary "exotic" particles. The final conclusion is that the field "electro-gravitational" and electromagnetic field with accelerated source are two different manifestations of the same single field dynamic. Whilst demonstrating why there are light sources with "flee" towards the red or blue of the light spectrum.
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  21. Introducción a “Nuevas contribuciones iberoamericanas a la metateoría estructuralista”.José A. Díez, José L. Falguera & Pablo Lorenzano - 2012 - Agora 31 (2).
    This is the introduction to the special issue of the Spanish journal Ágora-Papeles de Filosofía (31/2, 2012) devoted to new Ibero-American contributions to metatheoretical structuralism.
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  22. The Rationality Principle Idealized.Boaz Miller - 2012 - Social Epistemology 26 (1):3-30.
    According to Popper's rationality principle, agents act in the most adequate way according to the objective situation. I propose a new interpretation of the rationality principle as consisting of an idealization and two abstractions. Based on this new interpretation, I critically discuss the privileged status that Popper ascribes to it as an integral part of all social scientific models. I argue that as an idealization, the rationality principle may play an important role in the social sciences, but it also has (...)
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  23. Interweaving categories: Styles, paradigms, and models.Rasmus Grønfeldt Winther - 2012 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 43 (4):628-639.
    Analytical categories of scientific cultures have typically been used both exclusively and universally. For instance, when styles of scientific research are employed in attempts to understand and narrate science, styles alone are usually employed. This article is a thought experiment in interweaving categories. What would happen if rather than employ a single category, we instead investigated several categories simultaneously? What would we learn about the practices and theories, the agents and materials, and the political-technological impact of science if we analyzed (...)
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  24. Mathematical Modeling in Biology: Philosophy and Pragmatics.Rasmus Grønfeldt Winther - 2012 - Frontiers in Plant Evolution and Development 2012:1-3.
    Philosophy can shed light on mathematical modeling and the juxtaposition of modeling and empirical data. This paper explores three philosophical traditions of the structure of scientific theory—Syntactic, Semantic, and Pragmatic—to show that each illuminates mathematical modeling. The Pragmatic View identifies four critical functions of mathematical modeling: (1) unification of both models and data, (2) model fitting to data, (3) mechanism identification accounting for observation, and (4) prediction of future observations. Such facets are explored using a recent exchange between two groups (...)
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  25. Signs, Toy Models, and the A Priori.Lydia Patton - 2009 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 40 (3):281-289.
    The Marburg neo-Kantians argue that Hermann von Helmholtz's empiricist account of the a priori does not account for certain knowledge, since it is based on a psychological phenomenon, trust in the regularities of nature. They argue that Helmholtz's account raises the 'problem of validity' (Gueltigkeitsproblem): how to establish a warranted claim that observed regularities are based on actual relations. I reconstruct Heinrich Hertz's and Ludwig Wittgenstein's Bild theoretic answer to the problem of validity: that scientists and philosophers can depict the (...)
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  26. The value(s) of a Story: Theories, Models and Cognitive Values.Isabelle Peschard - 2007 - Principia 11 (2):151-169.
    This paper aims 1) to introduce the notion of theoretical story as a resource and source of constraint for the construction and assessment of models of phenomena; 2) to show the relevance of this notion for a better understanding of the role and nature of values in scientific activity. The reflection on the role of values and value judgments in scientific activity should be attentive, I will argue, to the distinction between models and the theoretical story that guides and constrains (...)
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  27. Form and Informality.Andrej Poleev - 2006 - Enzymes.
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  28. Comentarios a «Explicación teórica y compromisos ontológicos: un modelo estructuralista», de C. Ulises Moulines.Pablo Lorenzano - 2005 - Enrahonar: Quaderns de Filosofía 37:55-59.
    In this comment on the work by Ulises Moulines I shall not refer to the interesting analysis of the ontological commitments that depends the treatment of the so-called «data models», nor shall I debate the general metaphysical principles proposed in his approach, adopting an experimentalist, instrumentalist, anti-realistic, positivist or empirical stance. I shall focus on the last part of his article in which he elaborates on the links between Wesley Salmon's causalist approach and the structuralist analysis of explanation viewed as (...)
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  29. Ejemplares, modelos y principios en la genética clásica.Pablo Lorenzano - 2005 - Scientiae Studia 3 (2):185-203.
    Taking as starting point Kuhn’s analysis of science textbooks and its application to Sinnott and Dunn’s (1925), it will be discussed the problem of the existence of laws in biology. In particular, it will be showed, in accordance with the proposals of Darden (1991) and Schaffner (1980, 1986, 1993), the relevance of the exemplars, diagrammatically or graphically represented, in the way in which is carried out the teaching and learning process of classical genetics, inasmuch as the information contained in them, (...)
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  30. Desarrollos actuales de la metateoría estructuralista: Problemas y discusiones. [REVIEW]Santiago Ginnobili - 2004 - Análisis Filosófico 24 (1):111-113.
    Un aspecto poco estudiado del argumento de Michael Sandel en contra del carácter neutral de la justicia como equidad, es el modo en que funda sus conclusiones en el entendimiento que tiene de otros tres aspectos de la concepción rawlsiana de justicia: su carácter deontológico, el equilibrio reflexivo, y la posición original. Nuestro objetivo es mostrar que Sandel no ha cometido cuatro errores independientes, sino que poseer un entendimiento equivocado del carácter deontológico de la teoría lo ha llevado a caracterizar (...)
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  31. Representation and Invariance of Scientific Structures.Patrick Suppes - 2002 - CSLI Publications (distributed by Chicago University Press).
    An early, very preliminary edition of this book was circulated in 1962 under the title Set-theoretical Structures in Science. There are many reasons for maintaining that such structures play a role in the philosophy of science. Perhaps the best is that they provide the right setting for investigating problems of representation and invariance in any systematic part of science, past or present. Examples are easy to cite. Sophisticated analysis of the nature of representation in perception is to be found already (...)
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  32. Sobre la unidad de las ciencias biológicas.Pablo Lorenzano - 2001 - Signos Filosóficos 3 (5):121-131.
    The aim of this article is to examine, in the light of some recent works in general philosophy of science and special philosophy of biology, the different forms assumed by the thesis of the unity of science, in order to be able to determine in what sense one can speak of a unity of the biological sciences.
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  33. Semantic approaches in the philosophy of science.Emma B. Ruttkamp - 1999 - South African Journal of Philosophy 18 (2):100-148.
    In this article I give an overview of some recent work in philosophy of science dedicated to analysing the scientific process in terms of (conceptual) mathematical models of theories and the various semantic relations between such models, scientific theories, and aspects of reality. In current philosophy of science, the most interesting questions centre around the ways in which writers distinguish between theories and the mathematical structures that interpret them and in which they are true, i.e. between scientific theories as linguistic (...)
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  34. The Importance of Models in Theorizing: A Deflationary Semantic View.Stephen M. Downes - 1992 - PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association 1992:142 - 153.
    I critically examine the semantic view of theories to reveal the following results. First, models in science are not the same as models in mathematics, as holders of the semantic view claim. Second, when several examples of the semantic approach are examined in detail no common thread is found between them, except their close attention to the details of model building in each particular science. These results lead me to propose a deflationary semantic view, which is simply that model construction (...)
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  35. On the Aim of Scientific Theories in Relating to the World: A Defence of the Semantic Account.Michael Baur - 1990 - Dialogue 29 (3):323-.
    According to the received view of scientific theories, a scientific theory is an axiomatic-deductive linguistic structure which must include some set of guidelines (“correspondence rules”) for interpreting its theoretical terms with reference to the world of observable phenomena. According to the semantic view, a scientific theory need not be formulated as an axiomatic-deductive structure with correspondence rules, but need only specify models which are said to be “isomorphic” with actual phenomenal systems. In this paper, I consider both the received and (...)
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  36. Stegmuller on the structure of theories.Mario Alai - 1985 - Scientia 79:105-115.
    A discussion of Wolfgang's Stegmüller's ideas on the structuralist conception of theories, especially as presented in his book The Structure and Dynamics of Theories (Springer, 1976).
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  37. Stegmüller e la struttura delle teorie.Mario Alai - 1985 - Scientia 79:91-104.
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  38. A semantic approach to the structure of population genetics.Elisabeth A. Lloyd - 1984 - Philosophy of Science 51 (2):242-264.
    A precise formulation of the structure of modern evolutionary theory has proved elusive. In this paper, I introduce and develop a formal approach to the structure of population genetics, evolutionary theory's most developed sub-theory. Under the semantic approach, used as a framework in this paper, presenting a theory consists in presenting a related family of models. I offer general guidelines and examples for the classification of population genetics models; the defining features of the models are taken to be their state (...)
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